Crazy About You

"Uh... S-sean?" I tried to shout. I was scared if something would happen when I made a loud noise. This house was pretty big. "Sean!" I was shouting in the voice that I would use when I was talking to someone. Sean would be downstairs already.

I walked over to the door of my room and opened it an inch or two. I didn't want to go out and find him in case I got lost, which I was sure I would. I cleared my throat and made my voice a little louder. "Sean!" Now that was more like a shout.

I waited for a second or so - I was too frightened to wait any longer - then sighed. I needed Sean but I was a little embarrassed to tell him that I couldn't read. It wasn't my fault, anyway! It was my own parents'. They didn't give me any education and now I was a 16 year old girl who couldn't even read!

I guess I could read. But small words only... Like the or and or very very simple words like a and an. I kinda taught myself, really... I know the alphabet but I can't make out the words and what they sound like.

I sighed again and fell flat on my stomach on the bed. I buried my head in the pillow. I don't even know what's happening to me or how this all happened. It was all so weird. And now... Now I'm away from my parents, away from the horrid life. Maybe this was like another life almost, a better one, a good one.

"What?"

I screamed but the pillow muffled me. My eyes widened and I started to shake. The voice was in the room with me, very close to me. I didn't move at all; I stayed frozen, I stayed stationary.

And then I heard a chuckle.

"'S just me," Sean's musical voice told me and then my body went limp. He scared me half to death. I sat up on the bed and then glared at him. He was sitting at the end of my body wearing a grin on his face. I never heard him come in...

"You coulda told me you were here! You scared the life out of me..." I muttered the last bit and then sighed. "Anyway, I want you to read your little notebook for me."

He looked confused. "Uhm... Why? Can't you read it yourself?"

“Well, obviously, because of, y’know, my ‘old’ life.”

Sean finally got what I was talking about ohh’d soundlessly.

“Well,” he began slowly, “it says...”

“Mondays - 3pm - clean the ground floor living room.

Thursdays - 7pm – serve whatever the cooks make on the table for dinner. Clean dishes and wipe the table afterwards.

Saturdays - shopping with personal guard, Jared.”

Wow, so now I have a personal guard? This is like me being the Queen, but much better!

“Wow,” was the only thing I could say. And after a few seconds, I added, “What do I have to shop for?”

“Groceries.”

My face fell.

“But this Saturday we’re gonna get you some new shoes and clothes,” Sean said, when he saw the expression on my face. My eyes lit up with excitedment.

“Seriously?!” I screamed. “Oh my God, I can’t wait!” I saw Sean smile at the corner of my eye as I jumped up and down on my bed, clapping my hands together.

I haven't even been shopping at all. Apart from the first five good years of my life, but of course I don’t remember anything from then. And now, after eleven years, I was going to have to go shopping! I was actually really excited.

"So... Thursday chore starts tomorrow,” Sean said, breaking my shrieking.

I sat on the bed, a wide grin still pasted on my face. “Yup.”

"Tell me what I need to know about you that connects to the house."

"Well, I'm a late night shower-er, so I'll be using the bathroom every night–" Sean cut me off with his hand and I looked at him with one of my eyebrows raised.

“That’s fine cause you’ve got your en-suite,” he said. And then my eyes lit up again. I looked to where Sean was looking and I saw a white door with a shiny gold doorknob.

“Oh my God...” I muttered.

“Continue,” I heard Sean say, probably not wanting me to go all excited again.

“Uhm, if I watch any scary movies or anything scary at all, I know I'll have be having a nightmare at the same night, so if I suddenly scream in the middle of the night, don't worry about it,” I explained.

Sean nodded.

And I remembered something else. “And, oh! If you have ice-cream, and it’s suddenly all gone, don’t blame anyone cause that would be me.”

That made Sean laugh. I was obsessed with ice-cream after all. Ice-cream was always something I shoplifted from the corner shop.

"Oh yeah, and I have a phobia of snails," I added.

“That’s okay because I don’t keep snails here,” I heard Sean mutter. "You're an interesting person, Ali. Tomorrow, I expect you to remember your chore and do it,” Sean said. Then he smiled.

“Yeah, yeah,” I murmured.

Sean stood up and started to walk over to my door.

"Wait, Sean!" I said after him. He turned around and looked at me questioningly.

"Y'know, I will get bored here, sitting on my bed and doing absolutely nothing. Is there anything that can... like entertain me?" I asked him. I didn’t want to sit here and do nothing, even though I loved my new room.

Sean thought about it for one second and then he finally said, "You ever used a computer before?" A wide grin spread across his face.

"Oh my God, Sean! Are you serious? I mean, I’ve seen one before and it looks so cool! Yes, of course, I would definitely want to use one,” I said.

Sean smiled at that and motioned for me to get up. I followed after him and down the stairs. “And can you get some computer expert to help me out because I don't know anything about computers.” I talked non-stop as I followed Sean down the stairs.

I saw him nod.

"Yay!” I said excitedly.

When we finally got to the bottom of the stairs, Sean led me through to the living room, out into the dining room and into one of the rooms there. I was so excited I could scream. And that’s what I actually did when I saw the room.

It had like fifty computers in it and they were all multicolored. I stared at the black screens of the new-looking computers for five minutes until I finally got to my senses. I ran to one of the red ones and sat down on the red matching spinning chair that came with the computer.

As I stopped spinning on the chair, I caught sight of another man standing next to Sean. He was about one inch taller than Sean and he wore a tight white shirt, with a pair of plain blue jeans. He was bulky and had short brown hair, along with sky blue eyes.

“It’s the ‘computer expert’ you asked for,” Sean explained.

“Ohh,” was my response.

“And he’s also your personal guard.” Sean winked.

The man completely ignored us like we hadn’t spoken at all. "Jared. Nice to meet ya," he said in a deep gruff voice.

"Alice. Nice to meet you too," I said.

Jared came over to me and we shook hands, both of us smiling at each other. He seemed like a kind man. He looked like he was in his late thirties.

I saw Sean walk away and out of the room and Jared grabbed a blue chair and placed it next to me. He sat on it, adjusting the height of the chair.

"Okay, first, we need to turn it on,” he began to teach me. “The power button is right on top of the computer. You see that?" Jared pointing to a glowing blue power button that said on/off. "That's the button. Press it and wait until a plain blue screen comes up."

I pressed the power button and flinched as the computer made a sound.

Okay, so the first step is to press a blue button at the top of the computer that says on/off, then I have to wait for the blue screen.

The plain blue screen finally popped up and I looked at Jared with a what-do-I-do-now look on my face.

"First, you click that at the bottom left corner. You see that, right there? It says 'Start'. That's the first thing you click on," Jared said. I clicked on it. "Then you look for a blue 'E'. Underneath the 'E' would be the words 'Internet Explorer'. Find it."

I didn’t tell him that I couldn’t read ‘Internet Explorer’ but I did know what the letter ‘E’ was. So, I looked for a blue letter ‘E’. I finally found it.

"There?" I asked.

"Yes, very good. Now, click on it."

I did what I was told and something popped up and made me do a little jump. I blushed.

"Sorry. I've never been on a computer before," I mumbled.

"Doesn’t matter. Anyway, so you know this box that pops up when you clicked on the ‘E’?” I nodded. “It’s called the internet. So this box is called a window and once it's loaded, I'll tell you what to do," Jared said.

It began loading up and pictures began popping up on the screen. Everything looked so confusing.

"You see this box right here, at the top?” He pointed at a long rectangular white box at the top of the computer screen. “You type in what you would call a website here. Whatever you want to go on. You type on this - a keyboard." Jared placed his big hands on the keyboard type thing with letters on it and thought for a minute. "Let's see, we'll go on YouTube. YouTube is a popular website where you can listen to music, watch videos, do anything."

"Oooh," I said, getting just a little too excited. Computers are cool! I thought.

Jared typed the ‘website’ on and I memorized the spelling. Y, O, U, T, U, B, E. Okay, be sure to remember that, Alice...

And for the rest of the afternoon – I think it was the afternoon – I got used to YouTube. Jared suggested I should watch comedy and so I watched it. I cried because I was laughing too much. Then he suggested I should watch music videos and so he typed in some songs and I began to remember some of the chorus of the songs he showed me.

In the end, I watched loads of different videos with different genres – music, comedy, entertainment. I just couldn’t stop myself at all.