Hope

Prologue - The Girl Who Had It All

Prologue
The Girl Who Had It All

I remember the last day I saw her very clearly. It was a gloomy day, as most were during a zombie apocalypse; one where the sun was making its hardest attempt to make an appearance, but failing miserably due to the clouds even harder attempts to, well, make the sun's attempts fruitless. Clouds can be shady like that, sometimes.

Hope was a very smart girl, underneath her stained and wrinkled, week-old t-shirts, ripped jeans with pasta sauce stains on them, and too-small, too-old Converse shoes that she wore just to look cool. Hope was, though very book smart, not at all street smart, literally and figuratively. While she could speed read a six-hundred page book within an hour, she failed to look both ways on the roads while reading said book. She forgot to tie her shoelaces very often and didn't know what people were talking about half the time.

But I loved her anyway.

The day it happened, Hope had called me up on my telephone, stumbling over each word and stumbling over each and probably every thing in her basement, and told me she had exciting news. She told me to come over ASAP, now please, don't make me wait, please. It was something we came up with when we were in second grade.

Hope's house only had one floor, a basement, and the tiniest attic that ever attic-ed, and the doorbell didn't work. So you'd have to yell, "HELLOOO? IS ANYBODY HOOOME?" And usually, Hope would yell back asking who it was. If she liked you, she would open the door and let you in. If she didn't, she'd call back, "UHH... NOBODY'S HOME! GO AWAY!" And you'd have no choice but to leave, or feel like a total idiot standing in front of her house waiting for the fateful day she'd let you in.

She never would.

As Hope's best friend, I had full access to the house, and by fifth grade, my yelled requests to enter the house had come to a halt. I knew the answer. She knew the answer. So I'd just come in.

"Hope?" I called, opening the creaking door to the house without even flinching. The house smelled like metal, chemicals, and fire; nothing new, Hope was always trying things out in her basement laboratory. I heard her yell from the basement for me to come, in her excited, pitchy voice that told me she was really, really ultra-excited and reminded me how glad I was that I wasn't a dog.

Hope Fray was not a clean person. Her carpets were filthy, her walls were stained with food (she was not a very graceful person, either), and the house always smelled like cat food. I didn't care. I loved cleaning for her. It gave me time to talk to her about normal teenager things; we didn't get that often, what with the apocalypse having gone on for what, eight years?

(No offence, but if this zombie apocalypse thing was planned, or part of a master plan, whoever's behind it is really bad at getting their act together. Just saying.)

"Myles, if you can go any slower than that," Hope huffed, folding her arms over her chest and curling her lip, "then I'll kiss you."

Go slower, my mind whispered. I grinned at her. "Was that a threat or a bribe?" I asked her, and she laughed. Hope and I were not dating. We made jokes about it all the time, and even acknowledged that we could fall in love one day. She never knew I was serious. I wanted to protect her. I wanted to kiss her in the middle of her sentences. Nobody out there could love Hope the way I do. "Come on, then, what are you so excited about?"

Hope put her hands on her hips and raised her eyebrows at me. Her hair was in a messy ponytail at the back of her head, and she was wearing a dirty lab coat. "If you want me to shut up, just say so." She clicked her tongue. "It's huge, Myles. Life-changing. You may want to kiss me now so people don't call you a gold digger once I'm famous."

"Tempting," I replied. She tried to peck my cheek, but couldn't follow through without laughing. Her laugh was one of those contagious ones, but one of the ones you would want to hear all the time. I considered maybe it was just me who thought that way.

Hope laced her fingers through mine and guided me through all the clutter on the floor. I remember all the things we passed, because I remember inspecting every inch of her lab after she disappeared. I remember Hope was singing lyrics she was probably free birding, I remember she stopped at the third table.

"Now, I want you to promise you are not going to freak out." Hope's voice was diplomatic, like she was pronouncing me her royal knight. "And that you are going to love me even if I happen to be wrong about all of this!"

My cheeks hurt from smiling so much. It was impossible she was able to make me so happy, and then just be... taken from me. "I promise I will not freak out, Hope. And you already know the answer to the second question."

Hope feigned offence; her jaw dropped and she pulled her face towards herself. She took her hands out of mine and put them on her chest as if to say Who, me? She made a choking sound and said, "So you won't love me completely, entirely, and unconditionally and even especially when I am wrong? Myles Herbert Thorne, I am sorry, but this relationship is not going to work without belief in each other. Nope."

I slipped my hands into hers and looked at her gently. "I do love you," I promised her. She smiled back, but with amusement, so I knew she didn't know I was serious. I was both relieved and irritated. I still am. "Seriously. What is it?"

"It is that I am just steps away from curing the zombies," Hope announced proudly, trying not to shriek. She was smiling so hard, I thought she was going to break her cheeks off. I guessed that's what I looked like, too. "You aren't freaking out!" She raised a hand for me to high five. I obliged.

"I'm so proud of you," I told her. I went to give her a hug but she ran around the table and gave me a mischievous smirk.

"Are you, really?" Hope was often very playful and childlike in serious situations. She was always up for a spontaneous game of catch whenever things were getting too intense. "You'll have to catch me in order to give me that congratulatory hug, mister. Think you're up for the challenge?"

For her? Anything.

Anything.

Hope Fray was my life. Hope Fray was the death of me. Hope Fray was my everything. I would follow her anywhere, whether it be around her laboratory, or across the seven seas. I would undergo any pressure to get on the level of a diamond like her, whether it be the guilt of having knocked over several things in her lab, or a near death experience.

One minute, Hope was lovely. The next, Hope was lost.

Hope   -   September 2016