Blood and Picket Fences

The Romantics: Karoline Chapter 1

Kara held the picture frame tightly as she laid haphazardly across her freshly made bed. Her long blonde hair spread around her in a halo, her echo filling the room with the sound of Halsey. Staring up at the familiar face Kara let out a sigh her index finger trailing along the image of the girl in the photograph, bringing it towards her face she could almost smell the vibrant flowers surrounding her look alike. The same blonde locks, the same blue eyes, peachy skin, and slightly hooked nose. But this girl had freckles and thicker lips. Close but not the same. Not to mention the photo 17 years too old to be the teen lounging in the Florida bedroom. Rolling onto her stomach Kara placed the photo carefully in her large blue plastic suitcase. Covering the precious item with more of the freshly ironed clothes Ida had prepared for her trip. The case barely able to close as she pulled on the thick metal clasps she trusted to keep her life safe. The 16 year-old's stomach swirling as she put the roller case on the floor pulling the handle out so she could safely rest the backpack on top securing the straps so maneuvering through the airport would be easier. She couldn't help but rummage through her bag double checking for the third time this morning that her passport, ID, banknotes, euros and ticket were still safely protected in their respective spots. It felt strange leaving her credit card at home, but it wouldn't do much in Berlin and she was just as likely to lose it than need it.

Kara rubbed her hands together nervously as she stared at herself in her bedroom mirror pulling her hair behind her ears as she tried to calm her nerves. It was finally time. The letters from her grandparents resting on her dresser. Their penmanship perfectly scripted German. She hadn't seen them since she had been an infant. Not since her father left with her and never came back. He still couldn't. The ghost of her mother haunting him even to this day, the memory of her sunshine excruciating in his heart.

Karoline would be 17 by the end of her trip, the same age her mother had been when she'd died. Complicated birth. Anja died and left behind something he hadn't been prepared for: his daughter. He'd been only a freshman at the time in college but had transferred just the same, taking Karoline with him and little else to his new college. Some of Kara's best memories were in their London flat where her school uniform was one of the most expensive things they owned. She sometimes found herself missing the rainy English weather. Those days where free time was spent curled up with a highly abused Judy Bloom while her father typed away at his outdated typewriter. "It's all part of the process, you can never gain inspiration from a computer, you have to feel the words," he'd always tell her when she'd laugh at him and try to get him to upgrade to something this decade. No, her father was forever a coffee loving, typewriting, hipster writer. Secretly working on what he declared to be the next Tolstoy, between popping out incredibly popular murder novels. So popular that the flat suddenly felt crowded and anyways her father now made more money than they could spend, his books appearing alongside Stephen King and Tom Clancy. So he'd deemed their next adventure exactly the middle of nowhere in Florida. "If it had been good enough for Hemingway," He'd always say, even though they'd ended up south of Miami not even that close to the Florida Keys. Yet, Florida had been good to them, the beach life suited them, salty air and seclusion. The house had not been suburban when he'd bought it eight years ago but the town had grown a little bit, which they always felt gave it charm even if he'd meant for an isolationist ideal stuck between beach and swamp... Which to give it credit it still was. Now though it was time to go back. At least, it was time for Karoline to go back. She needed this, the closure and the adventure of her homeland, the lights of Berlin, the opportunity to reconnect with her family and have the chance to get to know the woman who gave birth to her. She was a romantic, hoping it would help her figure out who she was. A Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants moment when the heroine goes off on a summer vacation to only realize she is in a coming of age novel. At least that's what Kara yearned for. She'd miss her dad, there was no one quite like him, or as eccentric to be perfectly honest... They never spent much time apart, he couldn't write without her, she was his lucky charm. She suspected that wasn't the case and for his publisher's mental health alone she held her fingers crossed. It might be hard to spend so much time away from him, but her suitcase was packed with his summer reading list for her. Heavy with Romantic period poetry. John Keats, William Wordsworth, and William Butler Yeats to keep her company when the loneliness might try and ruin her otherwise perfect adventure.