That Which is Unexpected

  ****

  Uncle Eric was in his early forties, Hispanic, about six feet tall with green eyes, short black hair, chiseled good looks, and a physique that implied he should be acting in a Bond film instead of working as a journalist. He looked enough like the character Nathan Drake from Naughty Dog’s Uncharted series for me to think that a video game had been released based on the exploits of Uncle Eric’s secret life. I first met Uncle Eric at my mother’s funeral when I was five years old. I don’t remember it all that well, but I do remember him walking over to where I sat quietly in the corner. He handed me an assorted bag of candy while telling me that everything was going to be okay and that I was going to live with him.

  Eric Vaele wasn’t actually my uncle. He was just a friend of my mother’s and my godfather. I never met my father so Uncle Eric was as close to a father as I was ever going to have, and he knew it. The only reason I called him Uncle Eric is because he insisted upon it after I called him dad once and he freaked out.

  In addition to playing the part of dad/uncle, Uncle Eric was also my sword fighting instructor and we would fence semi-regularly in the basement. Despite being really busy working as a journalist for Natural Geographic, he always tried to make time for me and my younger sister Chezarei (whom I call Cheza). Now, Cheza obviously isn’t my real sister. She came home with Uncle Eric after one of his business trips when I was ten years old. While Uncle Eric only took over as a guardian for me (allowing me to legally keep my last name), he adopted Cheza so she took on his last name of Vaele.

  Despite being a journalist, Uncle Eric was quite well off financially (which only added evidence to my ‘secret life’ theory). He lived in a large modern style house that had been built against a cliff side in an L-shape with the small end touching the cliff face. Although the house sat on a fifty acre plot, only five acres were fenced in with six foot high brick fencing that opened only for the wrought iron gate that separated the one hundred yards of driveway from the rest of the road.

  Eric employed two maids: Tia and Sara. Tia was the head maid and ran the house, while Sara was more of a nanny and acted as an older sister to Cheza and I. Sara took care of us and even tutored us if we needed it. She’s still serious, but tends to geek out about some things. Sara is half Scottish, half Indian, 5’6” tall, slender with black hair that stops at mid-neck level, and green eyes that are noticeable through her square-frame glasses. At a 32A, Jason described her as “a little lacking in the bust department, but she more than makes up for it with that ‘Onii-chan’ feel.”

  “I think you mean ‘Onee-chan’, not ‘Onii-chan’,” I told him.

  “No, I’m pretty sure it’s Onii-chan,” he said.

  “Oh really?” I replied. “Because last I checked, she is female and according to Yuuko-sensei, Onii is used for older brothers.”

  “I thought oni meant demon…”

  Jason has this… had this rather extraordinary ability to remember bits about everything he came across but he didn’t have the attention span to get the details. I always described him as a jack of all trades but a master of none.

  Sara was also like a substitute mother for me when I first moved into my uncle’s house. Hard thing to ask of a sixteen year old but looking back, I say she did a pretty good job. I used to tell people that she was my mom, just to see the looks on their faces when they work out that Sara can’t be more than eleven years older than me. She became the caring and supportive older sister that she is today, when I was seven years old.

  ****

  “Flight 303 non-stop to Phoenix is now boarding those with ‘preferred members’ cards.”

  Chapter 4: Do we even like Funions?

  After settling into seat 5C, I start to think about my Uncle Eric and my family again.