Jason Low
as
Project HEARD
presents
GD: Scrapbook

 Julia was spending a rainy afternoon in the basement of the mansion, trying to
sort out some of the clutter that had been around for years and years. Well, it
wasn't exactly clutter, it was all neatly piled and stacked, but still, it was
a relatively disorganized lump of stuff off in one corner of the basement, and
rooting through it gave her something to do.
 Artifacts, old clothes, boxes of things the girls never moved to their
complex.. basically the history of the Diggerses was contained in several dozen
stacks of boxes.
 A couple of hours into the job, with no more than a fifth of the pile
organized into rows of similar items, she came across a dusty old videotape
wedged down between a box and the wall. It (the tape) was marked "Mom's Films".
 (What's this?) she wondered, turning it over, then taking it out of the case.
Dust drifted down from within. The label was in Gina's handwriting, as it
looked when she was a kid, still in school.
 "Hmm.." Julia abandoned the cleaning project for the moment and took the video
upstairs.

 The first image on the tape turned out to be a much younger Theo, on
scratched-up film that'd been transferred to video. He smiled into the camera
and spoke: "Wait until you see this." He stepped away and the camera moved in a
little to show the girls, Gina and Britanny, playing in the yard, apparently in
the spring.
 Julia gasped and covered her mouth; she recognized the outfits the girls were
wearing, because she'd made them. They were patterned after her own adventuring
outfit she wore when she'd been banished to Jade. She made them the first year
she was banished there, in an effort to keep sane, and managed to get a mage to
send them back to Earth. If she couldn't be there, at least her gifts could be.
 Julia jumped a little as the film abruptly jarred her to a different scene, as
if she just blinked and transported there in a flash. The kids and Theo were
gathered around the table, a white-iced cake atop it, all three of them looking
into the camera and singing "Happy Birthday".
 "Now girls," Theo told his daughters, "Mom would want you both to make her
wish for her and blow out her candles, so you go ahead and do that now."
 "I know what I'M gonna wish for, daddy," Gina proclaimed.
 "Well, don't say it to me out loud, or it won't come true," he smiled.
 The girls shut their eyes and together blew the candles out. Theo applauded,
and the girls hopped down from their chair.
 "Let's go to the kitchen so we can cut this, Britanny. Gina, can you bring the
camera, please?"
 "Sure, daddy," Gina said. She ran over to the camera and fiddled around with
it for a moment, then realized the lens was right there. She looked into it and
whispered, "I wished for you to come home really soon, mommy."
 Julia had to turn away and blink a few times to erase the tears that were
threatening to flow, and she missed part of the next segment: a series of
Valentine's Days and Mother's Days arranged in a bit of a film collage.
 The tape jumped again, and Julia found herself looking at the two girls again,
of course, at about ages 13 and 12 respectively. Both faced into the camera--
apparently now video instead of film, a much better quality in any case--and
smiled, and Gina nudged Brit, saying, "Okay, now show her what you can do."
 Britanny smiled again and seemed to pause for a moment, then started to change
her shape. The camera zoomed back a little to keep her in frame as she grew a
good deal taller and a lot furrier. She grinned and waved at the camera.
 Julia watched the tape roll on as Gina won first place in the Fulton County
regional science fair--at age 13 beating out students from grades far beyond
her own--and Britanny at the Georgia High School Games, entirely humiliating
her competition in the track & field championships.
 She watched several birthdays and Christmases, seeing gifts she'd made, found,
and sent home with Theo, and otherwise forgotten. She saw Brit proudly
displaying a necklace one Christmas, a necklace Julia had had made with a gem
she uncovered on one of her spelunking treasure hunts sometime in February of
that year. Britanny's eyes were sparkling as brightly as the gem at the end of
the chain.
 Then the tape blanked for a second and came up in the middle of a CNN report.
Julia was dismayed, thinking the old footage had been taped over, until she
noticed Gina standing there beside a reporter. The reporter was explaining how
Gina was, at age 19, the youngest person yet to have an entire exhibit on
display at the Altanta Museum of Rare Antiquities. The report glossed over most
of the find, and then was over, replaced with an ESPN broadcast of a college
soccer final.
 Julia eagerly watched that three-hour portion of the tape, cheering it on as
if it was a live event. She was on the edge of her seat for most of it,
watching Britanny play her heart out. Brit's team won, and, as the team was
celebrating, the camera crew interviewed several players.
 The reporter stepped up and held the mike up for Britanny. "What does this
mean to you today?" she was asked.
 "This means everything," Brit was saying in an overjoyed voice, girls bumping
into her and clapping her on the back and piling on top of her. As she was
pulled past the camera, she kept facing it as long as she could, and said, "Hi,
mom!"
 Julia was stunned. So many mothers around the world must have heard that over
the years, a simple two-word greeting said by their son or daughter on
television, but for Julia, the impact was so much stronger. For it meant that
Britanny, despite the fact her mother was trapped in an alternate dimension and
only able to meet with her once a year, kept her in her heart all the time.
Furthermore, Julia figured that Britanny had said it because she knew her
mother would one day see the tape.
 Julia noticed that the screen had gone to black. There was nothing more on the
tape, and so she turned off the television, rewound the tape, ejected it, and
looked at it.
 After a long, long time, she put it in its cardboard sleeve, and found a place
in the video cabinet for it. Then she turned and went to her bedroom, to
prepare to go out.

 Brianna looked up as the doorbell rang. The door opened shortly thereafter to
reveal her mother.
 "Hi, Mom," she said with a smile. "What's news?"
 "Oh, hello," Julia said. "How are you, Brianna?"
 "Pretty good," Bri' shrugged. "Been watchin' TV for a while, and later I was
thinking of going for a run if this rain ever stops."
 "That's good, that's good," Julia nodded somewhat distantly. She asked, "Are
your sisters around?"
 "Uh, no," Brianna said, sitting up. "Gina's off with Penny and Brit's at the
mall. Why, is everything okay?"
 "Oh, yes," Julia said, still standing in the middle of the room. "I just
wanted to give them a message."
 "Well, you can give it to me," Brianna said. "I'll relay it."
 Julia hmm'ed. "All right," she said, "but I still want to give it to them
myself as well."
 "Okaaaaay.." Brianna said, then was startled as Julia strode over and
collected her up in a tremendous embrace, lifting her into a standing position
and spinning around once or twice. Bri' was too surprised to even squeak out a
'zoinks'. "M--mom??"
 Julia hugged Brianna, burying her face in her daughter's shoulder. "It's all
right," said said, her voice muffled. "Just, please, thank them for the video."
 In a flash, Brianna knew what her mother was talking about. She remembered the
sisters making the film and video clips, remembered them editing it together
into a single tape, and remembered them putting it in the mansion, where it
must've been lost and eventually forgotten.
 And apparently her mother had just found it again.
 "You're welcome, Mom," Bri' said, hugging her back. "You're welcome."

				  fin