You Will Be Found

Chapter Seven

I looked up at the apartment building that my uncle 'owned'. It was a run down low-rise block, four storeys high in a poorer area of town. It looked more like a block of housing trying to be fancy town houses stacked on top of each other. It didn't quite reach that aesthetic goal. The area wasn't a terribly dangerous place to live, I'd never been hurt going to or from my local school the many years I'd been living here. I have a sneaky suspicion that one of these apartments was supposed to be mine, but my uncle felt I would be better off using a room in the basement and rent out the place. I think my parent's used to own the whole complex or something.

I went through the utility door on the side of the building, pushed my way past the usual pile of rubbish and old furniture that was blocking the hallway and opened a little door tucked around the back side of the utility room. This was my home. I'd lived here shortly after I turned five. After my dad passed away from a car accident, or something similar and my mother disappeared.

I have memories of my uncle and aunt both complaining about having to take on the 'trouble' and become a guardian because my mother had run away with the company accountant. For many years, I didn't understand what that meant. It wasn't until middle school that I learned she had probably run off company funds and eloped with another man whom she wasn't married to.

That didn't really gel with my vague, warm memories of a beautiful woman that I had identified as 'mother' in my memories. It didn't matter now, anyway.

I put my new food down on an upturned box, plugged my dead phone in to charge, pulled my damp blankets from the mattress on the floor, wrapped myself in them and lay down to sleep. I didn't want to use my new pyjamas as I didn't want to 'taint' them of this place. I'd move house first before I bring them out to use again.

Waking up to a cold room made me want to change my mind about that. I pulled my slippers out of my school bag, stared at them in yearning, then quietly packed them away. My extra pair of school socks would have to do.

Breakfast consisted of stiff noodles that I tried to 'cook' in warm water. I carefully squeezed out every ounce of oil and seasoning from their little packets before stirring it all together and eating exactly half of it. The rest would be dinner, even though they would be soggy by then.

One of the small jars in the bag of foodstuffs was a in a foreign language which surprised me. Foreign food wasn't cheap. But considering the hospital I went to was the main children's hospital for this region, it shouldn't be too surprising. It was a small jar of Dijon mustard by the brand Maille, with 'Framboise pointe de basilic' written on it in French. Roughly translated, it said, 'Raspberry mesh with a hint of basil' which probably meant it was mixed with raspberries, basil and something else. The ingredients list on the back showed it included white wine. It probably would be advertised as 'Raspberry, basil and white wine mustard'.

The appetizingly creamy pink mustard looked like it should taste sweet, but when I tried a little of it off the tip of my finger, it really did taste like mustard with fruity overtones and a hint of basil. I couldn't taste the white wine at all, but then again, I haven't tasted white wine since Grandpa Baxley took me out to meals before his family shooed me off a lifetime ago.

I decided then and there that raspberry mustard would go on everything that I could eat, until the jar ran out.

My phone was fully charged when I remembered to check it a few hours later. I had a few email notifications that asked for email authentication for the web novel sites I had signed up to yesterday. I sent confirmations back, then set up another email for 'Little Birdy' and changed all of my settings to send email to that new email address. This required another round of email verification emails. I also know that these sites require authentication of ID when you sign contracts with them, so I quickly took a photo of my student ID card that displayed my legal name and date of birth, then added this to each website under the author confirmation details so they wouldn't need to ask for it later.

I browsed my story on each site, only to find that it hadn't been read at all yet and sighed when I realised how much having a personal publicist would make my life easier. I couldn't afford anything like that so I spent the rest of the day thinking about what I could do.

After dinner of left over noodles and French raspberry mustard, I decided to send the links of my story to a few famous readers/bloggers that I remembered from my last life and see if they would be interested in reading and/or reviewing my story. Three of the email didn't go through, bouncing back with failure to send notices, and that made sense. These were people who were – or would be – famous or semi-famous bloggers and readers four or five years from now. Another six went through, or were sent but probably ended up in the spam filter folder. Not much I could do about that.

Putting away my dishes that I'd cleaned up in the toilet sink, I was suddenly struck with an idea for making money when I was putting the mustard away. French. I could translate. Now, I wasn't 'fluent' in French by any stretch of the word, but there must be an online forum or job share website that could list some translations jobs, and maybe there were some French translation jobs I could look at.

Excitedly, I searched online and quickly found a list of fifteen popular freelance websites. Problem was that they didn't display jobs, just freelancers who could be contacted to do these jobs. These people advertised themselves, listed their abilities and references and included their hourly rate for each job. Many of them had images of their smiling faces and were happy to give an example of work before a contract was signed.

I didn't know what to do. I didn't want to display myself out there like that. Not many of these people only showed an avatar in place of their image. When I read through some of the freelancer's profiles I ended up inspired in many other ways that I could make money. This was enough for me to make my decision.

Pretending to write a nice, believable profile for another story 'character', I managed to create a professional looking profile for myself. I quickly set up a free website for myself - you know, one of those free sites that had a random prefix on it that you'd have to update to the paid version to remove. It was hard to do while only using my phone, but I needed to direct traffic of any potential contractees somewhere to showcase my work. I translated the first chapter of my new novel into French and posted it up on my website. I remembered some of the lyrics from a few of my old songs and translated them as well.

Then I went through my phone photo album and uploaded a few images of the drawings, doodle art and 'tattoos' that I'd created and posted them on the website site under 'Drawings' and hoped that it was socially acceptable. I didn't indicate in any way that they were tattoos or 'skin doodles' as I liked to call them, but I wasn't sure if someone would think that a good girl like me would be into something so heavy like tattooing or body modifications. (I'm not. I just get overwhelmed in the head sometimes and have to draw. My arms and legs are the closest thing to use as a doodle surface.)

Another email address under Freelance_Little_Birdy was created and I was good to go. Just the avatar left me a little stuck. I couldn't find anything that I liked among the millions of images of cute or sweet birds. I closed down my phone and pulled open my school bag again.

The helpful lady with the activities and toys trolley at the children's hospital had given me a set of pencils and blank drawing book. The paper wasn't the best quality, but it was better than what I currently owned. When I left, I tried to hand them in at the nurses station, but was told to keep them as a free gift from such-and-such charity that had donated the materials to the hospital. I was fine with that as I now had something to work with that allowed me to draw my own avatar character.

I ended up using mainly blues, purples and pinks to draw a little bird that looked very much like a humming bird, which was strange because we didn't get humming birds in this part of the world. Stranger still, I felt it was a perfect match for my avatar. The small bird graced the white page, but I felt it needed something still to complete the image. I carefully picked up the bottle of water and aimed it at the drawing, wondering if it would be the correct size. Too small. The Thermos flask lid was too small as well. My only chipped noodle bowl perfectly outlined the bird, behind its tail and thin beak, and I carefully drew a circle to encapsulate the small creature on the page. Perfect. One lovely 'Little Birdy' avatar for web novels, music composing, online social media and my freelancing profile. Done!