The Lunacy Fringe

One

Part One

Part Two

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When I was seventeen years old, I stood on the shores of Lake Michigan for the very last time. I was only three years old when my dad took us from the sunny beaches of Southern California to Detroit. I had no real memories of California and always considered Michigan my true home. I knew the streets better than the lines on my palms. I visited that very lake every summer as I grew up, and then I was expected to say goodbye. No warning. Just like that.

A week later, I was standing on a different shore. Lake Michigan was large enough to sometimes feel like you were staring out at the ocean. But the real sea was different. A canvas of greens and blues stretched out as far as the horizon. The waves were big and imposing, the water salty and green. It smelled different. Even the sand felt unfamiliar and foreign. There were no fond memories associated with this place. No nostalgia. I just felt so very lost.

My dad's parents once owned and ran an orange grove within the San Diego county limits. It was back before cities and housing developments covered every inch of land. But as my father grew up, so did the rest of the county. And by the time he was an adult, the grove was reduced to a few acres. Even though I'd lived there as a little girl, I hadn't been back since the day we left. I barely remembered running through the orange trees, so I felt no actual loss when I discovered nothing was left of the grove now, save for a few trees in the backyard.

My dad inherited the land after his parents died. But since we were already living our lives in Detroit, he sold off the grove and kept nothing but the house. Which he'd rented out to random families until deciding to claim it.

I knew nothing about California. My home was in Michigan. To me, California was just where movies were made, and the beaches were warm. I saw it on TV and heard about it in my dad's stories, but I didn't know it. And at that moment, I never wanted to.

I knew why we'd come back to California. And more importantly, why my dad suddenly decided to drop his entire life to return, but that didn't mean I wasn't angry about it.

They were nothing to me.

The woman was nothing to me.

Our new home was strangely lush and tropical. We were living in a town named after its close proximity to the ocean, and even though it was only March, the air was heavy with moisture, and the sun was too hot. I didn't like it.

The house was actually six miles east of the waterline. It was a big, old house hidden behind orange trees and unkempt palms. The grove was long gone, and new little homes had been built in its place, so the building stuck out as odd. My new bedroom was my dad's bedroom when he was growing up. His furniture was gone, but the remains of his childhood still lingered in the room. There was cowboy wallpaper and markings of his growth in the closet. It smelled old and unused for the first few days.

My window looked out over the bare backyard with the few remaining orange trees and a single apple tree. I could see into the neighbor's yard through the chain link that divided us. White jasmines had taken over the fence. They were in full bloom, and at night when I lay in my new room with the window open, the air was thick with the scent of them.

When I was a kid, I used to get hurt a lot. There were a lot of average childhood injuries, like scraped knees and bumped heads. The only thing is that it happened with such alarming regularity that my dad joked I was cursed. He called it the "Lunacy Fringe." I looked it up in a dictionary once, just to see what that meant, but it had nothing to do with curses.

Either way, it was something I'd lived with since I could remember. Anytime something odd or inconvenient happened, it was the Fringe. Once, my dad admitted that my mom had been afflicted with a similar curse. But he didn't talk about her much. He preferred to keep moving forward. Never look back. If it wasn't for the Fringe and the few comments about how I looked like her, I'd have no connection to her at all.

My dad said to keep my eyes forward; now, she was the future. And so we'd packed up and moved across the country because my dad had left something behind that he'd regretted every day since we left for Detroit.

My brother. And even though my mother was no longer my dad's future, he was. And as soon as he'd tracked them down, we had nothing tying us to Detroit anymore. Nothing but my entire life and childhood.

So when I stood out on the beach that morning, watching the sunrise from behind me, I blamed the Lunacy Fringe for bringing me there. For taking away everything I loved and knew. My dad always said the Lunacy Fringe would go out with a bang. He said it would cause all of the good and bad things to happen in my life, and when it finally left, I'd know it. So far in my life, moving across the country was the biggest thing that had ever happened to me. Not the scariest. Not the worst. But it was significant and uncertain. And I hoped that it meant the Lunacy Fringe was over. My life would be normal now.

But I was wrong. The Lunacy Fringe would bring a lot of change to my life. Some things would be scary and life-altering, but some would be amazing and wonderful. I'd get hurt—a lot more than an average person did. I'd feel pain and fear. But I'd feel love too.

I just didn't know any of that yet. So I stood there on the beach, watching the clouds change colors, and I hoped the Lunacy Fringe was finally letting me go. Funny, really, since it was just getting started.

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For those of you who don't know, this story is a rewrite. I started writing it when I was 18. It took me 4 years to complete. I am now rewriting it. It's long. It's very long. It's the longest work of my entire life. But I took it down because it was very outdated. Since it was one of the first stories I ever wrote (and my first original fiction), many plots were either horribly cliche, silly, or just needed a makeover.

But this story got a lot of love, and I am forever grateful to everyone who took the time to get involved in this series the first time around. I have every intention of getting each of the stories back up as we go along. But it might take a while because they're going to take a lot of work, and I'm just starting to get them up. You can read them if you wish, but they do contain spoilers.

If you haven't read the story, then there are a few things you should know. This story is very long. It will follow Ruby's life from the age of 17 to 32. A lot of things happen in 15 years. There is no ultimate plot besides her curse. But her curse is a plot device I used to keep things dramatic, comedic, and entertaining. To be honest, I'm still amazed the story was completed at all. It ended up with over 200 chapters. So I'll probably be breaking it down into separate parts. That way, it doesn't get overwhelmingly huge.

I'll try to get updates out every Saturday. Probably in bunches.

So if you are an old reader, I hope you enjoy this reboot. If you are a new reader, I hope you stick with the story even though it's so long! And I hope you like it. :)