The Deadly Trials

33 | Simplified

// simplified // 

 For hours, I sat virtually motionless in front of the red tarlatan dress made for me via magic. Each thread seemed to contain a memory: this one when I met Eika, this one an argument between Jack and Kit. This thread played the scene of splashing water on the Prince's face. This one, Sirene. A smile tugged at my mouth.

After my conversation with Michelle three days previous, I had traded my time spent sleeping with thinking. And I continued to lie to myself. But things did improve some: I stopped skipping meals; I didn't work out until I collapsed; I spent a healthier amount of time awake.

However, some things remained at a standstill: I shut myself away in my room, and the number of get-togethers with my friends dwindled.

They had busied themselves with preparing for college. Donovan had taken extra shifts to make some more money. Evette trained harder, since she had to leave early for athlete orientation. And Mari, ever the social butterfly, devoted the remaining weeks of summer to her vast circle of friends.

Sighing, I fell spread-eagle on the ground. The ballet dress burned red with each blink, its image imprinted on my eyelids. The red morphed into yellow, to marigold, to butterscotch gold. Green leaves turned the expanse of color into pools of filtered light. Soon, Eternity stared back at me.

I groaned, sitting up. Whenever I allowed my mind to wander, it flitted to Eternity: the scents, the sights, the sounds, the citizens.

It had been almost two weeks since I'd taken Guide's bus from Eternity to Portland. With every passing day, it became a little easier to convince myself that the entire experience had been some elaborate dream sequence.

Serla's passionately red outfit and the black rose in my desk drawer were my only comforts that it wasn't the product of an overactive imagination. Sometimes, at 3:00 a.m., I would run my fingers along the souvenirs, pinching myself in painful assurance that I wasn't asleep.

During the day, I'd glance out the window or wander the streets, waiting for the sky to gray and burst with a deluge of rain. But it was August and eighty degrees.

Dance helped. Knowing Michelle knew at least the partial story lifted a weight from my shoulders. But she was right: the passion had left my limbs. My movements were flat, mechanic. I tried to turn my sadness and frustration into yearning reaches and mournful pirouettes. But the intention sputtered and died in my throat.

Michelle lingered but never outright approached me again. She said I should figure things out on my own, in my own time.

And time was running out.

There were seventeen days left until I had to leave for Puget Sound. Mom wouldn't let me forget all that was involved in agreeing to attend an out-of-state college: the planning, the packing, the utter uprooting of life as we knew it.

Mom hovered. She would follow me to my room after lunch to ask if I'd made any lists, gotten any emails, thought at all about how to pack.

It was a constant reminder that college was not my dream, my goal. And with each mention of the future, I felt my patience thin. I didn't want this future, the one that my parents had shoved on me. The one my mother now reminded me of with fervor.

The day my patience snapped, I cursed the lack of rain. I stomped outside, hat on my head, the brim low over my eyes. I pushed my fists as deep into my pockets as they would go. I scowled constantly.

As I wandered, surrounded by art and nature, I thought to my final year of high school. Everyone had asked what my future plans were, what I wanted to study in college.