Mummy
Ben, a ten year old boy in Year 5 of his school, thought that all in all he had a pretty good life. Sure, not every kid at his school was nice to him and sometimes he struggled with maths, but that could be said of any kid. He lived in a nice four bedroom house with two younger brothers (one was eight, the other six) and two really great parents. His mum was a doctor and was the smartest and nicest person he knew. His dad was a mechanic who was the wisest and funniest person he knew. Ben had plenty of games and video games and enough good friends to play them with. The only part of his life that sometimes bothered him was that he had amnesia – he could not remember a single thing from the first four and a half years of his life.
One day when he was four, he had woken up in a hospital with no memory and an aching head. He did not remember his parents, his home, or even his own name. He remembered how to speak English – apparently that was quite normal for people suffering from amnesia – but otherwise he was a blank slate. To Ben, it was like he had been born that day. It was scary at first and his parents had to home school him for his first school year, but by the time he joined a public school at the start of Year 2, he found he was actually ahead of his classmates in most subjects.
One night he was lying in his bed, listening to the storm outside of his window. He tried to get to sleep, but every time he started to doze off, lightning would flash through the sky, shortly followed by some almighty thunder. He was too old to be scared of lightning (or so he told himself), but something about it was really bothering him. He really felt like he had been out in weather like this before, but knew he never had been. When finally he did drift off to sleep, he began to have a very vivid dream…
He was on a boat – or was it a yacht? He looked down to see he was wearing a life jacket. He was on the deck with a woman he sort of recognised, but only from some other dreams he had had before. The sky was full of dark clouds, rain and lightning and the boat was rocking violently. Suddenly, the yacht (yes, it was a yacht) jerked to the right and Ben, attempting to hold onto the left side’s railing, was flipped over it and plunged headfirst into the icy sea.
“James!” screamed the woman from the boat. “James!”
“Mummy! Mummy! Help! Help me, mummmyyyyy..!” Ben cried back. But it was no use. The boat had already sped off into the darkness. Ben was alone in the dark ocean now, freezing and terrified.
“Mummy!” Ben woke up screaming. A moment later, his mother came rushing into his bedroom.
“What is it sweetie? Did you have a nightmare?”
“Yeah, I think… no. Seemed like a nightmare, but it wasn’t. I’m… pretty sure it was a memory. I saw… my mum.” A startled expression crossed both their faces at the same moment. “So… Mum… who are you?”
So it seems Ben / James is adopted. Why didn’t his parents tell him this?
What happened to Ben / James’s biological parents? Why does he have amnesia?
Can his biological parents be found? Will his adopted parents want to help him find them?