Annabeth Truce[2]
Saturday, June 25. Twelve days before the Incident.
We had only taken her home for little bits of time, so she could get used to the atmosphere.
At first, it had been one hour. Then, she stayed for a day.
And two days ago, she had stayed for two days.
Now, it would soon be time for her to move in.
As I thought about Annabeth, I began to remember my past.
As a child, I was neglected, and so was my sister, who was two years younger than me. Our parents would leave us in the house, and go out to parties, meetings, and dances whenever they were invited.
They left us in a little cramped apartment that needed serious cleaning and checkup for any heath threatening foods or animals.
Our parents seemed to forget we were there.
What made it worse, was, my sister had autism. It hurt my heart to hear my parents always rant, hit, yell at Rose, as I would just cry and tell them to stop.
One day, things just went just too far.
"Stop!" I cried.
"You stay out of this, Lily. It's not your fault Rose is an idiot."
"SHE HAS AUTISM1" I would roar, and Amanda would look at me, stare at my forehead with such intensity that she might bore holes through my forehead, and would glance over nervously at Dave, and then she'd look back at me.
"That's it."
First, it was a whisper.
We looked at Rose, who was looking at Amanda with hatred, fire raging hatred in her eyes.
"That's it!"
It was louder, now.
I took at step back.
"It's okay," I whispered, but I knew, just by the look on her face, that it would be no use.
"THAT'S IT!" Her voice did not come out clear and angry, but soggy, unclear, and angry, with a tint of sorrow, maybe a bit of misunderstanding and confusion. The mixed emotions of a confused child was put so accurately into those two words.
She screamed, shouting incomprehensible words, flailing around, her face distorted. I ran over to hug her, despite my own mother's dirty looks and my father's scared and nervous eyes.
"I love you, Kim," I said, whispering it into her ear, as I hugged her tightly so she could not move.
She hugged me so tight I couldn't breathe, and she replied, "I am proud of you."
I never knew where she had learned that. But she had always said that, every time I hugged her.
And somehow, she did make me proud, at that moment, whenever I took care of her, or at times later when I was sad remembering the days when Rose was my cheerful yet emotional sister.
Later, our parents disowned us, and we were put into an adoption center, with the little orphans, and we told everyone we were orphans, to the extent that we forgot our parents and often thought ourselves that we were orphans.
Deacdes later, there I was, at an orphanage, talking to a child with a rare mental disability.
"It can be dangerous," the ward had said. "She can be dangerous. She needs to visit the therapist nearly daily."
"I can handle it," I had said. Oh, if I had only known what disability it was. "My sister had autism, you know."
"Oh, I'm so sorry."
"You don't have to be." I forced a grim smile, as I walked into the 'Meeting Room', which was decorated with little pictures of children, drawings, and more pictures of what seemed like the perfect family.
"I am a girl," she had started. She spoke each word clearly, slowly, as if still understanding the letters, the meanings.
"I am ten and a half years old." She looked at Tom, who was, and is, my husband.
She looked at him for about five seconds until continuing her introduction. "My parents are dead." She looked at me now, cheerfully, as if she did not know the meaning.
"They died in a car accident." She looked at the table, probably looking at the intricate designs of the wood.
"They loved me."
I felt sad, and sympathetic.
"Hi, Annabeth," I said slowly, clearly, like I spoke to Rose. "I'm Lily. This is Tom," I said, gesturing to Tom. "We are here to meet you, so you can, maybe, become our daughter."
She sat there, tracing the lines of the artist who drew the little lines. She did this, for about five minutes.
Tom looked at me nervously, but I just smiled at him.
Annabeth was silently examining the lines of the table, following the lines of the little curves and circles. She seemed to have no idea why we were here, or if we were here at all.
Suddenly, she whispered something, murmured something we could not make out.
"Mindy," she whispered this time, barely audible.
"Mindy, I am proud of you." She murmured it to the table, and immediately, I felt a lump begin to rise in my throat, my eyes stinging with tears.
"Andy, I love you." She said to the table.
That had been our first meeting. We had sat there for nearly an hour, and she had refused to answer any questions, talk to us, or make any eye contact.
We did leave eventually. As I left the room, I looked back to see that young girl, the black strands of hair hanging over her face, as she pressed her cheek against the wood of the table.
When she did agree to become our daughter, it was very awkward. After all, she had a rare disease nobody had found a cure to.
And we didn't know much about it, either.
She had Somnium, which was a very dangerous disease.
I did not know how dangerous it was, until it was too late.
It didn't seem harmful, the way the explanation of the disease was basic: hallucination.
Her life was full of hallucinations.
So she was not able to understand reality as simply as we could. If I told her that this was an apple, and that you eat it, she would not understand. She would first ask why it is an apple.
Then she would ask why you would eat it,
then into the whole argument of why you do eat apples or food.
And she would ask why we needed energy to live,
then to the ultimate question that always ended our conversation--why we were alive, why we were living.
Through that, I learned a lot and thought a lot about the meaning of life, and such. I began to look at things in a different way, the way Annabeth would. It would be simple: her head was full of 'why's and 'how's, even for the most simplest things.
What I didn't know, however, was what really did go on in her head, and how potentially dangerous it would be, and, little did I know, fatal.
