The Orphans (Orphans Trilogy Book 1) Read online

  Charlie contemplated his seemingly endless options. He knew better than to go with his first impulse: his conception. Half his class would probably pick their conception or birth, and they all would surely be docked points for their lack of originality. Many would argue that losing his parents was the most important moment in his life, but Charlie had already decided that he wasn’t going to let that affect him.

  Charlie turned to the pages of his Moleskine, certain that they held the answer. He ran down his list multiple times but still couldn’t determine which moment was the most important. Arguments could be made for and against each milestone he had planned.

  The harder Charlie tried to ascertain the answer to his essay, the further he felt from reaching any resolution, and the more frustrated he became. Before long, he began to sense a dull pain in his forehead. It was as if someone had his frontal lobe in a vise and was slowly cranking the handle.

  Charlie knew the feeling well. He had battled stress headaches for much of his childhood. The first one came when he was in the third grade, right before he and his classmates were tested for the Gifted and Talented program. Charlie also knew that unless he did something, the pain would only get worse. So Charlie decided to call it quits on the essay for the time being. Instead, he would just focus on his other assignments and come back to the writing assignment later.

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  After only a couple of hours in the zone, Charlie had zipped through all of his accumulated math homework. The aching in his head had long since disappeared, and it was time to move on to Biology.

  Before cracking his Biology book, Charlie took a quick glance at the clock on his computer screen. It was already 10:16 p.m. While he had been successful in suppressing any thoughts of his parents and focusing on his schoolwork, he couldn’t help but think of them at that moment. It was right around that time of night that his parents would call up to him and encourage him to shut it down and go to bed. They would also wish him goodnight and tell him how much they loved him. “We couldn’t love you more,” they would shout together. It had become their nightly ritual ever since Charlie had moved to his third floor bedroom.

  Charlie turned his attention to the stairs that led down to the second floor and the closed door at the bottom of the staircase. A faint light emanated from the crack in the door. He kept his eyes fixed on the entrance for a few moments, just in case, by some miracle, the call might come.

  It didn’t.

  Charlie sighed and shook his head. He should have known better. Back to work. He flipped to the appropriate chapter in his Biology textbook and determinedly perused the pages.

  Charlie was halfway through the second chapter of his required reading when his eyelids started to feel more like sandbags. Hoping to get the blood flowing and milk some more energy from his worn-out body, Charlie stretched his limbs so long that his joints cracked and popped like bubble wrap. A tiny boost followed, but only for a minute. After that, he was worse off than before. With every sentence that his eyes attempted to interpret, it only added more sand to the bags, until the weight had become unbearable.

  Charlie decided to shut his eyelids for just a second, but no more than that. He let out a jaw-stretching yawn, folded his arms on the top of his desk, and then rested his head in his elbow crease. He reminded himself of his one-second time limit before drifting off to sleep …

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  Charlie’s eyes fluttered open. Immediately, he knew that much more than one second had passed. He lifted his head off of his desk and peeked at his computer clock to check how long he had been out. Much to his surprise, the clock claimed that it was now 7:15 p.m. Charlie blinked hard to reset his pupils and checked the clock again—same time. It didn’t make any sense. He’d either magically lost three hours or slept for twenty-one, neither of which seemed plausible.

  The clock wasn’t the only thing off. Charlie realized that he was no longer wearing his hooded sweatshirt. In fact, he wasn’t wearing any of his clothes from before. He had somehow switched to athletic shorts and a loose-fitting T-shirt. Before Charlie could contemplate the possible reasons for the time difference and his wardrobe change, he was stopped by the sound of rustling and voices coming from downstairs.

  “We need to hurry,” a female voice insisted. “We’re going to be late.”

  “I’m in no rush,” a male voice responded. “He can wait.”

  Charlie instantly recognized the voices—it was his parents. More than just their voices was familiar; so were the words they spoke. Charlie was able to place everything: He had heard them have the exact same conversation just five nights earlier. Charlie concluded that he hadn’t woken up. He was still asleep and was just having some sort of lucid-dream-memory hybrid. Charlie knew how to tell if it was, in fact, a memory. If it was, his mother would be calling his name any—

  “Charles Kim, can you please come down here? We’re about to leave.” Mary hailed from the foyer, just as expected.

  Charlie smiled. Hearing her speak his name sent a warm rush through his whole body, like he’d just downed the world’s biggest cup of hot chocolate in one massive gulp. Charlie sprung from his desk and sprinted downstairs.

  Charlie beamed as he made his way down the steps toward Alan and Mary, who waited in the foyer. Everything felt so real, like Charlie was living it all over again. The only difference—a dire one, at that—was that Charlie knew what would happen when they left. His thoughts jumped to the crash. He knew he had to convince them to stay home, or at the very least, to make sure that they took a different route—only he couldn’t.

  As soon as his parents acknowledged his presence, all Charlie could say or think were the same things he’d said and thought that night. “Where are you going?” he asked his mother.

  “Your father and I have a meeting in the city,” Mary said.

  “I’ll check the traffic.” Charlie pulled up the traffic report on his cell phone and showed his parents that the roads were clear, nothing but green on the digital map. Mary thanked her son.

  Alan, who was much more reserved than his usual self, chimed in, “Can you do me a favor, Charlie?”

  “Of course,” Charlie said. “Whatever you need.”

  “Take a break. At least ten minutes. Heck, go crazy and watch a whole tv show or play a video game.”

  “I don’t know if I can handle anything that crazy,” Charlie said, half joking.

  “I’m serious,” Alan said. “You’ve been pushing yourself really hard lately. I don’t want your headaches coming back.”

  Charlie had told his parents that his headaches had gone away for good a couple years earlier, and they seemed to have. But Charlie had hidden from his parents the fact that they had come back stronger after he had started following his plan. The same list of goals that boosted Charlie’s confidence and sense of purpose had also boosted his anxiety. But for Charlie, it was a small price to pay, and the pros far outweighed the cons.

  “Your father’s right,” Mary said. “You need to find a balance. You need to enjoy being a kid. You’ll have more than enough time to be an adult later.”

  Charlie was used to his parents encouraging him to “enjoy being a kid” and always found their suggestion to be equal parts amusing and ridiculous. He couldn’t imagine many kids’ parents actually telling them to do less work. Charlie figured it was easier for his parents to say; they didn’t know what it was like being a kid these days. When they were in high school, they didn’t even have ap classes, and most of their peers took the sats once, if at all. Charlie had taken his first practice sat in seventh grade and read daily vocabulary sheets ever since. One of his words from that morning had been “appeasement,” and that was the exact strategy he decided to employ.

  “If you guys insist,” Charlie said. “I’ll catch Jeopardy.”

  “Good,” Alan said. He nodded to Mary. “All right, let’s get this over wit
h.”

  Alan and Mary took turns hugging Charlie.

  “We should be back by ten at the latest,” Mary said as she let go of her son. “But hopefully earlier.”

  Alan put a hand on Charlie’s shoulder and nodded. “And don’t forget—”

  “To take a break,” Charlie sighed, cutting him off. “Don’t worry. I will.”

  Alan smiled. “More important, don’t forget that—”

  Alan’s reminder ended abruptly; however, he wasn’t interrupted by anyone. His words merely stopped short when Charlie blinked. Charlie would have obstructed the basic autonomic action if he had known what would happen afterwards. In the short amount of time that it had taken for his eyes to reopen, Charlie’s parents disappeared from the foyer.

  Charlie’s thoughts scrambled like eggs in a pan. That wasn’t how their conversation had ended. His parents hadn’t pulled off some sort of mid-sentence David Copperfield disappearing act. He knew for a fact that they had both given him hugs, and then he had watched them drive away. This memory he was reliving was all wrong.

  As Charlie attempted to figure out what was going on, he realized that he was no longer bound by the constraints of his memory and could finally think and speak for himself.

  “Mom! Dad!” Charlie shouted, but there was no response. “Don’t go! Stay!”

  Charlie’s body went stiff as he struggled to come up with a solution. Then it dawned on him: the garage. That’s where they had to be, and he might still be able to cut them off. If he got there in time, he could tell them why they couldn’t leave. He could tell them what would happen. Maybe, just maybe, he could save them, if only in his dreams.

  Charlie sprinted for the garage and ripped open the door, only he was too late. His father’s suv was already gone. Charlie started to hyperventilate. His vision blurred and the whole world began to spin like it was his own tortuous Tilt-A-Whirl.

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  Charlie shot up from his desk, wide awake and gasping for air. His sweat-drenched clothes were stuck to his body. Charlie was no stranger to nightmares or sleeping problems. Most nights, he would spend at least an hour staring at the ceiling, his mind racing, before his body would finally shut down. Many of those nights, a nightmare would follow. His experience provided him no ease, only the knowledge that of all the terrible dreams his mind had ever conjured, the one that he had just woken from was the worst by far.

  It took a minute for Charlie to regain his breath and composure. Once his mind was finally clear, Charlie did his best to remember what his father had told him before they left. But no matter how hard he tried, he was unable to summon Alan’s last five words: We couldn’t love you more.

  “We couldn’t love you more,” Alan had said to him before he and Mary had left for their meeting. The same thing they said every night before bed, and had told Charlie multiple times each day, ever since he was a baby. And yet, Charlie had no recollection of his parents ever saying it to him.

  In fact, Charlie was so focused on trying to remember his father’s words that it was a moment before it hit him that he had actually forgotten the conversation altogether. He remembered that it had happened, that they were in the foyer, and that Alan and Mary had left for something. But he couldn’t recall where his parents were going, their demeanor, or a single word they had said. It was the last time he’d seen them, it had taken place just days ago, and it was seemingly wiped from his memory.

  Charlie’s eyes darted frantically about his bedroom. How was this possible? He almost never forgot anything. He even remembered the combination for his fifth-grade gym lock, which he hadn’t used in years. He wasn’t sure what was wrong with him, but he figured something had to be. The more he considered the cause, the more his thoughts kept pointing in the worst possible direction: He was losing his mind.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  For Charlie, the prospect of losing his mind was exponentially more frightening than losing any particular memory itself. His eyes nervously searched for anything that might offer proof that what he was experiencing was an isolated incident and not the onset of a much larger problem. They quickly found their shot at salvation: his Biology textbook.

  Charlie snagged the book from his desktop and tore it open. He flew through all of the chapter review quizzes; testing himself on cellular structure and reproduction, plant and animal life cycles, photosynthesis, natural selection, and so on.

  After he had recited the answer to his final quiz question, Charlie sighed his lungs empty. He had nailed every single question. He still remembered it all. Soothed by the fact that it was just the one specific event that had escaped his memory, Charlie convinced himself it wasn’t as big of deal as he had initially thought. He reasoned that, if anything, holding onto the memory of his parents’ last night would only serve as a distraction, and it was better to save his brain space for something else, like the last Biology chapter that he still needed to read.

  Charlie checked the time on his computer. It was 11:15. He had been asleep for less than an hour, but thanks to the adrenaline rush, he felt like he had slept a solid eight. Charlie knew that if there was one good thing about nightmares, it was the resulting jolt to the system. It was comparable to drinking a pot of coffee and chasing it with a couple energy drinks. Charlie wiped the nightmare from his thoughts, turned to the page where he had left off in his textbook, and got back to business.

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  By seven o’clock the next morning, Charlie had plowed through nearly all of his homework, including multiple assignments for Civics and French. Only his four-page paper remained incomplete.

  Charlie stared at the blank Word document on his computer screen. The flashing cursor was both taunting him and lulling him into a hypnotic state at the same time. He had been trying to start his draft for the past hour and change, but the furthest he had progressed was an opening sentence, which he deleted almost immediately after he finished typing.

  Charlie’s blaring alarm clock roused him from his trance. It was time to get ready for school. He would have to put his paper on the back burner once more and hope that the answer would come to him later, maybe when he least expected it. The odds of that happening, as rare as they were, seemed better to Charlie than his odds of figuring it out on his own.

  Charlie silenced the alarm and then headed to the second-floor bathroom. He studied his face in the bathroom mirror: Dark, heavy bags had started to form under his bloodshot eyes. He figured it was nothing a piping-hot shower couldn’t fix.

  Charlie took a quick shower, got dressed, grabbed a bowl of cereal, and made it to the curb outside of his house just in time to catch the chartered bus that Atherton Prep provided for its privileged student body.

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  Charlie joined the throngs of students as they flooded the gates of their elite institution. While short on close friends—he didn’t have the time to cultivate such relationships—Charlie did have many acquaintances, which he rationalized as a necessary exercise in networking. All of his acquaintances, and even his non-acquaintances, were surprised to see him back so soon. But their astonishment paled in comparison to the confusion of his teachers, who didn’t even get the chance to inform Charlie that he would have all the time he needed to turn in his assignments before he was already handing them his completed work.

  Only Charlie’s Language Arts teacher, Mrs. Gamlen, was able to offer the extension, which Charlie eagerly accepted while still attempting to explain his reasons for not having his paper completed. Mrs. Gamlen stopped him. She told him it wasn’t necessary. She understood.

  Any feeling of relief Charlie received from Mrs. Gamlen’s empathy was exhausted when she handed him his most recently graded writing assignment. At the top of the paper, in bright red ink, was a big, fat B. There was no plus, either, just the miserable, lonesome B. It was the first grade below an A that Charlie had received all year, and the first gra
de below an A- since three years before. It was also the only thing on Charlie’s mind for the rest of class.

  Once the period ended, Charlie approached his teacher with the intention of arguing his way to a better grade. While he didn’t feel good about doing it, he knew his best bet was to play the emotional card. Charlie cited his parents’ deaths and the enormous stress that he was under, and how it had clearly affected his writing.

  “I couldn’t be more sorry about your parents,” Mrs. Gamlen said, “and I will definitely take that into consideration on your next paper. But you do realize the paper I handed back was turned in over two weeks ago, right?”

  Charlie froze, busted. He had been so confident in what he considered his ace in the hole that he never imagined his teacher would challenge the timeline. He attempted to free himself from the bind he had tied. “Uh, I know,” he stuttered. “But, like, I had other things going on, too. Other problems at home.” Charlie couldn’t believe he just attempted to cover his lie with another lie, but his mouth had just said the words without ever asking his mind to sign off of them.

  Mrs. Gamlen had heard the rumors about what might have “caused” the Kim’s crash, and took Charlie’s words as confirmation of their truth.

  Charlie, meanwhile, took Mrs. Gamlen’s noticeable softening as an opportunity to close the deal. “I just really need an A in this class,” he said, unknowingly overplaying his hand by switching the topic from his paper grade to his class grade.

  “You don’t need to worry about that,” Mrs. Gamlen said. “There’s still plenty of time to pull your overall grade up. Just make sure to put your maximum effort into the next paper.”

  That was the last thing Charlie wanted to hear. He was struggling with his assignment enough. Extension or not, he didn’t need the added pressure. Before Charlie could respond, students began pouring into the room for the next period.