This is really Chapter 3 in the book, but chapter 2 is just a poem written from the boy's POV, since this novel switches POVs. So techincally this is chapter 2.
Kashmere
I woke up in a white room that was bare and cold like dead bodies. It made me shudder to think about dead bodies. I remembered the dream of my parents dead, the warm sticky blood, the gunshot…It never occurred to me that that dream, could be real.
A woman wearing white walked into my room, wheeling in some flowers. “Oh, my. It’s about time you woke up.”
“Who are you? What am I doing here?” I snapped harshly. The woman looked taken aback and stared at me.
“I’m your day nurse, Helena, don’t…don’t you remember?” she asked quietly.
“I don’t need a nurse!” I cried. “Why am I in this place? Is there something wrong with me?”
“Kashmere, you fell down the stairs of your house,” Helena replied.
I stared at her strangely and my mind flashed back to a night. It was all blurry, but I could hear my own screams, and a gunshot, a gunshot in tune with my beeping alarm. Oh, and so much blood. Blood all over the sheets, down my mother’s face…the blurred vision began to fade, but tears could not be like the vision.
“No,” I whispered. “It’s not true! It was all a bad dream! Tell me it was a bad dream!” I screamed, shutting my eyes, and thrashing around on the bed.
“Kashmere!” Helena cried and wrapped her arms around me, holding me still. “It’s okay,” she whispered after I calmed down. “It’s okay.”
I breathed steadily, shaking slightly. “They’re gone,” I whispered. “They’re gone forever,” I felt wet tears fall down my cheeks.
“Shh,” Helena soothed, stroking my long, auburn hair. “Just close your eyes, just close your eyes.”
“I don’t want to close my eyes,” I whispered. “What if I never wake up? Just like my parents? What if blood spills all over this room because of my death?”
“Don’t think like that Kashmere!” Helena cried. “Don’t you dare think like that, you’re just a little girl.”
Suddenly, two girls burst through the room, I didn’t recognize them, but they seemed to know me. “Kashmere!” they cried and ran over to me. Helena moved and they embraced me.
“Who…who are you?” I asked.
“You don’t remember?” the one with blond hair questioned, looking at me with shocked blue eyes.
I shook my head, trying to recall what had happened before the blood and the gunshot, but it was nothing.
“I’m Missy, and this is Nikki,” she whispered. “Oh Kashmere, please remember. You’ve got to!”
I closed my eyes and tried, but nothing would come to me. I couldn’t even remember the faces of my parents. The only face in my memory was Helena and now a faint glow of Missy and Nikki.
“Now run along you two,” Helena said. “I’m sure she’ll remember you in time.” Missy and Nikki walked out the door, casting glances at me, and I tried with all my might to remember, but it wouldn’t come back. Nothing would come back.
“She can write perfectly fine. She just can’t remember the faces…she says she can’t even remember her parents.” I could overhear Helena talking to the doctor who specialized in amnesia.
“It must be a small case then…I suppose that she’ll be able to remember her parents and friends in time. We just have to wait a bit.”
I scribbled away on the paper, writing my name and random sentences and blurbs. “Kashmere,” a voice took me from my writing.
“Please, tell me, do you remember any faces?”
I shook my head, closing my eyes and trying to concentrate. My mind flashed back to a dark, dark night and…maroon tinted eyes. My eyes flew open and my breath came out in short gasps.
“Kashmere? Are you okay? Do you remember anything?”
I slowly shook my head. “Only that I woke up in the hospital. I had remembered a…a dream, but now I can’t even remember that.”
“Was the dream of your parents getting murdered?”
“I don’t know…I really don’t.”
“Do you remember where you got that necklace?” the doctor asked.
I shook my head. “I think…someone gave it to me. But I’m not sure, it feels like a dream.”
“See?” Helena said. “She can’t remember.”
“Do you remember any places?”
I shook my head. “I remember a house in a col-de-sac and then…um, I think I remember a fancy sort of school…but its all a blur. Like a dream.”
“Ah. But you haven’t lost any skills?”
“No. Writing and reading and math are natural for me.”
“So its just people and places?”
I nodded. “If I remember something…its almost like a dream, so I can never tell if its real or not.”
“She has Retrograde Amnesia I believe,” the doctor said. “Do you remember what happened before your parents were killed?”
“I think…I remember watching a movie, and then…oh!” I paused, something was coming back now, though it still seemed blurry. “I think my dad gave me the necklace. Then I woke up, and found my parents dead.”
“Did you see the murderers?”
I slowly shook my head. “I…I don’t think so. Someone, they saved me. It…it was a boy.”
“A boy?”
I nodded, closing my eyes. “He had…had maroon tinted eyes.”
“That’s…that’s impossible.”
“But I could have been dreaming. Its so hard to tell, everytime I begin to remember, it feels as if I had dreamed it.”
The doctor nodded then turned to Helena. “She has Retrograde Amnesia for sure. She remembers a few hours before the murder must have taken place, but it seems like a dream to her.”
“But doctor, how do we know it wasn’t a dream?”
“Well, we have to believe that some of its true. Maybe not all, but some.”
