3. HIGH NOON: WORTH THE RISK
Dax
I’m relieved that Ava’s still here when I return to the cave with some water and berries, but her eyes are closed and she hasn’t moved at all. My heart leaps in my chest, and I freeze to watch for the rise and fall of her stomach. Each time I see movement, doubt makes me think I’ve imagined it, so I kneel next to her and place my ear by her nose. Warm air coats my cheek and clears the paranoid thoughts from my head.
I pull up a small log and sit, conflicted on whether I want her to wake up and catch me sitting here studying her. But I can’t help it. To see a real girl after so long is like being reunited with a fluffy wad of cotton candy at the annual fair—forgetting how good the real thing is until a pinch of the wispy sugar melts on my tongue so fast I’m craving more.
It’s not like I’m one of those guys who think of women as an object to devour. I’m simply enjoying this moment and reminding myself of all the little things that make girls likeable, since Roxy is proof that all girls aren’t made of sugar and spice and everything nice. Besides, there’s not much else to do unless I snoop through more of her things.
The backpack beside me grabs my attention and stares at me with two pull-tab eyes and a zipper mouth. I try to ignore it, but the thing grows in my peripheral vision and waits for me to rationalize the decision in my mind. Why not? I can start by looking for medical supplies.
Quietly, I slide the bag close. Underneath the purse I went through earlier, there’s a sketchpad and some colored pencils, a magazine, some book with a buff vampire guy on the front, some clothes, an orange, a box of granola bars, and… a journal.
Jackpot.
It’s hidden on the bottom under everything else in hopes of not being discovered. The sketchpad is a safer bet if I get caught, but my eyes are fixed on the leather-bound journal that suddenly feels heavy in my hand while guilt and fear battle with my curiosity.
Idiot! I know this is a very bad idea because Roxy caught me reading her diary when we were kids and that ended badly. It’s not like I was going to use the info against her or make fun of her hopes and dreams; I just wanted some insight to what kind of thoughts were spinning around in that hamster-wheel brain of hers.
She got crazy mad and every entry after that (yes, I peeked) consisted of morbid drawings of me missing body parts after encountering various forms of violence, or detailed writings about every embarrassing or annoying habit I ever had, including a few that didn’t even exist. Now the memory makes me smile. There was actually a time when I worried about the content of that journal getting out and preventing me from being seen by prospective girlfriends as anything but repulsive.
But I guess some lessons are never learned because a quick glance at Ava’s sleeping face gives me the encouragement I need to open the front cover. I catch a pressed red rose that starts to slip from inside and replace it, then lift the book to sniff the faded floral scent before turning the page. A neatly written journal entry stares back at me.
June 1
Dear diary…blah, blah, blah blah. Dr. Blevins claims this stupid journal will help me express the feelings I’ve pent up inside for the last two weeks. I think she assumes I’m angry because I don’t like to talk about what happened. I’m not. I just figure what’s done is done and no amount of talking or sharing is going to change that. Mother always nagged me to keep a journal, but I never saw a need to remind myself of trivial things I spend most days trying to forget. But now I’m being forced to despite my stubborn resistance. I’ve decided to just get this over with so next visit I can hand the journal over like an obedient student, let her read my thoughts, and make of them what she will.
Looking back, I realize I wasted most of that precious day and threw away valuable time that can never be replaced. I think I slept in until noon, exhausted from the stress of my high school graduation the day before, and remained in my pajamas until I went to bed again at midnight. The only things I accomplished all day were finishing a marathon of chick-flicks and a pint of Ben and Jerry’s, like some lame attempt to rebel against seventeen years of spending each day practicing, organizing, studying, and doing everything right to meet the perfect-daughter expectation held by myself, not my parents. I am a classic case of Only-Child Syndrome according to Mrs. Blevins.
Anyway, the shrill chime of the doorbell startled me awake, and I contemplated not answering. The glowing digital numbers on my alarm clock said 2:23am. I’d only been asleep for a couple of hours so I closed my eyes again, cursing the neighborhood kids I thought must be pulling pranks on their unsuspecting neighbors in the middle of the night. But after the third chime and a round of impatient knocking, I finally got up.
I flung the door open, hoping to catch the little punks in action, and expected to see the trees in the front yard draped with garlands of toilet paper. Instead, two officers stood in the dim glow of the porch light. I scanned the street, looking for any signs of thug-type activity, but as soon as the officers asked to come in, I knew it was something much worse. I told them my parents weren’t home, but I realized from their lack of response the information was something they already knew.
Six hours earlier, my parents left our small town of Glenwood Springs to drive to Denver, a larger city four hours away to catch a flight headed to Mexico. I’ll admit I was more excited about staying home alone for a week than I was for them, and I even wished they’d be gone longer, which makes me think of my father telling me once to be careful what I wished for.
My heart beat wildly as the officers sat down in the two chairs across from me where I sat on the couch. The younger one, Officer Wilson, fidgeted with a pamphlet he held in his hand. He wouldn’t look at me, only at Officer Sanders, who I recognized as a parent of a girl on my school soccer team. He cleared his throat quietly before speaking.
“Your parents have been in an accident,” he said gently.
I spoke before he could say any more. “So you’re here to take me to the hospital, right? Let me grab my shoes.”
“No, Ava,” he said before I could get up, and those two words felt heavier than a cinder block on my chest. Officer Wilson covered his mouth with one hand and stared at the floor. Officer Sanders continued. “I’m sorry, but your parents didn’t survive.”
The sentence hit me like a bag of cement to the gut. The air whooshed from my lungs, and a pinch grew inside my chest. Stunned, I looked at Officer Wilson, whose wet eyes confirmed the harsh news his partner just delivered. I think I asked them what happened. They informed me as gently as possible that my parents were killed when my dad lost control of the car and careened off a cliff a few miles outside of town.
I sat on the couch completely numb, not hearing anything after the initial news of my parents’ death. I could see Officer Sanders’ mouth moving, presumably giving me advice for dealing with the tragedy and offering his condolences the best he knew how. Officer Wilson sat the ‘How to Deal with Death’ pamphlet on the coffee table in front of me, the same one he’d been fidgeting with moments before I heard the devastating news.
I felt trapped in a terrible nightmare, one where you scream inside your head to wake up but your eyelids seem too heavy to lift, so you wait out the torture until eventually your eyes pop open and you lay still as your pulse slows and everything returns to normal. Only this was a nightmare I couldn’t wake up from. And nothing will ever be normal again.
“Is there someone we can call for you?” Officer Wilson asked, but I didn’t answer.
In that moment, I realized that I didn’t have anyone to call. My mother homeschooled me until my freshman year when, after a series of quiet arguments between my parents behind closed doors, my father won and I was allowed to attend public school. I never knew the exact reason my mother had been so against it, but after overhearing her mutter words like, “unsafe” and “risky” before being shushed by my father during their private disagreements, I chalked it up to her over-protectiveness. The compromise was that I almost never attended social
activities unsupervised with the exception of one school dance and sports practice after school, which put a screeching halt on my social life.
I don’t think she trusted people in general, and she didn’t allow me to participate in the popular forms of social media like Facebook because of her fear of sexual predators and identity thieves. She even went so far as to keep my picture out of the yearbook and school paper to satisfy her paranoia. So no sleepovers or parties meant no close friends, and I have no relatives to speak of since my mom’s only sibling, a sister named Vivianne, died the year I was born. My dad was an only child like me, and both sets of grandparents passed away when I was young. The obituary for Veronica and Dale Starr shouted to the world what I already knew. The only living survivor is me.
I peek up at Ava and wonder if grief drove her to do something insanely stupid to end up here. I can relate to being parentless. My mom took off when I was three and left me with my dad because she thought a boy needed a father figure. At least, that’s what she told him, but I know better.
My parents met at a rock concert when my dad was a freshman in college and she was an aspiring actress. They had a short fling before they decided to get married in Vegas one fantastic weekend, both too young to realize they had nothing in common besides their taste in music. A year after I was born, my mom decided she preferred to be a free spirit than the housewife of a soon-to-be architect, so she left. She sent an occasional postcard telling us where she was the first three years, and then we never heard from her again.
It wasn’t until I got a little older and read the backs of the postcards that I figured out she was just a groupie who left her plain husband and only child to chase the dream of being some rock star’s wife and traveled around the world in search of the next big party. My dad married Roxy’s mom when I was five, and although I wished I’d gained a stepbrother instead, it was good to see my dad happy again.
I turn the page to read the next entry.
June 3
Here goes my second entry. Shocker, I know. But Dr. Blevins luuuved that I’d written something last week. I half expected her to put on a party hat and whip out some blowouts and horns by the way her face lit up when I showed her the page. I must admit I felt better after I wrote it, but is it weird that I prefer to talk to a piece of lined paper instead of a real person? She asked me to write something else before our appointment tomorrow, and I planned to show up empty-handed until last night. If I didn’t know better, I’d think Blevins was best friends with my current enemy—fate. When I informed her I would only write about significant events in my life, which are normally few and far between, she smiled and said in her calm, robot voice, “Perfect, Ava. But I’m sure you will find much significance in the weeks to come. This is a new chapter in your life, one that will bring many great things to share.”
So now I’m playing the game of fate like a game of chess, with Blevins officiating. Fate moves in and calls checkmate, so I have to find some way to deal with it. I’m definitely being outplayed. Fate’s first move was the death of my parents, and now the secret I discovered last night has caught me off-guard again.
I’m not sure what made me decide to go in the attic last night. I might have gone sooner if my mother’s friend from work, Mrs. Hansen, hadn’t been hovering over me like a bumblebee. I must have given the officer her name that night because then she was here, offering to stay with me for a few days and make sure I was all right. Days turned into weeks, but yesterday, I finally convinced her I was sane enough for her to return home.
I waited exactly five minutes after she left, just in case she forgot something, and then I ran upstairs two steps at a time. I guess I needed closure, a break from the grief that had completely consumed me. I just wanted to be alone and sit among my parents’ things.
I hesitated in front of the retractable pull-down stairs that led to the attic, a place full of treasures and memories of forgotten times. My mother’s familiar voice cautioning me to climb the stairs carefully was absent, replaced with the creak released from each step under the weight of my feet as I climbed the stairway. The air smelled damp and musty, mixed with a faint hint of cedar and mothballs. Small bits of light peered in from the octagon-shaped stained glass window, casting an auburn glow and illuminating what was once my playroom.
My eyes fell on the big, cedar chest full of gowns my mother wore to black-tie events before I was born. I spent hours as a child twirling around in those dresses and admiring my reflection in my grandmother’s large, oval mirror that still stands in the corner.
A smaller trunk full of purses and handbags sat pressed up against the bigger chest, the way a small child clings to a mother’s leg in fear of separation. It saddened me to see the film of dust that covered them, undisturbed for the last ten years. I was searching for more memories when I noticed the cigar box, looking out of place among my parent’s things. Light beams stretched in from the window like long, bony fingers, pointing it out to me from across the room, yet I’d never noticed it before. Curiosity drew me closer, and I pulled the box from a top shelf, where it sat next to my father’s old college books.
I blew a thin layer of dust off and lifted the lid. At first glance, the old photographs looked like duplicates I’d seen in our family album. Most of the pictures were of my mother and Aunt Vivianne together, but then I came to a few of Vivianne with a man I’d never seen before, and one with her holding a baby. These were definitely not in our family album. In these pictures, my aunt’s long, blonde hair was cropped short and dyed black. She was almost unrecognizable.
Below the pictures, I found clipped newspaper articles describing the graphic details involving my aunt’s controversial and mysterious death. When Mother mentioned that Vivianne died in an accident the year after I was born, I assumed she meant a car accident. But she died from falling off a bridge, and the controversy seemed to be whether she jumped on her own. The articles said she left a suicide note, but an unreliable witness surfaced who said he saw someone else on the bridge with her before she jumped. From what I can tell, the mystery still remains unsolved.
I found two official-looking papers at the bottom of the box. Unfolding the top one, I saw my birth certificate, but the name on the line where my mother’s should be was replaced with Vivianne’s name, and the line where my father’s should be was blank. The birth certificate was completely different from the one surrounded by footprints and pink ribbon, arranged neatly in my baby book sitting on the bookshelf downstairs.
The second paper was an adoption certificate complete with Mother and Father’s notarized signatures, testifying as proof to its validity. They adopted me from Vivianne almost a year before she died.
I removed a stack of letters Vivianne wrote to my mother, each one stored neatly in the original envelope. They were dated starting shortly after I was adopted and ending one day before Vivianne’s death. I read through them one by one, looking for clues that would lead me to the truth. But there was nothing. No information about the reason behind Vivianne’s decision to give me up, or the reason my parents had hidden my adoption from me. In fact, there was no mention of me at all, as though I didn’t exist. The peace I went to the attic in search for was replaced by the burden of an unspoken secret. And last night, my parent’s secret became mine.
Being orphaned at eighteen is overwhelming. Lonely. I want to move somewhere new and find a way to forget about the accident. Any place has to be better than staying in the same house I’ve lived in my whole life where time seems to have stopped mid-tick. My dad’s briefcase still sits by the front door, and the newspaper from that morning waits to be read on the floor next to his recliner. The glass of water my mother drank from before she woke up for the last time still remains on the side table next to her bed.
The one place I love as much as my hometown is San Diego. Besides, California seems to be the place most people go to start over and leave the past behind. And this is my plan. I haven’t thought long and hard about
it. I just woke up this morning and decided to leave Glenwood Springs to head for San Diego. Mrs. Hansen has agreed to watch the house until I am ready to come back and deal with my parent’s things. In exactly two days, I’ll board a plane and hope my bad luck curse doesn’t follow me to San Diego.