The Essence of Water

NEW VERSION Chapter 2

My house is nothing like Trish's. It's an old two story brick farm house. The floors are old worn wood that creak almost everywhere you step, unless you spent hours figuring out where they don't. I might be guilty of that. I don't have any siblings. I don't even have parents to welcome me home. Instead I have two guardians who adopted me for the soul reason that the government pays them a fat check every year for taking care of me.

"Adie?" I hear Gretchen call from the kitchen. She's an old spirit in the way that the kitchen is her domain. She sees is as a failure if dinner isn't on the table when Henry gets in from the fields.

I slip off my flip flops and hook them on my fingers. "Yes it's me," I call. I don't move away from the door. Gretchen's silhouette appears in the doorway at the end of the hall.

"Where have you been?" she asks.

"I was out with Rag and Trish," I tell her even though she knows already who I was with. She flips the hallway light on and suddenly everything comes into focus. The hallway has a small desk with a telephone perched on it, above it there are frames of photos from Gretchen and Henry's younger years. There a photo's of their two full grown children and their families. One could search all day and they'd never know that I lived in this house or that I existed at all.

"Why are you wearing those clothes? What happened?" she demands.

"We were down at the river, Rag was goofing off and I fell into the water when he bumped into me. It's no big deal, Trish lent me her clothes and Tyler just dropped me off. That's why I'm late. I'm sorry," I know it's better to apologize now even though I've done nothing wrong.

Gretchen puts her hands on her hips. She's wearing one of her old flower print dresses, the one that went out of style about forty years ago. She's barefoot and her curly peppered hair is pulled back in a messy bun. There are two pencils sticking out of it. She looks like she has antlers but I refrain from saying anything of the sort. Not unless I wanted a wooden spoon to find its way against my rear. She always says I'm never too old for a good old fashioned beating. I don't doubt for a second that she believes it and would follow through with the threat.

"Well go get dressed. Henry will be home any second and I'll not have you delaying dinner. Now shoo." She turns the light off and goes back into the kitchen. I breathe a sigh of relief and take the stairs two at a time.

My room isn't really my room. I'm more like a temporary residence, as evidence by the fact that there is nothing here that belongs to me except the clothes that are folded in the dresser under the window. The room belonged to their daughter when she grew up here. There are photos of horses and old actors on the walls. The flowered wallpaper has begun to peel away at the edges. I've never been allowed to touch or change anything in this room, because when my interview comes and I turn eighteen I will be released from my guardians care. It will be my responsibility to start my own new life and I have no doubt Gretchen will kick me out of her house. Unless the virus is found to be harboring itself inside my blood, then something else entirely will happen to me.

I shake my head, refusing to think about it. Tyler is wrong. I am not a Misfit. I'm not. But even I'm beginning to lose sight of things that were once so clear to me. If I'm not a Misfit, then how do I explain what happened to me today? I shake my head again. I don't want to think about the ocean.

Keep it together Adie. The virus kills people. It doesn't turn them into water filtering mutant freaks.

I change into my own clothes. They aren't much to look at, mostly old hand me downs of what Gretchen's daughter used to wear. Old jeans, most of them are bleached and ripped, and loose t-shirts that never quite properly fit. Gretchen's daughter wasn't only taller than me, but she had bigger boobs too.