Amelia Drake Side Story: The Anniversary (Part 1)

 Lightning rips through the sky as Amelia bolts from her house.

She runs and she runs and she urges her legs to continue, to just go faster. Her body will tire soon, and she doesn’t want to risk someone following her into the night.

Water splashes up to her knees. Mud splatters, caking her shoes and ankles. The rain barely bothers her, so used to the twists and turns and hills of the neighborhood that the assault from the fog and heavy water fail to blind her.

* * *

Amelia’s 9:30 A.M. alarm sounds.

Not five seconds pass before she rolls over to slap the snooze on her alarm clock, halting it for the time being.

The alarm attempts to wake her again at 9:45 A.M., but she turns it off altogether.

At 10 A.M., an alarm from within Ame’s HoloTech implants sounds. A voice calls “wake up, Miss Drake!” followed by a ringing, all from inside her head. It’ll cause a headache if she doesn't move away from her bed within the minute. Amelia groans and swings her legs to the ground, bringing crumpled sheets with her. She opens her eyes and begins the the daily motions.

Remove her wrist braces.

Pull off her pajamas.

Stumble over to her desk chair and pull on the shorts hanging off the back.

Pack books into a too-heavy backpack.

Go back to her nightstand and grab a pain reliever from the bottle in the drawer.

Walk to her closet and grab weather-appropriate clothing.

By the time she’s done, a message from her brother pops up in the corner of her HoloVision.

Miles Tanaka: breakfast is getting cold, hurry up!

She sighs, slinging her backpack onto her sore shoulders, and grabs a pencil to stick in her back pocket. A wall calendar catches her eye when she stands straight. X’s mark off the days that have passed so far. Thirteen have come and gone.

Amelia’s grip on her pencil tightens.

* * *

Rows of rain-soaked hedges appear on either side of Amelia as she runs, the lawns progressively more well-groomed and unused as neighborhoods shift from one to the next.

She stops in the middle of the street when she notices a child playing in the rain, unafraid of the cold or far-off thunder. Amelia wavers, happy to see at least one family taking advantage of their carefully kept yards, when a parent yells out the front window for the child to come in. The disappointment is clear in the child’s change of demeanor. Amelia grits her teeth, her mood turning sour, when the sound of an engine overpowers the racket of the yelling and the storm.

A car barrels down the road and Amelia notices it just before it’s too late. She panics and stumbles towards the sidewalk. The car’s horn blares as it speeds past, its headlights striking a muddled path in the downcast atmosphere.

The event leaves her frozen on the side of the road. It takes a few minutes, but her breath relaxes from haggard back to calm. There is almost no chance the car would’ve hit her if she remained in the street, but there is still the danger of cars manually steered by a driver.

Recovered, Amelia looks around and remembers her destination. The halt in her journey almost makes her head home, but the returning shame leads her back on her path.

Eventually, a forest replaces the houses on Amelia’s right. She appreciates the light cover as several branches reach over and obstruct the rain.

Amelia soon slows to a jog, her body wearing out and hurting like hell.

Her legs feel heavy during the last few blocks towards the entrance to a gated community. The closer she gets, the more eager she is, yet her body attempts to hold her back. To keep her from returning to the garden alone.

Once the gate comes into view, Amelia runs into the rain once more to punch in the entry code. Disappointment fills her when it fails to open the gate obstructing her path.

* * *

The long awaited version 2.0 update for the augmented reality device, HoloVision, released last week. While the software existed for many years, several side-effects required resolution before general distribution. Many kinks were worked out over time, but some still exist with the released update Write a two page paper arguing whether the software should have been held back until all side-effects were resolved.

Amelia has no idea what the assignment is telling her to do.

While pushing back from her desk chair, she reads it over again, but still gleams nothing. Even with the supposed edge she was supposed to have since the software was patented under the Drake name. Her eyes glaze over around the tenth read-through, and she leans back in her chair to switch tabs and clear her mind. A James Bond film remains paused, so she presses play and sits back, cradling one wrist in the palm of her other hand.

The movie fills the room with much desired ambient noise. Her eyes shift to her notebook where nonsensical scribbles lay in place of notes. Nothing there will help her decipher the homework. She remembers the lesson, but can’t recall an explanation of the assignment.

The pressure in her wrists build as she sits there. It’s as if metal cords wound themselves tightly around her hands—a mirrored frustration to the mental struggle of attempting to understand basic instructions. Various points in her back grow sore from sitting up in a chair for so long.

Goddamn Fibro. What she would give to be free of it for just a few minutes.

The movie continues in the background but she can’t pay attention. Her eyes glaze over as she stares at the screen, the sensation in her wrists tightening even further, her back and shoulders and knees and, God, even her arms. A building sensation grows in all points in her body—in every joint—even as she sits completely still. She becomes discouraged to move, afraid that it will cause the sensations to grow become as fiery as the feeling in her wrists.

Amelia squeezes her eyes shut to try and force it all away, but this makes her focus on it more. It’s not so much pain as it is an uncomfortable awareness of every sensation that is generally filtered out. Amelia fails to resist the temptation to lash out—knowing it will only cause a temporary relief—and kicks out at the wastebasket underneath her desk. Crumpled papers and snapped pencils tumble out, followed by a broken picture frame and wall calendar. She remembers her fit of anger from that morning and pulls her feet up to avoid the broken glass, hiding her face in her knees.

Tears prick Amelia’s eyes as she is overwhelmed, folding in on herself while the movie continues.

* * *

Determined to find a way through the gate, and feeling as if she'll explode if halted now, Amelia opens an overhead map of the area in her HoloVision. The map projects onto a screen appearing a foot in front of her. She scans it, zooming in and out, using her eyes to navigate the interface and search for an alternate route. When she overlays hiking trails onto the map, she notices a forest path that diverts into the neighborhood.

Using the technology creates a throbbing in the front of her skull, and she scowls at the unfamiliar side-effect. 

Amelia regrets her decision to leave the house without any sort of preparation. The moment she jogs into the forest and out of the rain, Amelia realizes how thoroughly soaked she is. Her knees threaten to give out, her joints wearing out and struggling to withhold the strain as she continues.

* * *

Amelia steps into the hallway, looking to where Miles’ parents chat to her right. Their laughter overpowers the sound of the television. They usually seem happy, their optimism amazing Amelia sometimes. She’s seen their reaction to several hardships over the years, including when their elder son, Eli, was at fault for a car crash that bound their younger son, Miles, to a wheelchair.

The comfort of their idle chatter distracts Amelia from her pain long enough to feel emotionally refreshed as she turns to the other end of the hall. She smiles, but her strides remain hesitant when she approaches Miles’ door.

Amelia knocks and her eyes wander down to a hole near the bottom of the door that makes her cheeks flush. A reminder of a time she’d lashed out. She can’t even recall what had gotten her to that point. Whether it was anger, distress, or general clumsiness.

Her head snaps up when Miles responds to her presence, the thoughts dispersing.

“I’m busy.”

“Miles, it’s me. Can I talk to you for a minute?”

Amelia takes the door unlocking, despite his silence, as a yes and opens it after the whirring sounds of the door’s lock halt. Miles sits hunched over his desk, not turning to greet his adopted sister.

“Have you gotten to the Ethics homework yet?”

“No, I’m still trying to finish Calculus.” Miles taps on the textbook with his pencil.

Amelia wanders farther into Miles’ room, noticing the clothes strewn about the floor. The whole room’s a mess. His trash can is overflowing, the comforter and pillows for his bed are on a small couch. She frowns, remembering her promise to help him tidy up earlier in the week.

She picks up his pair of AR glasses while mulling over how to continue, wondering if the non-implant counterparts to HoloVision got the update as well.

“Oh, okay. Well, when you-“

“Look, finals are coming up and I’ve already wasted too much time. I have to finish my own work, and maybe then I can help you.”

“I get that. I’m behind too, Miles.”

He’s stressed, Amelia knows that. But he doesn’t need to be an ass. Her grip on his glasses tightens.

“I’ve been staring at the essay prompt for over an hour. It’s hard to think with the fog,” she tries again, but he misunderstands her.

“I thought you liked dreary weather like this.”

He isn’t listening to her. The pain in Amelia’s back returns and she has to shut her eyes tightly, trying to push the feeling away.

“Can’t you leave me be? I just can’t deal with you right now,” he says, not so successfully hiding his anger. “There’s enough on my plate without feeling responsible for you, too”

Amelia finds herself backed into the doorway, pulling in on herself. The rest of her symptoms come back and claim her attention, overwhelming her once more.

The volume of her voice mirrors her emotions when she speaks. “I need to be with someone right now, Miles. Why are you being like this? Do you even know what today is?”

Miles turns to her, his brown eyes hard with irritation and exhaustion. “It’s Friday, why are you shouting?”

Amelia is too distracted to notice how tightly she's holding Miles' AR glasses. “Because you’re not listening to me! You’ve been distant all week, I–" The glasses snap in half, and she stares down at her hands in shock.

"Seriously, Amelia?!"

A loud bout of laughter comes down the hall, making both look towards the door. Amelia turns back to Miles, then to the hall with a scowl.

Without another word, she pulls the door shut behind her.

Amelia storms down the hallway—past her bedroom, stuffy with failure and frustration—and into the cramped entryway of the house. Mrs. Tanaka looks over as Amelia grabs her sneakers from the shoe alcove.

“Honey? Is something wrong?”

“I’m going out,” she snaps.

The front door slams harder than Amelia intends, but she takes off before giving thought to the effect it might have. Not allowing the gate to slow her down, she takes a path through the muddy lawn and jumps over a broken section of fence.