harper jones is on the run (jonesycakes) wrote in light_of_may, @ 2013-05-31 08:35:00 |
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The first few classes of the semester were always Harper's favorite. Sure the icebreakers were annoying, but at least you knew what to expect. And community college was turning out to be like a graduated level of high school. The classes weren't incredibly difficult and there was significantly less hand-holding from the instructors, but for the most part it didn't feel very different from high school. Or maybe that was just nostalgia speaking. It had been nearly a full two years since she had graduated. Maybe taking time off from school was just what she'd needed to make her want to go back. Granted, she had no idea what she was going for. The idea was that she would take classes until she found something interesting enough to actually declare a major and transfer to a larger school.
Her favorite thing about classes so far was that her Fridays were so blissfully short. She was able to leave campus just after lunch, which meant that traffic wasn't at all busy on her way home, allowing her to enjoy her afternoons at home. Arriving at the bakery doors, Harper gave one a half-hearted tug as she fully expected it to swing open with ease, allowing her inside out of the snow. However, the door did not budge. Her brows came together and she noticed that the sign was still flipped to the 'Closed' side. "Huh," she figured that her mother must have stepped out for something or another. It was just odd that Sherry hadn't left a note at the front door. The earth elemental rarely closed the shop without leaving a handwritten 'Back in Five' note taped to the door. Harper reached for her keys and unlocked the door.
Initially, the first thing she noticed was that the bakery was warm from the ovens. The unusual thing was that there was no smell of anything baking. No fresh cookies, cakes, truffles, candies. Nothing. It didn't matter if her mother had stepped out or not, she should be able to smell something new. "Mom?" She called as she stepped across the tiled floor, leaving a snowy trail behind her. She'd have to clean that up or she'd never hear the end of it from her mother. She slipped her hands out of her mittens and pushed off her cap and shook the snow from it. Her backpack was shrugged off of her shoulders and left on the floor next to the counter. She walked over to the ovens and saw that they were both on, preheating. Glancing around, she saw a bowl of what looked like brownie dough, though the top was starting to look a little hard, almost as if it had been left out to sit for a few hours. Surely her mother wouldn’t have left in the middle of mixing something.
A soft mewing from the floor caught her attention. “Hey, buddy,” she cooed down at the cat, scooping him up into her arms. “You know mom’d freak if she saw you down here around the counters, right? I mean, I don’t think you’d do anything to the food, but try telling that to her.” She pressed a kiss to Crayola’s head, who half-purred, half-sneezed in return. “Where’d she go?” Not that she expected the cat to answer her. “Come on, let’s get you upstairs before she gets back.”
For all the oddities that she had noticed that afternoon, nothing had really sounded off any alarms for Harper. As it was, she simply thought her mother was having an off day and that didn’t really warrant any more thought than that. Not until she would tease her mother endlessly later that evening when Daveigh was home from school, but before their father had made it home from work. Despite how much they argued and generally didn’t get along, Harper loved her sister and occasionally enjoyed the time she had with her and their mother. She was thinking of how much she could get away with poking fun at Sherry as she was walking up the stairs to the apartment above.
That was when she realized something was wrong.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw that the door to the pantry was ajar. Not that it was particularly odd for the door to be open, but it was incredibly odd that it was propped open by what was very clearly her mother’s foot. “Mom?” Harper called down. She couldn’t see inside of the pantry, but from the angle of the foot and the shoe that was sliding off of it, her mother was lying face down inside. Harper wasn’t sure why there was suddenly a bad taste in her mouth or why her sweat had turned cold, but she apprehensively took the steps one by one until she was back on the ground level of the bakery.
“Mom, are you alright?” Her voice was soft now, though it sounded as loud as her pulse thundering in her ears. She still clutched Crayola to her chest as she pushed the door open. Her mother was lying prone on the floor, her dark curls splashed around her head so that her face was hidden. It was more than clear that there was something wrong with her mother, but time seemed to freeze all of a sudden for Harper. The air was thick and falling to her knees seemed to have taken a small eternity. She wasn’t aware of letting go of her cat or if he jumped out of her arms, but they were empty when she reached for her mother.
She’s cold, was the first thought across Harper’s slow-moving mind. She pushed against Sherry gently, trying to help her roll over onto her back. For some reason, turning her mother over was an important thing to do. Sherry’s skin and muscles did not give in easily to the movement. She was stiff and rigid and Harper had to put more force into moving her than she thought necessary. Her breathing became sharp and she wasn’t sure she was even blinking anymore. Her eyes burned, though. Now that was a funny thought; she wasn’t supposed to be able to feel any sort of burns, was she?
“Mom?” she croaked, finally getting her mother onto her back. Dark curls latticed over Sherry’s face, so Harper reached out to brush them to the side. Her mother’s warm chocolate eyes had lost their sparkle and stared up at her, glazed. Harper couldn’t swallow. She couldn’t understand what was wrong with her mother. That morning Sherry had kissed her on the cheek and wished her a good day at school before she came downstairs to start things in the bakery. It was cheesy and even though Harper was twenty-two, she still liked that her mother stuck to it.
Finally, something clicked in her head. Mom’s sick. Need help. This was much more than she could handle on her own, she knew that much. She scrambled to her feet, nearly tripping over the cat that had remained by her side. She ran out to the counter, where she found the cordless phone and dialed 911 was fast as her trembling fingers would allow her. As soon as there was a voice on the opposite line, Harper’s heart jumped into her throat.
“My mom’s sick. I need help, now, I need someone to get here right now. Please!”
“Miss, I need you to calm down. What is wrong with your mother?”
“I don’t know. I just got home and she wasn’t moving.”
“Is she breathing?”
“What? I. I don’t know.”
The truth was, Harper did know. She had refused to acknowledge the lack of movement stirring in Sherry’s chest, thinking it was just a hallucination or a fluke or something that just wasn’t real. She edged towards the pantry door and peered inside again, this time seeing her mother lying face-up, staring at the ceiling with an expressionless look on her face.
“No. No she’s not.”
“What’s the address?”
Harper gave the address for the bakery and was assured that someone was on their way. She slid down to the floor, resting her back against the door frame. This couldn’t be possible. Her mother was the healthiest woman she knew! Despite the fact that her business was making sweets, Sherry was always trying to get her girls to eat vegetables and fruits that were organically grown. Harper always made a fuss about the broccoli or asparagus that Sherry served, but ate it all the same. She was suddenly struck with the question of what her mother was going to make for dinner that night. She’s sick. Someone should make dinner for her. Dad won’t do it -- oh shit, Dad. He needs to know.
She looked back down at the phone and dialed the number to her dad’s work. She hated calling him on the best days, but calling him at work even for an emergency nearly made her sick to her stomach. “Nicholas Jones, please.” She stated to the receptionist on the other line. She waited until her call was transferred and with a click she heard her father’s voice come through. He sounded so tinny coming through the speaker, and yet she could clearly see him sitting at his desk, his tie tied perfectly -- because Sherry had tied it for him before he’d left that morning.
“Hello? Is anyone there?”
“Dad, it’s me. You need to come home. You should get Daveigh first. She’s probably in her art class right now, so it’s not like she’ll miss anything super important. But yeah. You two need to get home in a hurry.”
“Harper? Harper what’s wrong? I can’t understand what you’re saying. Take a deep breath and calm yourself.”
Why didn’t anyone understand? Why couldn’t they just already know that there was something wrong with her mother and already be on their way? She was talking to her father, not her grandmother. Nicholas was no nonsense and should have gotten it right away. If she had been talking to Lady Vi, on the other hand, then she could understand having to repeat herself.
“Dad! Come home. Now.”
“What? Why? What’s wrong?”
“Something’s wrong with Mom.”
“Harper, you’re crying so hard I can’t hear what you’re trying to say.”
“Something’s wrong with Mom.”
Nicholas seemed to understand what his eldest had just screamed to him through the phone. He promised he was on his way home and urged her to sit tight. Sit tight, she thought. At least I can understand what you’re saying. Even if it makes no sense. Where did he get off saying that she was too upset, that she was crying too hard to be understood? She wasn’t crying. Her cheeks weren’t hot and wet with tear tracks. Her vision wasn’t blurry from the constant flow that had yet to ebb. That sudden choking sound couldn’t have come from her as she struggled for air between sobs.
Except it was. It most certainly was.
Sit tight.
She turned her head to the right and her eyes fell on her mother’s form once again. When her eyes fell on the body, she realized for the first time that it wasn’t her mother lying there on the floor, but her mother’s corpse. The pieces had added together the moment she laid her hands on her mother to turn her over, Harper simply could not bring herself to admit it or face the truth. Now it was there, irrefutable, heavy, and solid like an icy stone sitting in the pit of her stomach. It crushed her the way a speeding train would rip through an aluminum can sitting on its track. She felt as though she was being pulled in several directions at once, almost as if someone had anchored parts of her soul to tanks and had them driving in different directions. She felt sick and at the same time, she felt focused enough to realize what was happening, what had happened.
Harper heard the sirens before the ambulance arrived; the wailing sounds screaming through the streets almost made her ashamed. It was like they were announcing to the whole town that she had just lost her mother. But she’s right there. She’s just there. There, but gone. The breath had gone out of her at last, but a soft nuzzling at the back of her hand caused her to inhale again. She pulled Crayola up onto her lap, pressing her face into his fur as she sobbed again. The sirens were louder now. She could hear the voices of the paramedics just outside of the door. She didn’t stand up to greet them, though. She couldn’t move. She just sat there, holding her cat, and cried.
She’s cold.