Missy's garden: Prologue.

"Hopelessness doesn't always last forever." Is a quote that Amy said often enough, it was something that she heard in church once, before everything happened, she was 11 years old, her brother was in the hospital, MRSA was inside of his broken knee, her grandmother was in hospice, her dad was on everyone's nerves, her mom smoked 2 packs a day, and she was in the 1st big stage of puberty.

Part 1

0. "The following chapter is a prologue"

12 Years ago

*Missy*

"Missy," Jeremy Thornton called from the other room, "Where are you going Mellissa?"

'Darn!' Mellissa Thornton heard her dad, she wanted to leave, or at least pretend to leave for good, this awful place. She put all the thoughts out of her mind, opened the back door and called, "Fishing, I'm going fishing."

Slam! The spring loaded door shut tight as she hopped off the two short and wide steps, then grabbed her bicycle, her fishing pole and her helmet and pushed herself down the snowmobile path. She'd have to get off in a minute to climb under the gate, but it was a lot easier here. In her old life, there was no real traffic, it was an "artsy" location in the city, with vehicles topping a whopping 15 miles per hour, and her mom was always gabbing with the neighbors.

In her old town, yeah, her mind wandered as the bridge had passed her by a long time ago. Nothing was the same here. Yeah, there was more wildlife. Yeah, that was her mom's passion, but yeah, she couldn't even hold a cellphone anymore, let alone a 300mm lens.

She looked into space, she looked, and she refused to believe that any of it was real.

The snowmobile path crossed a bridge, peeling paint and cobwebs, that went above a waterfall, and there was a rusty old waterwheel that an ancient mill had used at one point in time, but now it was just another abandoned historical building. Missy rode her bike all the way there and let it fall. She knew today was about to suck too.

She climbed up into the old mill that had a leaky roof and holes in the walls, graffiti that made HER attempts look creative, and a handful of fake magic symbols. Slowly though, some of those symbols seemed to ease her attitude and give her hope as she wondered, "Why do those ones glow?"

She looked very deeply at them, only random ones glowed, "Maybe these are the magic." she looked at the junk around them, "and those are the crap."

It didn't matter. "It doesn't matter." She knew that even if it was magic, real live, not just some silly artsy prank that used glow in the dark markers, but a real piece of magic. It still wouldn't matter.

She looked out of one of the broken clapboards, at the house that was standing in front of her, yeah it was probably a crappy place, but it was flat. And it was here, and it could be made into a beautiful landscape, a garden for tons of wildlife. And in a few years, when her mom needed to be pushed around in a wheelchair, it would be awesome, a camera could be mounted, everything could be perfect.

"Of course," She sighed, someones moving in...

She looked, she knew, and she remembered a stupid folk story in class, "That house in front of the market, it's haunted." that's how it started, and then the home teacher joined in and added, "I knew his name, Joey, one day his family left him there."

She didn't get any tingles then, she hadn't cared at all then, but now, she felt she was past all that angsty shit and really wanted her dream to become true! Now. She smiled, "Now, I wonder when Joey will drive them out?"

"No one stays for long." She told herself part of the dumb story, "I sometimes see lights in the windows. And then he looks at you with his eyes, that're red!"

But, Missy knew that it was just a joke like on scooby doo, something really stupid, corny and kinda dumb. It was still a cool idea, 'I mean,' She thought, 'If Joey and Mom were friends, then… '

She puttered around the old mill and opened the trap door, she had thought about hopping down there, getting all sepsis after she landed on rusty nails and maybe even becoming the ghost herself. She had thought about a lot of things, like dying before her mom, like leaving and running away, like hurting her for even wanting a baby.

But, her parents weren't only photographers, they made up little stories, little captions for the good pictures.

Stories that made life more interesting, more fun, and could easily be expanded on.

Both of they're childhoods sucked apparently, and try as they might, they did pass it on, and that sucked too.

'You know,' A voice inside her said, 'you should be happy you can never be like them.'

Missy really didn't care enough to pay attention or shut that voice off, 'You have an excuse now, an excuse to do what they were afraid to do, because,' she picked up her bike and started to walk it across the walking bridge, 'you can't have a family anyways.'

She wanted to hop on it and ride away, far away to a sailing ship, go to Bermuda, become a pirate and die fighting. She wanted to leave. And she was going to, she just had to be like the bad girls, the ones who don't let anyone stand in they're way, who shoot their way through anything.

"And I can." She spoke out loud, "And I should." She pretended to have a plan, "And I…"

This was the same place that she always got stuck on, one of her parents stories, one that she wasn't sure if was just a tall tale or not, but it probably was real. Her dad had apparently made a plan with his best friend, they were gonna hop a train west, or south, or somewhere, in those days, they apparently had trains? She looked at her dad, he couldn't have been more than 40, so, 1980?

"Well." He continued, "We were gonna lie our way and everything, until we got caught by some friendly policeman and my friend was angry, so the policeman took him to his parents and he said, "No. No, no" and got taken away and got taken to a foster home that was really a work camp and then I was supposed to go with him and if I had Missy, if I had, then I would never have been able to be your dad."

Missy knew that soon, she would wonder why she had stopped, he was a horrible father. Maybe that's why she stopped, because, he was not a horrible father, he was trying his best, he let her complain, he tried to distract her, he didn't even get angry, like ever, he was not a horrible father.

Instead. She walked down the stone steps on the other side of the creek and tied bait onto her pole.

She looked at the dragonflies around her, and everything was fine now. She could see Randy on the other side of the river. He was cool, he was very silly, dumb and childish, but he was cool. She wasn't sure how long he had lived at the complex, she wasn't sure about any of the shy boy that she shared a bus stop with every school day, except for the fact that besides being extremely shy and everything, he was not retarded or whatever the new word for that is, where you have to take special classes, no. Randy was cool.

*Randy*

Randy watched the river water go by, the fish swimming, the leaves and spiders hitching a ride with the bubbles and remembered how his sister had told him about the water, how it makes things wash away, that was probably the last thing she told him before she got a job and abandoned them.

'It makes things wash away.' He thought as he swung his torso over the river, he wasn't afraid of falling in, it might have been because he was a dumb kid, it might have been because everybody acted like he was a dumb kid, who knows, but as he held onto a sapling with one hand, and one of his feet on the river bank, he let his body swing over the river water.

He did wonder if he should bring a rope sometime, maybe there were caves under the water like in adventure stories, maybe he could go into one and that'd be his secret hideout, maybe then his sister would come back to see him, and if she didn't come in this life, then she might find him as a skeleton in the cave and wake him up.

That was the camel that broke the straws back.

Yeah, Randy got some things mixed up, he was 12, and things were hard, but he did know that his parents had some form of contact with his older sister Amy, sometimes he walked in when they were on the phone, and they would tense up, he'd had seen cards hidden under more trash mixed in the garbage can.

"Maybe I should have retrieved them." He thought, he had been told to never get trash out, that there were needles in it and he would get aids or something, he had been told a lot of things. And the reality was that he didn't think all of them were true. Not that he thought that what his sister told him about raising the dead was true, but he did think that most of what they teach in Sunday school was true, and heaven and spirits and Jesus, they were true.

Maybe it was because his sister told him it was true.

He let his mind wander as he saw it, a dragonfly, no, it wasn't a dragon fly. He realized that it was a dragon. A little, tiny, possibly full grown dragon. And this was how his world was changed.

"You have 4 legs, no antennae, and 2 sets of wings."

The dragon stuck it's tongue out at him, it wasn't black like they show that some lizards have, it was real, it even touched his hand for a moment as he stood there, he wanted to let go of the branch and talk to it, something fantastic that he was sure would make this day better than blah. But it flew away.

He looked over the river, he saw a lone figure, "Probably fishing." he said out loud as Missy stood there, as everything was alright, Randy noticed that even though the figure looked tall, and very adult, it was probably a kid, either that or a very short person. He himself wasn't tall, his parents weren't tall, so, he knew that he probably wouldn't be tall either, and that was… Alright, he could ware platform shoes or something if needed, maybe in the future, he sometimes imagined, they'll have surgery like in gaticca.

He liked sci-fi, he changed the channel whenever his parents ridiculed him, but he liked it, it was something he did with Amy, it was something he hoped to do with her, 'in the future if she ever comes back for me.'

He imagined that she was working a very dangerous, well paying, international spy gig that would pay for a new life. He imagined that sooner or later, she would come for him, he imagined that she did love him, regardless of what his parents said about her loving no one but herself, and he imagined that everything would be perfect before he was 16.

"4 years away."

He couldn't last much longer than that.

'Four years away...'

"Maybe it's some kid, who's a neighbor." Randy mumbled as he wiped his glasses on his shirt, a lot of kids lived around here, there was the trailer park down the road, three 4-family apartment buildings on this road as well as the housing complex that he lived in.

He could make out some features, a hat, shorts. He waved, although not entirely sure who it was, he waved. And the figure waved back.

"Maybe it's a classmate." He almost smiled while thinking about which classmates might go fishing there, there was Tommy, or Tammy, and Jack, but honestly, Jack wouldn't go fishing, or anywhere without a guardian present, he was 8 and he was a runner.

"Missy." The thought reverberated in him as another dragon flew by him. He thought, well, he knew that she wouldn't ridicule him for telling her about the dragon. Dragons were fairy tales, she might even think that it's kinda cool and try to figure it out. She was good with computers, but the reality of it all was that, by the time he brought her here to check it out, it'd be gone.

"They're probably down there anyways." He muttered, he took one last forlorn look at his neighbor and sighed. He didn't, he chickened out, he'd probably tell his parents, his mom who told him to let her know anything, that she'd always believe him, and his sister if she ever came home.

He knew that she wouldn't.

As he trudged through the woods back home, he know that Amy never could find them if she really wanted to. She had gone to work over a year ago, and since, there was no birthday cards, no phone calls, no Christmas cards, and, although Randy was terrified that she wouldn't even know where to send them after they moved here, his parents told him that it wouldn't matter, because she never sent any before.

She never tried to visit. Randy thought as he went home and drew a picture, "What's that?" He imagined his parents coming in and asking him, his parents never cared, they were always too busy to care. But he imagined saying, "A dragon."

"Oh, like a knight and a dragon?" They would ask.

"No, not really," He would then tell them, "I saw a tiny dragon today."

"You did??" His parents would be nervous, they were nervous in any oddity, then they would ask, "You sure your eyes weren't playing trick on you? You know how your eyes can get cross eyed sometimes." then they would go on the spiel of that, and Randy, then 'I would plead that they weren't, then they'd probably mutter how Amy got like that sometimes, coming home with wild stories, then just leaving with no explanation to follow those crazy impossible stories around.'

Randy didn't care. He wanted her, he wanted her to hug him and tell him that everything was more than alright, that things were better than alright because were together. He wanted to guess what color her hair would be that day, what new genre of music she liked, if she had a real boyfriend. Something. Something that felt real and magical-

'And magical.' He thought, Amy was magical, she had admitted to it, no, she wasn't a full blooded witch, but she knew a little magic, and she had seen real live dragons.

Randy knew it was nonsense, just a fairy tale like the ones he sometimes sees Missy reading about at school. 'She and her friends just read those books about running away forever and ever and never coming back!'

He threw his notebook, he knew it was wrong. He knew that his dad would wake up from his Sunday afternoon nap and wonder what was wrong, he knew.

*

The next day though, Randy forgot how childish his world had been and decided to show his drawing at show and tell, "And I saw it yesterday by the river," he held up his drawing and explained, "And it was a real live dragon. I know because it only had 4 legs and no antennae."

All the kids ridiculed him, rather, they didn't believe him, and actually did show how stupid they knew him to be while waiting for the bus. It was okay, it was raining, and a few minutes later that bus stopped at the complex, only he and Missy got off here, it was the first stop for that bus, and some days, they actually do walk together to school, it was fine. He had on his mud boots, she had an umbrella, it was fine. It was-

He looked up and saw the purple clouds, it wasn't fine. Purple, that had been his sisters defacto hair color. It wasn't ever going to be fine and he was sure that he couldn't wait until he was 16 to act out, to lose himself, like his parents explained why Amy was a bad influence,

"Staying out all night long, and we've got a young boy to think about." That was when they started, it was just a little more, an augment, an outburst every so often, all because of me.

Randy looked ahead of him at Missy, 'the girl who avoids me like the plague at school, the girl who just wants to run away to a world with unicorns and make believe.' He imagined that she was really just a big mean teddy bear on the inside, and that she was only pretending to be nice and opening the door for him, and then she started talking.

"I believe you Randy." She followed him in to the corner of the stairs, "I saw the dragons too yesterday, and I believe you."

Randy stamped his muddy boots all the way up the stairs, it didn't matter if she believed him, she believed in all that crap, and still just wanted to run away to it like his sister.

He sat at the kitchen table, watched the rain and remembered that it was sunny yesterday, a lost day. He wanted to burn all of his pictures, he imagined getting a lighter from his moms purse and burning it all down, the whole reason why he wasn't supposed to play with matches, but this house had sprinklers anyways, so it wouldn't be bad.

Instead, he watched the rain, he listened numbly to his mothers soap opera and looked at the sparkles in the fog and watched the rain as he breathed, and breathed and closed his eyes to try and shut out the tightening vice on his skull.

Plob.

Some stupid take out advertisement plopped in the mail slot. It was stupid. But it was a change, it was an excuse to remove his muddy boots and wake up a bit, play a bit of game-station, do his homework and do it all over again.

*

Amy stood, she waited, she felt like. Like nothing was going to be alright, she got stuck, and lost her home, lost her family, lost everything because she got stuck and explained what she went through. Because she was honest.

She heard that her younger brother Randy was on the other side of the door, she even saw him walk into this apartment, she waited a few minutes, wondering if this would just be thrown away like all the others, but she wanted to make sure that he was the one to get it, the one to see her.

*

Randy picked it up, it was a postcard, it had no advertisement on the front, and it looked like a very childish thing, a very pathetic attempt at advertising as he slowly read, "I didn't mean to run away from you."

A moment went by, Randy turned the card around. "Love Amy."

He knew that this was a stupid joke as he reached for the door knob, he knew this had to be as his eyes focused on the hallway and he frantically looked around. Then he saw it, Amy's purple hair around the corner. He saw his sister smiling at him. He saw everything as she mouthed that she had to go, and to look outside.

Immediately he did, he closed the door, a little too loud for comfort and ran to the window, it looked the same, the rain was louder and it was darker, but it was the same.

Randy knew that his bedroom window might be the one that Amy was trying to tell him, so he ran over to that, opened his window and saw them, all the dragons, he took a flashlight and probably blinded a few dragons as he saw his sister shine Morse code at him to get a camera.

He didn't quite understand though as she shined that she loved him, 'She,' Randy's subconscious tried to make sense of it all, 'she has to leave, and that, things will be better.'

He was in awe of it all, he wished he had picked that instant-cam up, the one that he threw somewhere in his closet, his grandparents Christmas present, the one that Amy would always buy extra film for him.

"Take a picture." Amy shouted as she shined, "P-i-c-t-u-r-e" and then flickered a final "L-o-v-e" as a full grown dragon flapped its wings and took her into the heavens.

*

"And then I woke up." Randy Smith told his best friend Missy the next day. That was a strange day. There was a tree hit, several branches had fallen into the road and caused an accident with the railings, it was in the park by their house, and there were vehicles backed up, and school was a blur and Missy believed him.

"Yeah." Missy told him, "I believe in fairies and unicorns and dragons, and yeah, life isn't the easiest place to believe in things, is it. But Randy, I saw those dragons, no, I didn't see your sister or a big dragon, but I saw the dragons."

"It's okay." He thought how Missy probably wouldn't know what Amy looked like if they ever passed in the store and told her, "Mom and dad removed all of her photos anyways."

Mellissa Thornton looked at her neighbor, '"You poor boy."' she realized that his life sucked probably worse than hers, and was in awe at him those few moments before the school as they walked across the front playground and waited, and hadn't seen her friends yet. Then she saw her friends, said, "I'm sorry," and left.