Dancing With A God

Chapter 14

Amanda Marsh was in the kitchen, making dinner for the children. Sasha was talking with Rose in the living room. The children were playing inside as outside it was raining hard. And all the bulbs of the lamps were on being the orphanage was dark.

Crumbling the message in her wet hand, Quinn knew it was the moment for her to go. She guessed that Sebastien would soon wake up from his nap. But she wasn't sure of going. Because there were missing two people.

Hayley and Jane.

Chasing away her thoughts from her mind, she ran in the stairs towards the upper floor, afraid to make too much noise. She came in the forbidden room, the one were Amanda Marsh was sleeping. Her heart thumping from the fear of being caught, she moved the chair towards the center of the room and stepped on it without a noise. She knew she was beating a lot by doing that but curiosity had always been her first flaw.

Luckily, being a mother, that flaw has deemed but it stayed strong in her heart.

She had enough height to reach the ceiling of the room with the tips of her fingers. She went on her toes and she could touch it with her open palm. And she felt it for the second time in her life, with fear creeping in her heart. The small curve in the ceiling. The one were we could slide a thin arm or a thick finger. Repeating the same actions of when she was smaller, she opened the secret door of the ceiling, grunting with pain for it was heavy and hard, and she closed her eyes hastily as she feared that dust would blind her.

But nothing. When she opened them again, it was as clean as new. And she started to wonder if she truly was the first one to come back after eight years.

Surely not, the girl thought and, with the force on her arms, she pushed herself up on the fourth floor. And when she closed the trap door behind her, a flow of memories came back in her mind as she smiled with nostalgia at them.

When Sasha, Hayley and her were still children and when they would come there to have their secret reunions.

The super buster club they had chosen to be called,
in honour to the show they watched.

Quinn saw the opened window and stepped towards it, carefully walking in fear of breaking the old wood under her feet. And she went outside, in the cold shower that was the rain that drenched her and her clothes. But she didn't mind because she liked that weather. She loved the dark atmosphere that followed the rain. And she loved to hear the drop hitting the glass of the windows.

But then, she knew too late. She saw too late. And she heard too late.

She hadn't known until then who had put that paper in the pocket of her jacket. She hasn't known why someone would want her there. And she had accepted with stupidity and some naivety because the fourth floor reminded her of the time were everything was simpler. When all of them were still kids.

And as she was pushed off from the window, she heard the characteristic grunt of Hailey and the innocent gasp of Jane. And she fell, falling like Alice in Wonderland. But when she crashed her back and moaned and screamed with pain and harm, she knew that the Wonderland place was death.

And the last thing she heard before dying for a fourth time was the scream of her name and the footsteps of someone running towards were she had fallen.

And she mused : Is it my time yet ?

***

"Where is my son ?" A voice screeched, waking up from a sleep she wished she never left. Clenching her fist with an anger she didn't understood, the girl in a bed started listening to that woman who had woken her up.

"Ma'am. We plead you to restrain yourself from talking as loud." A doctor explained, his footsteps letting the girl know that he was coming towards the other stranger.

"I want my son and until I see him, I'm not moving !" The woman screeched again and, crunching her teeth together, the girl had the serious wish to get up and make the stranger shut up herself. But she didn't because her back was in pain.

"Fine !" Snapped the doctor with an annoyed tone. "How is called your son ?"

The girl in the bed, hidden by a white curtain, sighted with relief, thinking that she would finally have the peace she was longing for. For her, a hospital was meant to rest.

A hospital, She mused suddenly. Why am I in a hospital ?

Maybe from painkillers doctors gave her or maybe from the pain striking from her spine, she didn't move an inch and instead kept listening with a feeling who made her stomach twist.

"My son is Daniel Wellbone." Said the woman with pride in her voice, proof that she cared deeply for the man her child had become.

But the girl in the bed didn't mind that because she heard something else, more grave. Something that disturbed her more than anything else that had been said.

It isn't possible ! She thought, panicking slightly but keeping her breath at a normal speed rate. All of them died years ago !

"We have no Daniel Wellbone here, ma'am." Drawled the doctor.

The girl didn't wish to listen anymore. She wished to see the face of the woman.

I cannot have died again ! She thought, and this time, she was panicking. But even with all the motivation and all the want, she couldn't move from the bed where she was lying in.

"Then . . ." The woman seemed to hesitate for a moment, not talking for a second as the minutes of a clock kept ticking. "What about Aaron Levi ?" True hate and disgust in her voice as she said that name.

The heart and the breath of the girl in the bed, on the other side of the curtain, stopped.

Aaron ? My Aaron ?!

She was panicking, panicking and dying. Dying from the pain in her heart and the pain in her back. Her Aaron was in the hospital. Even if none of the doctors said it yet, she knew it. She could feel it. And she couldn't go see him one last time because she was stuck in a bed.

The curtain was pushed open and a doctor with a grey beard ran towards her. She heard him telling her to calm down but she couldn't.

The last thing she saw before passing away was the stern face of the woman who took care of her Aaron for the years she wasn't there. Lucia Wellbone held well her name, with those pinched and dry pink lips, those cold and distant brown eyes, that white wrinkled skin.

Thank you grandma for taking care of my son . . .