Elle

Chapter 1

Elle

Chapter 1

“I’m home Mummy,” Elle called, sliding her school coat off and placing it on the bannister.

“Darling! Oh, how lovely to see you. How was school?” Her Mother asked, an unusually happy expression on her usually tired face.

“It was great.” Elle lied, for somehow she didn’t remember a thing about how school was. Of course, she must have been at school– she was in her uniform after all, and her hands were covered in ink, but strangely, that entire day’s events just wouldn’t come to her, but she didn’t want to spoil her Mother’s happy mood, so instead of answering questions and having to lie more, she asked her own: “How was work?”

“Well, Mummy’s got exciting news for you,” Her Mother patted the spot on the sofa next to her, a big excited grin on her beautiful face, eyes glowing emerald green and teeth shining white, “you’ll never guess what. Go on, guess!” Elle was starting to get a little creeped out by now – was her Mother ill?

“Uhh… You got offered a better job?” Elle guessed, idly playing with the silver charm bracelet her Grandmother gave her four Christmases ago which she never once took off.

“No! Guess again.”

“I really don’t know, Mummy…”

“How could you not know, Elle? It’s your birthday! Surely one cannot forget their own birthday!”

Elle looked around her, eyes wide open with shock, to see banners and balloons and a big fat cake that said ‘Happy Fifth-teenth Birthday, Elle!’ on the table that wasn’t there a couple of seconds ago.

Even more to her surprise, friends and family began to appear out of nowhere with presents bigger than their heads wrapped up in colourful bows and packaging. Confused out of her mind, she looked back at her Mother to see Mrs Jenkins appear behind her with a bag full of raisins: “Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday dear Belle, happy…”

Other people joined in with the song, and her mind began to spin. It couldn’t be her birthday. Her birthday was in July – it was October! Everyone had this big weird grin on their face, and it was almost like her head was going to explode.

“No! Be quiet!” Elle yelled at the top of her voice. “It’s not my birthday!”

People began to disappear. One by one, the presents, the banners, the cards, the cake and all of the decorations. Soon enough, everything was gone except what was there in the beginning. Her Mother drew back, a hurt look in her eyes.

“Don’t you like it, dear? I did my best to make everything perfect. I thought you would love the cake…” She began to cry.

“Oh, Mummy, of course I loved it. I’m grateful, really. But you must know it’s not my birthday. My birthday was in July, remember?”

But Elle’s Mother wouldn’t listen. “How could you be so disrespectful? It took days to prepare!” Her tears started to get bigger and bigger until they got bigger than a head, and they kept on coming. “Oh, Elle, how could you! So ungrateful…” She sobbed.

Elle found herself swimming in the salty liquid, trying to stay above the water, but it was no use, for her arms and legs suddenly began to stop working, and there was nothing she could do to prevent herself from drowning.

She was falling deeper and deeper into the water, and all she could do was look around her until everything went black.

*

Falling…

Falling…

Falling…

Dead? Could she be dead? No. Everything felt so real.

No. Everything felt so real... The green grass, sprinkled with dew. The rough bark on the towering trees, the soft, delicate petals on the red roses. Laughter - coming from behind the bushes. Elle's head whipped around to see a tall, ruggedly handsome boy with dirty blond hair falling in front of hazel eyes.

“Who are you? And where am I? Am I...” Elle gulped, dreading the answer. “Dead?”

The boy snickered and looked her up and down. Elle looked down at herself to realize that she had no clothes on. She was completely naked in front of a boy! “Oh!” Elle yelped, doing her best to cover herself up, but failing miserably. “Could you please go away? I can’t… Oh, where in the world are my clothes?!”

“Don’t worry … girl. You are a girl, right? I’ve never seen a girl before, but you certainly don’t look like us…” a short, handsome boy with black hair said, gesturing to my poorly covered up body. “So I guess that makes you a girl. Don’t worry about the whole clothes thing; everyone who comes here starts out naked for some reason, we don’t know why. We got ours from random places – for every one of us it was a different spot, but you’ll find them. I found mine walking in the forest and saw a belt reflect the sun’s light, and there were all of my clothes.” Elle kept her mouth shut, waiting for him to say something else. “Well, go on. Say something. Talk.”

“First of all, my name’s not ‘girl’. It’s Elle. And when you said ‘every one of us’, what did you mean? There are only two of you.” She looked back and forth between the black-haired boy and the other, not-so-nice boy she met earlier.

“Oh, no, there are four of us. I’m Liam, he’s Haydn…” Liam stopped to look disapprovingly at Haydn who was still practically drooling over me. “Haydn. Quit it. This is a lady we’re talking to, so behave.” Haydn rolled his eyes, flashing me a lob-sided grin. “Anyway, so there’s me, Haydn, Jordon and Daniel.”

“Right,” Elle was still struggling to find a position in which she could cover herself properly, but failing miserably. If only she had three hands instead of two. “so aren’t there any other people?”

“I’m sure there are. We just don’t want to see them.” Haydn says, finally sitting down on the soft, warm grass and losing interest in my body.

“What do you mean?” Elle asked.

“Well if you’re not looking for anyone, you can’t see them. You also can’t see them if they don’t want to be seen.” Haydn explains. “We found you because we were looking for Daniel and Jordon. We’re playing hide and seek – never gets old here ‘cause there are new places to hide every day.”

“So where are we?”

“Elle, you should really know by now where we are. It’s kind of confusing to explain – we’re kind of in your imagination. Where you want to be – you created all of this yourself. The meadow, the forest… everything.” Liam gazes over at the beautiful flowers that bloom near the entrance to the mysterious and enchanting forest.

“So we’re in Heaven?”

“You could say that. We’re kind of in the In-between.”