WhiteSpace: Season One (Episodes 1-6 of the sci-fi horror serial) (41 page)

“Do you think she saw what was on it?”

“No. If she did, she wouldn’t have given it to Houser. And if she did, well, who’s gonna believe her?”

“No,” Warren said. “I suppose not. And what about Mr. Houser? What’s the situation there?”

“Mr. Houser has been taken care of.”

“Good,” Warren said. “Stay by your phone. I might have another job for you soon.”

TO BE CONTINUED…

In the STUNNING season finale!

Next week!

WhiteSpace: Episode 6

The Season Finale

by Sean Platt &

David Wright

Copyright © 2012 by Sean Platt & David Wright. All rights reserved
 

Cover copyright © 2012 by David W. Wright

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, businesses, events, or locales is purely coincidental. The authors have taken great GIGANTIC liberties with locales including the creation of fictional towns (and islands!) The authors rarely leave their home states and research is limited to whatever the spirit of Magellan tells them via Ouija Board.

Reproduction in whole or part of this publication without express written consent is strictly prohibited.

The authors greatly appreciate you taking the time to read our work. Please consider leaving a review wherever you bought the book, or telling your friends or blog readers about this book, to help us spread the word.

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eBook Edition - June 5, 2012

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* * * *

CHAPTER 1 — Sarah Hughes

Hamilton Island, Washington

Friday

September 1 (the day of the shooting)

Morning

Sarah woke up with the same hollow feeling that had haunted her every time she dreamed of Jon.

Mourning the unspooled fantasy of a life spent together; with him and their daughter, Emma. One big happy family.
The way it was always supposed to be.

It had been nearly a decade since she’d seen Jon, and yet, after the dreams, it still felt as though he had only been gone for days. His wide smile, his gentle touch, his voice whispering in her ear, and even the undeniable sexiness of his scent were still so strong in her memory — fixtures in her mind as comforting and familiar as home.

I have to stop watching his damned movies.

It was always worse after the dreams. Months could go by and she’d be fine, going on, content — hell, even happy —
 
with her life. But then something would happen to remind her of him. She’d see him on the news, run into his family, or sometimes it would be a face that Emma would make, and the next thing she knew, she found herself in front of the TV watching one of his movies and taking trips down memory lane.

But the trips did little more than rip the wounds of his betrayal and her decision fresh open. And what-if’s served as salt.

What if she had taken Jon back?

What if she had told Warren to go to Hell?

What if she had just let Cassidy do the time she’d rightfully earned?

Had her wrong choice been right? And even it was, did right mean worth it?

No matter how many times Sarah played
what-if?
, she always ended up feeling like the loser, filled with resentment, and mourning the best life she never had a chance to live.
 

Sarah hated feeling bitter, or like a loser. She had done just fine on her own, great even, raising Emma as a single mom. Besides, it wasn’t as if there were any guarantees of a golden life, even if she had managed to stay with Jon. It wasn’t like he hadn’t cheated on her 15 minutes into his first flicker of fame. Who was to say he wouldn’t have done it again? Probably on repeat. Sarah had read the tabloids covering his many drunken exploits — indulging in women from costars to runway models. And then there were the drunken violent encounters with the paparazzi. How many cameras had he grabbed? How many photographers had he beaten up? How many lawsuits had he been involved in? Too many to count.

That Jon was barely a shadow of the man she once knew. This fixture in
People
and
Entertainment Weekly
, and TMZ, was miles apart from the Jon of her dreams.

She had made the best possible choice.

So why the hell do I always feel so bad?

Sarah squeezed her eyes shut and pulled the covers over her head, gifting herself with a few more minutes of self-pity before crawling from bed to begin her day, determined to return to her regular happy self before the first bell rang.

Her door creaked open. Seconds later, Emma plopped on her bed. “Wake up, Mom,” she said in her usual song. “Time to go to school.”

Sarah wiped her eyes as Emma ripped the covers from her head, smiling her giant
I’m up way too early, with way too much energy
smile.

“Why are you crying, Mom?”
 

Sarah was immediately embarrassed, like she always was when caught thinking of Jon. She never cared if Emma saw her cry, except when the tears were caused by the girl’s father — the father Emma might never know the truth about. “I had a sad dream, that’s all.”

Emma stared at her mom as if she didn’t quite believe her. “About what?”

“Nothing for you to worry about, Sweetie. Just a dream, baby. All ready for school?”

Emma stood up and twirled, showing Sarah her blue and pink striped shirt and flared bottom blue jeans with the embroidered bottoms. “Readier than you! Just need to put my shoes on.”

“OK, I’ll be out in a few minutes. Can you make me a bagel with butter?”

“Regular or everything?”
 

“Surprise me,” Sarah said.

Emma’s right eyebrow arched with the weight of a sudden, great idea. “OK!” she said, then hopped from the bed and ran from the room.

Sarah forced her feet onto the carpet, and then her body into the shower, thanking God it was finally Friday.
 

**

Sarah hit the bottom stair, then rounded the corner into the kitchen to find a dinner plate decorated with a bagel and a sliced orange, and a Snoopy mug brimmed with coffee, all of it arranged and displayed like it was waiting for a tip when finished.

“Do you like your surprise?” Emma said, surfacing from the other side of the kitchen bar.

Sarah looked down to see that her bagel was two different halves — one regular and one everything.

“It looks amazing,” Sarah smiled, mustering as much enthusiasm as she could before the caffeine.

Emma pranced to the living room and looked out the window. “We should bring our umbrellas. It looks like rain today.”

A chill ran down Sarah’s spine. Not at the thought of rain. It
always
seemed like it
might
rain. This chill had nothing to do with the cold. It was an odd feeling — sudden and unmistakable and without a molecule of sense. Though the feeling might have been impossible to define, if Sarah were forced to give it breath, she would have an immediate answer:

It felt like today was the day she was going to die.
 

* *

Sarah leaned over and kissed Emma on the forehead as she dropped her off in front of her classroom.

“I love you,” Sarah said.

Emma stared over her mother’s head at a row of lockers, clearly embarrassed as Hudson Ralston walked by into their classroom, stealing a smiling glance at Emma.

“Who’s that?” Sarah asked, as though she didn’t know Wendy Ralston’s rascally son.

Emma’s face turned red. “Nobody,” she said, shifting on her feet and obviously wanting to get to class.

Oh my God, she has a crush! Too cute.

“OK then, see you later,” Sarah smiled. “But I wanna know everything later.”
 

“Stop, Mom,” Emma said, making her eyes big. She turned, waved goodbye, then disappeared into her classroom.
 

Sarah watched as Emma sat beside Hudson. Emma looked up and waved a hand anxiously at her mother, shooing her away.

Sarah smiled and turned toward her class, tears welling in her eyes.
 

My baby is growing up WAY too fast.

I
 
didn’t like boys until . . . oh, wait. Yeah, about the same age.

Sarah went to her classroom, then sat at her desk, waiting for her students to start shuffling in as she graded quizzes from the day before. As she moved the finished quizzes to their quickly rising pile, her thoughts kept circling back to Emma’s rather adorable crush.
 

When Sarah was Emma’s age, she had a thing for Jon, even though she hid it fairly well so as not to upset the obvious crush Cassidy was carrying. If Cassidy had known Sarah liked Jon, she would’ve made Sarah’s life miserable. It wasn’t that Cassidy was a bully — though some people saw her that way — but she was super competitive with Sarah for reasons Sarah couldn’t understood at the time.
 

It was only after Cassidy started dating Tommy Decker, when Sarah finally began entertaining the thought of liking Jon. When they started dating in middle school, Sarah was terrified that Cassidy would get upset. Things were great between them, better than ever, and she didn’t want to upset the harmony. Cassidy had taken the news surprisingly well. She was happy with her steady stream of guys, or at least it seemed so at the time. Cassidy said she would be bored to tears going out with one guy, especially a “rich prick” like Jon.

“Hey, Ms. Hughes,” a girl’s voice cut through the chaos in her head, pulling Sarah from her train of thought, and moving her eyes from Ben Johnson’s quiz to the eyes of Melody Quinn, one of her best students. Early, as usual.
 

“Hi, Melody,” Sarah said.” How are you this morning?”

“Great!” Melody beamed, chipper as always. Sarah suspected that beneath Melody’s happy exterior, lurked the restless soul of a very sad girl.
 

Or maybe you’re just projecting, Sarah.

Yeah, maybe.

Melody sat in the front row, and was quickly followed by a steady stream of incoming students until the first bell brayed against the soft sea of morning chatters. Of course, not all her students were there. But Sarah was lax. As long as everyone was sitting within a minute or two of the bell, she paid no mind to a few tardies. Some kids had to defy authority a bit, bend the rules to thicken their teenage blood — just like Cassidy. As long as it didn’t distract them from their best work, Sarah pretended not to notice.

Sarah took attendance as the final few students took their seats. Two kids either absent, or especially tardy.
 

“Today, class,” Sarah moved her eyes from the roll sheet to her students, “we will be writing to a prompt. I want you to choose one of the 10 prompts on this sheet.” Sarah held a stack of papers in the air, then stood from her desk and stepped in front of the class.
 

“I’d like to see at least five hundred words from everyone. And please,” she turned to Frank, “no more than a thousand, okay?”

Frank, along with a handful of other students, laughed. Frank was the class’s resident future scribe, who often turned essays into novellas which soared past boring into “impossible to care.” He loved the spotlight, reading his lengthy prose, and even his nickname, “tree murderer.”

“Okay, Miss Hughes …
I’ll try.
”

“That’s all we can ask, Frank.” Sarah smiled as she handed a stack of papers to the student sitting in the first desk of each row.

“Please pass these back,” she said.

Sarah sat back at her desk, sneaking a sip of Diet Pepsi as the class fell silent, rolling pens across papers. The morning was 10 minutes old when Frank was already turning his paper to the other side.
 

Sarah’s classroom door burst open.

Half the room looked up in unison as Mr. Heller, the teacher next door, ambled into class, clutching his briefcase close to his chest and gazing around the room as though he was stepping from a bus in an unfamiliar city.
 

Something was off, and that was putting it mildly.
 

Heller’s hair was a mess, his shirt wrinkled and untucked. His eyes were bloodshot, as if he’d been up all night working, crying, or as unlikely as it might be, getting plastered. More than anything, he looked confused, like he didn’t know which classroom he’d stumbled into.