The Lost Days Read Online Free Page A

7 minutes
    
S IZZLE AND P ETAL :
   
3 hours 9 minutes
    
C URLS :
   
once for 5 hours and 15 minutes, again later for 3 hours and 20, then again for 4 hours and 45
    
H URK :
   
2 hours 17 minutes
    
S TEVE :
   
between 2 and 3 hours
    
H AM H AWK :
   
11 hours 33 minutes

    Back to Raven. While pretending to be extremely busy taking notes, or studying my shoe or something for clues to my identity, I was actually keeping a sharp half-eye on the counter region. All of a sudden she vanished. I mean, maybe I blinked for a microsecond longer than normal, but really, I was looking right at her, and she just vanished.
    I glanced around really fast. Not a single customer was looking at the counter. She’d totally disappeared! With complete stealth I snuck to the counter, just in time to catch Raven slipping out through her homemade, wood-panel-camouflaged, no-doorknob-having, no-one-knows-I-went-to-the-breakroom secret little door. Pretty amazing, until I busted her using it. She didn’t let on much, just made me a metric grip of sandwiches and much espresso.
    Much! Espresso!! Later!!!
    I’ve come up with a few possible scenarios of how I got here and lost my memory:
Something involving space travel and being from a planet other than Earth. Yes, I do SEEM human…Could I just be humanoid?
I was on a family trip when I…fell out of the car…and bumped my head…and my family is so large, or so absentminded, they still haven’t noticed I’m missing.
I am a highly trained spy operating under cover so deep, my memories had to be erased.
I used to work with Rachel, previous employee of the El Dungeon, until Raven knocked us on the heads and took our jobs.
I used to work in Ümlaut’s traveling medicine show until…yeah, see above.
I was living in a typical suburb of Anytown, USA, until I decided to escape my incredibly meaningless life by giving myself amnesia and hopping a bus to nowhere.
I was actually a cat named Earwig until being magically transformed into a human girl. By someone. For some reason.
I came here from 100 years in the future. The trip destroyed my memory.
I am a creature from another dimension.
I am a supernatural being recently risen from death.
I summoned myself out of the void.
I am a hologram.
I am the victim of a terrible practical joke.
    All of these theories are flawed. Must find more clues.
    Later
    Took in some night air with the cats, and then later, walking back to my alley, who should I run into but (Very) Regular Customer Curls, on one of his short trips outside the El Dungeon. It betterbe said up front that Curls, first of all, thinks he is much more important and popular than he actually is. Also, even though he is probably only a couple years older than I am, he doesn’t seem to spend much time at school, or at home for that matter, since he’s putting in around twenty-seven hours a day at the El Dungeon. And he pesters Ümlaut’s pack as much as they’ll let him. Clear case of social climbing. You can tell by the complicated shirts, and how he’s trying out conversational gambits on you all the time.

    the extremely…hip Curls! (Ugh)
     
    
(V ERY ) R EGULAR
 
    
C USTOMER C URLS :
   
Fancy meeting you here.
    
M E :
   
Curls.
    
(V)RCC:
   
Isn’t it late for a missy without a sleeve to her name? What IS your name, anyway? Cockroach, right? No—Silverfish?
    
M E :
   
Earwig.
    
(V)RCC:
   
A ha haha ha! Sounds like a good nickname for RAVEN, with those ears ofhers, and that wig…So, I heard you don’t remember a thing past three days ago?
    
M E :
   
[Turning and walking away.] Ugh. Later.
    
(V)RCC:
   
Speaking of nicknames, Curls is a really stupid one. I prefer Ripper.
     
    Day 5
    Slept late and nearly missed the daylight completely. Huh, no big loss if you ask me. Unfortunately I did not sleep late enough to miss the chief of police, who came by to see if