Pieces (A Merely Mortal Book)

Book One: Pieces

Faye Hollidaye

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2010 Faye Hollidaye

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

ISBN: 9781476085685

Author’s Note

I want to first thank those who’ve helped in the development of this novel and those whose support has been a motivator. Second, I have decided to rate my novels to forewarn of any content that may not be deemed appropriate for certain age groups. This rating will always be mentioned on the Author’s Note page. Third, I will mention to my readers and supporters that without you, there is no story, only a chopped-up tree with ink stains, and I thank you for giving these words life. Read this novel however you like: by number (see the Table of Contents), by name (see the Color Guide and Table of Contents), or as a puzzle (read it as it is written)! Enjoy!

Check out my blog and like my page on Facebook, follow me on Twitter and Google+, and friend me on MySpace and GoodReads! Feel free to leave me feedback on any of these sites or in my inbox at fayehollidaye@gmail.com. Thank you.

All events, people, and ideas found in these pages are fictitious. Any connection to real people, instances, or thoughts is merely coincidence.

Adult discretion is advised for minors ages 17 and under due to adult content and profanity.

Hint

You buy a puzzle at a random yard sale you decided at the last moment to stop at. The box is appealing and it seems to be the most beautiful picture you’ve ever seen; so, even though it seems just a bit overpriced, you decide against your better judgment and buy it, on a whim of course. When you get home though, the box looks old and dusty and you kick yourself for acting on such a silly impulse. Then you start asking yourself questions like Why didn’t I open the box and make sure all the pieces were there?, How many pieces does this darned thing have anyway?, and How difficult will it be to put the final picture together and how long will it take?.

You cram the puzzle into a closet and forget about it—until, one day, you’re bored and it (again randomly) creeps into your mind. You decide What the heck, I don’t have anything better to do and end up studying each piece intently before eventually getting them all to stick together.

You may question the final picture when you read this novel, but I guarantee that all the pieces will eventually fit together and you will have no doubt that it was worth the time.

Table of Contents

Author’s Note

Hint

Table of Contents (You are here!)

Color Guide

Part One – Lonely No Longer : Chapter One – Maryanne (Piece 44), Piece 1, Piece 42, Piece 2, Piece 79; Chapter Two – Maryanne, Piece 3, Piece 80, Piece 4, Piece 81; Chapter Three – Maryanne, Piece 5, Piece 82, Piece 6, Piece 83; Chapter Four – Maryanne, Piece 7, Piece 84, Piece 8, Piece 85; Chapter Five – Maryanne, Piece 9, Piece 86, Piece 10, Piece 87; Chapter Six – Maryanne, Piece 11, Piece 89, Piece 12, Piece 93; Chapter Seven – Maryanne Piece 13, Piece 48, Piece 14, Piece 95; Chapter Eight – Maryanne, Piece 15, Piece 49, Piece 16, Piece 97; Chapter Nine – Maryanne, Piece 17, Piece 50, Piece 19, Piece 98; Chapter Ten – Maryanne, Piece 20, Piece 51, Piece 39, Piece 21, Piece 113; Chapter Eleven – Maryanne, Piece 22, Piece 52, Piece 23, Piece 124; Chapter Twelve – Maryanne, Piece 24, Piece 53, Piece 25, Piece 54, Piece 26; Chapter Thirteen – Maryanne, Piece 55, Piece 27, Piece 56, Piece 28; Chapter Fourteen – Maryanne, Piece 57, Piece 29, Piece 58; Chapter Fifteen – Maryanne, Piece 30, Piece 59, Piece 31, Piece 60; Chapter Sixteen – Maryanne, Piece 32, Piece 61, Piece 33, Piece 62; Chapter Seventeen – Maryanne, Piece 34, Piece 155, Piece 35, Piece 156; Chapter Eighteen – Maryanne, Piece 36, Piece 167, Piece 37, Piece 168; Chapter Nineteen – Maryanne, Piece 38, Piece 169, Piece 40, Piece 350; Chapter Twenty – Maryanne, Piece 41

Part Two – Never Again Alone : Chapter Twenty – Piece 46, Piece 45, Piece 105, Piece 43; Chapter Twenty-One – Face, Piece 47, Piece 65, Piece 88, Piece 63; Chapter Twenty-Two – Face, Piece 18, Piece 90, Piece 68, Piece 112; Chapter Twenty-Three – Face, Piece 91, Piece 70, Piece 92, Piece 71; Chapter Twenty-Four – Face, Piece 94, Piece 72, Piece 96, Piece 73; Chapter Twenty-Five – Face, Piece 99, Piece 75, Piece 100, Piece 76, Piece 141; Chapter Twenty-Six – Face, Piece 101, Piece 77, Piece 102, Piece 78, Piece 132, Piece 151, Piece 69; Chapter Twenty-Seven – Face, Piece 103, Piece 64, Piece 74, Piece 107, Piece 66; Chapter Twenty-Eight – Face, Piece 109, Piece 108, Piece 110, Piece 111, Piece 67

Color Guide

In addition to the meager Table of Contents, I will give you a guide on how to look at the pieces to aid in putting them together:

White

Laura’s Pieces: 1-17, 19-22, 26-37, 64, 141

Laura and Alex’s Pieces: 23-25, 38, 40-41, 66-67

Alex’s Pieces: 107-108

High School: 42

Yellow

Billy’s Piece: 43

Orange

Freedom’s Piece: 112

Toya’s Piece: 132

Red

Face’s Pieces: 18, 48-49, 58-61, 95, 124, 151, 156

Face and Maryanne’s Pieces: 155, 167-169

Maryanne’s Pieces: 44, 62, 65, 111

Campgrounds: 50-57

Cabin: 80-87, 89, 93, 97-98, 113

Straffe: 39

Purple

Chicago: 350

Blue

Ashley’s Pieces: 88, 96, 99-103, 105

Ashley and Leon’s Pieces: 46, 90

Leon’s Pieces: 91-92, 94

Green

Olivia’s Pieces: 45, 47, 63, 68, 70-73, 75-78

Black

Miranda’s Pieces: 109-110

John’s Piece: 74

Carol’s Piece: 69

Pieces

- Part One -

Lonely No Longer

Chapter One

Maryanne

Why didn’t he tell me? Maryanne pondered as she washed her hands over the bathroom sink. Does he think that I’ll go psycho and kill her or something? Maryanne had always had this trouble with her guy friends. She always had to find out from someone else when a new girlfriend was in her midst. Maryanne shrugged her shoulders and let out a sigh. Was it because she herself hadn’t had a boyfriend in four years? Was it because she secretly began each friendship with the opposite sex with the strong hope that this might be, in the end, the true love that she had been searching for her whole life?

Maryanne moved to the kitchen and opened the fridge to look for something to eat. Did they think that she was hopelessly in love with them and if they told her that they had found someone, the news would crush her world? She had tried many times before to figure this out. Friends told each other when something exciting happened in their lives; why would they keep something so important from her. She would honestly be happy for them; did they not see that she was true? From the beginning she was only a friend, willing to be something more but only at his command.

Finding nothing to suit her craving, she closed the refrigerator and decided to order out. Reaching for the phone, she quickly changed her mind and instead grabbed her keys and black leather jacket; the drive would do her good. Her friends and family had always teased that she would grow old alone, but also got excited when she acquired a new guy friend, and teased that maybe she wouldn’t live her life as a spinster after all. She locked the door behind her as she left her parents’ home. Her father was at work and her mother was away visiting Maryanne’s grandmother, so the house was left dark unlike many other times before.

The gravel crunched under Maryanne’s feet as she approached her black 1998 Mustang. She had only had one boyfriend and that was in junior high school. The relationship had lasted six months, three of them being summer months when neither had talked to one another. During the last month of her only relationship, she noticed he slowly lost interest in her and hanging on until the last minute broke up with him. He shortly started dating someone else.

She reached for the door handle and noticed her dog staring at her with an air of authority from the porch. He was five years old, stood roughly three feet tall and had lots of short, black and rust-colored fur. After her last young dog had died of unknown causes at the age of fourteen months, she despised puppies; she was well aware of the betrayal they were capable of dealing to one’s heart. Bade though, hadn’t given her a choice. Once he had shown her that he was more than his huge paws and large ears, and that he was capable of listening, she had fallen in love with the lazy worm-infested coon hound. Someone had obviously dropped him and his brother off, free to a good home; she had taken him home from church that day, knowing that she was going to get killed for it—being only seventeen and newly thrown into the corporate world. But her dad hadn’t thrown as much of a fit as she’d expected. He’d simply told her that Bade was her responsibility and that he wasn’t paying for the dog food when he began eating fifty pounds a week.

As she settled into the cold leather seat behind the wheel, Maryanne gently shut the door and slid her key into the ignition. She waited a minute after starting the engine for the car to heat up, then reached for her seatbelt and thought about where to go for lunch. What was she in the mood for? She vaguely hoped that she would run into someone she knew so she wouldn’t have to eat by herself, but yet she wanted to spend some time alone to clear her mind.

She started up the driveway, thinking that maybe the drive would do the trick. She had a whole half an hour to make up her mind about where to eat. Driving relaxed her in the summer months but only made her tense and jumpy in the dead of winter, which probably wasn’t good for her stress levels but did wonders for her body’s alert system. The winding roads took her full attention, since she had to be extra careful for black ice and deer. Black ice was tricky, deer got you into trouble around there and she wasn’t going to make a stupid mistake in her new-but-used dream car.

The car thankfully heated up quickly and Maryanne then wanted to shed her warm jacket, instead she turned down the heater so the movements of taking off her coat wouldn’t distract her. She was extremely lucky, she knew. She had a wonderful home, family, friends, and an awesome future ahead of her. She would graduate college a couple years from then and become a big-time chef. She had never lost anyone extremely close to her personally, but had lost the collie, Mickey, the month before she turned fourteen. She knew that not being prepared for a let-down could hurt and was always on her toes with paranoia. One day, she feared her karma would run out and leave her on a bruised bum.

As Maryanne approached town, she slowed with the rest of the traffic, of which she never got to see any face through any windshield. There seemed to have been some kind of accident ahead. That was weird, she had relived this exact scene many times and never before had an accident happened. She flipped on the radio to see if there was any explanation on the local station. Getting only music, she waited patiently in line, drumming on the steering wheel to the beat of a favorite. Other vehicles were turning around ahead in line, probably in a hurry to get to work or perhaps a meeting with that special someone for Valentine’s Day. One car nearly ran into a large truck in the opposing lane. The truck swerved to avoid the collision however, and Maryanne silently called the driver of the little red car an idiot.

She eased along for at least twenty minutes, her growling stomach reminded her constantly of where she was headed, and crept very slowly along with the flow of other patient drivers. When she finally broke through the row of emergency vehicles, Maryanne glanced to the right where the guardrail had given way to a small creek a hillside below. She saw a mangle of black and blue; the truck in the small creek below was too smashed to leave any doubt that the driver hadn’t made it through. She quickly returned her attention to the road ahead and paid the following drivers the courtesy of the ability to move at a faster pace.

The shade of blue kept her attention diverted. It was an odd shade that gave her an eerie feeling…where had she seen it before? She was just being paranoid again, she told herself, and there was no way she could have known the person behind the wheel. But again, it was a somewhat-close-knit community—it was very possible that she could have known them, unless it was someone just passing through.

Piece 1 – Laura

My Mom has always told me that when I was still in her womb, she had an accident: she was carrying Carl (my brother) in her arms while walking up a couple of wobbly, wooden steps. (They had bought the cheap steps; they had planned on laying cement later.) She didn't like or trust the steps, but had to travel them to get in and out the trailer. One day, they collapsed and she fell through.

She thought she had lost the twins that she had been pregnant with in her efforts to protect the child in her arms, but when she went back for her next check-up with the doctor, she learned that she had only lost one.

When she first told me, I figured that was why Carl was so cruel (he'd been knocked in the head one too many times). But I hadn't let her finish: I have always known in my heart, that up in Heaven somewhere, she is growing up, just as you are here on Earth.

My heart had skipped a beat. It seemed like a hopeless statement to anyone else, but I saw how true it was. I had finally realized why I had never felt whole; why my life was never complete, why something was always missing. I knew that my mother was pregnant with twins once, but I had never really thought about the simple fact before—I’m not alone, someone somewhere honestly understands me.

Piece 42 – High School

Hannah came back into the choir room frantic. Miss Jules got up and ran from the room, and left us to finish the song that we had started. What’s going on? someone asked. Someone passed out in the bathroom. She had dark hair. Hannah was really shaken up, almost in tears. Hannah, come here, Miss Jules called from the hall.

Hannah obeyed. We should just be quiet, someone else suggested. Yeah, that’ll freak Miss Jules out, just be completely silent when they return. The room is never quiet fourth block. Let’s show that we’re capable of shutting our mouths.

They returned to their seats. Miss Jules explained that they couldn’t find the girl, she just disappeared. They looked for her, she must’ve ran, must’ve been doing something she really wasn’t supposed to be doing, like drugs or something.

That’s really freaky, Hannah repeated, she just disappeared. Miss Jules commended her on doing the right thing. If something like this happens again, follow Hannah’s example and come tell me. That’s what you need to do.

The 2nd Piece – Elementary School

I'm in sixth grade gym class, playing basketball with some of my friends. I'm losing, but I have never been a champion at basketball. I finally make the basket and walk to the end of the line.

Great shot, someone mutters sarcastically.

Suddenly, as I attempt to stand still, my legs go numb. I – my fingers go numb, too. I collapse and find Rachel’s arms around my waist, holding me up. I start breathing heavily. I can't see nor hear clearly. My throat goes sore. I grow weaker and weaker. The lights are like lasers to my sensitive eyes, so I look away, unconsciously rolling my eyes back into my head. I grope for my stomach. I wish for the sick-nervous feeling to go away. My body's throbbing all over.

Through my blurred hearing, everything sounds as if a hundred bumblebees are surrounding my head. I can barely make out the question in Nautili's voice... she's asking me if I'm okay. I try several times to concentrate on the sounds that she's making, and I eventually figure out what she's asking me; but even though I can now understand what she is saying, I cannot answer her—I do not have the strength.

I try to fight off the spell that has just fallen over me and fail. I try again, only to fail once more; I quickly learn that I cannot win the fight. As I prepare to give up, I feel my head sliding backwards. With the thud of my head against the floor, I lose.

The 79th Piece – Cabin

Face slowly opened the back door to his log cabin when he finally got home from a week on the lake. Fishing and enjoying the air on the water was a favorite pastime when he was on vacation from his hectic life back in the city. He had grown up in that old cabin, his family with not much more money than the pioneers when