TIFITY

Favourable mistake

I never thought my father would be able to beat me even harder than he had done until then. But for my disgrace, he surprised me once again. My body ached as it never had before. However, I decided to prepare myself for school. "Hello darling, are you in too much pain?", my mum asked me as soon as she saw I had woken up. "Why did you come downstairs yesterday? You knew what would happen" she continued. "You're right mum, but I wanted to protect you from the ogre I have as a father", I answered. She hugged me in tears and the truth is that, even though I had saved my mother somehow, I felt bad for her. I knew she would blame herself for getting paralyzed again while the father of her children was attacking her daughter. I could never blame my mum for that, as she was just terrified by him. I couldn't even imagine the hell she had had to go through since they met.

I put the uniform on and took my bag just before leaving the house. I had no breakfast, as I was afraid to see my father that morning. That allowed me to take the train that came before the one I would take usually. That's when I thought of it. That's when I thought of skipping school and making it seem as if I had gone. My grades were falling and there was no way I could pass the course after all. "I'll lose nothing", I thought to myself.

I got off the train two stops later, instead of doing so in the one that was in front of my school. I instantly found myself surrounded by strangers. I had thoughts like: "why are all of them looking at me? am I that ugly?" or "oh my Alexis, are you stupid or something? get on the train again before everyone starts criticizing you even more". It just felt as if I was about to have the worst panic attack. Being honest, I was terrified, but I started billing some bullets and acted as if nobody was paying attention to me. That helped me to continue walking, although my legs were shaking. "I made it wow" was the first thing that came to my mind the second I entered a random cafeteria near there. I did it almost unconsciously, but taking advantage I was there, I decided to have my favourite drink; a caramel macchiato. That made me think of Evangeline. I hadn't known much about her in the past weeks, and I was sad all I could do was wait for her to get better while being in that psychiatric. Oh gosh, I missed her much more than words could ever convey. I missed our late night conversations, our walks, the hugs she gave me... Nostalgia invaded me. My family friend was the only thing I could think about at that moment, and how much it would mean to her if the door thing worked.

It was still ten o'clock in the morning, five hours left until my last class finished. "Should I go back home?", I asked myself. My dad surely had left for work at around nine and my mother was about to leave at that time too, so I thought I'd be alone at home. Suddenly, I remembered I had a brother. He was supposed to be in some friend's house, but I was afraid he'd come home any second. Although I was terrified he would tell my father if he found out I skipped school to stay home, I decided to buy a ticket to get back once I was done having my drink.

Luckily for me, nobody was at home when I arrived. I left the bag, changed clothes and went to the backyard after taking from the wardrobe the materials I needed to work on the door. It was finally the time for me to start with it.

First of all, I had to assemble everything, so I took the drawings I had made some days before. Basing on them, I started cutting the boards I would use for the door and its frame with my father's saw. Once I had all the pieces I needed ready, it was time for me to use the nails and the hammer. I would be lying if I said I was an expert when it came to using such tools. I actually hurt my hands a few times, but that wouldn't stop me from making my friend's dream come true. I knew the whole thing would take me days, so I decided to make the same move every day. I would leave "to school" before my parents did, but instead of taking the train I would hide behind the brushes next to our neighbour's house. That way, they would think I left for school and each of them would take a bus to go to work with no suspicions. My brother coming back home early was the only problem I could have.

As days passed by, the door to Tifity was coming to shape. The painting was the only thing left to do before starting with the calculations. It took me ages to paint the flowers from Boo's door, as I wanted them to be as similar as possible, but it was worth it in the end. The moment I finished painting everything, I realized it was already the time for my parents to get back home. That meant I had to hide everything in my wardrobe and clean everything before my father saw something. I left the door drying out in the backyard and I ran to my room while I could hear the door lock opening. I lied down on my bed as fast as I could one second before my mum opened the door and asked: "Hey honey, how are you doing?". "I'm alright mum", I lied. She asked me about school because, apparently, my teacher had called her saying that I didn't attend any day that week. "Where have you been all these days?" my mum asked with the most serious face she could. It took me a whole minute to reply, as I was thinking of lying about that too. But I decided to tell my mum the truth. She obviously got so mad at me, but she promised she would tell nothing to my dad. I can't even explain how much that meant to me. Nevertheless, she punished me with no hanging out on the next month's weekends. I deserved it for skipping school, so I accepted it and kept silence.

I decided to go back to school so my mum wouldn't get angrier at me for leaving it aside. I would make the most out of the weekends at home and every single class to get all the calculations done. Everybody would say I was crazy if I told them I was planning to create a black hole that would take me to another dimension. Yes, I was such a horrible student, but I was also so interested in astronomy and Stephen Hawking's studies. I admired his work so much, and I thought that taking his calculations into account, I would be able to make the door to Tifity work. I swear I tried my best to get all the answers right to make the strong gravitational acceleration I needed work for the black hole to appear. I tried to solve every single equation correctly, and I swear it made me feel so useless when I realized I had done the most stupid mistake in one of those calculations. I was just there, looking at a normal door in the middle of the night.

I didn't give up instantly as I would if it was something else. I tried my best to correct the mistake I had done, but I wasn't able to find where I had screwed up. After twelve days of trying to solve the same equations and finding no remedy for the error, I surrendered. "You don't even know how to solve two plus two, how could you think you'd be able to solve these? What a delusional child". I couldn't stop repeating myself things like that, and I felt the need to make me suffer for not being good enough for that either. I prefer to say I wouldn't have punished myself so bad if I had known the reality was different.