〖 chapter i: MOVE OUT OF THE WAY THOR 〗
Wysteria Redbird stands at her locker, meticulously organizing her books and binders in her bag in the order that she will need them in before putting away the books she won't need until closer to lunch time. Around her is the chatter of the new day and the shuffle of feet on tiled floor and outside the dark clouds threaten to break loose with a torrential storm. Wysteria glances absently at the photo tapped to her locker door. It's the only photo she has of her mother. Actually, it's a photo of all three of them and it's so old and faded, Wysteria almost didn't recognize the people in it. She touches it now, fingering the edges gently. If her father knew she had this photo, he would be livid.
When Wysteria and her father first arrived in Florida, the first thing they did was rid themselves of their heritage. He made Wysteria throw away presents from relatives and articles of clothing that reminded him of the Reservation. He even took away some of her Quileute jewelry and her mythology stories from their tribe and burned everything in a fire pit. Wysteria only has two pieces of jewelry left from the reservation. One is a necklace from her grandmother and one of the earrings from a pair that her mother had given her the day she left.
Wysteria tries to recall her mothers face on her own, without looking at the picture but she can't. She knows that her mother cried when they left but that's all she can recall. Everything else is like one big blur and once her father made her get rid of everything that connected Wysteria to Forks, Washington, it was almost like they had never even been there at all. This photo was something that Wysteria had found just a couple of days ago wedged between the pages of a book she had taken from her fathers room. It clearly hadn't been opened in a while, as dust had covered the spin and the top of the book. Wysteria had taken the book because it was listed as one of the books suitable for an upcoming project her English class was doing.
She hadn't planned to actually read the book, she felt more inclined to read the cliffnotes for it online but late one night she had picked it up and began to page through it, flipping the pages quickly. That's when the photo caught her eye. She paused, went back through the pages and wrenched it free from the book. When she didn't immediately recognize her family, she turned the photo over and found in neat handwriting the words Redbird Family, 1998.
Wysteria had sat up, staring at the photo. She recognized her father now. He didn't have worry lines around his eyes or hands that shook as far as she could tell and if that was her father and she was the baby... Wysteria feels a weird pain in her chest every time she looks at the smiling face of her mother. She had tried to ask her dad what had happened between him and her mom but he shut down the conversation every time. Wysteria sighed.
"Hey Indy." A voice behind her said. "Staring wistfully at that photo again?" Wysteria turned with a half soured face to look at her best friend, Corey who seems to have a perpetual smirk plastered to his face.
"What have I told you about calling me Indy? It's offensive." Wysteria says, leaning up against the locker next to hers. Corey grins and pulls his beanie down over his dark hair a little more.
"What? I'm trying to reclaim that nickname for you." Corey said. Wysteria shook her head. she knew Corey meant well but every time she heard him say Indy, she would just have flashbacks to all those kids in middle school who used to torment her about how dark she was, how she wasn't like them. Why would she want to be like these unusually ugly Pale Faces anyways? She'd much rather be part of the Quileute tribe, not that she really felt like she had that claim either but none of them knew that.
"Well can you stop?" Wysteria said, narrowing her eyes at him.
"Uh-oh. What did Corey say now?" Grace sang out, appearing at his side and staring up at their friend incredulously at six feet, Corey towered over the two girls and he was always teasingly saying that they, looked up to him. Grace would usually try to knee him in the balls every time he said this. "You know she doesn't like it when you call her that." Grace said, ever the mind reader.
"Oh come on, the more she hears a friend say it..."
"Keep saying it and I'll punch you in the face." Wysteria said. As if trying to emphasis her point, lightning struck the ground not far outside and thunder rumbled overhead. Corey looked around as the walls of their school shook slightly.
"Damn. You do that Ria? I think Thor has some competition." Wysteria just smirked as Grace rolled her eyes.
"Come on Wysteria, let's go to class." Grace says, looping her arm through her friends as Wysteria shuts her locker, trying not to look at her mothers smiling face.
"But we still have ten minutes until the bell rings." Corey complains.
"Should have thought of that before you started teasing our friend." Grace said, blowing a kiss to Corey as she and Wysteria walked away. "Don't let him bug you Ria. He's just a big dummy." Wysteria smiles lightly.
"Yeah, I know."
‧͙⁺˚*･༓☽ »⍟« ☾༓･*˚⁺‧͙
Wysteria sits at her desk, slightly slumped forward with her head propped up in her hand as Mr. Delgado drones on and on about American history. Wysteria could care less, especially since she feels that a lot of American history is embellished. She remembers vividly how angry she had been during a lesson about Native Americans in middle school. The text in their books hardly discussed the plight of her people. In fact, a lot of it seemed to be brushed aside. Wysteria had been enraged especially when the teacher outright called indigenous people savages.
She showed them all that day the definition of savage.
In the long run, Wysteria was expelled from the school, the teacher was also subsequently fired for his remark and while Wysteria would've been proud of this fact. Her father was furious. "Why did you go and fight with your teacher! You're not like this Wysteria. You don't go around picking fights with your elders."
"He made a racist comment about us! About our people. You would rather have me do nothing?" Wysteria felt a sharp sting across her face and it took her a couple of seconds to realize that her father had slapped her. He had never done that before.
"They are not our people." He said to her in a low menacing voice. "We are not one of them anymore." Wysteria's eyes had filled with tears and she fled to her room, locking the door behind her. Her father never apologized to her. In fact, they went about their lives pretending that it had never happened. From then on, Wysteria never referred to herself as Native American or Indigenous in front of her father and if she did get into a fight with someone over her heritage, she tried not to let it escalate to the point where her father would get a call from the principal.
Wysteria likes to think that she has a good relationship with her father. He's a little eccentric and mysterious but otherwise, he's been good to her. They always had a roof over their heads, always had food to eat. He's a good man which makes it all the more harder for her to understand why he speaks so badly about not only her mother, but of their people. Not long ago, her father even made her promise something to him. "If I die, I never want you to step foot on Quileute land again." Wysteria was shocked. She had never really thought about going back there, Florida felt more like her home now, but her father wouldn't allow her to laugh and brush this off. "I need you to promise me Wysteria Redbird."
"I... I promise dad. I won't go back to Washington." And she meant it.
"Ms. Redbird." Wysteria looked up at the Professor, pulling herself out of her daydream. "Are we paying attention?"
"I'm trying to." She said which clearly wasn't the right answer by the way Mr. Delgado frowned. Wysteria sighed as Corey snickered behind her.
‧͙⁺˚*･༓☽ »⍟« ☾༓･*˚⁺‧͙
By lunch time, the clouds in the sky had bubbled over and fat water droplets were pounding away at the rooftop of her school. Wysteria glanced out at the quad ruefully. She could barely make anything out through the window. The sky was too dark, the water making everything too blurry. Wysteria let out a silent prayer that her father would be able to pick her up okay from school. He was never that good at driving in the rain. A noise nearby alerted Wysteria to her friends presence. Corey and Grace were walking towards her, arguing again.
"Why must you argue with me?" Grace demanded. "I'm better at math than you." She said, setting her lunch tray down next to Wysteria's and putting her hands on her hips.
"We're both in AP Geometry. You're not better than me." Corey said, slinging one long leg after the other over the bench so he could sit down.
"Yes but who has the highest grade." Corey mocked her with his hand, making Grace scoff and sit down.
"I swear Ria, sometimes I don't know why we put up with this idiot." Wysteria smiled a little.
"We took pity on him."
"You did not." Corey complained, because he knew it was true. Wysteria and Grace have been friends since Kindergarten when Mrs. Wesley sat them next to one another. Corey arrived when they were in fourth grade. He was the new kid, a little pudgy, and had dorky clothes. Nobody would play with him at recess and being the ever loving and kind person that she is, Grace had pulled Wysteria towards Corey who was sitting by himself on the basketball court, watching everybody play.
"Whatch ya doin'?" Grace had asked with a broad smile, still holding Wysteria's hand tightly so she wouldn't run away. Wysteria didn't want to make friends. She had Grace, that's all she felt she needed.
"Watching them play basketball." Corey had said a bit mournfully.
"Well... Wanna play with us?" Corey had looked them up and done and eventually said yes. As the years went by, Wysteria would begin to tease Corey saying,
"You only said yes because you thought Grace was cute." Corey would always get red and tell Wysteria to shut up. She was right though. She knew they liked one another. What she couldn't figure out though was why neither of them did anything about it.
"Earth to Wysteria!" Corey said, throwing a potato chip at her nose. "You've been really spacey today. What's up?" Wysteria shrugged.
"I don't know." She said, pursing her lips. "Something just feels... Off about today." For some reason, her thoughts keep drifting back to her father, her mother and to Forks, a place she barely remembers.
"It's probably just the rain." Grace said, glancing outside. "It makes everything feel... Sad." Grace said with a small smile, toughing her friends arm. "Don't worry too much." Wysteria nodded slowly as another peal of thunder sounded overhead. She hoped this feeling was just the rain, nothing more.
A/N: For context, I said that Wysteria's picture of her family was taken in 1998 and she was born in 1996. So if she's fifteen in this story then that would put the events of this book at 2011. Just so we're all on the same page. Honestly, I could have put the year as 2019 but it unnerves me to have a character that was born past the 2000's for some reason lol.
Also, hope you all liked the first chapter!!!! Chapter two is coming your way tomorrow!