✓ 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐎𝐍𝐄 𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐆𝐎𝐓 𝐀𝐖𝐀𝐘, guy germaine

01. home semisweet home

❛ ━━･❪ ❁ ❫ ･━━ ❜
chapter one: home semisweet home

tw(s): none
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━━━ EVELYN ST. JAMES STICKS THE tip of her nose out the window of the yellow taxicab. New York City smelled like pure, raw, electric energy, the crisp breeze in the autumn and the frosty pinch of snow in the winter as she donned her skates and glided atop the slippery lakes and rinks. St. Paul smells slower (if that is even possible!) and softer, with the delicate raindrops that fall from the gloomy clouds and onto her chapped cheeks.

During her plane flight, she was overcome with jitters. Not because of the prospect of being alone (she has overcome that by now), but rather by the prospect of not being alone. During her time in New York City, she was able to enjoy a liberating independence. She was able to savor the feeling of being a carefree youth, roaming Central Park in the autumn and ice skating at Rockefeller Center.

When she lived in Minnesota, her mother always told her to believe in fate every night before she tucked her into bed. 'Just you wait, love. Close your eyes and fate will take you straight home.'

Home. If Evie St. James searched every book, every dictionary, every encyclopedia, she still wouldn't find a meaning of that word that is significant to her. Home. In the volumes that dwell the libraries of her mind, at least, that word has been redefined countless times over the years. Illinois was home for the first year of her life, before they moved to St. Paul, Minnesota, and into a quaint suburban house with a front porch that had a tinkling wind chime and a lovely flower garden that grew forget-me-nots (which she definitely forgot about during her short time in New York). 

St. Paul was home until she turned fifteen, around the time her past, present, and future came crashing down around her. Well, she's dramatizing things, because that's just what she does. Everyone around her will have to get used to it. But it was terrible enough that she felt that she needed to go back to the drawing board and create a whole new Evelyn St. James. And what better place to do that than New York City, where dreams come true?

And so, she packed her bags and bought a one-woman plane ticket and set off for New York. She wanted to be there for the rest of her life, hole up in a cozy apartment to do her schooling on her own before embarking on the adventures of adulthood she had only daydreamed of before then.

Fate was going to pull her home, she had thought excitedly.

Then, Evie's grandmother fell ill with pneumonia. Not a terrible illness for a strong teenager such as herself (as she'd like to boast), but for an elderly woman well into her seventies? Evie just had to go back home, she and her family decided.

So here she is, sticking her nose out of the window and observing the place she used to call home.

The cab comes to a stop and Evie hands the driver a wad of cash without a word, and he drives away. She stands for a minute, frozen in front of her house. The original wind chime is replaced by a different one; this one looks like a baby mobile with little tin cans and bells (the kind that one would attach to an adventurous dog's collar). It's pretty, but definitely the work of a twelve-or-so-year-old.

New flowers have been planted; white and pink pansies, a favorite of her mother's. The porch swing creaks the same way it always did; irksome to an outsider, but music to the ears of its owners. Evie is still trying to decide which one she is.