Dear Diary,
The dreary feeling of an all nighter hangs over my head, but the adrenaline keeps me focused. The kid from the journal only wrote 4 entries, but I read through them enough times to get every detail into my head.
Her name was Mal. She lived in my room, and she knew me. She was my sister. She lived here with my dad, and with my grandparents.
Those simple facts meant so much of my life didn't go the way I thought it did.
For one, why do I have no memory of a sister? Why was my dad alive at a time when my mom had died, if I had always thought that they died together? Why were my sister and dad living here, and me in Chicago? Why is there so much of my life missing from my head, and why didn't anyone tell me any of this? Why would they hide all this from me? Can I trust anyone?
There were so many questions, but at the same time, the biggest question of the summer was finally making sense. Why Calvin looked at me like he recognized me sometimes.
Because I do.
It's what he had said last night after he kissed me.
Every time he looked at me all summer, he was seeing someone else. He was seeing her. The thought sends a shudder through me. The day we met, on grandpas porch, we weren't really meeting. We already met before, and he knew that. All this time. I've been walking around Bear Paw like an idiot; oblivious to the fact that everyone knew exactly who I was. And I didn't.
Was our kiss even romantic? Did he only kiss me because he wanted to be kissing her?
...
"Anything wrong?" The librarian that pointed out the computers to me asks.
I didn't want to tell her that I was stopping to contemplate which computer would be the most private. They all seemed to be positioned in a way that anyone passing by could see what I was looking at.
"Uh, no, Thanks." I say before sliding into the desk at the farthest end from the reception.
Mal Linden, I type into the archive. It seemed like a good place to start. I try to casually glance around myself, to see if anyone is in reading distance. The only person I see is an older lady putting together a puzzle. Why she needed to do that here and not at home, I don't know.
Looking back at the screen I see a message.
No search results. This search is case sensitive. Please make sure to check your spelling.
"Great." I mutter under my breath.
Mal must be short for something, but what?
I try Mallory Linden. Nothing, Maleficent Linden. Nothing. Then I try just Linden, and the screen quickly fills with so many words it startles me.
I scroll through some articles talking about the motel, grandpa's wedding to Darla, and Darla's new flower shop, until I land on one with the title: 2 dead, 1 seriously injured in plane crash. I open it.
It was my parents. My mom had died, along with the pilot Elliott Murphy, and my dad had survived. Why did I think all this time that they had both died in that crash? And why didn't anyone correct me?
"What are you doing?"
The shock of the article mixed with the fact that I was doing something secretive makes me jump harder than it should have.
YOU ARE READING
That One Summer
Teen FictionJane was raised by her free spirited uncle, but when he moves to Paris she is forced to live with her grandpa for the summer in a small town where she finds romance and secrets to her past that she never knew were there.
