Chapter 4

Hours passed in the pleasant company of Anna, who seemed to keep Amy’s mind off everything. “She is so nice, so kind to everyone…”, Amy thought. At the end of the school day, they handed in their essays, and hastily left the building, ignoring the shallow giggles of the popular group of puppets. Arriving at the crossroad that separated the roads to their homes, Anna stopped so suddenly, as if she had hit an invisible wall. With blood rushing to her cheeks, she said:

“Hey, do you even remember when we last went for a stroll? Just you and me.”

Looking confused, Amy replied “Uhm… not quite, to be honest. It’s been a lot of time I guess. Why?”

“Well, I think we should make an exception today from our routine.”, said Anna, while trying to remove her ginger strips of hair from her eyes. “Let’s visit some shops today, let’s have a coffee, or let’s just walk… I miss doing this with you! You seem so far away lately. I mean, you, physically, are here, but I can feel that your mind is way off. Come on, let’s spend some time together and maybe you’ll tell me what’s been bothering you lately.”

After some seconds of awkward silence, Amy nodded her head and agreed to break her routine. Who knows? Maybe she would take her mind off her dreams… and the foggy silhouette she had earlier seen before going to her classes. It seemed like she didn’t have many things to do home anyway.

They walked slowly, visiting all the narrow old streets they could find. While Anna was desperately trying to keep the spirits high, talking continuously about anything, Amy was actually trying to focus on the surroundings. Their color was long faded and those brick walls and stone pavement were hiding a magnificent untold history. How many people had walked that path before… How many had fallen in love there! How many must have died there… If only one could somehow extract the past stories from those walls! If only those bricks and stones could speak, books and movies would be inspired by them! As the lovely ginger was mumbling about the newest movies in the cinema and how they should go there sometime soon, Amy noticed something unusual about those streets. She had seen it so many times before and she knew them better than anything else in that city. Yet this time something was different about them. She silently whispered to Anna, with a noticeable confusion in her voice:

“Anna, would you think that I am crazy if I told you I know these streets?”

“Uhm.. Doh! Of course you know them! We’ve been here hundreds of times!”

“No, but this time it’s different. I… somehow see them and I’m getting weird feeling about them. Just like they are suddenly a part of a very important memory for me… a memory I don’t have… and which hurts. For a moment I saw this street from someone else’s point of view. It seemed to be long ago, when the brick walls were still red. And they even had ivy of them. This pavement, as grey and broken as it is now, it was yellowish, shiny and with no pieces missing. This place inspired hope and happiness. But… never mind me! It must be the effect of the dreams I’ve been having recently. Maybe I dreamed this, and that is why they look like a part of a memory for me. Oh, look there! There’s a nice café! Let’s go there for a bit!”. Still, in her soul, she was certain that the feeling of knowing that place for so long and having powerful memories about it, was not a consequence of her dreams. Yet, seeing Anna’s misunderstanding look, she decided to leave it like this, like a product of her imagination.

So, arriving at the café, Amy ordered another coffee, with a bit of milk and sugar free, while Anna spent quite a lot of time deciding between a Coke and a tea. Choosing the Coke, she looked at Amy and, raising her eyebrow, she said:

“You’re not telling me something. It is clear that you’re trying to look as if you were listening to me, but you’re not. Your lips are smiling, but your eyes are not. For God’s sake, they’re almost crying. Amy, you’re very dear to me! I want to be there for you when you need to talk about anything. So what is it?”

Amy stopped playing with the teaspoon, lighted a cigarette and exhaling the smoke she said:

“I’ll be fine. I’m sorry but I need to know myself what is going on with me. I can’t tell it, if I don’t understand it myself. It’s just that... things have become a little bit… let’s say different. But can we please skip this? I feel quite uncomfortable talking about this. Right now I’m actually rather concerned with our final project. What are you going to write about?”

“Don’t really know… Think I’m going to invent a silly story actually. I don’t remember my dreams”, she replied with a charming honesty.

Then they continued talking for a while about what tasks they had to accomplish till the end of the school year, their plans for the future, bringing back memories from their childhoods. But as Amy was listening to Anna’s story about how she got punished in the 3^rd grade for painting the flowers blue, she heard a low voice whispering by her ear: “the antique stop”. She startled as if she had been burnt with a hot stick, and seeing that there was nobody by her side, whispering such things, she also realized that she was the only one who heard that. There was no point in questioning Anna about the issue. But… that voice sounded so familiar. It was the exact feeling as the one she had regarding the street. It seemed to be again a part of a memory that did not have…

“Anna, could we please pay for our drinks and go?”, said Amy, looking a bit anxious and somehow in a disturbed voice.

“But… why? We haven’t been here too long”

“Uhm, honestly, I want to go to the antique store. I have just remembered that I forgot to buy a present to someone.”, replied Amy, standing up and getting ready to go.

Still a bit confused by the situation, Anna agreed to leave the café and go to the antique store, not being sure yet if to trust Amy’s reason to visit that. After 10 minutes of more like running, than walking, they arrived to their destination, the old, sinister antique shop.

Amy took a deep breath, while her heart started bumping for no reason. That feeling you get when you hear the music change in a movie and you know that something is about to happen…