Sixteen (ON HOLD)

1.1 Home

All of the houses on Taylor Road looked more or less the same; two story, light colored, and fairly new. Everything about the neighborhood seemed nondescript, from the perfectly manicured lawns to the neatly swept walkways. Every house had the same white wooden mailbox outside, planted just before the lawn met the sidewalk. The local Home Owners Association was fanatical about the small uniform details that made their suburban community, for lack of a better word, perfect.

Nothing was perfect though, as nothing ever is. In front of one house a child had left their bike in the driveway and was sure to get yelled at in the morning when someone wanted to back their car out for work. At the very end of the street was a house with a broken window shutter, it hung limp on its hinges and rattled nosily in the intermittent wind. Some of the houses had deeper imperfections, darker secrets like alcoholism, adultery or illness. But still, nothing wholly remarkable.

Standing alone in the middle of the street at a quarter to midnight, a girl quietly watched one particular house. Her straight blond hair, falling just past her shoulders, was so light in color that it practically glowed under the dim street lights.

Her name felt like a distant memory and one not worth remembering. She had no memory of how she came to be standing there in the street and although every house looked the same, she was absolutely certain that this specific house was hers.

Without wondering if it was right or wrong, she walked to the backyard where, for no apparent reason, she knew a window would be open. It was only a few feet off the ground and not hard to crawl through. Soon she was standing in the house’s dark living room, a thousand memories she could almost recall trying desperately to reconnect with her brain.

A few feet away a tall cherry wood grandfather clock ticked loudly. Other than that, the house was silent.

The girl was silent as well, moving softly through the room, stopping only briefly to look at a shelf full of framed photographs. The smiling girl looking back at her from each photo looked comfortably familiar. There were vacation spots with rich sandy beaches, a friendly looking family consisting of two parents and two children, and shot after shot of that same familiar looking girl in a red and white cheerleading uniform.

A small grey cat with faint black stripes leapt from a chair and weaved itself between the girl’s legs. She stopped to pet the cat who purred gratefully. The chime of the old grandfather clock took over the silence in a sudden wave of cascading notes. The girl didn’t flinch and instead walked up the stairs with her long fingers trailing up the wooden banister.

She passed by several closed doors before settling on one to open. Her hand trembled slightly as she reached for the doorknob. Interesting, she thought as the moment of hesitation came and went in an instant.

Ballet slipper pink walls were covered in fashion magazine cut outs and more distantly familiar photographs. The furniture was white with a fake antique look. Cold and stale, it felt as if no one had been inside the room in quite a while.

There were a few dolls left on high shelves but there was a feeling of transformation about the décor, a coming of age. Abruptly the girl realized that she was both nameless and ageless; a realization that left her in a motionless panic. The house, which held no significance to her other than the fact that she had chosen it, now felt like a prison.

Out of the corner of her eye she caught sight of a mirror and turned her head. The resulting image was a thin young woman, decidedly teenaged, with pale blond hair and blue eyes; currently wide with terror. After staring at her own reflection for several moments her breathing slowed and the fear subsided. Her mind was just about to set itself on tackling that “name” problem again when a loud gasping sound was issued behind her. This time the girl did flinch, and quickly spun around.

“Kate? It’s . . . is it . . .” rattled off an older version of the girl. In fact she so distinctly resembled the image the girl had just seen in the mirror that confusion made her retreat several steps backward.

“Your father and I have missed you so much,” whispered the woman before fainting dead away and crashing to the floor.  

Kate, although she couldn’t quite remember that being her name yet, was home. In less than twenty four hours the whole nation would know, and welcome her back with an uneasy happiness, clouded with unanswerable questions.