Travel Glasses (The Call to Search Everywhen, #1)

Chapter 2 The Past

UNCLE AL raised his eyebrows.

Without waiting to find out whether he thought I was joking, I walked past him into the house and stamped upstairs to my bedroom. Serious book therapy was in order. I opened the door and flicked on the light. Shelves of books crowded my bed. My desk was wedged in a far corner near the window. An abandoned laptop and a mobile phone sat on top of it, both coated in dust.

I’d dropped out of live in-person classroom instruction when I turned thirteen, the earliest the law allowed students to take all of their classes online. Four years later, I graduated without ever setting foot in a high school classroom.

I squeezed my head with my hands and bit my lip. What had I done? What was I thinking? After living the last four years isolated against face-to-face interaction with my peers and spending the last month offline, I’d agreed to have dinner with a complete stranger later that day. As far as I could tell, Valcas was the same age as me, and that made me nervous.

I tried to remember exactly how I’d agreed to such a thing. True, I’d been dazed from being blasted by something. I still had no idea what that was and had to look down at my grass-stained clothes to convince myself that it even happened. Frustrated, I changed out of my running clothes, showered off all of the morning’s sweat and dirt and changed into a T-shirt and a pair of jeans. I would deal with dressing for my date later.

I dropped onto my bed and scanned the book titles on the shelves next to me. I’d kept some of the paperback books Mom bought me when I was a kid. Most of the books were from an old private collection that Uncle Al had given me, which was good given that after graduation I refused to read another book off of a computer or mobile device. I’d read the fairy tales and classics many times, as well as a smattering of coming-of-age stories which sounded just as far from reality as the fantastical myths and legends.

I opened a book and flipped through its pages until I found a story about a potter who’d been banned to an abysmal forest by an evil sorceress who was jealous of his wife. The sorceress promised him his freedom if he could craft an earthen vessel large enough for his wife to fit inside. I already knew that wouldn’t end well, and before long I started thinking about Valcas.

How had I found him to be so attractive without seeing his eyes? I imagined that the eyes behind the dark glasses would be a shade of brown, although light green would be a stunning addition to his already foreign appearance. I laughed at myself out loud until my stomach ached. My chances of developing any type of relationship with Valcas were completely hopeless.

“Are you all right up there?” Uncle Al called to me from the kitchen. I could hear the sizzle of odds and ends of leftovers being prepared for an early lunch. He was a good man and, even though he didn’t get me most of the time, I appreciated his sacrifice in taking care of me when I had nowhere else to go. So, I left my book and went downstairs to join him.

“Well hey there. I thought you’d be all primped up by now.” Uncle Al chuckled through his grizzly salt-and-pepper beard.

“I’m not going out until suppertime. Did we get the morning paper?” I knew this was a stupid question, filler talk intended to avoid the subject, a talent I’d inherited from Mom. The paper was right there on the table next to plates of fried cutlets and potatoes.

Uncle Al poured me a glass of iced tea. “Aw come on, Calla. You’re so cool all the time. I’m surprised you even told me about the fella.” He looked straight at me with his peering eyes. “If you don’t show some interest in this young man, you’re going to end up the smartest spinster this part of the country. The Wicked Witch of the North, they’ll be calling you.”

I choked on a dry chunk of potato. “Um, North and South are good witches.”

“I’m serious,” Uncle Al said. “Here you are messing around in the garden during the day, head buried in books all night. If you’d just let folks get a bit less intimidated by you, maybe you wouldn’t have to spend so much time by yourself.”

I knew my uncle meant well, but his words made me cringe from the pit of my stomach. Tension crept up my back and into my shoulders. I gripped the edge of the planked kitchen table with clenched fingers.

“Intimidated? What makes you think anyone here is intimidated by me?” I didn’t understand how keeping myself shut away would make others feel uncomfortable.

“Now there you go again. You take things too seriously. You’re good-looking and you know it, but you don’t seem to care who notices. A young fella’s got to work up a day’s worth of courage just to say hello to you and then gets nothing back.”

I shrugged. Being “good-looking” was never enough to make me anything more than initially attractive. Instead of arguing about it, I purposely became absorbed in a news article concerning Lake Winston’s sunfish overpopulation.

A FULL-LENGTH mirror attached to the back of the bathroom door reflected my image wearing a casual sweater and denim skirt over dark tights and brown boots. I had the same peering eyes as Uncle Al, but they were wider and softer with long black lashes.

As a preteen, when I saw Mom more regularly, she often reminded me to sweep blush across my cheeks so I wouldn’t look piqued. Today I took her advice and even applied some raspberry lip gloss. After pinning back a few stray black curls, I looked ready to go out. On the inside, however, I was a mess of knots and queasiness.