:Locked: for double-posting. Please go to topic32423.html for this story.
There are just some parts of this that seem a bit awkward to me, but an outside opinion would really help! 
Chapter one, part one
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CHAPTER ONE
GRADUATION DAY
Ava awoke with a startled gasp. Slight bewilderedness was quickly replaced with self-admonishment as she realized she was sleeping though the chairman’s speech. She shook her head to disperse the remaining signs of tiredness and desperately tried to refocus her attention on the speaker.
She scowled at the thought of setting such an impression on her peers, making them think that that she didn’t care. To show such dedication towards her studies during each semester, only to fall asleep
during the final step of the process, what kind of valedictorian fell asleep on their graduation day? And how dare she be even the least bit interested in what the dream she just had?
Since she had awoken with a particularly noticeable jerk, her state of attentiveness (or lack thereof) did not go unnoticed. Behind her she heard a soft, yet completely audible, snickering.
“Wow Ava,” said the teasing voice, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you sleep when you were on campus and at graduation too!”
Scowling, she ignored her friend, Heather. Her teasing was nothing new to her. She had found out long ago that it was best to just ignore her snide comments. So she huffed angrily and glared at the speaker, trying to disregard Heather’s taunting voice echoed in her head.
The anger in her eyes intensified as she realized that the idea of ignoring that particular comment was almost laughable. She had always been the first to be complimented by a teacher, always been at the top of her class; to show such indifference at the end was simply inexcusable. And still the dream she had had lurked almost hauntingly in the back of her mind. She wondered just what the dream meant; why she could never fully remember the dream, just flashes of lights and brief bursts of sounds that compiled into a huge jumbled mess of useless memories that had no semblance of order and made absolutely no sense. She wondered why she kept having these dreams, just how many times she asked herself these questions, never coming up with any answers. Why did she even care? And why was she still thinking about it?!
She nearly kicked herself realizing that another section of the elaborate speech had just bypassed her attention and she once again scrambled her brain, in an attempt to pay attention.
Trying to get a grip on her concentration she watched the speaker drone on, seemingly endlessly. The words flowed in one ear and out the other, never really registering in her distracted brain.
Fleetingly she noticed a couple a kids in the distance playing catch in the local park that neighbored their assembly.
She watched, the speaker’s words now completely escaping her interest, as the ball sailed towards a raised glove at a speed that made the tiny ball a white streak against the clear, blue sky. Her attention sailed like the ball as the streak took shape of an arrow head in her mind’s eye.
An arrow-head? Didn’t her dream have something to do with an arrow?
A new flash of lights registered in her brain as she found herself digging through her mind, scrambling to try and fit together the random flashes and sounds into an order that made some semblance of sense.
This stupid dream used to absolutely terrify her when she was a little girl. But not anymore, now they were just annoying.
Mercifully the dreams never happened every night. It was always off and on. Sometimes she would have them for many days in a row, other times she went without them for almost a whole month. But they always came back, and of all the times of it to do so, it just had to be on one of the most important days of her life.
Sighing, she put her elbows on her knees and rested her chin in her hands, not even mad at herself this time for losing her focus again, perhaps realizing the futileness of the task. She sat up a little straighter in her seat in a last half-hearted attempt to listen to the dull droning voice of the speaker.
“… Standing before you, ladies and gentlemen, are not mere students. They are disciples of the noble art of healing some of God’s creations. They seek not riches or fame, only to make the world a better place for everyone to live. Why; just the other day…”
The words were inspiring enough but he might as well have been reading her the water bill, the way he droned on and on. Who could blame her for falling asleep!
Again she scolded herself for thinking like that; she couldn’t make excuses for herself. Not now! Ever since she had started this she had expected nothing less than perfection from herself. She had sworn to any and everyone that she would come out of this with a perfect record. She did not disappoint.
From the moment she had entered Carrolton University she had been dubbed with the “model student” label. Oh sure, she was pretty enough, with thick, slightly wavy, dark brown hair that went down to the bottom of her shoulder blades. Her slightly tanned features sported deep blue eyes, an innocent face, with a slight “angular beauty”, as her mother would say, a small button nose, a curvy body, and long legs, — though they did little to help her petite height of five foot, six inches — she had no trouble drawing plenty of looks from boys on campus. But to her, that dimmed in comparison to the things that would appear on her resume, the things that truly mattered.
She had had straight A’s all through college, high school and most of middle-school. She had also been President of the Debate, and French clubs, along with being named the valedictorian in high school and college.
People who knew her for her reputation said she was the type that had been obsessed with her grades since she had known what the word meant. People who knew her well, knew better. They knew about Oliver, they knew about her father.
Allowing herself to once again drift away from the droning voice she took a pleasant stroll down memory lane, trying to pin-point the moment where this whole thing began.
Any sensible person who knew her story would immediately assume it began on the day she realized the absence of a male influence in the family.
Ava was a sensible person, and she was certain that she knew her own story.
But the real starting point, or at least the one she could remember, was the day a spokesman had come into her seventh grade class to talk about their future careers. Most kids in her class had no idea what they wanted to be when they grew up. And the spokesman had only smiled and said it was natural that a child their age didn’t have their future planned now, and that it was natural not to plan for it the next day.
To Ava, it was just another reassurance that she wasn’t completely normal. Because it was that day she planned her future step for step and she knew what she wanted to be.
Ava had interrogated her mother about her father for as long as she could remember. She had grown an obsession in her early child-hood, so obsessed that it got to the point where it was unhealthy.
She wanted to know everything about him, how he talked, what he looked like, she even went so far as to ask her mother what he smelled like once.
Ava remembered when she was six years old she used to use the information she had gained from her frequent interrogations to carry on imaginary conversations with him. She would carry on conversations with him for hours and eventually she had taken them out of her room. She started asking his opinion about things and people. She started to ask him what he wanted to eat or to do. She started to believe he was truly there.
At first, her mother had thought it was cute — she had an imaginary friend! — But when she had discovered the name of her new found companion she had put an immediate stop to it.
“He’s dead Ava!” she had said, “And you had better learn to deal with it, because there’s nothing you can do to change it.” She had cried a lot that day.
Since then she had grown up. She never again had another imaginary accomplice. However, her frequent interrogations about him never ceased.
She would never forget that day. When she had asked what he had done for a living, she was ten years old. The reason for asking it was long lost, but her mother’s reaction to it would be engraved in her memory for as long as she would have the power to think.
When she had asked it, she had looked strangely alarmed. Then she remembered that a slight smile played at the corners of her lips as a single tear ran down her cheek. She had turned to her slowly; eyes alit with unshed tears and a radiant smile on her face as she told her that he had been a veterinarian.
She never learned why that particular question brought on that behavior, such reactions weren’t familiar and she wasn’t sure how to handle it, but she made sure to limit her questions about him since then.
Following the spokesman’s advice on current preparation, she had immediately asked to visit an animal hospital the next weekend. Her mother convinced her to settle, instead for a trip to the local zoo. That trip to the zoo had started a chain of utter nuttiness that still continued today.
She was fascinated by the screeching primates in their house-like cages, the dark lights of the cool reptile room, but nothing caught her interest more than the aviaries.
Passing the chamber that held all of the birds — including those big ones, like swans and eagles — she was intrigued by a cardinal that stared at her with intrigue, as if it were spying on her.
She had spent hours in that cage, all the while the birds showing an uncanny interest in her. A lot of the smaller ones even sat on her finger like they did in those fairy tale cartoons you see as a child. The big ones tended to keep their distance, but they came closer to her than anyone else. Even today she could whistle to them and they would come to her. She didn’t do it often; she didn’t want to draw unnecessary attention to herself. But sometimes when she was feeling a bit lonely — like when she started to think about the father she never knew — she would wander out to the gardens at her mother’s house, or to the balcony of her apartment, and call to them and they would come. They would sing to her the most beautiful melodies; tunes that people now-a-days seemed have forgotten to appreciate.
Ever since the day she found out what her father did for a living, she had worked so hard through the rest of middle school, and through all of high school. Her result was starting her college classes in her senior year of high school, voted most likely to succeed, and admission to the best animal hospital school in the country. Five years and dozens of sleepless nights later she was sitting in this very seat, graduating at the age of twenty-two, a year early of most Carolton graduates awaiting the rewards of all her hard work.
“… and now to our valedictorian, we present the reward of all her hard work. Ladies and gentlemen please give a round of applause for, Ava Hollowell.”
Ava gulped, this was it. The moment she had waited for all of her life. Slowly she made her way up to the stage, and with a shaky hand she accepted the rolled up certificate, the reward of ten years hard work. She shook hands with the chairman, Mr. Glade, who whispered in her ear, “Well done Ava, I’m sure you will go on to do great things.”
Ava smiled brightly and thanked him. She walked off the stage, towards the deafening cheers of the audience and she caught the eye of her proud mother, wiping a stray tear from her face. Sitting next to her was her grandpa who looked bewildered at the loud noises. She suspected he had been sleeping throughout the whole ceremony. Slowly taking her seat once again, she placed her diploma on her lap.
The rest of the ceremony was a blur and it wasn’t long before she was faced with her teary eyed mother. She dropped her hand bag as though it meant nothing to her and embraced her daughter with a tight hug.
“I’m so proud of you, honey!” She could hear her voice slightly tremble as she rocked them side to side.
She rubbed her mother’s back and caught a glimpse of her grandfather’s disapproving look at all the noise as he sat waiting for them on the spectator’s bench.
She pulled back and took her mother’s hands in her own. They were near mirror images of each other, and for a woman approaching her fifties she looked very pretty. With shoulder length hair, exactly the same color as her own, dying her hair took care of the graying. She also had the same shaped face, and the same button nose. The only differences were her eyes, which were a chocolate brown.
“Mom, you should see yourself! Do you realize how hard you’re crying, I mean, it’s only graduation!
“Only graduation?!” her mother exclaimed passionately. “Who are you, and what have you done with Ava?”
Her response was cut off by a tap on her left shoulder; she turned to face the two excited faces of Heather and Laura, who were also clad in blue robes and top hat.
They all embraced each other tightly with squeals of delight.
“I can’t believe it’s actually over!” Laura said with her face flushed from the excitement at her new-found freedom.
“I know, it’ll feel weird not going to classes tomorrow,” Heather agreed avidly.
They all giggled and reveled in the glory of completion. All three of them were best friends but it hadn’t always been that way. Heather and Lauren were both older than herself, but they all had seen each other at social gatherings that Ava’s mother always seemed to be invited to. They had spoken to each other in passing but it would have been pushing it to call them anymore than colleagues. However, when finally college came around, Heather and Laura were the only familiar faces and by the end of Ava’s freshman year they had become inseparable. Though Heather and Laura were older than herself, the college-credit classes she had taken in her senior year of high school allowed her to be in the some of the same classes as them and, obviously, to be in the same graduation class.
“Hey Ava!” called a masculine voice from behind the celebrating trio.
She turned round and saw a familiar boy with an immovable silly grin approaching them. “Hi Jason,” she replied brightly.
Jason smiled even wider, which didn’t even seem possible, reached the trio. He was a handsome boy; he had thick, wavy brown hair that brushed his thick brows and kind black eyes that always had a mischievous twinkle in them. The smile engraved upon his cleanly shaven face. He greeted Ava enthusiastically as he always did.
“Listen, have you heard about that new movie coming out in a couple of days, the one with all those scary looking animals?”
“Yeah, everyone’s talking about it!” Laura said excitedly. She turned to Ava expectantly. “You heard about it, didn’t you?
“Of course I have!” she scoffed.
Jason’s black eyes lit up. “Really? Well look, I know a guy who can get me two tickets, free of charge. What d’ya say, huh? You wanna go?”
Ava sighed. She had lost count of all the times he had asked her out. “Listen Jay —”
“Just one movie!” he interrupted, raising a single finger. “C’mon girl, you know you want to!”
Ava shook her head, trying not to giggle. “Look, I really like you, you’re a great guy but… I - I’m really not looking for anyone right now I think we should just stay friends.”
She spoke the truth. Under normal circumstances she might have accepted his offer. Maybe if —
She shook her conscious ending the trail of thought. She couldn’t think about that, not today!
Jason sighed and his shoulders slumped a little as he shook his head, his lips still upturned in a small smirk. Ava wondered if anything could get him to stop smiling. She heard Laura groan in annoyance at her friend’s rejection, and this time she couldn’t help but smile a bit.
“Alright,” he said with a chuckle as he started walking backwards with a bright smile, not a trace of false emotion in his eyes. “Just friends, I think I can deal with that. But if you ever change your mind, you give me a call; alright?”
She laughed and called back, “I will!”
Heather shook her head. “You’re hopeless, Ava.”
Ava knew where this was going to go and she glared intently at Heather, daring her to continue. She wouldn’t succumb to sorrow on the happiest day of her life; she wouldn’t burden everyone else with her melancholy, so she quickly sought a way to divert the conversation.
She needn’t have bothered.
“EVERYONE, GET READY TO THROW THE CAPS!” someone shouted.
She saw her mother, who seemed to have been listening in reserved silence, fumble in her bag for her digital camera.
The resounding boom of the whole graduating class’ voices rumbled through the air as everyone removed their caps.
“ONE!”
An imaginary drum roll echoed in Ava’s ear as her heart pounded. She could hear her mother’s camera clicking rapidly and she tightened her small fingers around the brim of her cap.
“TWO!”
She could hear a couple of party poppers go off, stray impatient cheers could be heard as the graduating class of 2008 held their breath.
“THREE!!”
Two hundred blue clad arms shot into the air, releasing their square caps into the air as confetti rained down onto the graduates. Unified sounds of whooping, cheering, and cries of joy could be heard for miles and Ava felt two arms embrace her in a one armed hug. She let out an answering cheer as she embraced her friends back.
As the caps came raining back down onto them along with the confetti, she wondered what her mother would say to her after.
Several unidentified hands clapped her on the back and she fleetingly acknowledged them with a quick nod as she wondered what kind of “great things” she would go on to accomplish.
But most of all she wondered, as she looked onto the grinning faces of her best friends, the proud gaze in her mother’s eyes, and the reluctant smile on her grandfather’s lips, if her father were here today; would he be proud of her?
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Last installment of Chapter One!
Enjoy! 
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“Amy my dear, I can’t keep up this charade any longer.”
The T.V screen seemed like a beacon of radiance from a light tower, illuminating the otherwise pitch-dark room. Gramps sat in the plush armchair, obviously sleeping. Ava and her mother sat on opposite sides of the couch, with Max in the middle with his head on Ava’s lap.
“What do you mean, Rick? I thought we agreed to not keep any secrets from each other.”
They were watching their favorite drama show that happened to be showing that night — at least it was Ava’s and her mother’s favorite, Gramps had screamed himself sleepy at Max who had broken his most favorite, and most horrible vase, that was supposedly a “sacred idol”. He was already asleep by the time they came in.
“I know, but… I couldn’t tell you these things earlier, but I can now…”
The big secret about the main character was about to be spilled, and both of the women seemed tense with anxiety. They knew only as much as all the other characters knew, and the suspense was killing them. Viewers had known that Rick was harboring a big secret; they just didn’t know what it was, but not for much longer.
“You probably won’t believe this but —”
The picture cut off and was replaced with the Local News emblem; the ‘Emergency’ sign in the top right corner of the screen was flashing red.
“We interrupt this program to bring you a special report from your local news station.”
“NOOOO!!” groaned Ava’s mother, waiting for months to discover one little secret, only to be foiled when the moment finally presented itself tended to infuriate viewers.
Ava was also irritated with the timing of the interruption, having followed the show as long as her mother had. “I wonder if they do this on purpose,” she grumbled.
A somber looking man with short black hair that was slightly tinged with gray, combed to the right side of his face. He was sitting solo behind a wooden desk.
“Good evening viewers,” he said importantly, “I’m Tim Wesley, and we apologize for this brief interruption. There has been another murder in our quiet town, the body was found in an abandoned factory on Bookman Avenue…”
Ava groaned, the show all but forgotten. Another murder? She squealed inside her head, that’s the sixth one this month and May’s not even half-way over!
There had been many mysterious killings for the past several months and people were starting to get uneasy, the fear was starting to become apparent to every single person who resided in their town. Ava was no exception.
She looked at her mother who also seemed to have forgotten about the show.
“For more on this subject, here’s Gretchen Myers.”
The screen split in two to show a young blonde woman in her early thirties, holding a microphone, Tim was still in the left half of the screen.
“Thanks Tim,” she said, the screen enlarged to take up the whole screen, revealing a yellow tape restricting her access to the open yard that housed a worn down factory.
“Witnesses report that the victim had entered the building as a dare, when the victim didn’t come out for nearly an hour, the friends panicked and called 911,”
The screen cut to a young high school age, brunette girl with tears in her eyes. A label briefly appeared under her to read —
KAYLA HOUSING
And under that in smaller letters it read —
FRIEND OF THE VICTIM
Her mother, who had lost all interest in her disrupted program, sighed. “Oh dear, not again.”
“It w-was supposed to be a j-joke!” sobbed the young girl. “I was th-the one who c-came up w-with the idea, it was m-my fault I —” she stopped mid sentence and turned away and the image cut back to Gretchen who looked noticeably gloomy.
“While police are no closer to catching the culprit, the citizens of this town seem to be having much better luck.”
The screen cut to an old, stern looking, black woman.
“I was there walkin’ my dog on Vernon Hue Drive when I looked in the alleyway an’ there was a pair o’ red eyes just starin’ straight at me,” The image noticeably cut to a part further into the interview, “My dog went crazy an’ I just high-tailed it out o’ there, I was scared half to death! There be demons runnin’ around this city, I ain’t EVER goin’ outside again.”
“Vernon Hue Drive?” mused Ava’s mother, “that’s not far at all from here.”
The image cut back to Tim who wore a grave expression, “The witness’ last comment would have been put off as nothing but a joke if not for many other sightings of these mysterious red eyes that have appeared in alleyways, roof-tops, and even at people’s windows.”
“Ignorant fools!” yelped Gramps, who had seemed to have finally woken up, “It is obvious that evil spirits are among our city!” Gramps took a quick glance at Ava then without warning, flicked the long awaited holy water into her face.
Ava rolled her eyes and wiped the perspiration from her features when he turned his head. He’d probably just splash her again if she was caught wiping it off.
She suddenly she felt extremely tired. The day’s events seemed to have finally caught up with her.
She slowly stood from the couch and yawned. “Listen mom, thanks for dinner but I gotta go.”
Her mother shook her head, “No dear, that murder happened much too close to here, your not going anywhere, you can leave tomorrow.”
“Oh, mom.” Ava groaned.
Her mother held up a finger, “This isn’t a request”
Ava sighed, when her mother made up her mind about something, there really wasn’t much you could do about it, she was extremely persuasive.
She trudged up the stairs, with Oliver’s diary in hand and Max in tow. She walked slowly down the hall, her eyes skimming past photographs that served as a sort of timeline to her life. She was wondering when the pictures from today would appear on the wall.
Who am I? she thought. Earlier today, all those people, all my hard work, was it really me?
She glanced down at her father’s diary, examining its soft leather cover. Is this me?
Her fists clenched tightly around the diary, and her eyes burned with anger. Of course it was her! She was there! She felt it, saw it… she lived it.
But then… why was there this hole inside of her, a hole that she just couldn’t seem to fill. Was this really the way it was supposed to be?
She groaned and rubbed her temples delicately. I have to stop, she thought tiredly. This is my life, I chose my path and nothing’s going to change my mind, no matter how many times that stupid voice inside my head bugs me about it.
And as if on cue, You’re only fooling yourself, dear.
She glared and shook her head violently, expelling the voice from her head. She grimaced as she realized it had spoken to her twice in one day. Not only that, but she was even acknowledging it!
Not good.
She sighed and continued on her way to her old bedroom. It’s just because I haven’t had much sleep, she told herself. She felt enormous relief as a heavy yawn escaped her mouth, reassuring her theory, as she turned the brass knob of the door to the room at the end of the hall. Happy memories flooded her conscious as she looked around her old room. She couldn’t help but smile and all tenseness seemingly melted off of her body, as if she had opened a door within herself as well.
Her mother had kept everything exactly as it was, her plush dolls still rested on the top of the shelves, under which, were many books she hadn’t bothered to take with her to the apartment. The walls were still a pale blue and her bed spread was still a slightly worn out black.
Max hopped onto the bed and took his familiar place on the far side of it. He twirled around and around before finally curling contently up in a ball and looking at her with his head cocked a bit to the side, and one ear up and the other one down. The expression he used to get him out of trouble countless times.
She smiled at him before placed the diary on her bedside table and opening the closet on the far side of the room to find what little clothes left she had in there. After a few minutes of rummaging she pulled out a relatively soft, pink night gown that she had no memory of ever buying. She shrugged indifferently and hurriedly changed.
She sighed as the soft silk ran down her body like waves and her eyes grew even heavier than before. She fought to stay awake by shaking her head slightly and the leather-bound diary caught her eye in the process. She eyed the diary with indecision. Maybe she could read it; just one page before bed.
Ava sighed and reluctantly declined her curiosity in favor of exhaustion.
Tomorrow, she promised herself. As of now, she’d be lucky if she got to the bed, let alone read an entire diary entry.
Her feet dragged across the floor and she stumbled onto the comfortable furnishing, clumsy from the lack of rest. As she laid her head on the pillow she played over the words that Mr. Glade had said to her.
“I’m sure you will go on to do great things.”
She smiled and thought about the long journey she had taken to get to this point. The zoo, high school, college, veterinarian school and now, at the young age of twenty-two, after years of racing she had finally reached the finish line in first place and the rest of her life ahead of her. The feeling gave her the first genuine --- however slight --- sense of completion.
All I have to do now… is find a new purpose, she thought sleepily.
All thoughts left her as she closed her deep blue eyes, letting Max’s soft snores take her into deep slumber.
It is a funny thing how people plan for their future, no matter how old they are. Little girls pick out there wedding gowns, and boys choose which cars they wish to possess.
As they mature, the world changes and because of this we adjust the way we see it, changing our opinions and sometimes even our very morals and values. But while their view of the world changes, their desires never do. Girls maintain the aspiration to look beautiful on their wedding day, while boys always hope to have a presentable vehicle to exemplify their independence or their public appeal.
While a man may have no wish to continue a legendary career in sports or music, they always yearn to be remembered for it, which is why they would have wanted to start such a career path in the first place. They find new ways to reach their ultimate desire as they, and their view of the world changes.
So as Ava slept, she had a specific way she saw the world and therefore she followed the path that her father had taken so as to keep his memory alive. That was her ultimate desire, and caring for ill animals was the way she saw the world. That was her opinion.
But little did she know that by tomorrow’s end, her view of the world would change forever, and she would soon realize that she could keep her father’s memory alive in ways she never could have imagined.
Desires never change but the world and the way we see it does, and Ava’s world was about to change forever.
During the final step of the process, what kind of valedictorian fell asleep on their graduation day?
And how dare she be even the least bit interested in what the dream she just had?
seemingly endlessly.
Heis part two of Chapter One
Enjoy!
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“Your father would be so proud of you, dear”
The fresh new car smell permeated the air inside the blue Chrysler mini-van that was zooming down Earl Twine Road. If you looked out the window, you would see dense wood and the occasional open field where horses of all sorts of colors grazed the neatly kept acres of land.
Ava sat in the mid-section of the car, enjoying the soft breeze of the air conditioner that gently swept her face; the summers were hot in northern Georgia.
“Thanks mom.”
“I still think you should have been a doctor,” her grandfather piped up from the passenger seat. He was so squat; you couldn’t see the top of his head over the headrest.
She rolled her eyes in response to his usual banter. Here we go again, she thought wearily. “How many times do I have to tell you Gramps? I have no where near the patience to go to medical school.”
Gramps replied with a stubborn “hmph!” and let the matter drop. She was grateful; she didn’t like having to explain her reasoning for her career path. Not only was it a bit awkward but it was also discouraging to have doubts about it herself at times.
Since she had started her path to becoming an animal doctor, she had always had this feeling, she couldn’t really explain it, but there was this feeling she got sometimes that she was supposed to be off doing something else, that there was somehow more out there for her than animal doctoring. Between her dreams and these random feelings, she had begun to think that she was going insane. However — not unlike the dreams — she had learned to ignore the false voice of destiny.
Sighing, she dropped her gaze and traced the scar that ran up the middle of her right hand. Another question without answers, the scar was in the shape of one of abroad S. It was much more defined than the natural hand lines that riddled any human’s hands. She had another scar on the side of her stomach that she got from tripping on the garden hose when she was seven. She winced; of all the places that Gramps could have put that broken steel pipe! Unlike the small reminder of the clumsiness of her juvenile years, the scar on her hand was as noticeable as a tattoo and had no explanation. Her mother guessed that she may have cut herself as a baby; too bad that a wound capable of this kind of scarring would probably have severed an infant’s hand.
The car took a slight drop, and then it went up again telling her they had just they had just gone over a gutter. She looked up again to see a well kept lawn with a curved sidewalk and full bushes outlining the gap between the lawn and a white porch that was ornamented by dozens of small metallic trinkets dangling from the ceiling making a soft chime in the cool May breeze. Attached to the porch stood a medium-sized, two-story, white house. Ava grinned, she was home.
She loved her own apartment, but a visit to her mother’s house was always something to look forward to. It had the more rustic and old-fashioned look, that she really had grown to love. The green lawn was dotted with small plastic gnomes. In the middle of the lawn was a small orange tree with branches that spread out like a canopy and provided shade for the elegant bench that stood by the trunk of the said tree. Off to the side stood a small, neat garden where her mother grew the herbs she used for cooking. Her mother was probably the greatest cook she would ever meet.
As she got out of the car and stepped onto the driveway she heard a loud barking. Everyone turned in the direction of the racket to see a yellow Labrador darting towards the slightly startled veterinarian. Ava barely had time to squeal, “Maxie!” before the enormous canine’s front paws were on her shoulders and was smothering her with a dog’s traditional greeting. Giggling and reaching to scratch him behind the ears, she looked at her mother questioningly.
Her mother smiled. “We fetched him from your apartment before we headed to the ceremony.”
Ava smiled brightly and continued her pleasant scratching. As with her supernatural association with birds, her dog, Max was another creature in which she had an eerie relation. It wasn’t like nobody else could get him to listen — he was probably the smartest dog in the world — it was the fact that when she talked to him (yes she talked to him; go figure!) he really, really seemed to listen. Also, despite the fact that he had previously belonged to her father, before she was even born — which was another reason she loved him so much — he seemed just as energetic as a puppy, and hadn’t seemed to have aged a day for as long as she could remember. Yet another odd mystery in her wacky life!
With Max at her heels she walked into the front door and got a whiff of seemingly delicious home-made pizza. Max hurriedly raced into the living room and pulled down his favorite blanket that was hanging from the couch, spread it to accommodate his size, and curled up for a quick snooze, knowing that his best friend would soon join him, with a good probability at some leftovers. Ava heard her Gramps sigh; he didn’t like it when Max was in the house.
Following a mouth-watering dinner, Gramps asked her to accompany him to his room. After being forced to tell Max not to tag along — Max didn’t really like to listen Gramps — and climbing the stairs at an annoyingly slow pace, they finally reached his room.
Gramps set his cane down and turned to look at her. His posture was tall and proud though he was so short, it was military caliber.
“Well, I’ve said it many times before, Ava, I —”
“Still think I should have been a doctor, yeah I know” she finished for him.
He narrowed his eyes in a silent scorn and she giggled. She loved her gramps but she reckoned that he may have a screw slightly loose. It was one of the reasons he stayed here, so her mother wanted to keep an eye on him. It wasn’t that he was some kind of mental case; he was just a little obsessive with his religion. Even now, when you walked into his room, you couldn’t help but feel like you were walking into the home of the pope.
The walls were festooned with crosses of all shapes and sizes like a patchwork pattern on fabric. Religious quotes weaved their way through what little space was left on the wall, and on the floor next to the water bed lay a massive jug of holy water.
Gramps had the crazy idea that evil spirits lurked everywhere in the world and it was essential to be sprinkled with holy water at least once every twenty-four hours. If you didn’t lock your door every night, he would sneak in and make sure to run his holy water doused hands on your fore-head; sleeping or not. And even if you did manage to keep him out during the night, you would pay for it the next day by either coming out of your morning grogginess by a short quench of holy water in your face, or spend a half-hour getting chased around the house by a briefly insane, squat, old man with a vat of the “purity juice”, as Gramps liked to call it, with the said man insisting that the evil spirits of hell had taken hold of her and she needed to “cleanse her tainted soul”. She had a slight suspicion that he drank from it as a nightly beverage! But that was just a joke. At least she hoped it was.
Despite his quirks, Ava loved him dearly and wouldn’t change him for the world. She found his tight grip on the traditional lifestyle amusing, and his fierce loyalty towards his family — which were constantly shown in his disapproval of sharing her lunch or belongings with anyone, and his reluctance to letting a friend into the house — to be utterly amusing.
Her thoughts were thrust from her mind as Gramps continued to speak, “Nevertheless, I am proud of you, not many people graduate veterinarian school at the age of twenty-two. Therefore I shall give you a little something.” He stooped low to rummage through the trunk at the end of his bed, after a few moments of swift searching he produced a small leather- bound book and was quick to thrust it under her nose.
She raised an eyebrow at it. “What is it?”
Her grandfather grinned with excitement, it was clear he thought that it was the best gift ever. “Open it,” he whispered.
Ava took the book and sat down on the bed. It looked normal enough; she wondered what kind of book it was to make him grin so arrogantly. She cast a narrowed eye at Gramps, who looked particularly proud of himself, before she opened it to look at the first page. What she saw made her heart stop.
In hastily scribbled letters she read —
THIS DIARY IS THE PROPERTY OF:
OLIVER HOLLOWELL
She stared at the writing on the clean, white page as if she had never seen English before, her mind was strangely blank. What was there to say? Obviously she was extremely grateful, but…
This was her father’s writing! Her father’s hand had actually held a pen and had written these letters to form words, his name. His fingers had actually touched this paper. She suddenly found herself savoring the texture of the old pages.
She had proof that he was real, this diary had belonged to him… her father… Oliver Hollowell. The person she never had gotten the chance to know, yet somehow felt like her best-friend. His thoughts, his dreams, his very soul lay within this book, stories that she couldn’t hear from her mother’s lips, tales that she had always wanted to hear from his point of view. Now she finally had that chance.
She looked up and fixed Gramps with a radiant smile, who smiled back. His slicked back white hair looked neatly combed, and the wrinkles on his aged face gave off a pattern of sound waves that a child would draw coming out of radio. His eyes shined with pride that he had chosen such a good present for her, and she got the impression that he had been saving it for this day for a long time.
“I took that from Oliver after he proposed to your mother” he explained pompously.
She looked at him incredulously, “Why?”
“I wanted to verify he wasn’t a crazy hoodlum,” Gramps growled. “I had to be absolutely sure he was the right man for my daughter.” Ava rolled her eyes at his fierce concern for his daughter. She rose from the bed and embraced him lovingly, “Thank you so much Gramps.”
“Anything for my favorite granddaughter,” he replied as he hugged her back.
“I’m your only granddaughter”
She felt him chuckle softly at their long-time joke.
The moment was ruined by a loud barking, echoing up the stairwell. Max was getting tired of waiting for his best friend to feed him the scraps.
“That mangy dog!”
Gramps grabbed his cane and headed for the door with a slight limp in both of his legs, giving him a staggering posture as he walked.
Ava couldn't help but smile as she followed her grandfather into the hall; she had to make sure Gramps didn’t beat Max over the head with his cane!
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