Kindling (2 page)

My papá knew I got super reflective in the foothills – he did, too, which was probably something he drilled into me as a kid – and he smiled at me as we made our way through the grassy trails leading to the mountains. The trail narrowed, so he manoeuvred in front of me to lead.

I liked to watch my papá run. He was so agile it was a little sickening, but I was proud to have him as my papá. While other father’s had affairs and drank and didn’t pay attention to their teenage daughters – my best friend, Mercedes, barely had a father he was gone on business so often – my papá made his family a priority. He did something special with each of his kids and treated my mom like she was his queen. The way they look at each other made me gag sometimes and it was hard to believe they were ever not together.

But, there was a time when my mom was in love with another man. That man would be my real father, like real as in biological since, as far as I was concerned, my papá was as real as fathers got. 

I know, shocking, but you heard me right. My papá – the man who treated me like a princess, who had called me “mi cielo” for as long as I could remember, who spoiled and pampered me and gave into my girlish whims – was not my real father. Well, not biologically, anyway. It was easy to tell my papá and I were not related, though. He was a dark, Mexican American with nearly-black eyes and black, wavy hair – gorgeous and thick just like my sister’s and brothers’ hair – and I was ... giant and pale. Albino pale. Pale skin, pale hair, pale eyes – the reasons behind my UV protective clothing and prescription-strength sunscreen.

Growing up in a South-Western state where the majority of the people around me were swarthy gods and goddesses made me a bit of an outsider. I went to a mainly Hispanic high school, so I was one of just a handful of pasty, white kids and even most of the other kids tanned, at least, but not me. I only came in two colors - white or red.

Even without my skin color, I felt like I was kind of a mess overall: I was the tallest girl in my school and almost the tallest student; my arms and legs were long and lanky; my frame was athletic; my chest had microboobs. I hated nearly everything about how I looked and I could hardly look into a mirror without cringing. I saw myself as a freak of nature and, yeah, I was always pretty self-conscious about my looks, but it seemed to just get worse and more awkward as I got older. If it wasn’t for my friends, I’d just be that weird, lonely white girl that worked out all the time with her father. That’s not really how I wanted people to think of me.

My mother wasn’t dark like my papá, but she was darker than me and the only thing I got from her were my lips and my thin nose, so I supposed my nearly albino heritage came from my biological father’s side. Like, maybe he was Norwegian? Swedish? Maybe German or something like that? There had to be a a country full of
unpigmented
people somewhere, but I didn’t know. In all honesty, I really hadn’t had the urge to find out much about him. All I knew was his name – Henry – and that he was around when I was a baby, but then he left my mom and me with my papá’s family. Somehow, my papá and Henry knew each other and my mom ended up falling in love with my papá. It all worked out for the best, I suppose, and my parents never said anything bad about Henry, even though I think he’s kind of a dick for leaving his wife and newborn daughter with strangers in a strange place, but that’s just my opinion.

I guess only met Henry once more, when I was four or five, but he either really didn’t leave much of an impression on me or I was so busy playing or something that I forgot all about him. I rarely even thought about him or acknowledged that I was not my papá’s biological daughter, so I wasn’t sure why I was thinking about him that day, of all days, because usually when I think of him I start feeling a little sad. I knew I shouldn’t – my papá adored me and we had a great relationship – but I couldn’t help but feel ... slighted, like I was missing out on part of another person’s life that I should have been a part of. And Henry was missing out on my life, too. My friends with divorced parents had two lives - one with their mother and one with their father - and they seemed to enjoy their two families or, at least, get perturbed at all of their relatives. I know it was a bit irrational because I had two parents who loved each other and were totally committed to their families, but I wanted to enjoy two families and got perturbed with all the people everywhere! As much as I hated to admit it and would never admit it to my parents, in the very back recesses of my conscious, I wanted Henry in my life. He was my father, after all. And I often wondered about my extended family, too. Like, did I have aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents I could know? Was Henry remarried and I had half-siblings? Did he ever think about me? My mom was pretty sealed up about him. All she said was he’s a good man and had many reasons for leaving us and I would understand one day. She forgave him long ago and I should, too.

Whatever. It’s not like I had an impassioned hatred for the man or yearned that much to know him or even thought about him that often, because I didn’t. Just today. And I was more annoyed with him than anything else.

I noticed the sun was high, by then, and I was getting hot and winded. Papá and I had been jogging for awhile – over an hour and a half – and we were nearing the springs. I knew it was time for a rest before we headed back home, so my papá and I began to slow. It was our favourite spot, but I was tired and I knew, even after the hour and a half return home, he was going to make me train.

Oh, yeah, training. I’ve mentioned training a few times and I’m sure you’re like, what the hell was she training for? Basically, papá has been training me in mixed martial arts focusing on defensive combat techniques since I was about four. Yeah, I know, it was so super crazy. What 17-year-old girl knows defensive combat? I was always embarrassed to talk about it with anyone because who trains their daughter in MMA? NO ONE except Mercutio Chavez. I guess, back in the day, papá used to be a cage fighter. Apparently, he was pretty amazing and fighting even put him through college. Everyone on his side of the family just goes crazy for martial arts and they’re so proud that he was a fighter. And everyone does some sort of martial arts in the family, both of my grandparents do Jiu-Jitsu and even my great-grandmother still trains in Aikido and she’s in her 90s or something.

Mom forced my papá to stop fighting when they got married, but he trained me because, I guess, that was the only way he could think of bonding with me when I was little. He trained my sister, a bit, and I guess he planned to train the twins when they were old enough, too. Gabriela was four years younger than me, but papá had only trained her in self-defence and she didn’t like fighting at all – she whined 100 times more than I ever did ... well, maybe not ‘ever’, but she whined a lot. Me? I got the full-blown, intense workouts and, I don’t like to brag, but I’m pretty good - like, by the time I was Gaby’s age, I could take down a grown man in under a minute and I run a mile at about six minutes and I’ve won loads of junior competitions for martial arts.

Papá was relentless on my training. He always pushed me to be harder on myself, be faster, be brutal. I used to get so upset, sometimes, because all this training took a lot of time. Like, years and years and years of daily, constant training and exercise and bruises and sprains and hairline fractures and muscles so sore they could fall off and tears from the pain and throwing up because he made me run even after I engorged myself on almost an entire pizza and fighting with my parents because OH MY GOD I DON’T WANT TO FIGHT TODAY OR I WILL PUKE. But, no matter how much I begged, pleaded, screamed, threw fits, and said ‘I hate you’, neither of my parents relented. Every day, run in the morning, train after school; on weekends, run in the morning, train in the afternoon, no excuses and no breaks. It’s a lot of time – a ton of time and, especially when I was younger, I always wanted to get out of it. I was such a little piss that there were times when my father would get just as frustrated as I was and there were many times I think I had almost taken him to his mental breaking point, but he never broke.

Once he finally got me outside, I would whine during our whole run then I would whine when we were at the gym and then I would whine about putting on my sparring gear and then I would whine about having to fight and then, after he eventually got me to spar, I’d be a real shit and not put any effort into it. My papá would say, “What if someone was attacking you? You would be dead!”

“But no one is attacking me, papá. It’s just you,” I would say.

“But, what if, Catalina. You have to think about that every time we spar.”

“What if I sprouted wings? Then I’d be flying, papá,” I would said in the snottiest voice I could manage and he’d throw his hands up in frustration and he would have to walk away from me for several minutes. Eventually, he’d end up threatening to stay at the gym “all damn night” until I put some heart into it and attempted to beat him.

But, over the years, I had come to recognize that this was my papá’s and my thing. He got so much joy out of showing me how to defend myself and I was spoiling it by being a brat. Just like my papá and my sister’s thing was hiking and camping – which they would be doing that night if it wasn’t my birthday party. Even though I grew to love fighting, I understood why Gabriela didn’t like it. She had to grow to love hiking and camping and, honestly, I would rather skewer myself in the stomach than go camping, but she lives and breathes sleeping out in that tent under the stars. It’s a bonding thing with papá and, as I’ve grown older, I’ve come to recognize the training and all that goes into it – the running and the conditioning and the agility and endurance tests – as a really special time, even though, sometimes, I still would rather curl up in bed and sleep for a week and a half.

And, when the twins were old enough, my papá would start traditions with them, as well, and whatever those traditions will be will probably be something that will annoy them as much as fighting used to annoy me and I will be like, kids, he did the same thing to me and Gaby – get over it.

Finally we were at the springs. The air was wet and heavy with mist. We were so warm and the water was nice and cool. Papá and I took off our shoes and waded into the water. The air was already beginning to thicken with heat and sweat poured off of both of us. I sat in the dust and re-lathered myself with sunscreen as we chugged our water bottles and listened to the sounds of the earth around us, the birds and the water bubbling and the insects beginning to hum.

Suddenly, we heard a noise like something was moving about to our right and we were both startled. Sometimes we saw mule deer or even elk up there, but it really wasn’t the time of year for that. I was more worried about mountain lions or something that could take a bite out of one of us. We weren’t really on a frequently used trail, so anything was a possibility out there. But when we looked towards the noise, there was nothing, not even a shaking limb. We looked at each other and shrugged but, then I noticed to the left of my papá, two weird-looking guys standing there. I mean, they weren’t Neanderthals or anything, they were just ... odd, and I couldn’t put my finger on what exactly it was about them that was strange, but it was something. My father saw my face change and looked behind to see the strange men. His mood changed immediately. His straightened and tightened his fists and he was upset and nervous.

After my initial shock of seeing two young men on a relatively unused trail, I noticed they were absolutely gorgeous, like they were both kind of buff and I could make out their toned physiques beneath their shirts. Still, something was off about them, but they were around 25 or so and they were dressed funny for both the time of year – early summer – and for where they were – basically, the mountains. The shorter of the two was olive-skinned and dark haired, really model-gorgeous looking, and he wore a leather jacket, blue-gray t-shirt, jeans, and sunglasses. He looked like he spent a lot of time on his hair and perfecting his five o’clock shadow. The other guy was taller and a bit lankier – still unbelievably hot, with soft brown hair and blue eyes – and he wore a blazer, khakis, a sweater-vest, and a v-neck t-shirt - not the typical camping clothes. They were a strange mixture of oddness and perfection. And their faces, while model beautiful - like, holy hotness those two were beautiful - they looked just a tad bit weird, like they had on too-much makeup or were cut-outs from a magazine that had too much Photoshop done on it. Something was strange about the whole situation, though, with the photoshopped men and their clothes and, to top it off, papá and I rarely ran into people out there and, when we did, it’s always been a jogger or a camper. These guys, though, didn’t look like either. Maybe they were lost or something, but it just didn’t seem like it.

By this point the silence was weird and I realized I was totally obviously checking them out. My face reddened, but no one seemed to notice my embarrassment. My papá and the guys were basically having an angry staring contest, which was super confusing because my papá was usually extremely friendly and helpful to strangers. I looked at him and tried to gauge his emotions. He was angry, above angry, and ... scared? My tough, cage-fighting, mixed martial arts loving daddy was scared of two, skinny boys, one of which was wearing a sweater-vest?

I didn’t understand - maybe my papá was just having a bad day, what did I know? I decided to break the silence. “Are you guys lost?”

The one with the vest smiled a grin that made me feel uncomfortable, like it was forced. “A little,” he said. He had a Scottish accent, which basically just doubled his hotness scale for me. What? I totally had a thing for accents. “We camped last night and are trying to find the best way to get down.”

I looked at my papá again and, still, he had the same, furious look. “Well, where are you headed?” I asked.

“Just trying to find the best way down,” Vest Boy said again. He didn’t even seem weirded out by my papá. He reached into his blazer and pulled out a folded map. “Could you show me the trail?” I nodded and stood and, I don’t know what happened, but suddenly my papá jumped up and he was so quick I hardly saw him run to the guys.