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  She walked in with a long face and slumped shoulders and poured herself into a chair at the dining room. I chuckled at her dramatics. She thought she was fooling me but she didn’t fool me for even one minute.

  I ignored her, continuing to stir the spaghetti sauce as she brooded.

  She let out a huge, long, loud sigh and I replaced the lid on the pot and turned around.

  “Don’t even try it.” I mumbled just loud enough so she could hear me.

  “I don’t know. I may have failed all of my classes. I’m not going to graduate.” She threw her head back in mock despair.

  “Well, at least we know you didn’t fail drama.”

  “Or, I may have gotten straight freakin’ A’s!” She said as she smiled and did a gangly celebratory dance in her chair.

  Then she rose from her chair and ran to me, throwing her arms around my waist.

  “Now you only have two years of grad school and you’re done!”

  She slapped my bicep and head butted my chest.

  “You just couldn’t let me bask in my success could you?” She laughed as she berated me.

  “No, I mean it’s great. You started out facing six years of school and now you’re down to two. Say it with me, optimism.”

  “Optimism.” She chanted the word like she was a monk at a funeral.

  I went back to the stove and finished putting together dinner while she changed clothes and got out the plates.

  “So how was work?” She plated spaghetti and salad for us both.

  “Nothing different. Dad is planning on retiring soon. He’s looking ragged. And I think he wants more time off since he and Mom are dating or whatever again. It’s so weird that my parents are dating.”

  “Hmmmm…I think it’s cute.”

  “Ok, spill it. I know there’s something you want to tell me so spit it out.”

  She twirled a noodle before she started.

  “I was going to tell you that since I was graduating, well, I went off of the pill about six weeks ago.”

  The blood drained from my face as water drains from a sink.

  “Are you sure? You still have two years of school.”

  “I know,” she was almost whispering, “but I’m ready and your mom lives here now and Aunt Brenda is retired and they’ve offered to help. I know I can do both.”

  My Mom had moved here shortly after Remi and I got married that summer after she came back from Texas and that’s when Mom and Dad started their dating thing.

  “Plus, there’s me.” I added sarcastically. She still had a tendency to try to do things on her own. Sometimes it burst my ego but I loved her independence at the same time.

  She got up from the table and came to sit in my lap.

  “No, that’s where you’re wrong Mr. Neal. There’s us first and then if we need help they’re there.”

  I could hear the sound of an inflating ego like blowing up a helium balloon.

  “Mrs. Neal, you are the best thing that has ever happened to me.”

  “So,” she kissed her way along the side of my neck “Are you done with dinner?”

  I shook my head and whispered the words that she hated to hear.

  “Not yet.”

  If you enjoyed this book, look for Emerge, also by Lila Felix.

  Find Lila Felix:

  [email protected]

  www.authorlilafelix.blogspot.com

  Twitter: @AuthorLilaFelix

  Facebook: Lila Felix

  Now, please enjoy an excerpt from Shelly Crane’s new contemporary, Wide Awake, due out early 2013.

  Chapter One

  Someone was speaking. No, he was yelling. It sounded angry, but my body refused to cooperate with my commands to open my eyes and be nosy. I tried to move my arms and again, there was no help from my limbs. It didn’t strike me as odd until then.

  I heard, “All I’m saying is that you need to be on time from now on.” Then a slammed door startled me. I felt my lungs suck in breath that burned and hissed unlike anything I’d ever felt before. It was as if my lungs no longer performed that function and were protesting.

  Then I heard a noise, a gaspy sound, and my cheek was touched by warm fingers. “Emma?” I tried to pry my eyes and felt the glue that seemed to hold them hostage begin to let go. “Emma?”

  Who was Emma? I felt the first sliver of light and tried to lift my arm to shield myself, but it wouldn’t budge. Whoever was in the room with me must’ve seen me squint, because the light was doused almost immediately to a soft glow. My eyelids fluttered without strength. I tried to focus on the boy before me. Or maybe he was a man. He was somewhere in between. I didn’t know who he was, but he seemed shocked that I was looking up at him.

  “Emma, just hold on. I’m your physical therapist and you’re in the hospital. Your…” he looked back toward the door, “parents aren’t here right now, but we’ll call them. Don’t worry.”

  I looked quizzically at him. What was he was going on and on about? That was when I saw the tubes on my chest connecting my face to the monitors. The beeping felt like a knife through my brain. I looked at the stranger’s hazel eyes and pleaded with him to explain.

  He licked his lips and said softly, “Emma, you were in an accident. You’ve been in a coma. They weren’t sure if…you’d wake up or not.”

  Of everything he just said, the only thing I could think was, ‘Who’s Emma?’

  He leaned down to be more in my line of sight. “I’ll be right back. I promise.” Then he pressed a button on the side of the bed several times and went to the door. He was yelling again. I tried to shift my head to see him, but nothing of my body felt like mine. I started to panic, my breaths dragging from my lungs.

  He came back to me and placed a hand on my arm. “Emma, stay calm, OK?”

  I tried, I really did, but my body was freaking out without my permission. And then his face was suddenly surrounded by so many other’s faces. He was pushed aside and I felt my panic become uncontrollable.

  I thrashed as much as I could, but felt the sting in my arm as they all chattered around me. They wouldn’t even look me in the eye. That man…boy was the only one who had even acknowledged me at all. The rest of them just scooted around each other like I wasn’t important or wouldn’t understand their purpose, like it was a job. Then I realized where I was and guessed it was their job.

  My eyelids began to fight with me again and I cursed whoever it was that has stuck the needle into my arm. But as the confusion faded and the air become fuzzy, I welcomed the drugs that slid through my veins. It made the faces go away. It made my eyes close and I dreamed of things I knew nothing about.

  My eyes felt lighter this time when they opened themselves. The fluttering felt more natural and I felt more alive. I could turn my head this time, too, and when I did I saw something disturbing.

  There were strangers crying at my bedside.

  The woman caught me looking her way and yelled, “Thank the Lord!” in a massive flourish that had me recoiling. She threw herself dramatically across the side of my bed and sobbed. I shifted my gaze awkwardly to the man and waited as she stood slowly, never taking his eyes from mine. “Emmie?” When I squinted he said, “Emma?”

  When I went to speak this time, the tubes had been removed. I let my tongue snake out to taste my lips. They were dry. I was thirsty on a whole new level and glanced at the coffee cup stuck between his palms. He looked at it, too, and guessed what I wanted. He sprung to set the cup down quickly and fill an impossible small cup with water from a plastic pitcher. I tried to take it from his fingers, and he must have sensed I needed help, because he held my hands with his and I gulped it down in one swig with his help. My arms ached at the small workout they were getting and again I wondered what I was doing there.

  I made him fill it three more times before I was satisfied and then leaned back to the bed. I decided to try to get some answers. I started slow and careful. “Where am I?” I said. It felt like my voice was strong, but the
noise that came out was raspy and grated.

  “You’re in the…hospital, Emmie,” the woman sobbing on my bed explained. She smiled at me, her running mascara marring her pretty painted face. “We thought we’d never get you back.”

  That stopped everything for me.

  “What do you mean?” I whispered.

  She frowned and glanced back at the man. He frowned, too. “What do you remember about your accident, sweetheart?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t remember anything.” I thought hard. Actually, that statement was truer than I had intended it to be. I couldn’t remember…anything. I sucked in a breath. “Who are you? Do you know something about my…accident?”

  The woman’s devastated face told me she knew everything, but there was apparently something I was missing. She threw her face back onto my bed and sobbed so loudly that the nurse came in. She looked at the man there. He glanced to me, a little hint of some betrayal that I couldn’t understand was in his eyes, before looking back to the nurse. “She must have amnesia.”

  The nurse ignored him and took my wrist in her hand to check my pulse. I wanted to glare at her. What the heck did my pulse have to do with anything at that moment? “Vitals are stable. How do you feel?” she asked me.

  How did I feel? Was she for real? “I feel like there’s something everyone isn’t telling me.”

  She smiled sympathetically, a side of wryness there. “I’ll get the doctor.”

  I looked up at her. She was short and petite, her blond hair in a bun and her dog and cats scrubs were crisp. I watched her go before looking to the man again.

  “I don’t understand what’s going on. Did I…” A horrifying thought crossed my brain. “Did I kill someone? Did I hit them with my car or something? Is that why you’re all being so weird?”

  The man’s own eyes began to fill then. I felt bad about that. I knew it was my fault, I just didn’t know why. He rubbed the woman’s back soothingly. He shook his head to dispel my theory and took a deep breath. A breath loaded with meaning and purpose. “Emmie…you were in a accident,” he repeated once again that I was ‘in an accident’. OK, I got that. I wanted him to move on to the part that explained the sobbing woman on my bed. He continued after a pause, “You were…walking home from the football game. Someone…hit you. A hit and run, they said. The person was never found. They left you there and eventually someone else came along and helped you. But you’d already lost a lot of blood and…” He shook his head vigorously. “Anyway, you’ve been her for six months. You were in a coma, Emmie.”

  I took in a lungful of air and uttered the question that I somehow knew was going to change my world. “Why do you keep calling me Emmie?”

  He grimaced. “That’s your name. Emma Walker. We always…called you Emmie.”

  “My name… Emma,” I tasted the name. “I don’t feel like an Emma.”

  He smiled sadly. “Oh, baby. I’m so sorry this happened to you.”

  The woman raised her head. “Emmie.” She tried to smile through her tears. “Try to remember,” she urged. “Remember what your favorite color is?” She nodded and answered for me, “Pastel Pink. That’s what you were thinking, right?”

  Pastel pink was the last color I would ever have picked. “Are you sure I’m Emma?” She started to sob again and I felt bad, I did, but I needed answers. “Who are you?”

  “We’re your parents,” the man answered. “I’m…Rhett. And your mother is Isabella. Issie…” he drawled distractedly.

  “Rhett?” I asked. “Like in Gone With The Wind?”

  He smiled. “That was your favorite movie when you were little.”

  I closed my mouth and felt the weight bear into my chest. I wasn’t me. I had no idea who I was. These people claimed to know me and be my parents, but how could I just forget them? How could I forget a whole life?

  I tried really hard to remember my real name, my real life, but nothing came. So, I threw my Hail Mary, my last attempt to prove I wasn’t crazy and didn’t belong to these strangers, however nice they may be. “Do you have some pictures? Of me?”

  In no time two accordion albums were in my lap. One from the man’s wallet and one from the woman’s. I picked up the first, trying to sit up a bit. The man pressed the button to make the bed lean up and I waited awkwardly until it reached the upright position. Then I glanced at the first photo.

  It was the man, the woman, two girls and a boy. They were all standing in the sunlight in front of the Disneyland sign. The man was wearing a cheesy Mickey Mouse ears hats. I glanced at him and he smiled with hope. I hated to burst the little bubble that had formed for him, but I didn’t recognize any of these people. The pictures proved nothing. “I don’t know any of those people.”

  The woman seemed even more stunned, if possible. She stood finally and turned to go to the bathroom. She returned with a handheld mirror. She held the picture up in one hand and the mirror in the other and I indulged her by looking. I have no idea why I was so dense to not understand what they had been implying, and what I had so blatantly missed.

  I was in the photo.

  I looked at the mirror and recognized the middle girl as the girl in the mirror. I took it from her hands and looked at myself. I turned my head side to side and squinted and grimaced. The girl was moving like I was, but I had no idea who she was. She looked as confused as I felt. I looked back at the picture and examined…myself. She was wearing a pink tank top with jean shorts. Her hair was in a messy blonde ponytail and she had one hand on her hip and the other around the girl’s shoulder. One of her legs was lifted a bit to lean on the toe. Cheerleader immediately rambled through my head. I almost vomited right there. “I’m a cheerleader?”

  “Why, yes,” she answered gently. “You love it.”

  My grimaced spread. “I can’t imagine myself loving that. Or pink.”

  It hit me then. Like really sunk in. I had no idea who I was. I had forgotten a whole life that no longer belonged to me. I felt the tear slide down my cheek before the sob erupted from my throat. I pushed the pictures away, but kept the mirror. I turned to my side and buried my face in my pillow, clutching the mirror to my chest. My body did this little hiccup thing and I cried even harder because I couldn’t even remember doing that before.

  The man and woman continued to stand at the foot of my bed when the doctor came in. I looked at him through my wet lashes. When he spoke, his voice sounded familiar. “Emma, I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but it appears that you’ve developed amnesia from your accident. We’ll have to run lots of tests, but the good news is that in more cases than not, the amnesia is temporary.”

  I jolted and wiped my chin clear of tears. “You mean I could remember one day?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Don’t get her hopes up,” I heard from the doorway and turned to find the man-boy. My heart leapt a little. He was the only person that I remembered. Well from when I woke up at least. He felt like some awkward lifeline I needed to latch onto. He shook his head. “Every case is different. She may never remember anything.”

  “Mason,” the man yelled, making me jump at the volume of it, and shot daggers at him across my bed, “this doesn’t concern you.”

  “She’s been in my care for six months,” he growled vehemently and then glanced at me. He did a double take when he saw me awake and looking at him. I had no idea what the expression on my face may have been, but he softened immediately and came to stand beside…my parents.

  “Isabella. Rhett,” he said and nodded to them as they did in turn. He was on a first name basis with my parents. He wasn’t wearing scrubs like the nurse. He was in khakis and a button up shirt, the sleeves rolled almost to his elbows. His name tag said “Mason Wright - Occupational Therapy”. He looked at me with affection that showed the truth behind his words. “I’m Mason, Emma. I’ve been doing all of your physical therapy while you’ve been…asleep.”

  “You look a little young,” my mouth blurted. I covered my lips wi
th my fingers, but he laughed like he was embarrassed.

  He swiped his hand through his hair and glanced around the room. “Yeah… So anyway, I’ll be continuing your care, now that you’re awake. You’ll have some muscle atrophy and some motor skills that will need to be honed again.” I nodded. “But, from what I’ve seen from working with you these past months, I’ll think you’ll be fine in that department.”

  “Working with me? Like moving my legs while I was asleep?”

  “Mmhmm. And your arms, too. It keeps your muscles from completely forgetting what they’re supposed to do.” He smiled.

  I wanted to smile back at him, but feared that I didn’t know how with this face. Plus, my body was exhausted just from this little interaction. He must have seen that, too, because he turned to the tall man who had yelled at him before. “She needs her rest.”

  “I know that,” he said indignantly. “However, the news crew will be here later on.” He turned a bright smile on the woman that was supposed to be my mother. “She’ll do an interview with them and tell everyone all about her ordeal. I’m sure you could even get a deal on a big story to the-”

  My father spoke up, putting a protective hand on my foot. “You set up an interview with the press the day she wakes up…and don’t even get our permission first?”

  They all kept talking around me. Mason started defending me along with my parents. The man apologized half heartedly and I assumed he was the head doctor or some hospital head from the way he was acting.

  My mind buzzed and cleared in intervals. I lost all track of time and eventually just turned to let my cheek press against the grainy pillow. My throat hurt from the tubes that had been keeping me alive.

  Only to wake up to a reality that was more fiction than non.

  My eyes still knew how to cry though and I tried to keep myself quiet as I let the tears fall. I thought I’d definitely earned them. Eventually the room quieted and the lights were turned off, all but the small lamp beside my bed. The phone on my bedside stand had a small list of numbers, for emergencies I assumed, but the name on the top of the card was what caught my eye. ‘Regal City Hospice’.