Prologue

Emma:

Year: 2002

As memories are known to be lost throughout the process of growth, we still may have those special ones that just stick. It’s so ingrained into our memory that it is shocking we can even remember it. So the question is, did it really happen? And why is that we always remember the bad ones?

To me, the worst one has been imprinted in my head since I was four. The day should have been a great day because I played with my best friend Rye all day long. An intimate, warm day. We even made a promise that when we grow older that we would get married, as if we knew what a marriage means. Actually we just learnt from our parents that if you truly love someone, you would never let them go.

As we sealed our promise with a very sloppy kiss just like our parents always did, my mother bursts into the room. She picked me up and carried me out of our home. I heard everyone yelling. Where was Rye? I found his mother was pulling him in the opposite direction. But why?

“Mumma!” I cried but it was if she could not hear me.

Outside I can see the rest of my family in the car and my mum places in my uncle’s lap “Hold her” and tears start to fall down her cheeks. Something really bad happened and I look to my older brother Daniel sitting next to me. My parents are in the front and my mother is crying and my father starts driving very fast.

“How did they find out?” Uncle Stephan asks.

“We were betrayed” Dad

replies.

“Dad, who is after us?” Daniel looks out through the back of the car. “Very bad people Danny” my father responds and I look out the back to see that we are now very far from where Rye is and I get this weird feeling inside my chest.

“What’s wrong baby girl?” my uncle asks and wipes the tears from my cheeks.

“It hurts” I say, rubbing my chest.

 He makes a funny face and the next thing we know a huge truck crashed into the side of us, my uncle had wrapped his entire body around me while the car flipped so many times. There was blood and glass everywhere and I couldn’t move with my uncle asleep on me and then I was falling asleep too.

When I awoke the next day, mum was sitting next to me looking so tired with some blood on her shirt. My father was pacing the room.

It was not a bad dream, wasn’t it?

I looked around the room. “Where’s uncle Steph and Danny?”

“Baby girl, they are in heaven…” mum drew me into a tight hug. I felt her shaking shoulders and hot tears streaming down her face.

She sobbed for so long that I fell asleep again. A couple hours later. Dad’s shouting woke me up. He was arguing with mum.

Bam! The door slammed. Only mum’s crying echoed outside.

I never saw my father again.

And Rye too.