Chapter 1

And so it begins...

Chapter 1

 

 

“Raggazan felt the sword gripped tightly in his sweaty hands. It was now or never. He lunged forward with a speed belying his heavy build and struck the giant with both hands. The giant retaliated, using its lumbering hands to trap Raggazan in his grasp. The warrior despaired for his life. No one could save him. Just then, another war cry sounded out and Lattina, with her golden hair flowing in the wind, leaped into battle. There was hope! Together, they raised their swords and…”

 

“Miss Bronte,” Mrs. Foggerty’s clipped voice jerked me away from my book, “Glad to see you decided to join the class. Would you mind giving the answer?” She smirked in that I’m-a-teacher-who-isn’t-paid-enough-and-I-see-you-weren’t-listening-so-now-I’ll-boost-my-self-esteem-by-embarrassing-you way that she had down to a tee. I glanced up at the board, feeling my cheeks turn as red as my hair. Which is to say, pretty red. To be honest, I didn’t even know which question we were on. Something about using properties of trigonometry to help “Jim” decide which airplane route to fly. You know, the super important stuff.

            “Um…42?” A few kids giggled, one gawky guy wearing a graphic tee smiled at me, but most of the class had sunk too deeply into their habitual school time hibernation to notice anything. At least I was expanding my brain by reading or whatever. Mrs. Foggerty shook her head and proceeded to go into an in-depth analysis of the problem, apparently oblivious to the fact that no one cared. Clearly, she hadn’t read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

            I swear I tried to pay attention to the problem, but we wouldn’t even have to do it if this “Jim” wasn’t too cheap just to fly direct. My attention wandered to the clock on the wall. Thirty-six minutes to freedom. I watched the second hand ticking, thinking how book characters did this all the time. It was impossible. No one has that kind of patience. I gave up after 122 seconds. Yes, I counted. My book was beckoning me from under the table, but I resisted. Real life was more important than fiction. Or so the proverbial “they” said. The problem was that real life sucked at editing.

            Finally, the director of life gave me a break, and the bell, blessed by generations, rang out. The student body flooded out of the room, the relief palpable. I hefted up my bag and followed the mass of humanity out into warm early May afternoon in New York City. High schoolers swarmed this way and that, to subways and taxis and Starbucks’. I followed the latter group, looking out for my “friend”, Hattie. I don’t put the quotes around “friend” to be mean, she’s as good a friend as I’ve ever had. It’s just that we kind of hang out by default, mostly because she’s too shy to hang out with cool people and I’m too, well, not cool. Before I could locate her however, I heard a jeering voice from the front of the coffee shop.

            “La’aaaaaa,” the voice said in an utterly sickening sing-song. I turned around. No one who even remotely likes me calls me by my given name. Yes, my given name is La’a. Yes, it is pronounced Ladasha. No, my family is not an underprivileged black family. Yes, my parents thought it would be funny. No, it is not funny.

            “Hello,” I said warily to the blond girl with the pimple who had said the name that must not be spoken. “What do you want?” This just wasn’t going to end well.

            “Why’d your parents name you that? Are you adopted? Can I call you Lala?”

            “Um…no. Please…” I could feel my face turning red again. I wanted to tell her she was being rude. I wanted to say it was none of her business. I wanted to tell her to piss off. “Uh…I gotta go,” I motioned vaguely to where I had just spotted Hattie, mercifully several tables away. I walked away as quickly as possible without running, feeling the flush in my cheeks creeping down my neck, cursing my cowardice.

            “Hey, Dash! What’s wrong?” Hattie could tell I was uncomfortable, her quiet little voice sounded concerned. I sat down. Hattie Milton was very petite, very cute with her perfect brown bob, and pretty dang unobservant. Come to think of it, that was probably why we were still friends.

            “Just people calling me La’a again,” It wasn’t the real issue, but I’m a good liar and Hattie’s gullible. I wasn’t about to tell her that I was a coward. That would have taken too much bravery. “I mean it would even have been better if I’d been called Lapostrophea or something. At least that’s more grammatically correct.”

            “You’re weird.” Hattie took a sip of the latte she must have been getting while I over there embarrassing myself. This was a pretty common sort of interaction between us. You see, Hattie’s relatively normal. She likes boys and instagram and lattes with her name on them. She’s just too shy to get in with the crowd that she probably should be running with. So she hangs out with me, mostly because I don’t mind her awkward silences; they give me time to think. I, on the other hand, am exceptionally weird. Most of my life has been taken up by fictional characters from about the time my mom taught me to read at the age of four. Twelve years later, and I still had far more friends between pages than at school. I suppose my withdrawal could be considered a way of coping with the events of May 7, 2010, but it could also have been that I just didn’t like people very much. Hattie broke me from my reverie with a shy cough. You’d think after two years, we’d have progressed past the “shy cough” stage of friendship, but that’s Hattie for you.

            “Do you want to come over to my house tonight to work on that service learning paper? If, you know, you want…I mean you don’t have to…” She finished nervously. I thought for a moment. It was tempting. A legit excuse to be out of my house, tonight especially. And yet, I couldn’t imagine my dad being very happy about it. Plus, I’d done the paper the weekend before when my brother had brought friends over. Come to think of it, it would have been better to bear my brother’s friends and save the excuse for tonight…oh well.

            “Sorry, Hattie. I’m already finished with it. I think I might have a family thing tonight to go to. E-mail me the link if you want me to proof yours, though,” I started to stand up. It had begun to rain.

            “Ooh is it a birthday or something?” Hattie asked, uncharacteristically interested. Just my luck.

            “Something like that…” I muttered, beginning to walk away. She didn’t pursue me. Not that interested after all. I almost smiled at the bitter irony of her question. I suppose it was a bit like a birthday of sorts.

            The rain outside was only a light drizzle. My books wouldn’t get too wet. It was only about ten blocks to my family’s apartment. On the way, I listened to Don’t Fear the Reaper by Blue Oyster Cult. Totally my brother’s fault, but it seemed to fit the mood of the day in a kind of morbid way. I lip synched the words and stared into what little of the slate grey sky was left visible by the slate grey buildings.

            In a matter of minutes, a little fumbling with damp keys and a heavy bag let me into our modest apartment. By all standards it was reasonably nice. Not fancy, but not too cheap either. It cost about ten times as much in New York City as it would have anywhere else. Right now it was empty. My dad was presumably at the office, my brother at college, my mom as conspicuously absent as she always was. Not bothering to take off my wet shoes, I trekked into the cute, slightly-middle-school room in which I slept. I flopped onto my bed, staring blankly at a Lord of the Rings poster on my wall. I hated it. Not Lord of the Rings, that’s sacrilege. I hated the house. I hated how it made everything look like it was normal, that it was okay. It hadn’t changed in three years. The only thing that hadn’t, really. The world had fallen apart, and the house had had the gall to stay well kept and serene, the photographs smiling, the clocks moving. I had wanted it to stop for a while, all of it. Now I wanted it to change. Nothing was like before, and if it hadn’t stopped, it should at least have the courtesy to keep going. Making a sudden decision, I rolled off the bed, grabbing my wallet out of my bag at the same time. It was pretty amazingly athletic, but the house, as usual, did not appreciate it.

            I was out the front door again in seconds, walking the 517 steps to the imposing building with the plaque labeling it as a Public Library. I have no idea how many times I’ve made that short walk, but it has to be in the mid thousands. I don’t know how I could have stood my life for so long without that sanctuary nearby.  Up the worn, rain slicked steps, through the arching doors, past the book drop, bathrooms, and reception desk.  Into the library. The smell is always the first thing that hits me. That dusty musk that seems somehow to be both long dead and immortal. That timeless smell that every library worth its salt in the history of ever has possessed.

            I walked through the maze of towering, teetering shelves, just breathing, letting time dissolve. Days like that, I didn’t need to read. I could absorb it all through my nose and skin, ears and eyes. The infinite worlds calling to me, adventure and tragedy and comedy and romance, fantasy and fiction and biography, somehow sitting harmoniously one on top of another. In them, the days were brighter, the storms stronger, the heroes braver, the villains crueler. I loved them all.

            No one else could understand my obsession with books. For my dad, their heartbreak was never worth their joy. Once my brother had read one, he felt he had read them all. Hattie didn’t like the ones that didn’t have happy endings. My teachers didn’t like the ones without a good moral. None of them could see the power in every story, no matter how it was written, where it was set or what it was about. They are all windows into worlds, every single one of them. And who are we, to raise one world above another? Imagine what you would think if someone told you your world was poorly written or that your life didn’t end poetically enough.

            My fingers brushed along broken spines as I walked silently down the aisles. I need not fear any reprimands from the librarians, they all knew me. They probably thought there was something a bit wrong with me because of all the time I spent there. Welcome to the club. I pulled out my phone to check the time. 5:42. Crap. My dad was probably already home from work. I needed to get back. I looked wistfully at the rows of old friends one more time before heading for the door. No reason to check anything out. I could get something tomorrow after I finished my current book.

            Five minutes later, I was yet again fumbling with wet keys. The rain was picking up and the temperature had dropped. I let myself in, careful to take off my shoes this time. Dad was in the kitchen. My dad was short; he used to be considered a little round. His hair, red like mine, was beginning to recede, and laugh lines had begun to fall into a frown. He seemed wilted, a newspaper spread in front of him. He appeared to be reading, except his eyes weren’t moving.

            “Hey, Dad. I’ll be in my room,” I mumbled as I sidled past him into the hallway. He grunted in response. My Dad hardly ever spoke anymore, and his one-syllable answers effectively masked his prodigious vocabulary. I guess I couldn’t really blame him. We all had our methods. Dad just chose to sort of ignore this new world. Lucky him.

            Upon entering my bedroom, I was met with an unpleasant, though not totally unexpected sight. My brother, Will (notice the normal name), was sprawled over my poorly made bed, a loopy grin on his handsome, surfer-guy kind of face.

            “Get out of my freaking room, Will! I’ll tell Dad!” Ok. Probably pretty childish, but I’d like to say my nineteen year old, theoretically adult, brother on my bed caused the regression.

            “Come on, Dash,” Will rolled his eyes, pinching the hideous flower on my pillow, “Ya know Dad doesn’t give a s**t anyway. When was the last time any of us even had a proper conversation. It’s…It’s kinda funny, actually, how screwed up we are. I mean…we were so normal…bet someone could write one of those emo books you like about us. The Brontes book 3: When Everyone Finally Lost Their S**t. Or maybe it’s more of a sit-com…”

            “Dude, are you stoned?”

            “Nooooo…”

            “Liar,” I smacked him with the stupid pillow, “Leave my stuff alone and get back to school where you can screw up your life along with the rest of our elite generation. You and Dad drive me crazy. Some of us want to keep living life. All those stupid parties and crap don’t really make you any different from Dad, You know you’re hiding just as much as he is,”

            “Oh yeah, so that makes your bibliophilic tendencies and crazy-a*s physical punishments healthy, does it? At least I’m having fun with my life,” He tried to throw the pillow back at me, but missed. It went sailing into a Spelling Bee trophy from When I Still Cared About That Crap. making it shatter on the floor. Good riddance.

            “Dude, your aim is screwed by all that stuff you take. Just get a cab to school. You have an excuse to ditch this place tonight. Why’d you even come over, anyway? This is always the classic night to ‘showcase how messed up the Brontes are,’”

            Will shook his head, the grin sliding off his face. For a moment he almost looked sober. Minor miracles, “I wanted to see you, sis,” He stuck out his tongue for effect, but the emotion seemed to be genuine. I shifted a little awkwardly, unused to the realness in my generally surreal existence.

            “Thanks, I guess. Now get out, before Dad sees you like this. He might not talk about it, but he still wants you to graduate,” I grabbed his arm, helping pull him up before shoving his much taller frame towards the door, hoping Dad was too lost within himself to hear.

            “Back to NYU then, and the furtherment of academic excellence and innovation!” Will quoted, his voice dripping with sarcasm and his cocky grin firmly back in place as he walked past our unmoving father, not even bothering to keep his voice down.

            The front door closed behind his back, and I flopped down on the still warm bed. I loved my brother. I really did. And he was marginally more tolerable than my father, whom I also loved, but that bar was pretty low. I rubbed my face absently, allowing myself a moment of self-pity. My by all initial appearances utterly average life was majorly screwed up. My father and brother were both stuck in the past, on a sort of loop, continuing the patterns that had kept their lives bearable for three years. Barely bearable. Me, I wanted to move on. I couldn’t help but think that if I broke the loop, something good could finally happen. And if it didn’t, even bad was better than that lowest standard: okay. Really though, that was just the kind of thinking I’d have liked to have. I wasn’t nearly brave enough to take that leap.

            I reached over the side of the bed, rooting around in my backpack until I unearthed the book I’d been reading during math. In my haste, I hadn’t marked the page. With a possibly overly dramatic sigh, I combed the book, wary of spoilers. Not that the book had many. The plot arc was utterly predictable. Still, the world was beautiful. I lost myself in it, watching the battle scenes play out before my eyes, casting and directing and editing the movie in my head. I was pleasantly surprised by a plot twist I had not seen coming, and my eyes moved faster and faster as the night wore on. I felt good.

            “Dash! You need to eat something,” For the second time that day, my name put an unhappy end to my reading.

            “Coming, Dad. Give me a minute,” Right, food. I supposed I was a bit hungry. Characters in books seem to eat about half as much as real people, unless they’re at some kind of lavish feast that makes your mouth water. On reflection, that was probably because eating, for the most part, is monotonous. I wished someone could edit it out for me.

            I stretched slowly, letting the nearly finished book fall onto the bed before I rolled off of it, hitting the floor with a thunk. I got up, still stretching, and headed into the kitchen.

            Absently, I grabbed a yoghurt out of the fridge, too lazy to make anything.

            “You sure you shouldn’t eat more?” Oh my God, a full sentence. My sarcasm levels were apparently on high.

            “Nah. Not really hungry,” I stuck some yoghurt in my mouth, and casually started retreating back to my room. I couldn’t handle my Dad and his quiet pain, not tonight. Every time I spent time with him, it wore me out a little more. I guess we were just too different. He was so passive, and I…I needed something more, I needed an outburst.

            “You really should get out more, like your brother. You can’t live your whole life stuck in a book,” He said it mildly, the way he says everything. I’m not entirely sure what hit my buttons. It might have been the misjudged comparison to my brother, the hint that I was the only one not dealing. It was definitely the slight on my fictional characters. Weirdly, I laughed.

            “Oh yeah… Cause Will’s dealing so well, going out all time. He’s killing himself, Dad! But you can’t see that. You’re too wrapped up in your own little pity party to even notice what’s happening,” I paused for a moment, judging his reaction. Come on Dad, talk to me. Couldn’t he see I needed the release? My voice rose, my anger shocking even me, “Do you think this is working? What we’re doing? News flash: it isn’t. Nothing is getting better and some day it’s gonna get worse. I’m gonna leave, Will’s gonna OD, and you’re just not gonna get up anymore! I can see it. I can see what’s going to happen. You gotta move on, Dad. Something has to change,” I was out of breath. It felt good to scream, I could feel the adrenaline pumping through me. But I wasn’t quite gone yet. I looked up at Dad a little nervously, part of me dreaming that he’d get up and hug me, tell me it would be okay, that everything would be different, we would all get better. Most of me knew what he was going to say.

            “Go to your room,” He was resigned. He didn’t look angry. That was the worst. I wanted him angry, I wanted the reaction, the confirmation that everything in him hurt as much as it did in me.

            “Why? Thought you wanted me to go party,” I spit at him. I was seething. Months, years of repressed anger spewing out. There was no going back. The floodgates were open.

            “Because I’m your father, and that is what I said,” he still looked tired, his eyes hardly even invigorated by the fight. Mine were blazing.

            “You’re lucky you don’t have to work for that status. All you had to do was bang Mom. You could check out after that,” I was backing into my room now, aware that I’d gone too far. Mom was strictly out of bounds. I didn’t even mean it, but that didn’t matter. I wanted Dad to get angry, needed to feel his fury match mine. Got my wish.

            “La’a Bronte,” He was in the doorway now. I was by the window, “You stay in this room. Stay here until I let you out or I swear I will find every one of your precious books and I will burn them all,” His face was reaching the color of his hair now, the danger palpable. His threat, though, was stupid. He was in the doorway, I wasn’t about to run past him. Where would I go? Then it hit me.

            “Try and stop me,” I taunted, reaching under my bed for a small, dusty backpack. At the same time, I flipped the safety catch on the window, shoving it open, punching out the screen. Before I could think about what I was doing, I was on the ledge, balancing precariously. My Dad’s eyes widened. The stakes suddenly much higher. The control was intoxicating.

            “What are you doing, Dash? Stop! We can fix this. We can. Everything will go back to normal. Just don’t jump,” I could hear the new-found fear in my Dad’s voice. Some part of me that I didn’t like enjoyed it. His fear hurt, but it had gone too far, everything was too out of control, to just go back.

            “I don’t want it to go back to normal. Normal doesn’t work. That’s the whole problem. You and Will are okay with this mess, you don’t mind the limbo. I can’t do it. I’m done. Something has to change, something huge,” Since when were there tears on my cheeks? “Mom died, and somehow everything just stopped. Three years. Three years. And we’re still at square one. God, can’t you see it?” The tears were coming faster now, I couldn’t stop, “The machine doesn’t work without Mom. We have to change. Stop dwelling on her, Dad. It’s time to let go of her, of all of it. It’s never coming back,” Dad was crying too now. Somehow that was strangely comforting.

            “No. That isn’t right. We can’t leave her behind. She’s still apart of this family. We can still do it. Get off of the window, sweetie, please,”

            “What family? This?” I gestured around, nearly losing my balance, “This isn’t a family, Dad. This is a freaking mental institution. I want out. You said normal. Dad, this is not normal. Mom broke us when she went. There’s nothing left. The pieces don’t fit!” Dad seemed to jerk back at that, obviously stung. But then he gathered himself, standing taller than he had in years.

            “La’a Bronte. Get off that windowsill right now.”

            “F**k you, Dad,”

 I jumped.