Chapter 25 (post two)

Pre-read note: It's 2am so I don't feel like editing this before I post it. So here it is, in all its mistakes and imperfection -- Annika's real story, Jake's real past. 

 Chapter twenty-five, section two:

I sat there hoping to feel something.

I kept staring at the wall. If I focused too hard, kept my eyes wide open, I could feel the water brimming at the edges. And then I could concentrate on the warmth slipping down my cheeks.

I kept waiting to be hit with something.

Instead I kept analysing.

Analysing the details of my after-life, the details that were laid out before me in sheets and graphs, the details that were pre-planned from the moment I woke up here in this world. The good times, the times of breakdown, the fights and the friendships – everything, everything including Jake.

I tried to find the find the files that would tell me what else that had planned for me, but I could only find the files that led up to yesterday.

I wanted to really cry. I wanted the pain to fill my veins, pulse through me and out. I wanted to feel something exploding from my chest, tightening my stomach and causing me to double over.

Jake.

I stared at the white wall, concentrating, until the burning started in my eyes again. Unblinking, unmoving, I watched the shadows blur as my eyes stung and the salt water came to relieve them.

I felt the tears drip warm and comforting down my cheeks.

He had charted my after-life like a story or a game. He must have known that I’d fall for him, fall for him like a glossy-eyed puppy naive to the background workings of this world.

That’s when suddenly I finally started to feel again: What had been real?

Was the relationship I’d shared with Jake been pre-planned because we were meant to be together? Or had he known all along that this was supposed to happen, that this was what he was supposed to do? The way I felt about him was real – but had the way he felt about me ever been real?

As the tears fell mellow-dramatically down my face and my stomach twisted, I tried to figure it out, but there was no way to know. Unless...

I jumped up and wandered the dark aisles of shelving. The file cabinets were organized by dates and I kept wandering back through time to find that date I was looking for: the day that Jake died. Through the shadows on the dark wood I found 1945, then April 25^th. Hopefully Jake hadn’t lied that day on the beach.

Hepburn, Jake.

I opened the file immediately and black and white photos escaped, floating down around my feet. I ignored them as I glanced through the pages. There were reports about his first days spent in this world, in the same hospital I’d woken up in. He’d had a Guider of his own, although from what I could understand he’d always known that his purpose in this world was to become a Guider. Then I found pages on his life – and I gasped.

He’d lied, his family hadn’t been shot by Germans. As I read the pages and pages, I started to understand.

He’d grown up in a city in the North of the Netherlands. He was from a family of class and prestige, his father working in the government. When the Nazis invaded, everything had changed for him. The government was taken over by the Socialist Party and his father had been put out of a job. Instead, he was forced into mandatory labour in factories like every other man over the age of eighteen. His father, though, had been an activist who resisted the Nazis and was part of a group trying to rise up against them. In 1944, he was part of a resistance that attacked German troops – and died fighting for the liberation of his country. This same year, Jake turned eighteen and was to be forced to work in the factories the way his family had, factories that were regularly bombed by the Allies. Rather than do this, Jake ran away. He ran away and lived on the streets until he was picked up by the Nazis, and became one of them.

I read this part over again.

He’d become a Nazi soldier. He’d become one of the bad guys – one of the soldiers that his dad had died fighting.

He had died fighting on the wrong side. He had been part of the Nazis when they starved the Netherlands during the winter, killing thousands. Two of his sisters died. He was killed shortly afterwards in a bombing of the city that also killed his mother and his eldest sister.

He had lied to me.

I slowly picked up the photos that lay dusted around my feet. They were smiling faces of a happy family, Jake always beside either his father or a blonde-haired girl who looked to be the eldest sister. Checking back to the files I found her name: Sofie. Her bright eyes caught mine and for a moment I could’ve sworn they sparkled through the black and white film. I let go of the picture as I gasped, and it slowly drifted to the ground.

I dropped to the floor with the remnants of Jake’s past life scattered around me and curled into a ball, letting my wings wrap around me and my tears flow freely once again.