Chapter Fourteen

Melody's time spent absorbing lessons in art and life from the master artist Darren Dreamer was already beginning to pay off. Darren truly believed in her potential, and she came to regard him as a mentor. She looked forward to her daily sessions with Darren, even more than she ever thought she would. He was her guru in the abyss -- she felt like she could tell him anything at any time.

Darren, too, eagerly anticipated his summer mornings with her. There was something about this singular girl that appealed to him -- although he didn't quite know what it was. She was like no other teenager he'd ever come into contact with, and yet, she seemed strangely familiar. Darren had dealt with his own pain, the loss of his beloved wife Darleen in a tragic kitchen fire, and as a single father he was forced to put aside the pain for the sake of his young son, Dirk. Dirk, for his part, had handled the situation well, with a maturity far beyond his years. All this changed when he met, befriended, and married Cassandra Goth, the mysterious daughter of the richest man in town. Over the course of that summer he had developed such a relationship with Melody that at times he had to remember she was someone else's daughter. "Melody, why do you like to paint?"

She was surprised by the directness of the question, and had to quickly think of a response. "It's the only means of self-expression I've ever felt comfortable with, and when I paint, I lose myself on the canvas. I've liked to do it ever since I could remember. It gives me joy."

Darren surprised Melody when he mused, "I bet your parents think the same thing about their toys."

Melody admitted she never thought about it that way. "You ever thought about asking your parents why they make toys?"

Melody shook her head. "No, not really."

"Ask them sometime. I bet they come up with some of the same answers you gave me. You see, Melody, you're a lot more like your parents than you realize. It's just that you've chosen a different path to essentially the same end."

"Mr. Dreamer --"

"Please, child. You could call me Darren."

Melody picked a random book from Darren's bookshelf and began thumbing through it. "You read a lot, don't you?"

Melody nodded her head yes. "I'm always researching stuff, doesn't matter if it's important or not." Then she asked if she could take the volume home, and Darren said yes.

"What's your first memory?" asked Darren out of the blue.

Melody took awhile to respond. "There was this black and red jack-in-the-box that I took off my parents' shelf. The jack leapt out of the box and I was afraid. My parents came near me -- I could still hear my mom's voice saying, it'll be okay, it'll be okay. But it still wasn't okay, because I still had that jack-in-the-box in the back of my mind."

"Have you told your parents any of this?"

Melody shook her head again. "No," she mouthed in a low whisper.

"I think you should tell them why you don't want to work in the toy shop. Maybe this way they'll get to understand you better."

"My parents will never understand me," Melody replied. "I'm too different from them."

"You're eccentric," he told her. "Don't take it as an insult. It's a compliment. All artists are. It's almost a prerequisite for wanting to become one. And you, my dear... you are definitely an artist. Even your name is artistic."

"If anything, given my name I should be a musician." Melody managed a chuckle. "I do dabble in the piano, I prefer painting though."

"I can tell."

After a brief pause, Melody said, "I finally told my mom that I'd kissed a girl. She practically blew her top."

Darren came to the realization that this was probably the reason Melody ran away. Touching her on the shoulder, his warm, soothing baritone calmed her down. "You have to understand that this is probably a shock to her system. Give her some time to digest it, and she'll come around."

Melody marveled that Darren always seemed to know the right thing to say. "I have yet to tell her about my abduction, though. She already thinks I'm a freak. That'll really set her off, for sure. She'll probably call the asylum and have me committed on the spot."

As the summer wore on, though, she realized that she hadn't seen Sarah since school let out. After work, Melody decided to call her. "What's going on?" she asked. "You don't return my calls."

"I've been kind of busy." Sarah explained that she'd been working odd hours at this greasy convenience store downtown. "It's been wild."

Melody tried to hide her disappointment. "Oh. I see. Think it's possible I could come downtown to see you?"

Sarah let out a hearty laugh. "You -- come downtown? Please!"

"Why not?"

"I'm sure your parents wouldn't let you out of their sight, won't let you leave the bougie suburb. Especially not to come here."

Melody was incensed. "That was harsh, Sarah! And why are you sounding so different all of a sudden?" In the background she could hear a gruff-sounding man call Sarah's name.

"Look, I've got to go. I'll call you later, if I'm not too busy."

As Melody hung up the phone, she was perplexed by Sarah's attitude. Why was she avoiding her? Why was she acting so strange? And, more confusingly, why did she even care?

Just then, Stephen knocked on her bedroom door. "Come in, it's open."

Melody had returned to her canvas. "I'm sorry for not being there for you in the last year," Stephen began, his voice racked with guilt. "I've been told it's been a pretty rough year for you."

"You don't say." Melody refused to even look at her father.

"Melody, dear, I probably deserve everything you're saying and everything you're not saying to me."

Ignoring her father, who stood close enough to her to touch her at arm's length, Melody continued to dab her canvas.

"When I look in your deep brown eyes, sweetheart, I see pain. I know you're not happy, and there isn't anything I wouldn't do to make you happy."

Melody still didn't look at him. Instead, she concentrated on the silhouette she was working on.

"I just want my little girl back," pleaded Stephen. "Tell me I haven't lost her for good."

"You have a little girl," Melody shot back, "she's sleeping in her crib."

"No, she's not the one I'm talking about, and you know that. I'm talking about you, Melody. You're my first born, and you'll always be my first born." Stephen gave her another once-over. "I remember when you were a little girl, you used to always ask me to read to you, and I'd sit you on my lap and I'd read you the silly picture books, and then you'd crawl off my lap and ask me to reach for the grownup books."

Melody turned to face Stephen, managing a little smile at this memory.

Wistfully looking at her, Stephen continued, "You were always so smart, you had your little nose in a book every time I passed by. We couldn't keep any books out of your hands. We wanted you to play with toys and test out our toys, but you would rather read. It was either that or taking apart something. I couldn't keep a screwdriver around, they were mysteriously disappearing. I had to laugh because that's exactly how I was as a child."

"Dad --"

Stephen turned around.

"Dad, the reason I never liked toys is because I'm afraid of them."

Stephen couldn't believe what he was hearing. "How could you be afraid of toys, sweetheart? They're harmless."

"Dad, you remember when I was little, there was this red and black jack-in-the-box I had taken off one of the shelves?"

Scratching his chin, Stephen thought about it. "Vaguely."

"It scared me half to death."

Stephen shook his head in disbelief. "Melody...is that why you won't set foot in the shop?"

"Do you believe me?" Melody looked plaintively at her father.

"Of course I believe you, darling. It's just that, after all this time, we never understood."

The next day, after receiving his promotion, Stephen announced he had a surprise for Melody. "I know last summer you wanted this, and I couldn't afford it, so now I can and here it is."

Melody couldn't believe it. It was her robot crafting machine! She seemed genuinely delighted by the gift. "Dad!"

"I'll be making up the last year to you for the rest of my life, probably." Stephen, however, knew better than to stick around, and he politely left Melody alone with her new toy. "She may be an odd child," he said to himself, "but she's my odd child."

Melody opened the box and seemed a little daunted by the screws and wires and metal she needed to put together the crafting station. Contenting herself with the instruction manual, she calmly attached the necessary parts to each other and began reading all about making robots. "There are bots that can cook and clean for you?" she asked herself, and with palpable delight she dug in to the simplest robots she could make, the toy robots, which, incidentally, could be sold in her parents' workshop.

Before he went to check on the baby, he peered into Melody's room and saw her, still contenting herself with her new hobby. He was satisfied now, knowing in his heart that she was satisfied -- at least for now. That's my baby, he said to himself, she may not admit it, but she is a Tinker through and through.

Melody couldn't wait to go to work, if for no other reason than to tell Darren about her new hobby. He had advised her to find something she liked to do besides painting, especially if it became her job. "Well, I like to play chess," she told him, "and I like to stargaze with my telescope. That's how I got abducted."

"So, your dad purchased a robot crafter, eh?" asked Darren, looking over Melody's shoulder.

"I was pretty shocked. I had wanted it last year but --"

"You got it now, right?"

"Yeah. I've been having a blast learning about all the intricate wiring, the nuts and bolts, stuff like that. I stayed up all night."

Darren smiled. "I figured you were the type to need challenges. Keep yourself from getting bored."

Melody smiled back. She often wished she could talk to her own father like she could talk to Darren. But she and her own father had little in common except their last name and their dark skin. "I'm a geek," Melody said in a self-deprecating manner. "Why do you want to spend your afternoons with a geek like me?"

"Simple," Darren replied. "Because I like you."

Just as Melody was leaving, Dirk reappeared. He couldn't help but steal a glance or two at her. Curious, he walked up to his father. "Who is that, Dad?"

"Her name's Melody," Darren replied. "She's my new apprentice artist."

Dirk remembered. Melody Tinker -- that girl from the art show. "She's cute," he said to his dad, but thinking all the dirty thoughts that teenage boys think. If he didn't have a girlfriend and wasn't madly, crazy about her....

"And smart," Darren added. "Smart as a whip."

"Looks like it to me too," replied Dirk. "I can introduce you two if you want."

"Nah, I think I'll run into her again sometime." Dirk flashed his father a devilish smile.