Everything in life happens for a reason . . .
No. That's not right.
Life itself is a reason for everything and anything to happen. It seems simple enough. For me, it should have been simple. Problem is life never plays fair. 'Cause why listen to reason when you don't have to?
.
.
I was four when I saw my first pokemon. It was a wonderful little thing. Dad said it was a Nidoran, a girl one. He found it while he was out by the lake fishing. It seemed scared and lost so he figured someone out there must be missing their friend.
I fell in love with pokemon from that point on. It was not just the fact that Ranran's (my nickname for Nidoran) eyes shone with understanding whenever I talked, but having her around for those few days made me forget about my loneliness. It's tough being an only child. That was the one time I ever had company at home besides my parents.
Of course, I knew Ranran couldn't stay forever. Mom had the decency to make sure I understood that. She would softly remind me every time she tucked us into bed. Ranran really liked sleeping beside me, all safe and sound beneath the covers. She also loved apples. Everyday I got to know something new about her. How her left ear twitches when she's happy. Or that she's only ticklish at the neck. By the end of the first week, she was as close as family.
It was a Tuesday, a month after Dad found Ranran, when that dreaded phone call came. Ranran's family had picked up on our flyers. They offered to come by to collect her but Dad, being the thoughtful person he was, told them he would her off instead.
"It's no trouble at all." He said kindly, all the while staring at my devastated face.
The pain of losing a friend cannot compare to losing your very first friend. That's just what happened. I knew Ranran wasn't mine, but a big hopeful part of me had wished silently every night that she was. I wished she stayed with us forever.
Dear old Dad knew how I felt; he knew how hard it was for me, so his way of making me feel better was to ask if I wanted to come along to send Ranran off. It was the worst possible solution ever. No way was I going to watch another family get Ranran. It wasn't fair. If they were careless enough to lose her in the first place, then they didn't deserve her. They'd never deserve her.
Bottom line was I declined Dad's offer, screaming about how much I hated him for putting up those stupid flyers in the first place, and ran to my room to weep like the naive four-year-old girl I was. Dad came up a while later. He stood outside my room, turning the knob and asking me to open up. I ignored him. He probably stood there for ten minutes, though it felt like hours. The last thing I saw was his shadow moving away from under the door before sleep took over.
When I came down the next morning, I felt weird. Not my-tummy-is-a-little-rumbly weird. You know when you have a gut feeling that something's wrong but you just didn't know what? Yeah, that kind of weird.
There wasn't any breakfast on the table. In my household, that's practically a sign of the apocalypse. There was no smell of coffee. No clattering of plates and pans. No sigh whatsoever of anyone ever being in the kitchen. I got more than a little spooked. I immediately when to check on my parent's room. I scrambled up the stairs in my pink princess nightgown and proceeded to bang my fists on their door.
No reply. Nothing.
By then I was really scared. At the time, I got the notion that my parents wanted to punish me for treating Dad the way I did yesterday. Nobody loved a rude, disrespecting daughter. They probably left a note somewhere saying how much they hated me and didn't want to see me anymore.
It's funny the conclusions kids come to.
All of a sudden, I heard something coming from the bathroom.
I know, I know. Little girl—home alone—hears funny noises. I should have run straight to the neighbor's right there and then. Instead, wide-eyed and curious, I tiptoed over to the door. It was half ajar. I could hear the noise clearer now. It was somebody crying. A ghost? A monster? No, it was my mother, dressed in her pajamas, auburn hair a mess, bawling her eyes out in the bathtub. There wasn't any water but I was surprised her tears hadn't filled it up yet.
Up till then, I thought the only time grown-ups cried was in the movies. You know, since it's fake and all. But this was very real.
I'd like to say that my first instinct was to slowly back out of the room but the truth is I never had much of an instinct to begin with. Instead I just stood there, listening to my mother's painful cries. And let me tell you, I may have just been a kid at the time but I figured having a rusty nail jammed into my heart inch by inch would have been better than enduring that.
Before I knew it, I started to bawl too. I didn't even know why. I guess it was just the sight that had shocked me and my adolescent mind into commotion. Only then did Mom realize she wasn't alone. She jumped a good five feet into the air.
"Ashley!" She stopped crying for a few moments, probably trying think of one of those parents' excuses to calm me down with but never got the time to come up anything. The waterworks came pouring out again. "Come here, honey . . ."
I ran over and crawled into the tub with her.
"W-why are you crying, Mommy?" I choked as she hugged me tight.
She gave me a good long look through flooded eyes, and I instantly regretted asking. I cried harder than I ever did in my life as my mom told me everything. She never hesitated, not even when she needed to breath in between sobs.
A police officer had come by very early in the morning with the news. It was quite stormy the night before. The roads were slippery and the winds were terror. While on his way to deliver Ranran, Dad lost control of the steering as he tried to swerve a sharp bend. The car went straight through the barrier and down into the ravines below. He told Mom that the impact alone must have already been enough to kill Dad, long before the car burst into flames. Officers sure know how to be reassuring.
A few days later, I was attending my first funeral. There was no casket. Dad was cremated and his ashes scattered in that lake he loved so much. The lake where he brought to me Ranran. They never found any other body in the car but they figured that there was no way for a small pokemon to have survived that crash. Ranran was simply lost.
.
.
Everything in life happens for a reason. There's no special meaning behind it. There's no moral in the end of every story. There's no lesson to be learned after every mistake. Stuff just happens. That's all it is.
That's probably the only thing I can really count on.
