Do you know what?

I was so preoccupied with typing my new chapter of DYRM, that I totally forgot about blogging until now. How stupid was that? Eternally, right?

So, I've not done much today in any case. Just gotten ready to go to London. Which brings me to my new message. I don't think I'll be updating until Wednesday. I might do, the person who I'm staying with does have internet, it's whether I'll be living enough to type a blog that's worrying me. Oh well, I don't think I'll be that missed. I'll be taking a pen and paper with me so I can keep writing DYRM, but nothing for that is promised either. I could see it as a writer's vacation. I'm going to be buying quite a few things. So all's good. :D

So, moving on, here's the new chapter. I hope you like it. It looks to me like the plot might finally start moving again :D

Chapter 25

Beep. Beep. Beep. What the hell is that noise? It’s so damn annoying. Someone please turn it off.

            Where am I? Did I die? I’m not sure if I should be happy or sad about that. I’d be happy because then I wouldn’t have to see Maggie again. I’d be sad because then I would have surely failed Hayley and Jesse.

            I’m sure they’d understand if they found out I’d died. Does drug overdosing count as suicide?

            I bet you it does. Life just sucks that way for me.

            I groaned, opening one eye and closing it quick. The room was too bright. Where did people go when they die? I’d never really bothered to ask anyone. Not that they’d know because they’d never died before.

            “Danny?’ God, who was asking me questions now. I’d died and still being questioned? This was going to be some sucky afterlife. “Danny? Can you hear me?”

            I groaned in response. I heard the person sigh. I opened my eyes again, and blinked a few million times to let them adjust to the sudden light intrusion.

            Hospital. I’d know this place from a mile away, I’d only been here once in my memory, but what other kind of building had a mixed smell of death and cleanliness? The air was coated in the foul smell. What other kind of building, also, was just decked white from floor to ceiling?

            It really didn’t take much guessing.

            I turned my head and found the source of the beeping. A heart monitor. I must have got it bad.

            “How could you do such a thing to yourself, Danny?” I looked over to the source of the voice. Jamie.

            “What day is it?” I asked, avoiding the attention.

            “Friday.” I’d missed a day of school. Well, two technically as I was supposed to go back to school from my suspension yesterday. “You didn’t answer my question.”

            “What I do is none of your business.”

            “Of course it is, you’re my brother.”

            “When can I get out of here?” I asked quickly.

            “I don’t know. I’ll go tell the doctors your awake.”

            I sincerely hoped that she’d leave it. Obviously I’d been dreaming a little too large here. Well, the thought of doctors hadn’t really come to me. I just didn’t want to have them crowding around me asking me questions. Oh, Danny, why won’t you come back to me? That’s what she’d said to me. The words had pierced me sharper than the sharpest knife the world knew.

            My heart broke to pieces just thinking about what she’d said to me. When I’d been getting stoned on the drugs, the only thing I could hear were my own thoughts with what she’d said playing on repeat like a broken record in the background.

            My life had slowly turned to hell.

            “Well, Danny, it’s good to see you in the land of the living.” The doctor was obviously trying to make a joke.

            “Look, I’m fine, can’t you just let me go? I don’t need to be here.” Sure, I’d said that, but I was still feeling a little light-headed. It was probably the damn brightness of the damn room. Whoa, I was definitely in a curse mood today. I

            “No can do. Have to make sure you don’t relapse.”

            “Well, I’m not going to. I feel perfectly fine.”

            “I’m sure you do. It’s just for precautions.” Damn doctors and damn their precautions.

            “When can I go then?”

            “Well, if you really want to. I’ll see about getting you out tomorrow.”

            “Thank Christ. What is there to do in this hellhole?”

            “We’re certainly in a chipper mood today.”

            “You didn’t answer my question.” I said echoing what my sister had told me earlier, though she hadn’t come back into the room. She was probably getting Maggie and Jim.

            “Nothing, for you, of course. You have to rest. You worried us. It was real close call. Your parents have been worried sick.”

            “I’m sure they have been.” He obviously didn’t catch my sarcasm and smiled and walked out of the room.

Boredom had dominated me for the rest of the day and night I was there. The bed was uncomfortable and I had the annoying beep, beep, beep all day and night. I was just about ready to go nuts with it all.

            Luckily, Jamie had come to save me. Holly had come over too, last night. I was grateful for that.

            “Hey, Danny, heard you’d ended up in here.” Holly laughed casually walking into my room.

            “Hey, how was school?” I asked.

            “Everyone’s talking about you. They said you went mental and totally drugged yourself up.”

            “Well, obviously the ‘drugged up’ part is right. I’m not exactly sure about the mental, yet.”

            “They say that you’re going to go to jail. That Simon’s family is going to press charges.”

            “I most certainly hope not. Though, I wouldn’t be against them if they did. I hurt him pretty badly. I deserve whatever I get.”

            “Don’t you ever say that! Don’t you think you’ve suffered enough as it is? Someone out there is playing a cruel joke on you and you should know that. It’s not your fault everything is like this.”

            I didn’t really know what to say to her after that. She talked to me about the rest of school. She said Simon had gone back to school on that Friday. He’d broken his nose and jaw and everything else was just a way of him trying to get attention. It was nothing worth sending someone to jail for.

            But Holly didn’t really know the extent of what I’d done in the time I’d been back.

            I knew now that I’d probably end up in some prison. There were only so many chances you could get before everything just blows up in your face.

“Hey, Jamie?” I asked stepping into her room when I got home. My ride with Maggie had been awkward in the car. I knew she wanted to talk to me, but I couldn’t face her. I didn’t want to see the disappointment in her eyes. I didn’t want to see the hope that she held for some day getting back the Danny that she remembered.

            Somewhere deep down I knew that she’d probably never get back the Danny that she knew. Whatever had happened to him when he was kidnapped would have changed him forever, and what was happening now to me. I don’t think that Danny would be able to handle it. I wouldn’t be able to handle it.

            I couldn’t tell her that I thought this though, so I went to Jamie. She’d promised me she’d do something for me.

            I took this moment, as she looked up from her research books, her English books, to study the light pink of her walls and the white bedspread. There really wasn’t much to Jamie’s room. It was plain. There was a bookshelf overloaded with books of all sorts on one end of the room, a bed, a wardrobe, a desk that she was sitting at, and a chest of drawers. Nothing else. Nothing was out of place either.

            “Yes, Danny?” She answered back, finally looking up from her work.

            “Do you remember your promise to me?” Okay, so I guess the world ‘remember’ shouldn’t have been a good word in this situation, but hey, I didn’t think of that when it was coming out of my house.

            “Which promise? If you got your memory back, there’re a lot of promises I’ve made to you.”

            “It’s quite a recent promise. From when I came back to you.”

            “Does it have something to do with the site where you disappeared?”

            “That’s the one.” I smiled. “You promised me you’d take me to see it this week, and well, a lot has happened. I need to go now.”

            “Why the urgency? Mom said you needed to rest before you thought of doing anything.”

            “I don’t think I have that much time left.”

            “Why do you think that?”

            “Well, I don’t know where Hayley and Jesse are for a first. Anything could be happening to them. The sooner I get to them. The better everything gets. And two. I’m sure the trial will be coming up soon and there’ll be no way of me getting away with it and coming off lightly with a warning. Just face it. I’ll go to jail or whatever’ll happen to me.”

            “So, your saying, you really want me to take you? This isn’t some drug escapade, right?” Ah, the mention of the word. Since they discovered that I wasn’t capable of quitting drugs on my own. They were taking any ‘necessary precautions’ to stop me from getting to them again. I wasn’t allowed to leave the house on my own, in other words. I needed someone to be with me at all times. No matter where I went. I was also not allowed to be on the house on my own. No friends were allowed to come over in case they had drugs on them.

            I guess I should have taken it as a compliment that they even thought I had friends other than Hayley and Jesse. Well, there was Holly, but she had other things to do. She told me she had home business to do when she got home. I wished I remembered more about her sometimes. Her situation seemed complicated and I didn’t even know about it!

            “No, can’t you all give me a break? That’s the kind of stuff that made me want to do the stuff in the first place!”

            “Oh yeah, and that gang of friends you made before coming to us had nothing to with you smoking pot?”

            “Well, they started it, but as soon as I got here, everything just got stressful and I needed an escape.”

            “There are other ways to escape other than smoking pot, Danny.”

            “Yeah, well, what I do is none of your business.”

            “So, why should I take you to this damned camp site?” Now there’s a first for everything. Jamie never cursed, why didn’t she want to go there?

            “Why don’t you want to go there?”

            “Because it’s the place you disappeared Danny, why do you think I’d want to go back there in the first place? You could be taken again.”

            “I won’t get taken again. It won’t be long. I just need to see if there’s anything there that’ll help me get to Hayley and Jesse.”

            “You’re obsessed with finding people you don’t remember.” She stated calmly.

            “I just want them back.”

            “Why do you want them back so bad? If you don’t remember them, what should it matter to you?”

            And do you know what? I didn’t have an answer to her question. I did not know why I was so obsessed with finding my lost friends.

So, I hope you liked it, it's now officially hit the 121 page mark. Not far off making novel length. We're still currently in the stage of novella. But all's well, it's the longest original writing piece I've ever done :D

Night!