The Impact

Chapter 58

"Go ahead upstairs and change, I'll have your snack ready in a minute, your dad and I need to talk to Ian for a minute because he didn't put his hand through Parker's dad's face," Peter says, helping Lydia take off her backpack and trying to usher Edmund and her upstairs.

"Oddly descriptive commentary on what did not happen," Edmund says, suspiciously.

"Give me your phone I need to call Parker," I say, feeling Edmund up for his phone before he agrees.

"I know right? The world also isn't coming to an end because it's raining," Gage says, patting the kids on the head. He's still dressed in his gangster clothes of ripped jeans and a leather jacket, wife beater underneath, neck tattoos showing, and chains hanging off his belt. I swear to god, the chains have dried blood on them. I'm slightly afraid of him when he looks like that, I realize. "Go on now, we need to talk to your brother for a minute, okay?"

They go up to the landing to eavesdrop, I suspect.

I look down at Edmund's phone to call Parker. It turns out, I don't need to, because she and Dashiell walk through the door at that moment. So does somebody else.

"Who are you you bastard?" his hands go around my throat.

"What??" I ask, staggering backward, "Why are you here?"

"Ian, what's wrong?" Parker asks.

"He's not Ian---I am," the person says.

"What---what is going on," Gage is staring at me, blinking.

"Stop---okay I don't remember anything, should I know who you are?" I ask the boy who is attacking me. I twist and manage to throw him off of me.

"I don't know---you are in my body,-----I am their Ian---I am her Ian not you," he says, angrily.

"Okay----I'm going to take a wild guess and say that all of you just saw me stagger across the room for no reason and talk to thin air?" I say, because everybody is staring at me.

"Yes, very good," Peter says because he's always nice and encouraging.

"Shit," I say, looking at the boy, "You're Ian?"

"Yes," he says.

"When we were on the beach----when I woke up----I lost my memory," I say, slowly.

"Because that thing---Beggarman was trying to infect you," Parker says.

"Right----but I lost my memory. So----what if I'm not Ian," I say. The boy nods,

"I think that's what happened," he says.

"What if it worked," I say, "and I'm Beggarman?"