Chapter One

8:00 AM, Charlie

Kansas

“It was crippling and twisting and loving and hurting. It was shock and disappointment. It was shattering everything before and after us. It was everything we thought of and everything we spoke about. It was long nights on rooftops under the ceilings of stars. It was the early mornings in the sand and before the rising sun and in the arms of a good friend. It was whatever we had seen and whatever we had known. It was us. And them. And the world. It was the summer with breeze and warmth and shiver and color in souls. It was everything we could speak of and everything we’d rather keep to ourselves. It was the summer of curiosity. It was past and memories and secrets waiting behind locked doors. It was the summer of new beginnings and better friendships and bitter endings. It was the summer of building ones’ futures and destructing others’. Yet it was after all, a climb on a never ending hill. It was us three sisters and a single mother. It was summer in Florida.”

We are the Belle sisters. We live in Kansas, and we’d never left altogether before, not since my father has left. My sisters have gone all the way to Alaska before, but I never went with them. I dislike the cold. I would’ve loved to travel with my sisters, but I’d like to go to somewhere where there’s a beach and sun or trees and forests or mountains and animals of the wild. I like nature, but I also like it when nature is being kind to your skin and body. When it’s being appreciative and colorful and not depressing and harsh and white. When my sisters told me they were going to Alaska and that I should come along, it felt uncomfortably agonizing to go there, besides hating the chills and shivers of the cold; my father has left us in the creeps of winter. He left us with no explanation and no made up excuse and not even and inconvenient reason.

I was not curious about where he was going, nor was I eager to know why he was going there. Yet I believed and still believe that we deserve to know why he was leaving us, I was well aware of the troubles between him and my mother, and although they seemed to have no reason and no core, they caused his departure. I believe we deserve to know why he left and not why he was going to that other place, but my pride kept my mouth shut and my tears behind walls. Because if I had asked, the strongest among my siblings would’ve been showing weakness right there and then. If I ever ask, I would burn and shatter the last crumbs of hope ever left inside my sisters’ heart, and in my mother’s imagination. Although she shows no pain and no hurt and hasn’t spoken my father’s name since three years, I do know that somewhere deep inside of her heart she hopes he comes back and somewhere lost within her mind she sees him coming back.

I don’t wish for any of us to ever hold the knowledge of his whereabouts, because it would either be heartbreaking and victorious how miserable he is without us, or it would be heart aching and catastrophic how happy he is without us. The knowledge of his whereabouts would bring nothing but mixed emotions and pain. And mostly pain.

I don’t wish my family to be in pain.  

I know this information will forever be unknown, but I can’t act heartless and face them with such facts, I will not act as the breeze that puts off the little flame of the candle which lights his memory in their hearts. On the other hand, he’s already dimmed inside of me, that chapter of my story has already been read, I don’t reread chapters that have been read out loud, and I don’t rewind memories that bring me agony and pain and a sense of weakness. Because every time I get a flashback of that memory, I figure he’s monstrous in more ways than one.

He looked me in the eye. He was hesitant, but not hesitant enough. “Where are you going?” my mother asked in a fading whisper, she was a wreck that day and had no energy to call out for him although he was a few inches away from the door and she was on the top of the stairs. She is sweet and at that moment she was even sweeter and she was broken, she looked like someone was holding her spleen and waiting for just the right moment to rip it out. They had been fighting for months, arguing and shouting on daily basis, she looked sick and the more they fought the sicker she looked. She would always be apologizing, she would always be the one who tried ending the arguments and he seemed to be the one who brought them up. I loved Jack; he used to be a good father, until that moment, that moment when he drained the last sips of love I had left inside of me for him. I hadn’t seen a crime around our house that earned his departure, but it happened. He looked me in the eye. A second passed and his eyes were glowing tears. Two seconds passed and he drank back the salt. Three seconds passed and he closed his eyes as if telling himself there’s no going back now, as if reminding himself of something I had done wrong, as if I had done anything wrong to him. Four seconds pass and his eyes were burning fire. Five seconds pass and he was out the door. He looked me in the eye and drained me of all the love I had for him, he erased every good memory I had of him.

He looked at her only once that night and it was in complete disgust, as if she’s the reason for all this, as if she hadn’t been constantly trying to fix everything, as if her apologies were nothing, as if her pleading was nothing, and as if we were nothing. As if his daughters were nothing. “Where are you going?” she asked again as the door shut behind him, she sounded so desperate, she sounded like she was too tired to even speak up or run down the stairs or chase after him. She sounded like she needed a break from everything. She sounded like she was breaking in half. I had lost my temper. “Can’t you see the look in his eyes?” I was about to lose it. “He’s going away.” I sighed and was about to go back to my room as soon as I saw my sisters hovering over my mom, but I couldn’t move. She was sitting on the stairs then, her face in her hand, resisting the tears, trying so hard not to cry, not to feel it, not to acknowledge it, but the pain was too familiar to be ignored and the moment she had been hugged was the moment her spleen had ripped out all at once, along with all her other organs, and she was left with nothing but a heart with a hole, because she had lost someone who sat there, and then he left that place and there was nobody that could replace him in her heart, maybe there was someone who could feed her mind and keep her sane, but there was nothing to fill that hole. And she had burst into tears, and I wanted to tell her it’s okay, that it will be fine, that we can do just fine without him, that she was better than him, that she had us, that she had me. But I didn’t, I only stood there and watched as she was held tight by my sisters, and I was paralyzed in my place and I couldn’t move until I heard the sobbing stop and turned to my room without a word, without a sound, the only thing I had left was the image of him looking me in the eyes and turning his back on me, and that image kept playing and playing again and again in my mind, and even when I could finally sleep three days later, it’s the nightmare that kept haunting me for months and months.

I still can never imagine the pain she had suffered that night, it must have been her most fragile moments, her weakest hours, her most trembling minutes, and her never ending torturous seconds. It must’ve been years and decades and centuries where she was. She kept whispering “He’s gone” over and over again. She’d said it so many times, I’d lost count how many.

Yet the next day when I thought I’d wake to see her collapsed on the staircase or curled in her bed or even crying her eyes out in front of an old photograph, it was all the opposite, I woke to the smell of fresh food and laughs, and she looked healthier than she had been before, I woke to hear Gen and Leslie asking “Are you sure you don’t want us to stay in tonight?” and I saw her smiling and saying “No, you go, why would you stay?” and it all seemed like it never happened, except it did, Gen and Leslie were being extra cautious towards mom’s feelings, which they never did. But she was perfectly fine, like the wreck she was yesterday was someone else. That was the moment I had seen the strength in my mother. That was the moment I had learnt never to underestimate her, never to underestimate anyone, that your strength would be apparent in your weakest moments. That strength will represent itself to you as long as you allow it. As long as you get hold of yourself for all the time you can. And when you can’t handle anything anymore, when you’re not giving up but also not holding your ground, that’s when strength finds its place in your heart and in your broken bones.

“Good morning” she’d said to me

“Good morning.” I was good at hiding my feelings but she was better at finding them, she looked at me and smiled in a way that says ‘I know you’re probable confused, but I’m not schizophrenic’ I smiled back, and then we all went forward with our day as if nothing had happened the night before, we all agreed that it was better leaving her in denial or with that strength she’d magically got than to fight because she’s trying to keep the family together. We agreed silently, with pity looks and warm broken smiles. But that was only the day, for the night is the one who beholds our most terrifying and ugly secrets. For the night allows us to break and crack and show our true sides. It listens to the craziest and most agonizing of cries like they are Beethoven pieces playing. It speaks to the lonely like it is their friend. It hugs the broken like they have gained a lover.

It wasn’t until one dark, cold night that I saw my mother in my dad’s office at three AM, I was only awake because it was a time when the moment I slipped into slumber I replay that night in my dreams and would wake with tears on my cheeks, I was only down to get water, when I saw her there, when I saw the tears that kept her going through the day. I’d always felt it was wrong not to break from time to time, but I also didn’t want to push her until she does. But I saw that at night she held one of my father’s shirts close to her chest, hugging it and trying to steal the aroma of him off of the shirt. I saw her tears and heard her breathe loud. She was sitting on his chair, behind his desk. Her eyes were closed and her body was constantly shivering. That night I decided it was best to let her grief in silence and peace. That night I decided she had the right to grief.

She has not shed a tear in front of us since, I only see her when she doesn’t know I’m watching, and that’s how it is right now.

That’s how it’s been since he was gone.

But that is the past, and it is something locked behind a door and trapped inside a cage.

Today I’m not hurting as much and last night my mother was sleeping soundly in her bed and didn’t cry for him. Today is the first day in the last week of my senior year, I should be busy completing my portfolio and doing community service and creating something extraordinary to get into Brown or Harvard or something like that, but I’m not, I don’t want to go to college, but I have a applied for a few for my mother’s sake. Most of my friends are busy with extra work and projects and giving assignments and trying to make something so exquisite that would highlight their portfolio other than anyone else. The thing is I don’t know what I want to study, I mean there’s so much potential in everything that you would study, there is a future for every major but not enough majors for all futures. I kind of believe in fate, a lot of great people succeed because of fate or a sharp mind. You could go from homeless to billionaire if you’re smart enough, and that has no major in college. There is no more major in college that teaches you about travelling or being a proper movie commenter, there is no major in college that teaches you to be happy, and there is no major which actually helps you figure out what you want to study or even help you sort out what you need to study to get to your goal and what you want to study just for the sake of studying it.

So majors are various, but success is not final nor is it guaranteed. I know I want to a lot of stuff, for one thing I’d like to open a bookstore that is actually willing to put up unknown writers’ first works and cheap old books with a coffee corner and Pink Floyd music playing filled with posters of all beliefs and religions, I’d like to own a place which feels like home to someone who doesn’t know where they belong.

I’d like to be a cinematographer and create meaningful, life-changing films, one of these films which leave you with a hangover right after the finale, the ones which remind you of your mistakes, not in a hurtful way, in the I-Will-Fix-My-Life kind of way. These movies that never go forgotten, the ones that get quoted on their very good filming, paused pictures, GIFs, short videos, etc… you know the type of movies that create quotes that get stuck with people and all over their bios and right down on their photo captions on instagram.

I’d like to study architecture and make the plans for great buildings, massive ones, ones that will live long after I die, I’d like to be Gaudi 0.2 except with my own thoughts and imagination and originality.

The more I speak about what I’d like to be when I’m older, the more careers I think of, the more confused I get, and the farther I get from actually having a goal to achieve or a path to follow.

The idea that I don’t care about higher education and college life means I’m the least busy among my friends. I have plenty of time on my plate to read, workout, paint, I begin with reading, I haven’t been reading a lot lately, so I’ve been up all night reading a book that left me with something that I can’t completely understand, it felt so close to my heart, it hooked me up and I couldn’t put it down, so I didn’t go to school today.

I manage to get myself out of bed, grab my laptop and head downstairs, I pour coffee when mom comes in.

“Good morning,” she says

“Hey,” I smile keeping my endless cycle of yawns inside of me

“Why didn’t you go to school?”

“Been up all night, wouldn’t function well,”

“No exams?”

“History,”

“You don’t care a bit, do you?” we’ve been through this over and over again I want to say, but all I manage is a silent glare, my mind is not fully charged for this conversation right now.

“I want you to get into a good college, Charlie, have a good life with an actual job that gains you actual money,” that’s when the conversation gets to the level of desperation, and I say it’s fine and it’s okay and that I’ll have an actual job and that I will make her proud, just not this time.

“We’ve already talked about this,” I say

“And you’re skipping classes and finals, how will that get you into a college?”

“It won’t!” I throw it to her face and she seems like she’d just heard the last thing she’d expected, she seems very disappointed.

“I’ll go walk Daisy,” I try to avoid confronting her disappointment.

She nods and I leave, I catch her glare for only a second.

“I’m going to the office today,” she calls out

“Why?” it’s not normal for my mother to go to the office, she’s always working from home, she rarely goes to the office and her tone saying it aroused my suspicions, but I let it drop and said “Okay.” and took Daisy out to the streets.

12:00 PM, Gen

Kansas

“I’d been a liar, a cheater, a thief, a psycho, a princess, a nice girl, a leader, a follower, and I’d been a million other things, at the age of sixteen, I’ve accomplished being a lot of things. I’ve been everything, been in everyone’s shoes but never been myself. Who was that anyway? Who was that person I never tried to be? Was she the one who cared about her clothes and hair more than she cared about people? Was she the girl who cared for nothing even those who cared for her? Was she the nice person who was always there for everyone? Was she strong or weak? Fire or water? Wise or reckless? Mentality or beauty? I knew that much about her, she was never familiar to me since he left, and the moment I caught his gaze one more time, seeing him happy and sad at the same time, I remembered who that girl was, and I never wanted her to go forgotten again.”

I know we’re leaving for the summer, I don’t know if I want to go or not. Florida would be nice, but I don’t know if I belong here in Kansas or there in Florida. I’m scared it’ll feel like home, I’m scared I’ll decide to leave mom and Leslie and Charlie and all my friends. I’m scared of Charlie’s reaction when she knows what mom is planning, mom wants Charlie to check out the college she wants her to go to there, but Charlie doesn’t want to go to college. I don’t know what it is exactly that Charlie wants to do with her life, she’s very talented, creative, and open-minded. I think she could do well without higher education but she would do better with it. More professionally. I don’t know what to do, where to go, I’m still a Freshman, I don’t need to think about that, I’ve got plenty of time on my plate, I don’t need to worry about such things. But I can’t help it, my mind spirals and goes in circles, searching for wherever it is I belong, where it is I can call home. I have my actual home, the shelter, the roof on top of my head, the walls surrounding my body, the sheets and covers keeping my body warm at night, that’s somewhere to go, that’s something to love and be thankful for. That’s a house. That’s a family. That’s love. That’s a shelter. But that’s not where I belong, that’s not where anybody belongs. You don’t belong on the couch in your parents’ house, you don’t belong where you were born, the place which feels like home and warmth won’t come easy or at least it hasn’t come easily for me till now. Maybe I’m not trying hard enough, maybe I’m not taking enough risks, maybe I should go to Florida with open arms, maybe I should be more brave about it, all these maybe’s drive me crazy but I’ll hold my ground. One week.

One more week.

Just one week.

Seven days.

I’ll leave afterwards; I guess mom wants it to be as soon as possible so we wouldn’t have time to plot on how to stay here.

I have an English final test in thirty minutes, I spare the thirty minutes of lunch and slip to the back of the school and use it for a smoke. I text Jason: “at the back, come. Bring lighter” five minutes later I spot Jason heading towards me.

“Lighter?” I ask as I place my messily rolled cigarette in mouth

“Smokers die younger? New style, huh.” He says as he lights it up

“I like them better, you can place more tobacco inside this way, or less, there are no rules actually,” I say knowing what he meant. ‘Smokers die younger.’ Is the slogan over the pack of tobaccos you buy if you’re rolling your own cigarettes, I like them better than American Spirit, Marlboro, Camel, and all these other brands. I like the feel of rolling my own cigarettes up.

“Why aren’t you in the cafeteria eating like all normal humans of this school?”

“Because all humans of this school are in the cafeteria, I’d rather stand in a quiet parking lot, smoking with my boyfriend,” I give him a stern look

“Always so serious” he puts his arms around my shoulders “You’ve another one?” he asks

“I have a pack of another ones.” I hand him one from my back pocket

“You’re still going to Florida?” he looks me in the eye, I see moons and sons and my stomach sinks and I break the connection before I collapse. I love him so much, it hurts.

“I don’t think she’ll let me stay” I say looking at my shoes, I really like those shoes, what the hell? This is not the time to think about shoes.

What is wrong with me?

I smoke more and more trying to ignore the fact that he’s here, that he is real, his presence is more real than the sun over our heads, and he burns.

“What about telling her you’ll go but only for a week or two?”

“I’ll try.” I say

“God, I’ll miss how dark you are”

“I am not dark” I punch him in the stomach

“You’re constantly frowning. You don’t bother about anyone. You’ve got energy that you use to write very sad writings. You dyed your hair black. You have a Buddhist flag stuck to the ceiling of your room. You listen to Kurt Cobain because he committed suicide and you laugh at every single joke that you hear.” He pauses as if thinking and looks at the sky for a few seconds “Yeah, you’re pretty dark” he smiles a sly smile

“And I thought you kidnapped my Jason, there he is the one who is always criticizing me,”

He laughs. I laugh. He drops his cigarette and it turns out I dropped it, I think maybe I dropped it while laughing. He grabs my waist, I think he’s going to kiss me, but he doesn’t, his hands go up and he pulls me into a tight hug. Kisses me on the forehead and keeps me so close to his body, it’s all like we’re the same body split into two, like two bodies and one soul. He’s my anchor in this world, what keeps my ground from shaking and opening and swallowing me whole. He keeps me going. I owe him myself. I’m his and he’s mine, and that’s enough for me.     

12:40 PM, Gavin

Florida

“She was madness, yet what kept me sane. I was death, yet what kept her alive. I made her feel special and different. She made me feel like a part of something bigger. She connected me to the world, she made me breathe the air so easily it finally felt like a friend, she made me do things that were off my limits, and she refused to believe I had any limits. She refused to believe she had limits either. She flew, like birds in the horizon before the setting sun, she let go, she was light and weightless, and she was filled with agony that appeared many times. She needed to be felt and I needed her to feel me. Perhaps my love was too much, perhaps she deserved a little more, and perhaps my love was heavy on her shoulders, perhaps I loved her for making me reach and connect to my nature, to myself, but perhaps I helped her with nothing but admitting she’s sad and empty. Perhaps I’m the reason her smiles became rare and her cries became often. Perhaps it’s all my fault. Because you never know whose fault it is.”

Freshman year is about to end, it sucks, and it needs to be over, I’ve been saving up to travel to Europe, I want to get as far away from here as possible, away from all the drama, all the stress, all the people I know, I want to take a break from all the reasons behind my frequent epileptic episodes. They were fine before, they were much better, they used to come and go occasionally, but they’ve been coming more often, and with increasing anger, stress and pain. I don’t know why, but I know they are making me weaker, I know I need to release the stress and pain in something, but even without the episodes my hands keep shaking and I can’t carve into one thin wooden sheet without hurting myself in the process. My mother thinks these injuries are an attempt of suicide and refuses to believe I am trying to end the episodes and feel lighter, happier, and more satisfied. I’ll try again I decide. I open a box filled with failures, they won’t be anymore. I will change them, I will change all of them.

I take the worst wooden plate, the thickest, the earliest failure, it has so many shallow carvings, it looks as the skin of a recently whipped slave, I carve it more I go in spirals, I connect spirals, each scar drags a spiral out of it, each spiral meets the other from any direction, from its end, its middle, its whirlpool. Some go deeper in the wood than others, some are very shallow. The board is filled with spirals now, they look like an attempt to hypnotize someone, but they aren’t. They’re an attempt to make me feel better about myself, to prove to myself that I am still capable of the things I used to do. I am still strong, I may refuse to have the surgery, I may be sick to the core, I may have more episodes each day more than you can count on your hands, but I am strong, I will remain strong, I will prove that to myself. My weakest points hide while I carve, because they’re defended by art, I tame my demons and erase my fears the moment I hold a wooden plate, colors, and tools.

‘I am Gavin and I am strong.’ I tell myself

‘I am Gavin and I will remain strong’ I insist

‘I am Gavin and I am strong’ I repeat

‘I am Gavin and I will remain strong.’ I hold powder colors and watercolors and oil colors with pastel shades and bright ones with smooth textures and rough ones. This is who I am.

Author's Note

I appreciate critics, please alert me with my faults and tell me the pros and cons, be sure to review on the chapter and rate it, thanks in advance!

Reviews

[AshMack]

I find myself wondering if this is based on a true story. The emotion behind the father's departure is so realistic.Realistic in the sense that I have a similar story about my own parents divorce. You certainly know how to capture the readers attention. My only con would be that some of your sentences seem to drag on. Keep them a little more sharp and concise and you have a really great story to be told.

[Nourhane]

thanks for the advice and I'm sorry to disappoint but this is not exactly true, it's just me haha, thanks again!