I turned off the bathroom and bedroom lights
with no painful shocks.
Thank God
. The bed looked as if a
tornado had cut a swath of destruction across it, but I—wait, why
was I still looking at the bed under a full bright light? I stepped
back and observed the switch with doubt. I’d flipped it off. It was
down. So, why was the light still on? I pushed it up and, this
time, a confusing darkness fell on me. I frowned. Maybe the light
switch was installed backwards?
I shook my head. Enough with electrical
nonsense. I ran down the stairs and found Dad in the living room.
He was looking all around at the new furniture—and definitely
wondering how many trees had died to build this house.
I know I did.
"God, this is so beautiful... just what we
needed,” he said when I sat down next to him on the couch.
“Sure,” I replied with a sigh. To be honest,
moving from New York into this place had been a big shock, even if
I'd been the one who'd chosen this town. But the selection process
hadn't been exactly normal, so having a result, well, not normal
was expected.
He was the one who’d wanted to move out of
New York, claiming he needed a change of atmosphere. Fifteen long
years of working as a playwright in the fast paced world of
Broadway had finally taken its toll. The exhilaration of the city
that never slept wasn’t his grand source of inspiration anymore. So
a new “setting” was needed, preferably a small, quiet town, and
since he was the one inflicting that change of life on me, he’d let
me choose the place.
The one thing he hadn’t known, though, was
that I, too, needed a change of atmosphere. That I, too, wanted to
leave the Big Apple. The reasons? Only one. One that lived in the
opposite building right across from our apartment, reminding me of
the ache within my chest every time my eyes caught its familiar
shadowy outline behind the gauzy curtains. Stephen. He was the one
that had pushed me away from the warm, familiar embrace of the city
lights.
So one night, with that painful shadow
moving right across from my window, I unfolded a map and trailed my
fingers across the dry paper, trying to spot what would be our next
home. It was kind of adventurous and I loved that sense of freedom
and recklessness. But something odd happened while tracing the
bottom of that wide paper. My fingertips suddenly froze with a
jolting shock—much like the one I’d had minutes ago—and fixed in a
tiny black point on the state of New Mexico. I raised my finger and
felt the skin pucker between my eyebrows when I spotted the name:
Ruidoso. I didn’t know why or how this was happening, but I
suddenly knew this was the place—our new home.
Of course, if I’d known I would be
surrounded by massive chunks of trees and mountains, I would’ve
thought twice before coming to “Woodland.”
I placed the unpacked books on the couch and
stretched my fingers. The electric tingles still crowded my hands.
Was this normal? It usually lasted just a few seconds after a
discharge of energy and then it was gone. But it hadn’t this time.
Why?
A cold gust of air seeped through the house
and blasted on my face, like a slap telling me to stop wandering
with my mind. I stood up and snapped the long, narrow window shut.
“Crazy mountain weather,” I muttered. Perhaps this was the reason
for my increased energy discharges. Mountain air wasn’t the same as
city air, after all. And I bet that living next to a huge
forest—Lincoln National Forest to be exact—had a lot to do with
it.
“Honey, could you please go upstairs and
bring me the scissors. I need to cut this…stupid…bag.” Dad said,
tugging on the plastic that refused to yield.
Yep. Even my dad who never used "bad
language" surrendered to the curse of blaspheming while unpacking.
“Why don’t you use a knife?” I nodded to the kitchen.
“Don’t you even go there, Kalista. You know
my answer already.”
Oh, I did. Knives were precious tools made
for cutting and crafting delicacies—alias food—not for mundane
activities—alias opening boxes or stupid bags.
“Where are they?” I sighed. The idea of
looking for the scissors in his office was worse than searching for
a needle in the garbage. He was the only one who could find things
in that mess.
“Next to my laptop.”
I rolled my eyes and hurried upstairs.
The cabin-like house still looked like a
warehouse. Unpacked boxes lined the hallway, and since Dad lacked
time to do it—my guess was he didn’t want to do it and stayed a few
extra hours at the Spencer Theater—there was no one left besides
me
to unpack things. With all the school material I had to
catch up with, unpacking had been the least of my worries. Being a
newbie around this time of the year was practically academic
suicide, but we both needed the change, and change meant
sacrifice.
I took in a deep breath, stepped inside his
office and made my way through skyscrapers of papers and boxes. The
long slab of oak that served as a desk stood imposingly at the end
of the room.
How can you be so messy, Dad
? I said to myself
while walking amid the city box-maze. Setting up this office was
going to be a hell of a hard task.
Once the deed was done—the scissors hadn’t
been next to the laptop but on top of a box lying beneath a pile of
more towering boxes—
good one dad
—I rushed downstairs to find
Dad was now in the kitchen and set the evil things on the pristine
kitchen counter next to him. Despite his organizational issues, he
managed to keep the kitchen as spotless as a display case. “I hope
dinner is really good tonight because after that expedition to your
office…I
am
exhausted”.
I knew dinner would be good, of course.
Cooking was what I’d come to know as my dad's true passion. He
loved writing plays and taking people to places they would never
expect. He’d once said to me he couldn’t imagine doing something
else. But the sparkle shining in his eyes every time he put on his
“Don’t mess with the Chef” apron told otherwise. The kitchen was
his Mount Olympus. He just hadn’t realized he could take people to
unexpected places with his cooking, too. He was
that
good.
The smell of his dishes could make anyone float to a Shangri-la of
mouth-watering flavors, and whatever he was cooking right now fit
the bill. It swirled wonderfully hot in the air, awakening my taste
buds.
One would say I could’ve inherited his
masterful cooking skills. But
no
. The “chef gene” was
completely nonexistent in me. As far as spoons and pans and fire
were involved, I was a lost cause. The microwave was the only thing
that saved me from total ignorance. Pretty pathetic, I know.
“Thank you for the scissors, honey,” he
said, giving me a quick glance as he stirred something that looked
like…rice with mushrooms? Yeah, definitely rice. “It is pretty
messy, isn’t it?”
“Sorry, Dad, but
messy
is an
understatement. The whole place made me feel claustrophobic.”
“That means you’re not going to help me with
the place, huh?” He poured a bit of white wine on the rice and
added some parmesan cheese. The poised grin flashing above his chin
told me this was a dish he’d mastered to perfection.
“I'm not going to stick my fingers in your
office. I’ll do the rest of the house.” Like if that was easier. Or
maybe it was. Hard to tell.
"No risotto for you, then."
"Risotto. You're making risotto?" He didn’t
need his chef’s ego to be pampered, God knows he had it of the size
of Brazil, but I couldn’t deny the truth. I loved that thing.
"I guess you'll stick your fingers in the
office after all," he said with a satisfied smile.
I rolled my eyes.
Bribed with food
. I was so
pathetic.
After the heavenly rice feast, I pulled up
the heavy pile of books from the leather couch and climbed up the
stairs to go to my room. With a relieved sigh, I settled the tower
of paperbacks on my wooden desk and walked up to the wide, wooden
armoire in the far corner. God, everything in this house screamed
wood all over. It felt as if I was living in a huge “tomb” of
mutilated trees, which, to top it all, was surrounded by a vast sea
of still “breathing” trees. Talk about irony.
I put on my night clothes and skipped the
bathroom. I wasn’t in the mood to wash my face and catch my
reflection in the mirror. After so many years, I still hadn’t grown
fond of the light smattering of freckles across my nose and
cheekbones. Bleaching creams, oatmeal facials, rubbing lemon juice
on my face—none of that had helped to get rid of them. Though
considered cute, to me, freckles were the dirty little demons that
kept me away from having smooth, spotless skin.
I pulled off my long chocolate-brown hair
from its tight clasp, turned off the lights and strode to bed. A
sense of peace started settling all over my body. The four walls
and balcony doors were no lid to my ears; they caught the sounds of
the night as if I was standing outside. I listened to the trees
whisper, unfolding and dancing in the wind, pulling me under a wave
of harmony. I imagined the dew falling and moistening the blades of
the grass, coating the tips with diluted tears.
I opened my eyes and gazed at my ceiling,
dotted with stars that glowed as diamonds on black velvet. So
beautiful…mesmerizing…and then, everything went dark, my mind lost
in faraway dreams.
“Let’s go, honey. I’m running late,” my dad
said, grabbing his car keys from the breakfast counter. He'd woken
up late and hadn't even grabbed a bite for breakfast.
Luckily, I wasn't the type of girl who
freaked out over clothes because she didn’t find a matching shirt,
or the type that followed trends in fashion magazines with
half-starved girls on the cover—I wouldn't have the time for long
morning showers if that was the case and God forbid if I didn't
stay twenty minutes under that cascade of water. Me? It was always
the same for school: a tight tee, a pair of skinny jeans and my
favorite mud-crusted white converses. Quick and easy. So I had time
to spare.
“Running late?" I arched one eyebrow. "Has
the stage cracked or something?” I teased. My dad spent a couple of
hours at the Spencer Theater every day. It’d been recently built
and needed people to bring it to life. Dad had offered his help
and, of course, it’d been accepted right away because, who would've
denied the precious help of the great playwright, Peter
Hamilton?
“Kalista,” he pointed his eyes at me.
“Okay, okay.” I sipped the last puddle of
milk and dashed to grasp my sporty biker jacket from the hook
behind the door. The day wasn’t really cold so I wasn’t in need of
a heavy coat.
We slipped inside the blue Escape and I
couldn't help but feel a small shiver as I buckled my seatbelt. Dad
said this new hybrid was
friendly
on the gas mileage, but I
was more interested in its friendly side while rolling on the road.
In other words, I was more interested in the
will-I-get-squelched-like-a-cockroach-if-the-car-crashes than in
the benefits of hybrid electric technology.
Feeling safe in a speedy four-wheeled
machine wasn’t easy for me, especially when I was the one driving.
The anxiety and fear that swamped my body whenever I was behind the
wheel defied the strength of a tsunami.
It’d been a complete
hell
when I’d
had to take the driver’s license test months ago. My whole body had
been shaking and sweating, my feet accelerating at the wrong points
when turning…It’d been a disaster, an atomic disaster, more like
the Hiroshima type.
“How is it possible that I passed my
driver’s license test?” I said in awe, looking at the sea of trees
edging the road.
“Miracles do happen, honey,” my dad said
with a smile.
“Very funny, Dad. With this kind of support
I'm never going to be behind a wheel again.” He was right, though.
It was a miracle.
“Grab the Escape and go for a run then. It’s
a small town…light traffic…perfect for practice, don’t you
think?”
“I don’t know…We’ll see”.
“Why is it so hard for you? I don’t
understand. Most kids your age would kill to have a car and drive
around.”
“I'm not like most of the kids, Dad,” I
reminded him through clenched teeth. “It’s just—just the fact of
having other cars around…”
“Meaning?”
I hesitated for a moment and sighed. “I'm
scared that they will...well…that they’ll crash against me or
something,” I confessed, lowering my head. I knew my last words
would arouse painful memories of Mom’s death, which is why I didn’t
talk about this with him.
She died twelve years ago. She was a doctor
and loved volunteering in mountain villages in Central and South
America. She was in Peru the day she made the wrong choice and
decided to go for the quickest road. She didn’t see the car that
took the curve too fast and, well, you can guess the story. It was
a very difficult time for my dad, and I was too little, I guess.
The only things to remind me of her were old pictures, faded
memories and fairy tales.
“Don’t be silly honey, that’s not going to
happen.” I looked up at him. “If you practice enough,” he added,
glancing at me.
Of course,
I thought to
myself
.
But practice was nerve-racking. Cars were moving
deathtraps! “Maybe I’ll give it a shot someday.” But not soon,
definitely not soon.
He smiled and kissed the top of my head.
“That’s my girl.”
It took us fifteen minutes to get to Ruidoso
High School. The day was sun-soaked, painting the landscape with
bright golden light. Jagged outlines of green- and brown-hued
mountains rested in the deep blue background, with a heavenly white
spreading on the peaks, creating a beautiful contrast of colors. A
gentle breeze whispering through the foliage of high trees seemed
to cast a spell as it passed, waking them up so they would wave at
us. Everything looked alive and full of energy, as if Mother Nature
was smiling at us.