street when a dark man pulled up in a grey van. Your father was supposed tell the boy to run inside his house as fast as he could. I mean, he was supposed to put the idea in the boy’s mind to run inside, but he didn’t. It’s not that he wasn’t going to, he was, but he decided it would be a good idea to have an adult witness come out and see just in case the boy didn’t run. So he put the thought in the boy’s mother’s head to go check on her son. By that time the man in the van had already gotten out and was grabbing the boy. There wasn’t time to run anymore. The mother came out of the house to see that horrible man throw her six year old son into a van and drive away. She never saw him again. Your father’s intentions are good, but when it comes to executing them, it doesn’t always pan out.”
Lily had learned this first hand.
“Avery has a good heart. He still feels horrible about what happened to that family, and I know he is going to feel the same way when he truly realizes what he has done to you.”
Lily knew her mother was probably right, but she wasn’t ready to forgive the man who put her in this predicament. She wanted to change the way this conversation was going.
“So my body has to heal enough to wake up from this coma, right? Is there any way we can find out how bad my injuries are so I have some time frame of how long I’ll get to talk to you?”
“Probably, but I haven’t finished telling you about how….”
“That’s okay. You can finish telling me later,” Lily interrupted.
“I’ll see what I can do sweetie.”
Lily could feel her mother’s smile on her like the morning sun, and then she was gone. Lily was now alone with her thoughts.
Chapter 6
Lily never had any problem being alone. She even considered herself a bit of an introvert, but she had been alone for what seemed like several hours, maybe even a whole day, and she was feeling very bored and very lonely. She wished her mother would come back, or even her father.
“Wow, I’m really getting desperate if I’m willing to talk to that jerk,” she thought.
She already tried calling for them with her thoughts, but either it didn’t work, or they couldn’t hear her. She knew they would come back, but it seemed like it was taking forever. It wasn’t like she could pick up a book or watch reruns on television. There was nothing to do. She went back to doing the only thing she could do. Think. Think, think and think some more. The same thoughts swirled through her mind. What if I don’t wake up? What if I’m brain dead when I wake up and I’ll have to go live in an old folk’s home with the wrinkled people?
When she was seven, Nathan, the older boy down the street told her never to go to a nursing home at night because that is when the wrinkled people wake up and stalked through the halls, arms outstretched like zombies searching for young people to suck the life out of so they could live longer. The youngest children were the best for the wrinkled people. They had the most life force of course. Nathan’s grandfather told him all this and he said his grandfather would never lie, so it must be true. Lily knew there was really no such thing as “wrinkled people”, but just to be safe she didn’t want to risk it.
“This is so dumb. I’m only seventeen, and my own father might have damaged my brain enough to put me into a nursing home. My life will hardly be worth living. And what about aunt Jenny? There is no way she can afford that. This would ruin her. I still can’t believe that guy! The man I once called father cares about no one but himself. Even if my brain is perfectly fine, my body is bound to be broken to pieces! I will probably be in a body cast for the rest of high school and I’ll miss everything! No dances for sure. I’ll probably have to live in the hospital and miss the rest of school. Then I’ll have to get my GED like that girl who dropped out of school when I was a freshman. She ended up going to