Cam Valdez and the Lost Origins: The Unkown Twin

I Steel an Expensive Truck

     The house was silent. Too silent. Everyone had been asleep for a few hours. Everyone except me. It wasn't uncommon for me to be the only one up at a late hour. I just hated falling asleep and having dreams about the strangest things. I didn’t even know how to explain my dreams. 

     Instead of getting some rest after that long day, I replayed my encounter with Hermes. My thoughts drifted from the way he kept slurping his root beer to what he had said. I tried to remember each word he had uttered, but my half-asleep brain was too sluggish to think deep thoughts. Finally, I knew it was useless to try and sleep. I stood up and paused at the door.

     My room was on the first floor and had a sliding door to the wide backyard. I had only a little bit of decorations in my small room; A desk, a camera, and a small wardrobe that mostly consisted of jeans and mud-stained t-shirts. I also had a picture of my best friends from four years ago sitting on my desk. They were the only true friends I had ever had, until two of them, the black-haired children, had disappeared as if an unseen current had swept them off and into the deep sea.

     No one even remembered their names after they had disappeared from the boarding school at which we had met. And all the things that suggested they even existed had disappeared along with them. Except for the picture on my desk.

     Hermes’ words rang in my ears. It was a certain sentence he had said. Something he had said about my father. ‘Your father wanted me to bring you that weapon along with this message: ‘you’ve waited and have been patient. Your time has come.’

     Those words sounded familiar, but I couldn't place exactly where I had heard them before. Maybe an old friend had said it, or a teacher. Finally, just to put my mind at ease, I told myself that a social worker had most likely said it to me at one point. Yes, that made sense. I think... 

     The Celestial bronze phone Hermes had given me was also on my desk in my small room which was a cut off section of the garage. The rest of the garage was taken up by a very nice lime green Camaro. I was prohibited to even breath on the Camaro, much less drive it. 

     I walked over to my desk and picked up the slab of metal phone work. Before I had left my hut in the woods, I had compared the phone to the other blobs of glowing metal I had collected. And, as it turns out, the phone was the same material as my collected metal. Celestial bronze, as Hermes said. I had no idea what ‘Celestial bronze’ was! Thanks so much for the help, Hermes!

    I walked out of the door and started circles around the yard. 
                                                          
     “Dang it!” I yelled a little while later as I stepped on a particularly sharp rock. Someone cackled behind me. I turned around, clutching my barefoot only to see a horrible sight. 

     Now you might think I'm being over-dramatic. But If you had shared every birthday party, every field trip, every moment at the Jones' house with a bossy blondie who took every chance she could to make you look like a nitwit, then you would understand. 

     “Valdez, I knew you'd be out here, ” Lilea said in her stereotypical cheerleader voice. She was already dressed in a crop top and skinny jeans, her perfect tan visible in the dim light that was coming from the morning sun. Her stormy gray eyes shimmered like the reflection of a depressed and ugly rain cloud in a pond.

     I was amazed at how much time had passed as I had walked about the wide yard. “What do you want, Big L?” I said while I used a nickname I had given her years ago. She snarled at me.

     “You're acting weird,” she said, looking at me in distaste. 

     “Why thank you!” I said with a mock bow. “You don't know how hard I try not to be normal.”