The Lost Girl... (Faith, Hope and Tranquillity #1)

CHAPTER 9

Lily’s POV

This car ride was the most awkward thing I have ever experienced… ever. I kept looking at Silver to start a conversation, but his eyes were fixed on the road, not looking at me or even looking remotely interested in talking. His lips were pressed tightly together, indicating he had no intention of speaking. No music was on either, which made it even more uncomfortable. I sighed again, quite loudly, so he clearly knew how hard he was making this, and he didn’t care. He still didn’t react. I saw him grab the wheel of the car tighter and decided I needed to end this. We had another 15 minutes to drive and the last 15 had seemed like an eternity.

“I like your bike!” I blurted out, not even knowing where that thought came from. I didn’t like it I was terrified of it… wasn’t I?

“Thanks!” He mumbled, still staring at the road. His gritted teeth and tight lips seemed to have slackened and he seemed to have let out a breath I didn’t know he was holding, but he continued staring at the road. I looked down at my lap and sighed again.

“Don’t you like me?” I asked finally. I needed to either clear the air or know where I stood with him. This caused a reaction. He stared at me for a while before remembering he was driving and swerving the car back onto the road, which had started to veer off the road.

“Is…is…” He choked out between sharp breaths. “Is that what you think?” He said, anger clear in his voice. I wasn’t sure why this invoked anger. I mean, I was the one who should be upset with him for ignoring me. He was acting irrationally.

“Yes…” I said, looking at him, waiting for a reaction. “I mean, you glare at me, you won’t talk to me, you constantly speak to me in short snaps or an angry tone. What else would I think?”

“I don’t hate you!” He finally said, letting a breath of exasperation out. Now he’s annoyed at me. Great…

“OK, so what is it?” I asked, challenging now. I was starting to get annoyed at him and I crossed my arms across my chest in both defiance and to protect myself. For some reason, this whole conversation was making me want to cry.

“You remind me of someone…” He answered, nonchalantly. His words tapered off to quiet as he shrugged his shoulders and let out a sigh. I wasn’t expecting that.

“Oh…” I answered, suddenly remembering Faith’s conversation with me. “OH!” I said again, realising I should probably keep my mouth shut. “I…I’m sorry…” I didn’t know what else to say and decided to stay quiet the rest of the way home. We pulled up to the apartment complex and I wasted no time exiting the car.

“Finally…” I mumbled as we pulled up outside the house. I was so glad to finally be out of that awkward situation. Silver turned to me as if he heard me. “Right, I’m going to go get some rest. Sorry to have cut your day short.” I got out quickly, opening the door as fast as I could, before turning to exit the car. I felt something tug me back. Silver had grabbed my arm.

“I’m sorry I gave you the impression I hate you. I really don’t…” He trailed off, mixed emotions showing in his silver eyes. “I’d like it if we could become friends…” He said, a forced smile showing on his face, his hand moved down my arm. I thought he was letting go but it drifted into my hand, not quite holding it but grazing it with his fingers. Light shot through my head again. I felt extremely comfortable with him despite the fact he annoyed me with his attitude.

“OK, if that’s what you really want…” I said, looking at him with my eyebrows raised, questioningly.

“It is, honestly!” He looked at me and noticed my necklace. “What’s that?” He said, pointing at it. I rolled my eyes; he was clearly trying to change the subject. I pulled it out and showed him.

“It’s a pendant I was found with…” I trailed off, he didn’t know about my past and I wasn’t ready to talk about that with absolute strangers. He grabbed it and looked at it, his face extremely close to me. I started to feel extremely hot and embarrassed. If he moved his head up to face me, I was sure we would be nose to nose and, for some reason, this made my chest beat harder and harder in my chest. I knew I was breathing heavier too.

“L I T Y?” He questioned.

“Yeah, my name, I’m called Lily. It’s my name on the pendant... I think the second L just got scratched”. He didn’t look away from the pendant.

“Your name isn’t Lily…” he seemed to whisper. Or at least I thought he said that, but I wasn’t sure as he said it so quietly. I looked at the top of his head in confusion. My eyebrows raised, questioningly.

“I’m not sure what else it could say, and the other side is so scratched I can only make out the picture of what could possibly be a snowflake…”

“Hmmm…” Was the only reply I got from Silver as he let go of the pendant and sank back in his chair. “I think you should go and get some rest; you’ve had a stressful day.” He said without emotion in his voice once again. Seriously? This really annoyed me again, so I stormed out of the car, and he set back off to pick up the others. I however, noticed a piece of paper in my hand, he had slipped it in when he was looking at my necklace.

I’d been back probably an hour and decided to take a quick nap on the sofa, but it wasn’t happening. I decided to call David and see what he was up to. He answered on the first ring.

“Hello?”

“Gosh that was fast, were you waiting by the phone?” I giggled.

“Ha! I was scrolling through some emails, that’s all, don’t flatter yourself.” He laughed back.

“Well, I did message you this morning, but you never got back to me.”

“Oh yeah, sorry I meant to, but I figured you’d be busy, so I thought I'd call you this evening, but you beat me to it.” I could hear the smile on his face.

We talked about our days. He had had a lazy morning followed by answering work emails, which I told him off for, as it was a weekend, and he shouldn’t be working. Then he had a bath and was set up in front of the TV for the afternoon. I started talking about my day.

“So, we ended up at the lake just outside of town…”

“Who were we?” David interrupted.

“Oh, I went with the newbies.” I laughed, forgetting I hadn’t said who had gone and David knew I didn’t have family. “Hope is adorable, and they live in the same building, so she…” I couldn’t tell him Alda had seen my address details, or he would be fired. “She saw me in the halls and asked if I wanted to join them.” I finished.

“Oh… Cool!” He replied, he didn’t sound too pleased though, which caused me to frown.

“I’m sorry, I should have called to see if you wanted to join us. But I don’t want to seem too clingy after what we talked about yesterday…” I trailed off.

“No, its fine, I’m just tired. Did you have fun?” I told him all about the skating, leaving out the bit about slipping and fainting. I didn’t want him to worry.

“And I got home about an hour ago, tired and headachy, but it was fun. Isn’t it weird that there’s snow this time of year?”

“Yeah…” Again, he seemed not pleased.

“Do you have any idea what could be happening? I know how much you like to research the unknown.” I said, smiling, hoping to break him out of his funk.

“Well, I have a few theories, but nothing interesting or remotely possible in real life!” He laughed. “Let’s just say your dreams are nothing compared to this ha-ha. It is unheard of for us to have snow at all, never mind in the summer!”

“Yeah… speaking about my dreams, I wondered if you’d read anything else, things have been getting weird here…”

“What’s up?” He asked.

“It’s a long story, but I had another dream, but they keep changing, and the main boy keeps changing his hair colour. The problem is, I don’t know whether the black hair is real or the silver hair.” I said, very confused.

“Maybe your dreams are being mixed up because of the people you have met recently. I have black hair and Silver has well…. Silver hair ha-ha”

“Maybe…” I thought about it, it did make sense, the girl seemed to like the main boy and maybe because I like David it would make sense that the main boy would have black hair, but that didn’t explain the silver hair. “I don’t know, it seems like there’s other things…”

“Want me to come over?”

“No, I’m going to take a nap. Just wondered, some weird things happened this morning. I’ll talk to you more on Monday about it.”

“OK, but let me know if you change your mind or anything else happens.”

We talked for about an hour more about the weirdness of the snow as well as plans for a next date and work that needed doing on Monday, especially with Hope and the gang.

UNKNOWN POV

“She remembered, I’m sure of it!”

“How do you know?”

“She said something… Only I would have remembered it.”

“Just don’t expect too much too soon!”

“I won’t…”

Lily’s POV

Sunday came and went. The snow melted and the sunshine returned by late Sunday evening. I had been sitting on the balcony most of the day, reading. The feeling of the cold snow mixed with the blaring sunshine was lovely. My flowers had closed up due to the cold and I was worried they would die, but they seemed to be coping well with the cold front we had had, and the thick layer of frost was definitely helping.

I heard a tweet as my usual friend visited in the afternoon. I knew he had been over the last two days as the cereal I left yesterday morning had disappeared. I decided to put more nuts and seeds in the bowl and keep them on my table.

“Good afternoon, Mr swallow!” I smiled, seeing him land on the table and hop towards the bowl to begin eating the seeds. He replied with a tweet as he filled himself with the food. I carried on reading. My book was a novel I had picked up a few months ago about a woman who became a private investigator with a lawyer. It was shrouded by mystery and very strange happenings. It made me feel that maybe my dreams could mean something wonderful.

My thoughts drifted off to the day I spent with Hope and everyone yesterday. I really enjoyed it. I pulled a piece of paper out of my pocket; the one Silver had given me yesterday. It had Hope, Faith and Silvers numbers on it. Pulling out my phone, I decided to add them to my contacts and sent a quick text with my number and name in it.

Almost immediately, I received replies from Hope and Faith about how excited they were to make a new friend in the city. Silver didn’t reply, which again annoyed me. Why did he annoy me so much? I sighed and put the phone down, realising I couldn’t get back into my novel. I needed to do something productive. Deciding the snow had melted enough, I grabbed my jacket and headed to the door.

“Hey!” I heard a voice shout. Turning round, I noticed the large silver eyes without pupils at first, making me gasp. My dream man decided to see me in real life. I took a step backwards ready to run and blinked again before realising it was Silver. I’d never noticed he had pale blue eyes that looked silver before, but he definitely had pupils.

“Oh, Hey Silver…” I replied, he grimaced at me. What had I done now?

“Where you off to?” He said, putting his hands in his pockets.

“For a walk, I was feeling restless…” He made me nervous without even trying. “What are you doing?” I asked, remembering they lived below me, so I had no idea why he had some up here.

“Oh, erm…” He seemed embarrassed. “I was actually coming to check if you were OK…” He trailed off. I was shocked, this was the first time he had shown any sort of worry over me.

“Well, as you can see, I’m perfectly fine!” I giggled. He just kept looking at me, as if he didn’t believe me.

“Mind if I tag along for the walk?” He asked.

“Sure”

We walked towards the beach; the day had turned lovely. As I headed towards the usual entrance, I would take to the beach, between two large rock outcrops. Silver grabbed my hand and dragged me towards another path which led up the hill overlooking the beach instead. His hands were lovely and cool, strong and protective. I let him lead me to where he wanted to go without saying a word. It was the first time he had seemed remotely friendly to me, even if he still held that sardonic face. We arrived at a large grassy area overlooking the beach with a few bushes and benches. I have been up here a few times, but it has definitely become more overgrown since the last time I was here.

Silver dropped my hand as we arrived at a large tree which seemed out of place on the hill. I looked around to see if I could see any more but there weren’t any. Silver had walked over to the tree and placed his hand on the tree with his eyes closed.

“Silver, are you OK?” I asked, worriedly. He didn’t answer me straight away, so I started towards him. He turned suddenly and looked at me, straight into my eyes. His pupils searched my features and eventually stopped at my eyes, looking straight into my soul.

“I’m fine” he said. “You remind me so much of someone who meant a lot to me a long time ago and I can’t help but feel… things… around you.” He took a step closer to me. “Do you know what tree this is?”

“Erm, it’s a silver birch, right?” I asked, not breaking eye contact with him. I didn’t feel conscious. It was like his eyes held a whole world I didn’t know but I felt like I needed to know it.

“It is! This tree means a lot to me…” He drifted off but took another step towards me.

“Erm… it’s a lovely tree.” I really didn’t know what to say to that.

“My… friend, she would always take me to a tree like this when I was sad or confused.” I hadn’t realised, but he was close enough for me to touch now.

“I’m sorry about your friend Silver…” I said, genuinely sorry that he had become so cold because of losing that friend. “I can never replace them, but I would love to become a new friend of yours.”

“I would like that.” He said as he reached towards my face. I flinched but not because of his touch, because a light flashed through my head again, a vision of a small boy with silver hair flashed through my head. The boy from my dream? “Are you OK?” He asked, moving his hand away. His face showed concern yet again.

“Yes, I’m fine…” He kept looking at me as if asking for embellishment. I sighed and headed for the tree. I leant against it and sat on the floor bundling my knees up to my chin. “You’re going to think I’m weird, and we haven’t exactly started out on the right foot.”

“I won’t, I promise, what’s going on?”