In the Lone and Level Sands Read Online Free Page B

Charlotte.”
    “And I’m Ben.”
    “Where are you from?” Sara asked.
    “We actually only live about an hour away from here,
in Ashton,” Charlotte said.
    Sara smiled. The sound of paws on mesh drew all eyes
toward the screen door in the kitchen. “It’s Angus’s dinnertime,
too. When we have beef stew, we usually mix some in with his
regular food. He adores it!”
    “I can imagine,” Charlotte said.
    “Come on! Let’s get eating!” Fred said.
    Sara let Angus inside and led him to the pantry,
where his food dish resided. It looked more like a bowl for
Charlotte’s standing mixer at home, but Angus was an eighty-some
pound German Shepherd with a big appetite. Sara filled the bowl
with dry food, mixed in some steaming beef stew, and set it down.
Angus went to work on it right away. He was finished before Sara
could set bowls for everyone else, and as they sat down to eat,
Angus curled up on a large bed in the corner of the room.
    “So, in the accident, you lost your memory?” Fred
asked.
    “Yes,” Ben said. “Some things are coming back, but I
don’t remember a lot of other things. Dr. Barnum says it all might
just come back to me.”
    “I hope so.”
    “Me too,” Charlotte said. Ben smiled.
    “You two seem good together,” Sara said. She stabbed
a piece of beef and dropped it for Angus.
    Ben ate his stew mostly in silence, looking at
Charlotte from time to time. A smile crept onto his lips, and he
felt a little uneasy, but in a good way. He didn’t remember who
Charlotte was, but there was nothing stopping him from trying to
get to know her again.
    The sun was setting as the four friends sat around
the table enjoying each other’s company.
     
    6
    Alone
     
    Zoe Isaacs rode the bus to and from school every
day. The stop was about a mile from her apartment, and she would
walk in silence, and it didn’t bother her. She would often repeat
that to herself.
    Zoe had lived in the apartment all her life. Her
father had died when she was young, leaving her mother to care for
her. When Zoe got old enough, the roles reversed. Because her
mother had been prone to illness, Zoe got a job at the age of
fourteen. The local grocery store didn’t normally employ people so
young, but they had made an exception upon hearing her case.
    She worked at the salad bar, and by the time she was
seventeen, was promised a manager position. Zoe hated the job but
needed the money, so she accepted the offer, apathetically waiting
for the day she’d turn eighteen and be given a nicer nametag in
celebration of the glory that came with the promotion.
    In Zoe’s senior year of high school, her mother died
of a cold. It couldn’t have been cancer or complications from
surgery or some freak accident; just the common cold, a case the
medicine couldn’t shake, and Zoe’s mother was gone one morning.
    After her mother passed, Zoe decided to just carry
on. She’d stay in the same apartment, work the same job, and attend
the same school, at least for a while.
    A while turned into years, and at the age of twenty,
Zoe found herself in the same situation she had spent her entire
life in, only more alone.
    She couldn’t seem to find a reason for anything. No
reason to get up and move out, no reason to find another job, no
reason to go to a different school. She was getting by, with a
little extra money every month, and school wasn’t difficult.
    Zoe would work her shift and then come home and do
homework or sleep, whichever took precedence. In the rare occasion
that she found free time, she would read or write. Always she would
listen to music.
    It was time that could’ve been spent with other
human beings, had Zoe not been so shy. Throughout her life, in the
rare instance that she was able to make a connection with another
human being, whomever it was inevitably ended up on the backburner,
eventually driven away by Zoe’s lack of contact. And of course Zoe
didn’t have a boyfriend. She didn’t have any friends. She knew the
names