In This Town

3. Flashbacks

It was 11 o'clock on a Sunday evening, and Imogen's house was far too quiet for her liking. She was the kind of person that liked having white noise in the background of any room she was in. Dead silence was too eerie, often leaving something of a ringing in Imogen's ears. That was why she always kept a stand-up fan in the corner of her bedroom, running nearly 24/7. Her parents gave Imogen a hard time for this, but Imogen didn't listen. She knew all too well that her family had some weird ticks and pet peeves of their own.

For example, her father, Ben, was adamant on having the couch a certain distance from the coffee table, otherwise, to him, everything looked completely wrong. Her mother had a distaste for any kind of new-age slang or text talk being used in every day conversation. Not only was it too difficult for her to keep up with, but she just didn't have the tolerance for teenage lingo. Scarlett had what her parents would refer to as OCD but Imogen didn't believe was that serious – she dubbed Scarlett a perfectionist at most, always liking things to be picture perfect and the way she liked it. Lucy, on the other hand, was the more laid back of the twins – well, if you didn't take into account the fact that she had to have exactly three ice cubes in all of her drinks, and she refused to let any of her food touch.

It was weird ticks and quirks that made a person who they were, Imogen decided. Without those little details, everyone would be the exact same, leaving no room to make solid connections with people; there was no excitement in everybody you met being exactly like you.

Suddenly, Imogen found herself sighing. While she often found comfort in thoughts and realizations of the likes of these, she knew this time that she was only trying to distract from the real problems plaguing her brain. The truth was that she was trying to push all her stressors so far into the depths of her thoughts that they seemed like distant memories. Only, they were incessantly creeping back no matter what she tried, like some chemical acid that burned through anything in its path.

It was Imogen's first day at her new school in just under nine hours, and while that would be enough to send most teenagers into a fit of anxiousness and doubt on its own, there was still another thought that seemed to be the cherry on top the cake as she lay awake, staring at her closed closet door. It had been three days since she found the box labelled "Bo's keepsakes" – three days since she had that strange, vivid encounter which she had fully convinced herself was merely a dream.

Imogen recalled the moment she woke up once again – her heart was thumping hard before she even had a chance to open her eyes. She was slowly slipping back into consciousness, her brain taking its time to start turning its wheels again. Imogen could sense something was wrong, but in her sleepy haze, the thought hadn't yet struck as to what it was.

It was when she flashed back to the image of a girl with beautiful dark hair and sweet (yet somehow, equally cold) looking eyes that her own eyes flew open. She sat up immediately, head practically turning 360 degrees to scan the entirety of her room. Something wasn't right.

Imogen looked down then, tingles crawling up her spine at the sight of a pillow which her head was resting on only moments before. I didn't put this pillow here, Imogen thought suspiciously, bringing her thumb to her teeth to bite down on gently, nervously.

The box, Imogen's head suddenly seemed to scream at her, remembering what it was that caused her to fall unconscious. She looked around again, this time with an intention; it was when she couldn't find the box or even a loose sheet of paper sitting around her room that her brain started running a mile a minute.

In an instant, Imogen was on her feet and standing in front of her closet once again. She wasn't really sure if she wanted to confirm any of her suspicions about whether or not that cardboard box remained on the other side of the door, but she knew she had to find out. And so, with unsteady fingers, she took the doorknob gently into her grasp. Imogen's movement were slow, almost painful as she pulled the door open, ridding the barrier between what her brain was telling her and the truth.

And then she saw it. The box that she was convincing herself was only her imagination for the five minutes she was awake, sitting neatly on the floor without a trace of it ever having been opened.

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I'm so sorry for the short chapter and the long wait... I've had a pretty extreme case of writers block and writing has been very difficult for me. I'm doing my very best - I'm so sorry!

I really hope you enjoy this chapter, I'm working hard on number four!

xoxo, Quinnlan