Forgotten Truths (The Forgotten Truths Series) Read online

  FORGOTTEN TRUTHS

  Justine E Domke

  Copyright © 2013 Justine E Domke

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN-13: 978-1493757848

  ISBN-10: 1493757849

  DEDICATION

  I dedicate this book to Mr. John Clawson, my tenth grade English teacher. Without his inspiration to follow his dreams, I would never have been able to write this and follow my own.

  .

  Chapter I

  “Andy, wake up.”

  I opened my eyes, startled, and looked up. I was under stairs. How had I ended up here? Last I knew, I had been out on the deck, staring up at the stars. I turned my head and saw Jason shaking his head at me. “Kid, you need to move before he sees you down here.”

  I sat up and stretched. I took my time to reply to him. “I didn’t start that fight.”

  “Someone did, and Hank is still pretty sore about it. I’m going to assume he isn’t finished with you.”

  I crawled out from under the steps and stretched again. The sun looked as if it was sitting on top of the main mast. It was a wonder I hadn’t been spotted before. Then again, Jason looked out for me. He was one of my closest friends, and he felt very responsible for me. He was also rarely apart from Mark, so I knew he was close. Sure enough, I turned my head and saw that he was across the deck talking to Hank. He probably was trying to smooth things over, but by the way that Hank kept glancing at me, I knew he was far from letting things go.

  “He’s just angry because he can’t touch me.”

  Jason glanced over at them. “I don’t think that will stop him next time.”

  “Whatever. I’m not scared of him.”

  Jason grabbed my shoulder. “Don’t start with him. Your father-”

  “My father needs to start treating me like one of the guys.” I ripped his hand off my shoulder. He knew that it wasn’t just my father’s rule that no one touched me. I had my own issues with it. Before he could stop me, I went right toward Hank. He saw me coming and sidestepped Mark.

  “Andy, don’t. Your father-” Jason started from behind me, but stopped short. He knew he couldn’t stop me no matter what he said or how many times he said it.

  Hank and I stood toe to toe. He was a big man and always seemed to have a scowl on his face. He was a head taller than I but that wasn’t intimidating, neither was the fact that he could get in huge trouble if he did anything to me.

  He winked at me. He knew how much I hated it, hated him, and then I let my fist fly into his face. We started right where we had left off the night before. He hit my left eye; I got his gut, and so on. I shoved him back, and he was just about to hit me again when the circle that had formed around us scattered immediately. My father was here.

  “Hank, if you throw that punch, you’ll be begging for mercy within the hour.”

  Hank eyed me before he took a step back. “Yes, Sir.”

  After he left, it was just Jason, Mark, myself, and my father. Jason and Mark looked away but my father turned to me. “What have I told you?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Don’t fight. You’ll get hurt. Blah, blah, blah.”

  “Andrea.”

  I winced. I hated my real name. Being a female on a pirate ship was bad enough, but to be reminded of it by my name drove me crazy. That was why I preferred to be called Andy. My father, being the captain, didn’t help either. He found the need to mention as often as possible that I was, in fact, female and didn’t belong on a ship. But since I had no alternative and no other family to live with, he was stuck with me. In my opinion, which was often spoken aloud, he had no right to complain because of this fact. Mark understood this. Mark was my best friend. Jason didn’t understand as much but he never tried to either. Lately, he hadn’t even been around much. Mark had started hanging around me more as well. I knew the two were connected, but I didn’t know the reason why.

  “I have tried to raise you the best I can. I know for a fact though that fighting was not part of that.”

  “You didn’t hear what Hank said though!”

  “I honestly don’t care. You will not fight. And the next time you do, you’ll regret it.”

  I rolled my eyes again. These were always empty threats. I’d heard this one at least five times this month. He and I both knew that he would never do anything to me, let alone punish me. It was just another something to add to the list of how he wouldn’t treat me like one of the crew.

  My father, Shawn, was famous for being strict. Yet guys wanted to be on his ship. He was very selective about who he employed. He wouldn’t just take random men off the streets. It was weird, but it was almost as if he selected the men who had more… “experience” in higher society. He seemed to choose men who had been raised a certain way, a proper way but had lost their ways. I never understood this. I never understood why anyone wanted to be on this ship either. I wanted to be off the ship and gone the moment we docked and his eyes were off me. Unfortunately, Jason and Mark also had their eyes on me so I never got a break. I did try it once, but I failed miserably.

  My father was still holding my gaze. Mark and Jason shared a look, but then Jason walked away. I noticed it again. He looked very uncomfortable to be by Mark. Mark watched him go, and I couldn’t tell if he was as aware of this as I was. Then he caught me staring at him and winked. Men.

  “Andrea, are you even listening to me?”

  “Not when you call me Andrea. You should know that by now, Shawn.” I turned back to him. I preferred to call him by his first name, mainly because he didn’t like it. I felt it was payback, and it always gave me some satisfaction, even if it was the tiniest bit.

  He pointed his finger at me. “Just because you think you’re old enough to start fighting against me does not mean you will win. You will not fight at all, and when we dock in a few days, you’ll be lucky if I let you off.”

  I kept at it, even though I was feeling the small stir of excitement in me about docking. “And what will you do to stop me if I continue to defy your rules?”

  He hesitated. “I’ll lock you in your room and sit outside to make sure you don’t escape.”

  I felt a frown tug at the corner of my mouth as he walked away. It was obvious that he didn’t know how to treat me. I was the only girl who had been in his life for the past ten years, which was as long as I could remember back. It was one of those odd things about myself that I couldn’t explain. I couldn’t remember anything about my life before I was eight. I wondered if maybe something had happened and that was why my relationship with my father was so strained. Then again, maybe it was as simple as he didn’t deal with women all that often. I doubted that I’d ever find out.

  “Well, that went… well,” Mark said, which brought me back to the present as he came up next to me. He rubbed his fingers over his brow and sighed.

  I snorted. “If you say so. I just wish, just once, that he’d actually come through on one of his threats to me. At least then I would feel like one of the crew.”

  He nodded his agreement, and we walked over to the side of the ship. He always seemed to understand what I meant, no matter the subject.

  I leaned forward and rested my arms against the railing. The ocean was so soothing. I loved the feel of the ship as it rocked beneath my feet. “So, what is this about us docking in a few days?”

  “Captain thinks it would do some good for the crew. It’s been getting a little tense lately, if that hasn’t been obvious.”

  It was true. We’d had more fights this week than we’d had in the month. My father was more stressed than normal as well. The reason? It had been almost four months since we’d been anywhere but
the open sea.

  “Where are we going?”

  He shrugged. “You think Captain tells me things? You could know more than I do, if you ever talked to him.”

  I looked away. That was a sore subject. My father not knowing how to treat me wasn’t entirely because of his lack of knowledge about females. I never talked to him. Yes, I was being very rebellious with him, but the odd tension between us was an obstacle. We never talked about it, but it was there. He was the only family I had though, so I tried to keep the strain to a minimal most of the time. However, I felt there should have been something more, as if this wasn’t a natural thing between a father and daughter, but I had never seen a relationship like ours, so I really didn’t know. Of course, this could all just have been in my head as things tended to be.

  “You know, it wouldn’t take much to go over and ask him how he’s doing,” Mark said.

  I looked at him. “Why do you care?”

  “Well see, if he hates you, then he’s going to hate me. And since I plan to stay on this ship for a long time, and not try to escape when we dock...” He gave me a pointed look. I rolled my eyes. “I need to stay on his good side.”

  I stared up at the sky. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him look behind us and sigh. I followed his gaze. One of the newer guys we had picked up was staring at us, more specifically, at me. This bothered Mark a lot. He didn’t like it when guys looked at me like a piece of meat.

  As I thought about this, I glanced down at myself. I started at my bare feet, went up my legs, which were covered by some guy’s pants that were too long for me and stopped at my torso, that was covered by a guy’s shirt which was also too big. I was tall, standing eye to eye with most of the men on the crew. I was skinnier though, and that made it hard for me to find clothes. I had short and spiky auburn hair with sun-kissed streaks. I kept it short to keep it manageable out on the sea. I didn’t like hair blowing in my eyes. I had an average face from what I knew. The few times I had glanced in a mirror, however, I was drawn to how my cheeks always looked pink and how my upper lip was just slightly bigger than my lower lip. I would also notice my eyes. They were an interesting combination of blue and green. My father once said they reminded him very much of the sea and how when the sun would hit it, it seemed to change between the two colors. It was one of the few times he’d talked to me as if I was the only person who mattered in his world.

  Typically, the new guys took an interest in me until they found out I was Shawn’s daughter. This tended to be a surprise to them, since we looked nothing alike. He was a tall, broad- shouldered man, and stood about a head above me. His hair was black and short and he had light, sandy eyes underneath two think eyebrows. He kept a little gruff on his face, but never let it get very long. There was not one thing about us physically that resembled each other. He told me that I was the spitting image of my mother though, which was the reason why we looked so different.

  My mother had died when I was very young, or so Shawn had told me. Being eighteen and not remembering my earliest years didn’t bother me most of the time. What bothered me was not remembering my mother. There were times where I really wished she was still alive, but then I would have been made to live with her and wouldn’t have grown up on the ship.

  I looked back up at the new guy. I never said anything to them about their staring at me, but I knew when I wasn’t there that Mark did. He got to them before my father had a chance to realize what was going on. Jason had used to do this as well, but that was another thing that had changed recently.

  “Why don’t you and Jason talk much anymore?”

  He slowly took his attention away from the kid and looked at me. When he did this, I always caught myself examining him. He was a few years older than I, four I guessed: he had never been very specific. He was one of the few men on the ship who was taller than me. He had broad shoulders and was very hard muscled. He used to challenge Jason, or whoever else was around, to competitions involving lifting the cargo and who could load or unload it the quickest. He usually won. His midnight-black hair was short on the sides and around the back but was longer on top, just shy from hanging over his forehead. This brought out his bright green eyes. His eyes were intense, and they often made me feel like he saw more than what I was telling him. Sometimes he’d stare at me and when I’d look into his eyes, I felt like I had no control over myself. It was very unnerving and I’d quickly turn away. He had an innocent face, which contradicted the annoyed expression he often wore, but he knew more than many of the other guys on this ship. Sometimes when I looked at him, I wondered about his story. He’d been on this ship for quite some time, and we had been friends for as long as I could remember. But he had to have had a life somewhere. He didn’t like talking about it though. I could understand that, and therefore never pushed the matter.

  “Why is that your concern?” he asked slowly, his voice low and deep. His eyes narrowed slightly, which made him look a little threatening.

  “Well,” I shrugged, “You two are usually inseparable. And suddenly, it’s as if you want nothing to do with each other. So I was just wondering.”

  “We have some different views on things.” He looked over my head. “It’s not that big of a deal.”

  “Mark!”

  We turned to the person who had called him. It was another new guy, who, by the look of it, had just finished a bad conversation with my father.

  Mark glanced down at me. “Duty calls.”

  ~~~~~~~~***~~~~~~~

  As much as I loved the feeling of being on the sea, a good portion of why was because of my father’s ship. He named it Dark Moon because one night he looked up and watched the moon suddenly disappear. He said it was one of the strangest, but most inspiring nights of his life. The ship itself was very shadowy. It wasn’t black, but the wood was so dark it almost looked black. It wasn’t very large compared to others I had seen, but it could hold its own. He had converted the room beneath the upper deck at the stern into a special living area. I assumed this had to do with him wanting me to have my own space, away from the men. I rarely used it though. I preferred to sleep in the hammocks below deck with everyone else or hang out on the dock with the crew. The rocking of the ship kept the hammock swaying through the night, which would usually put me to sleep pretty quickly.

  The night before we were supposed to dock, I was in my room. I had a book open on my lap, but I wasn’t interested. My father made sure that I knew how to read and write, though I never understood why. When would I ever find the need to write to anyone? Reading, on the other hand, was something I liked to do to pass the time. I had a very limited selection, but it was good enough. I was a very slow reader, and I put a lot of concentration in the books because there were so many words I didn’t know. I really wanted to understand the story, but I really couldn’t. So this usually resulted in my thoughts drifting away.

  I was about to set the book down and douse my candle when there was a knock at the door. I crossed the room and opened it. Mark stood on the other side.

  “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

  I followed him up the stairs just outside my door and went up to the top deck at the stern where the helm was. He went all the way to the far railing, but I stood a few feet behind him. I watched him closely. He was unusually tense.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “Jason and I had another argument, a pretty bad one.”

  “What about?”

  He looked back at me. “About you.”

  I came closer. “What about me?”

  He sighed and looked up at the stars. After a minute or so, he turned his attention back to me. “I really like you, Andy.”

  “What do you mean?” I stopped short. I was close beside him and leaned against the railing.

  He hesitated and then reached his hand out to touch my face. I instantly stepped back, not because of what he had said but because he had tried to touch me. Besides when it was a sudden grab, which I immediately ripped away
at, or if I were in a fight, I would stop someone touching me if I knew it was coming.

  He continued to stare at me. “What do you think I mean? And why do you step away from me anytime I want to touch you? If I’m your best friend, then shouldn’t I be allowed special privileges?”

  “You are my best friend, and that’s all you are to me. And I don’t like anyone touching me. It has nothing to do with you. It’s everyone.” I felt like I always had to restate this with him. I didn’t like feeling defensive, but he’d made me feel that way a lot lately.

  He took a step toward me, but I took another step back. He noticed, and a frown appeared on his face. He kept coming until I was backed up to the railing. I started to get very uncomfortable with this conversation and being backed into a corner didn’t help.

  “Andy, you and I have a relationship a little stronger than best friends. You can’t deny that. And I don’t want to be apart from you.”

  “When are we ever apart?” I started to look away, but he quickly cupped my chin.

  “That’s not how I meant that.”

  I tried to lift my head out of his hand, but he held on a little tighter. I reached up and grabbed his wrist, but he was stronger. I started to struggle while a minor panic started to rise inside of me. “Let go of me.”

  “Not until you tell me what you’re thinking.”

  “I’m thinking that if you don’t let go right now, I’m going to scream.”

  “And what would that do?”

  The panic was rising, as was my anger. The anger started to overpower the panic, and suddenly I was out of his hold, setting some much needed space between us. I’d hit him before, but it wasn’t very often and it had never been for this reason. The punch hadn’t meant to hurt him, not that it did. He had hard muscles across his midsection so I knew it would have taken a much harder punch to harm him. It was more to catch him off guard so that he’d let me go. He tilted his head and examined me with a confused and annoyed expression. I could see in his eyes that he was rethinking his strategy.