Lost In The Memory

Prologue

A heavy box fell with a thud. 

"What are you doing, honey?", a voice yelled from above with a concerned tone.

"Sorry Mumma!!", replied Emily, a girl who is about to turn thirteen in a few hours.  

Christmas is looming, and Emily was looking around in the basement for the lights and decorations to embellish the X-mas tree.

She bent down on her knees to pick up the upturned box that had taken a fall from the top of the willow wood shelf.

The box was without a label on it, unlike the rest in the basement. It wasn't one of those large packing boxes made up of carbon fiber, it was a carton box – duct-taped! Its anachronism intrigued Emily, and its diminutive size piqued her mind. That's all that takes an about to be a teenager to take a look inside.

Duct tapes are no longer relevant, and she noticed that the box hasn't been opened for a long time, or rather, it hasn't been opened at all!

She grabbed her phone and pushed a tiny button on its side. Out popped a short knife. She thrust the knife into the tape and slid it along its entire length and opened the box. Her eyes lowered slightly due to guilt. She was invading the privacy of her parents. But that didn't stop her, nor would it stop any other teenager.

She found two books stacked on top of each other and a couple of Polaroids. Every polaroid had two teenage girls and a boy within, two of which were familiar to Emily, them being her parents in their yesteryear, while she was unfamiliar with the third one. The photos seemed to be of their high school years. There were thirteen pictures in total.

She fished out the books. They seemed to look like a diary. She had seen them in the older films, which she used to watch, with her Dad. Her eyes gleamed with happiness to have seen one in real. Although her friend Lydia claims to have one, she is a notorious liar. She opened the diaries. There were names written on the front page – Betty Brown on one, Augustine Miller on the other. Below it was written, in all caps, two words; one in red ink and the other one in deep blue.

"For James."

Both the diaries began on the same date – 1st September 2012.

"Did you get the lights, Emily?" yelled her mom.

So deeply engrossed was she into her discovery that she hadn't let her mind go astray.

"Yes, Mumma!" she lied, and her mind oscillated back to the diaries.

"Gather all of them before Dad is back", her mom said from the kitchen.

Emily paid no heed to her. The diaries were thick. They were basically tomes with hundreds of pages. She realized that it would take a long time to read them, but not long enough, as the font was bigger than the conventional way in most books that one could find in an e-reader.

"A few hours at most", she said to herself as she scuttled upstairs, went to her room, grabbed a pillow, ran down the stairs, and was back in no time. She laid the pillow on one side of the old couch present on the far end of the basement. She picked up the diaries, lied down comfortably, and decided to read them simultaneously — one entry at a time. A boring afternoon became an interesting one for Emily.

Emily picked up Betty's diary and flipped the pages and reached the first entry.

Hey guys, thank you so much for choosing Lost in the Memory to read in your leisure time. Thank you so much for reading the prologue. I hope you enjoyed the prologue and will enjoy the rest of the book with an ever-increasing enthusiasm! I am an eighteen-year-old guy. This is one of the means for me to improve my writing skills. Please pardon my mistakes and point them out in the comments section. Also, I am not from the United States, where the story is situated. So, I might have a wrong notion about a few or a lot of things. You may find a few clichés because I will be writing what I had been presented about America through the movies and the series and the songs. I am striving to learn over time.

In the end, I wanna thank my friend Ava for helping me to create the cover. Thanks a lot!

I would be really glad if you would Like, Comment, and Share this story with your friends and family.  Also, add this to your reading list to be notified, the next time I put out another chapter.
Thank you so much!!

Nisarg.