In the Image of Grace Read online

  “Can I help you?” I screamed at him as loud as I could to make sure he could hear me.

  The guy smiled exposing all his teeth which appeared too small for his mouth and taupe in color. “What’s your name?” He shouted back in a nasally voice.

  “You need to take a step back,” I shouted.

  “We’re at a show. Where am I supposed to go?”

  “Away from me,” was my response. I turned back to the front hoping he had gotten the message.

  He then leaned into my ear. “I like you,” he lisped.

  “And I would like for you to leave me alone.”

  “What’s wrong with you bitch?” Was the next thing he said.

  I couldn’t believe what I had just heard. What was wrong with him? I pushed through some people and tried to get out of the crowd. He just followed me. I stopped and sharply turned around. He wasn’t expecting me to stop so suddenly and walked right into me. I stomped on his toes.

  “Ow, bitch,” he whined. He then took both his hands and shoved me backwards. I landed on a couple of guys who were holding cups of pop. Their pop went flying everywhere, getting the girl in front of them wet.

  “What the fuck,” somebody in the crowd said.

  “I’m sorry,” I screamed at one of the pop holding guys.

  Greasy guy just stared at me. I walked up to him and looked him in the face. His once blue eyes were bloodshot. I got real close to him and quickly pulled up my knee and thrust it into his groin. In an instant he was doubled over. I heard a few people say, “damn,” but most were oblivious to what was going on because it was so loud, dark and crowded. I pushed through the rest of the crowd and popped out the back where there were people drinking and just hanging out. I found a stool on the side and had a seat. I didn’t see the greasy hair guy again.

  …………………………………………………………….

  When Jeremy’s band was done they went through the door on the side of the stage. Another band came out and started setting up. After a bit Jeremy and his band mates came out onto the floor and set up their merchandise at a table where they all sat behind. I walked over and looked at what they were selling. They had some CDs, buttons and stickers and tee-shirts.

  “Hey,” Jeremy said spotting me. He got up, walked around the table to the front and leant up against it. I gave him a quick kiss.

  “Girlfriend,” I teased smiling.

  “Uh, yeah, that kind of almost slipped out,” he said wiping his forehead with the back of his hand. He then scratched the back of his neck and gazed at the floor like there was something very intriguing down there.

  “That’s okay.”

  “Yeah,” he said looking up with a big grin spreading across his face.

  “Yeah.” I looked over at the table. “You guys have your own merchandise, seems like a pretty big deal.”

  “Nah, not really, we make it all ourselves, except the CD. Our friends started a small record label, so they helped us out with that.”

  “That’s still pretty spectacular.”

  “Ah, I wouldn’t go that far,” he said taking his glasses out of his pocket and putting them back on. He blinked his eyes. “So much better.”

  “Jeremy,” called somebody from the other end of the table.

  Jeremy reached out and held both my hands.

  “Go on,” I urged.

  He squeezed my hands and walked towards a crowd at the end of the table waiting for him.

  “Hey,” I said.

  He turned.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you were in a band?”

  “Didn’t seem very important to everything you have going on.”

  “It is.”

  “Wait for me?”

  “I actually have to go. If my father comes home and finds me gone he will kill me.”

  “All right.”

  I let him go do whatever mingling or what not that awaited him. I went and found my jacket which was on floor behind the chair I had placed it on earlier. I squeezed past a couple of people in the stairwell thinking what would really happen if our father came home and I wasn’t there. I didn’t even want to know.

  …………………………………….............................

  I got to our house and opened up the gate with the key and softly walked to the front door. I lightly knocked on the door and waited, expecting Clarissa to open it. Instead it was our father. I nearly fell over right there. Why was he home? He never came home till around midnight or later. Something seemed very fishy.

  “Welcome home,” he said with a stoic look on his face.

  I nervously giggled. I looked around the front of the house for other signs of life. All the lights were out except for a light coming from the back of the house. My father looked in the direction of the light and I obeyed and walked to the back of the house. Nobody was back there. It was just my father and I. I had a very uneasy feeling in my stomach. He waved in the direction of the couch and I had a seat and took off my hat.

  He got straight to the point. “You need to stop fucking around.”

  I was very taken aback. Our father generally said very little to us, let alone curse. I answered with a surprised look on my face.

  “Don’t give me that look. I know you’ve been sneaking out. Look, you just come waltzing in here at what hour.” He stopped and rubbed his chin. He then continued on. “You are not going to be some whore and set a bad example for your sisters. You understand?” He didn’t give me time to answer. “After school you are to come straight home, no clubs and homework excuses like you’ve been giving Ms. Dunderfeltz. If you are not at school you are in this house and that goes for weekends too. Give me your key.” He stood over me with his hand out

  I didn’t move. I didn’t want to give it up. I never got around to making more copies. We’d be screwed. Ms. Dundefeltz must have certainly enlightened him to our after school activities. I just sat there on the edge of the couch staring at him.

  “Charlotte,” he growled through gritted teeth. “Give me your goddamn key.” I could see anger in his eyes. They were pulled in together, squinted and looking down on me.

  I gave in and took it out of my coat pocket and handed it to him.

  “Next time you sneak out there will be severe consequences. Just because you girls go to an outside school now does not mean you can go about doing whatever you want. You were raised to be responsible, proper, young ladies and your behaviors should reflect no less. Understand.”

  I nodded my head and bit my lip. I had to bite my lip to keep from screaming and shouting at him. I wanted to shout that his technique wasn’t working, that we needed to experience the world. What he was doing to us was causing more harm than good. Look what happened to Elizabeth, but I didn’t say anything. I knew it wouldn’t make a difference.

  When my father was done making me feel like a juvenile delinquent he sent me up to my room. On the way to my room I paused at Isabelle’s doorway wondering if I should go and wake her up, but I decided against it and went on to my room. I laid in bed thinking about Elizabeth, about how everything was his fault, all the lies. Our whole life was lies. Elizabeth never knew the truth. At least Isabelle, Clarissa and I had some vague idea what the truth might hold. Elizabeth deserved to know. I was going to find it for her. Somehow I was going to find a way out of that house. I quickly fell asleep and had the dream. The screaming was so loud I thought it was going to burst my ear drums. I don’t remember anything else from the dream except the screaming. I woke up with a great feeling of anxiety. I felt like I was starting to feel how Elizabeth might have felt.

  Chapter Eleven

  I lay in bed for a while staring at the ceiling, listening to myself breath in and out. My heart felt like it was still racing from my dream and my hands felt all clammy. It was still pretty early. I rolled over and looked out my windows at the sun slowly popping up into the horizon. I pulled back my covers, got up and walked down the hall. The house was totally quiet and still ex
cept for the creaking floor beneath my feet. I knew our father was gone already for the day and my sisters were still asleep. I walked up and down the hallway trying to calm my heart.

  “What are you doing?” I heard. I turned and saw Clarissa standing in her doorway.

  “Trying to calm down,” I answered walking over to her.

  “Another dream?”

  “Yeah.”

  The two of us then went downstairs, ate breakfast and waited for Isabelle to get up.

  My sisters and I were alone in the house. Ms. Dunderfeltz didn’t work on the weekends. Our father expected us to stay there, but there was a small loop hole, not the safest, but still we knew it was going to have to do. Our plan was to go out Elizabeth’s window, since there wasn’t a motion detector on those windows. We were going to jump to the ground and scale the fence and be free to do what we needed to do on the other side.

  ……………………………………………..

  My sisters and I all stood in Elizabeth’s room in front of the window garbed in our outside gear. We had the window open and were looking down at the ground.

  “What if we land wrong? We could break a wrist or sprain something and then that would be a dead giveaway,” Clarissa concluded leaning out the window and looking down at her possible doom.

  “Well, Elizabeth didn’t hurt herself,” I said not wanting either of my sisters to back down.

  “She technically was sleeping, so she didn’t tense up or anything. That’s how she didn’t get hurt,” Isabelle pointed out not easing anybody’s woes.

  I bit my lip and looked around the room. I didn’t see anything that could really help. There were no air mattresses lying around. “What if we tied sheets together or something?” I asked. I thought perhaps it could work. “We could tie them to Elizabeth’s canopy bed or something.”

  “Problem with that,” Isabelle reasoned pointing with her finger for added emphasis, “Is that there would be this sheet rope hanging out of the window.”

  “True,” I agreed. “What if we gathered all the possible pillows and things with fluff and threw them all on the ground and then scooted out on our bellies, swing our legs over the side while holding onto the gutter and then dropped onto the pillows.”

  “Just come up with that?” Clarissa asked.

  “That might work,” Isabelle said giving the idea a slight nod. “But what are we going to do with all the pillows and stuff?”

  “I know,” Clarissa blurted excitedly. “We could throw out laundry baskets or garbage bags to put them all in and then store them on the side of the house.”

  “If we stopped talking and listened to ourselves we will realize that we sound crazy,” I said thinking we were quite possibly crazy for wanting to jump out a window. Granted it was only the second floor, but there was also a basement and our house was big and old. It wasn’t like some tiny compact suburban house. We really could have gotten hurt.

  “Aren’t we doing this for a reason?” Isabelle asked.

  “Yeah,” I responded. “Let’s start gathering.”

  ………………………………………………………….

  We each started in our own room. I went in my room and yanked my pillows off the bed throwing them on the floor. I then pulled off the comforter and tossed it in the pile. I then went to where the turret of the house was in the corner of my room and pulled off all the pillows from the window seat that sat under the windows. I then also pulled up the window seat itself. I only had a couple stuffed animals, but I threw them in the pile too. We needed all the extra squishing we could have gotten. I dragged all my stuff into Elizabeth’s room and then went down the hall to the laundry room and got all the laundry baskets and the couple of hampers that were in there. I met up with Isabelle and Clarissa in Elizabeth’s room. We proceeded to throw all our bedding out the window.

  “Who’s going first?” Clarissa asked as we all once again stood in front of the windows.

  “I will,” I volunteered. “I can help the two of you to the ground.” So with that I held onto the window frame and slowly lowered myself to the roof. There was a good breeze blowing outside and the air actually smelled fresh and crisp, not the usual city smell of car exhaust and garbage. On all fours I crawled backwards until I felt my feet hit the gutter. I then got onto my belly and started to shimmy myself over the side. My legs hung all the way over the side, then my backside went over and then I realized my plan in grabbing onto the gutter wasn’t going to work. The top of my body slid off the roof and I fell backwards hitting the ground with a great whomp.

  I was a little dazed for a second and I heard Clarissa scream and I saw the underneath of the trees and the clouds in the partly overcast sky and felt the pillows and blankets below me and realized that it worked. Not quite the way we had planned it, but I made it out of Elizabeth’s room without any harm caused to me. I then rolled to my side and slowly stood up shaking off my fall. “Throw out the baskets,” I yelled up before we forgot.

  “Oh, thank God you’re alive,” Clarissa yelled down.

  As I stood there waiting for Clarissa and Isabelle to throw the baskets at me I wondered if any of our neighbors were witnessing what was going on and if so were they going to say or report anything. I was hoping not. The baskets were thrown down at me and I put them on the side, reorganized the pillows, blankets and select stuffed animals for the next sister who was to drop from the roof. Clarissa was next. I saw her appear outside the window in her ponytail and pink ski vest. She did the same shimmy and scoot that I did. I kind of caught her by the waist and we both fell backwards together. Last was Isabelle. She closed the window after she climbed out and Clarissa and I caught her in our arms.

  “Hey,” Clarissa said as we were all safely on the ground gathering all our bedding and putting it into baskets. “How do we get back up there?”

  Boy, we sure didn’t think of that. We decided we would worry about that when we got back. At least we got out to do what we needed to do without setting off the house alarm and alerting the police. We then managed to get ourselves over the fence and were on our way.

  ………………………………………………

  We got to Mr. Fernando’s house about fifteen minutes early. The three of us stood on the curb looking at the house. It was in a part of the city that was still technically the city, but surrounded by suburbs. The house was brick and resembled a little gingerbread house. A neatly manicured lawn sat in front with perfectly trimmed bushes. We had the slightest idea what we were going to say and even if we should mention the possibility of us being clones and should we tell him about the whole cult thing worshipping Grace? If I heard it I would think we were making up a bunch of horse hockey. We started getting a little cold, so we decided to approach the house. We climbed the steps and stood on the little cement porch. I rang the bell. The three of us anxiously awaited the door to be answered. After a little bit the door was answered by a man of average height with thinning dark hair on top of his head. He had Asian features, but one could discern he was of mixed descent. There definitely was some sort of relation to our mother going on.

  He looked the three of us over. “Yes, do come in,” he said very politely.

  We walked into a small foyer with a coat rack and then in the living room. “Please, take off your coats.”

  So we did and he took them from us hanging them up on the coat rack. “Have a seat,” he said waving us over to the couch.

  “The three of us sat down on a yellow floral print couch. Mr. Fernando sat in an armchair next to the couch. He sat bent over with his forearms on his knees and his hands clasped.

  “I can’t believe the resemblance,” he said looking over at us. “I just can’t believe she had three girls and I didn’t even know about it.” He sat up straight and rubbed his hands over his face.

  “Actually,” I said. “There were four of us. Our older sister recently passed away.”

  “Oh my word,” Mr. Fernando gasped. “I�
��m so sorry to hear that.”

  I looked around the house. I figured he must have been married because there was a lot of floral. I only sat that because I’m pretty sure most guys don’t choose floral for their decorating theme. Above the archway between the living and dining room was a twisting branch with leaves and pink flowers all over it. The rug on the floor was maroon with blue and white flowers. There were various vases full of flowers on different shelves around the two rooms.

  “How exactly did you know our mother, Grace?”

  “I’m her brother.”

  “So you probably want to know just as much as we do in what happened to her,” Isabelle suggested.

  “Yes, I would like to know where she is. I still can’t believe how much you girls look like her. It’s almost like I’m looking right at her.”

  “You kinda are,” Clarissa said wincing not sure if she should mention the whole clone thing.

  “In a way yes,” he replied. “After all, you are her children.”

  “There’s something very important we have to tell you,” I admitted hesitantly. “You might not believe us, but its okay if you don’t because what I have to say might sound crazy.”

  “Okay,” he said clasping his hands again.

  “We might be her clones,” I blurted out. There really was no way of beating around the bush.

  He looked up at us, “Jesus.”

  “I know it sounds crazy.”

  “No, I say that because before she went missing she told me this story and I refused to believe it. I only talked to her one other time after that.”

  “What did she tell you?” I asked.

  Mr. Fernando took a deep breath. “I don’t know if I should be telling you girls this.”

  “Oh no, please do sir,” Clarissa urged.

  “You girls can call me John.”

  We nodded in agreement.

  “She called me in a frantic state and said that somebody drugged her and impregnated her with her own clone. I told her she was crazy and that no such thing could happen and now you girls come here and say.” He stopped and stood up and started pacing back and forth. “I should have believed her, the next time I talked to her she said she had her baby and she kept going on with the clone thing and that was the last time I heard from her. I mean, was she really telling the truth?”