Rooming With Ash

Bonus Chapter #3

Keira's POV - 3 years prior to story, Baltimore

Would it be considered obsessive if from this moment forward, I recorded my years with the use of the terms B.A. and A.A.? Before Ash and After Ash. That's what people did, right? Used life-changing events to help them keep track of time – to help them organize their lives. Right now my life was anything but organized, and aside from the recent deaths of my parents that no doubt played a role in that disorganization, I knew it was also partly because of the mysterious boy I had met a few weeks ago. The mysterious boy who, in only one night, had changed my life more than any other person had been able to since the accident. A boy I had never really seen before that night, but that I now seemed to lay eyes on every time I turned around.

And I was sure that nothing had actually changed – that we used to pass by each other the same amount as we did now. What was different though, was the fact that nowadays I actually noticed it. Nowadays he had become all I could think about. That night with him had become all I could think about. This was what happened in the time of A.A.

Before Ash, I had been in control of my mind and the places it wandered, but now, in the time of After Ash, I had lost all semblance of control, and there was no going back.

~

1 Day A.A.

My eyes scanned the halls of my high school that I had never taken interest in till now. And I guess I still wasn't taking interest in the hallways per se; I was looking for someone specific. I was looking for the boy from last night, Ash Moretti. The boy who I still couldn't believe had really been there with me – at the one place I never thought I would meet another person. The lake hidden deep in the forest, a place I'd convinced myself was mine and mine alone. Apparently it was his too.

I couldn't believe that I still had to go to school today. After last night, I deserved a public holiday. After Ash had blown in like a hurricane and changed everything, I deserved at least a day off to process everything that had happened. I woke up this morning wondering whether last night had all been a dream. Everything in my life had been so dull recently that it just seemed so out of place, and I knew that my mind liked to play tricks on me too. Tricks that would momentarily allow me to forget that I lived in an orphanage now – that my little brother was the only remaining family I had. Last night at the hidden lake could have easily been one of those tricks.

When I had touched my lips this morning though, I knew last night had been real. My lips didn't feel like the innocent, un-kissed lips I had had before the lake. No, these ones were new lips – lips that had finally felt the smooth static of someone else's. And these were lips that wanted to experience that same electric current over and over again.

Who would have guessed that for the whole year I'd attended this school, the crowds that bustled through the hallways had been hiding within themselves a light. A light with the ability to finally rekindle the flame inside of me that had been blown out the day my parents died.

Much to my dismay, I didn't see him in the hallways that day. I couldn't pay attention in my classes that day because my mind kept wandering over to him. I couldn't help wonder where he might have been, what he must have been doing. I couldn't help wondering whether as he went through his own day, if maybe – just maybe – he was thinking about me with a smile on his lips too.

12 Days A.A.

Twelve days later and it hadn't gotten any easier.

I hadn't told anyone about the day at the lake – not my little brother, Mickey, not my best friend, Riley, and not even the mirror I looked into in the morning. At first it had been because I didn't want to speak the words aloud and bring reality to a night that had felt so magical. It was a secret I wanted it to stay that way. I didn't want anybody else's words or projections to tamper with my memory of that night.