The Scrapbook

The Scrapbook

I stared out the foggy window, listening to the pitter-patter of the rain outside. I was deep in thought when suddenly I felt something touch my shoulder. I jerked around and saw that it was just my older sister, Lindsay. She had a huge smile on her face which only meant one thing—Lindsay had an idea. I don’t know why she was giving me the time of day, however. I mean, Lindsay was pretty, athletic, and popular. She had more important things to do than hang out with me.
“I have the perfect day planned for us,” Lindsay said. “Well, after it stops raining of course!”
My first thought was, Has she lost her mind? I could tell that this wasn’t going to be an ordinary day.
I decided to turn on the television to get some information on the weather. It turns out that the “rain” was just going to get worse. Our area was under a tornado watch, so I was safe from Lindsay’s dreaded plans for now. What I was not safe from was a possible tornado. This should not be a surprise to us, because we live in an area of Alabama known as “Tornado Alley.” Lindsay, being the older sister, decided that we should take shelter in the basement until further notice.
I always dreaded walking down into the cavernous basement. It was very dim and dull, so I tried to avoid it as much as possible. Lindsay and I crept down the stairs anyway. Unlike usual, the twelfth stair did not creak at all.
“Dad must have fixed it while we were gone,” Lindsay whispered. I could tell that she was as shocked about it as I was, though. Her face was flustered and splattered with red blotches all over. When we reached the end of the staircase, I found the light switch with my hand, and waited for the room to get brighter.
The basement was just how I remembered it. Our mom used it as a storage area, so it was cluttered and crowded. I walked over to a large red bin labeled “Tornado Kit” and took out the supplies that we might need for later. My curious side then got the better of me, and I started to snoop around and look in all of the other boxes that lay scattered in different areas of the basement. Most of them were just full of junk, but I did find some very interesting things, such as a box full of old scrapbooks. I dragged the heavy box over to Lindsay to see what she might have to say about them.
“Oh my gosh, I haven’t seen this stuff in forever,” Lindsay exclaimed. Knowing that our mother was a huge pack rat, I wasn’t very surprised. Whenever she got on one of her cleaning streaks, she just threw everything in boxes and stuffed them in the basement. You couldn’t really blame her, I guess. Our house wasn’t messy or clean, it was just in between. Due to our mother’s being OCD, that wasn’t good enough. She figured that if she had to live with slobs, then she would have to compromise with us. She stored all of our belongings that had no place to go in the basement instead of just getting rid of them.
“If this is what the basement looks like, I have a feeling that I don’t want to go up to the attic anytime soon,” I stated.
“Ditto,” Lindsay replied.
Okay, who uses that word anymore? I let that slide until later. We had more important things to worry about. For example, we were all alone when a tornado was possibly going to hit our area. I needed to get away from Lindsay’s grasp, but I knew that she would never allow it. When she was given a dilemma that gave her the chance to be in charge, she would never let you forget it. She was, though, the only person that I had with me at the moment, and I couldn’t let myself leave her.
I desperately wanted to find my mom. What if she was driving home when the tornado struck? I wouldn’t be able to go through the pain and trauma of losing a loved one…again. You see, it all happened about six years ago, when I was only ten years old. My mom was taking Lindsay and me to school, when she received a dreaded phone call. It was the police and they were calling to tell my mom that her husband, my dad, had passed away. He had been driving to work early in the morning because he had to be at a meeting that was five hours away. A drunk driver lost control and swerved right in front of my father’s vehicle. Then he rammed into my dad, making his car go off the side of the road, down a hill, and into a tree. By the time that the police found out and got him to the hospital, it was too late. The damage was done. My father was dead.
Okay, I have to stop thinking about that horrible incident. It all happened six years ago, but I still could not stop replaying it everyday in my mind. Each time I even thought about my dad (which was a lot), I would picture that day in my head. Going to the emergency room, the funeral, and seeing my mom at her worst. Ugh! No matter what, I just could not get those images out of my mind.
“Erin,” Lindsay called, “what’s wrong with you? Stop daydreaming and come over here…this is big.”
“What is it?” I stammered. I prayed to God that this was good news, not bad. Well, actually, knowing Lindsay it was probably her old prom pictures or something dumb like that. I cautiously walked over to where she was sitting. With a large scrapbook on her lap, Lindsay carefully opened the book up. On the first page was a picture of our family, our whole family. Before we knew it, both of us had burst into tears.
“We have to get over ourselves,” I cried. “We’re going to be okay and so is Mom. Everything will be alright. Now let’s listen to the radio and see what’s happening.”
“Okay,” Lindsay replied. I hastily tuned in our portable storm radio to the weather channel.
“So for all you listeners out there that just tuned in, this is J. Big Mac here, and I have all that you need to know about our tornado conditions. So far, there have been no sightings of any tornadoes near ‘Tornado Alley.’ However, in other areas of Alabama there have, so if I were you, I would stay in my basement. Over and out.”
Just great! “We’ve got to call Mom,” Lindsay and I yelled simultaneously.
No use…the storm had made it impossible to get any service. It didn’t help matters that we were in a basement, and that I had a cruddy phone. Note to self: When all of this is over, talk Mom into getting me a new phone.
“Well, since we can’t get a hold of Mom, let’s just look through these scrapbooks for now,” Lindsay said.
I turned to the fifth page of one of the scrapbooks. It was a beautifully designed page about my fifteenth birthday party. Everyone was there: my mom, Lindsay, Rachel, Samantha, and all of my other family and friends.
“I remember that day like it was yesterday,” I whispered.
“Yeah, me too,” said Lindsay. “The only bad thing was that it wasn’t about me.”
I gave her an evil stare, and she suddenly backed off.
“Gosh, I was just kidding. Can’t you take a joke?” Lindsay said.
Suddenly I realized that something wasn’t right. The room was getting bright all of a sudden, and it seemed as if we were spinning around uncontrollably. Then, a piece of paper appeared in my hand, and we were thrown against the ground. We were not in our basement anymore. Instead, we were located at the scene of my birthday party.
“This is impossible,” I stammered. “I mean, I know I said that I remembered it like it was yesterday, but I didn’t mean literally!” This was too hard to believe.
“What’s that in your hand?” Lindsay asked. I looked down and realized that it was a poem.
“Umm,” I said, “it’s a poem. It says:
It’s time to take a look at the past,
But please don’t forget these words.
Once you get bored, and I know that you will,
I suggest you get out of here fast!”
“Well, whatever. Come on, let’s go say hi to everyone,” Lindsay exclaimed.
I went over to the exact same place that I had been in one of the pictures in the scrapbook. My friends were standing there, deep in a conversation, but no one even seemed to notice me. “Hello,” I said cheerily.
Nothing.
“Hello?”
Again…nothing. This was weird. I decided to go see how Lindsay was doing. To my surprise, I found her yelling at her boyfriend, Cody. Uh-oh. I pulled her away, out of everyone else’s hearing. I said, “Lindsay, no one can hear us. To them, we’re not even here.”
“Let’s try the next page,” Lindsay suggested. Well, I guess it was worth a try.
Lindsay and I held hands tightly, with our eyes closed. At once we said, “Go to page ten!” We went through the same drill—bright lights and random spinning. It felt like we were going through a black hole. Except this “black hole” had a destination. That destination was our 2006 Under the Sea school dance.
We were all dolled up in our mermaid style dresses. Mine was turquoise, and Lindsay’s was lime green. I felt that this was a time in both of our lives when we looked most beautiful. Lindsay and I then went our separate ways. I remembered every last detail about this dance including who was wearing the same dresses as each other (not on purpose). But, one thing that I did not remember was no one talking to me, or making eye contact with me, or even moving out of my way. I seemed to glide right through them, hypothetically speaking of course!
I then walked out of the gym where the dance was being held to the girls’ restroom to check my hair. Unsurprisingly, I found Lindsay there as well, staring at herself in the mirror. I swear she is SO vain sometimes, it’s not even funny! I went over to where she was standing, so that I too could get a glimpse of myself. What I saw in my reflection was, well, nothing! I had no reflection in the mirror! Neither did Lindsay. Between this, and the party, I was starting to get freaked out a bit.
I said, “Go to page fifteen!”
We went from a school dance to Christmas Eve in just a few seconds. I saw our whole family gathered around the Christmas tree, opening presents. Although I am not psychic, I knew what was going to happen next. No one would see us, hear us, or even know we were there.
“What is the point of going back to the past if you can’t even be a part of it,” I asked.
Lindsay just looked at me. She said, “Don’t you see? I think I know what that poem was all about…whoever or whatever did this to us knew that we would want to get out. They knew that we wouldn’t be a part of the past, and that no one would know we were there.”
“That poem must be a ticket out,” I exclaimed. “We just have to go to the last page, and then recite the poem!”
In unison, Lindsay and I said, “Go to the last page!” We were on a boat in the middle of the ocean. Since we were already in our bathing suits, I decided to go swimming, and Lindsay decided to go sun bathing. I jumped into the water without hesitating. I could feel the ice cold water all around me, and when I tried to go up for air, I couldn’t. It was like something was holding me back, and that something was a whirlpool. I got to the surface, and had just enough time to yell for help, before I got sucked back in.
This is it, I thought. I could barely make out noises coming from above the water. It was Lindsay, and she was coming to save me.
She jumped into the water, and started to swim towards me. I knew that she was a better swimmer than me, but that I was stronger. I pushed and swam with all of my might to fight the current. Oh no! Lindsay was starting to get pulled in too! I used all of the air that I had left to call out, “Say the poem! Just say it, or we’ll both be goners!”
“It’s time to take a look at the past,
But please don’t forget these words.
Once you get bored, and I know that you will,
I suggest you get out of here fast!”
Back in the safety of our own home, we went back down to the basement. We crept down the stairs, and when we got to the bottom, I thought that I could hear someone crying.
“Huh?” I questioned. “It’s Mom.” She was looking through the same scrapbook that we had been looking at earlier. It was turned to the last page, and on it, was a newspaper article with the title: Two Young Teens Drown Due to Whirlpool. Wait. What had just happened to us had actually occurred in real life. But in real life, we hadn’t made it out of the water alive.
“Oh…my…gosh,” I barely choked out. I stared at Lindsay. The article was dated July 11, 2007. “That was one year ago…today,” Lindsay cried out. “That means that we are really… dead.”
We had to let Mom know that we were still here, that God had wanted us to stay with our mom for a little while longer and then go to heaven to see him and our father. I took the closest piece of paper that I could find and wrote: Hey Mom. It’s Lindsay and Erin. We have been here all along. I love you, and I miss you. See you by the golden gates to heaven.
And then we left as the rain poured down.