So! This is officially my first EVER Ryella story. Yes, it is going to be a romance/drama/courtroom drama/tear-jerker, just like my Troypay stories, and to tell you the truth, what I have in stored for this one might just be, dare I say it, just as good as Autumn Love Story (squee!!).
Okay, so at first I wanted to make this a Troypay, as per usual, but as much as I tried to fit it in, I just couldn't do it. There were too much major factors of the two characters I couldn't change for the story, because this story involves racial prejudice. This story is going to be reasonably realistic, so don't expect anything too dramatic and soapie.
I didn't want to get Taylor and Chad involved in this, because I'm afraid some of the language might insult people, so I settled for Ryan and Gabriella.
Yes, I know, I'm using Gabriella as the main female in a love story!! Don't worry, even though I dislike her character in HSM, I've managed to mould her into a character I like in my story.
Alright, cut to the chase. This story is going to be an adaptation (meaning totally based upon) of my all-time favourite novel Snow Falling On Cedars. The main plotline of the story is pretty much the same, but I've changed a few of the details. The story is about racial prejudice against the Japanese after Pearl Harbor, and this takes place inside a courtroom of white men and women. I've done some research and come across similar racial discrimination against Puerto Ricans in the early 1900s, so automatically Gabriella's going to Puerto Rican (I've always wanted her to be Puerto Rican after I watched West Side Story).
I'm pretty sure none of the kids reading this would have read Snow Falling On Cedars. It's not a kid-friendly book, and I'm sure it isn't as famous enough as Harry Potter for anyone else to know the whole story. Instead, I'll give you my version of it. :)
I'm sorry, but I'm going back to school next week. All my stories will have to be put on hold until then, but after my exams I'm gonna finish them.
Antonio Calderón sat at the defendant's table in a proud and rigid stance. His hands were folded neatly in front of him on the hard wooden desk as quiet murmurs from around him flowed through. While others fidgeted and exchanged comments as they waited for the verdict, no one could read the accused man's expression. Many took this as a mask of apathy that hid the fear of a guilty man.
But no one could tell.
Dressed in a white cotton shirt buttoned up to the very top with a simple blue tie and sensible grey trousers, Antonio Calderón was impassive, not even a flicker of emotion in his dark brown eyes.
He was a tall, handsome man of Puerto Rican descent, his skin was tanned slightly, not from the sun, and his thick black hair was cropped close to his skull in a way that the wind could never make a single strand of hair fall out of place. His features were smooth and hard, his figure strong with physical strength, especially his arms and neck that were muscular and toned of that of a working man. His dark silent eyes lingered out the window of the courtroom, where they stayed unmoved.
Snow was falling.
The courtroom was practically full, almost every seat taken. The gallery was, of course, divided into two sections; the defendant's and the plaintiff's, all of whom were eager as they were about to witness the murder trial. The plaintiff's side was entirely of Whites, all of whom have been connected or close friends or family of Daniel Swift, a local fisherman. Many of them had attended his funeral at Kendall Valley Hill, where he was now buried. Their friend, fellow fisherman and local hero was bid farewell on a Sunday afternoon ceremony and laid to rest beside his father, leaving behind a wife and three young boys.
On the defendant's side, every face was Latino. Besides his family and friends, most of the citizens of Puerto Rican descent, even those who knew Antonio Calderón very little, came.
The judge, the Honorable Samuel Page, sat patiently at the front as he flicked through the file booklets his bailiff Robert Weston had placed in front of him. It was not often that a murder trial would take place in the small Island County Courthouse, nor had any history of murder by law occurred in San Diéz, a small island off the coast of Oregon, according to Judge Page's memory.
A man of over sixty, Judge Page rubbed his wrinkled temples as he digested the information in the sheriff's report. He was a thin man, and though he still had a thick head of hair, all of it had turned white and grey with age. He worn half-moon spectacles that hid the true emotion of his eyes, and he had a white beard that he stroked out of habit. The members of the jury watched as they waited for the judge to resume the verdict.
They were crammed in together, as the room was, where the witness stand was only a meter away from the platform where the thirteen jurors sat, all with impassive expressions as they struggled to focus on the subject matter. All the men wore shirts and neckties, while the women wore their Sunday dresses.
The room were awfully stuffy, the steamers having been brought in to heat up the room as it snowed heavily outside. The wind howled and scratched against the window, the icy coldness of it causing thick condensation from the heat of the steam. Many of the citizens in the courtroom were sweating, but they stayed silent and carelessly wiped away the beads of sweat with a handkerchief.
The accused man stared out at the snow with silent wonderment. He had been locked up in the county jail for seventy days; the last week of September, and all of October and November. It was December now, the first month of winter. Antonio had been put into a basement cell where there were no windows or anything that gave him access to the outside world, and he realized only now that he had missed Autumn completely. The delicate snowflakes blew onto the window, creating condensation as it melted against the heat of the glass, blown by the cold blizzard wind. The flakes swirled around like a trail of crystals and diamonds, Antonio watched from the corner of his eyes.
It was magnificently beautiful.
San Diéz Island drifted a few miles from the coast of Oregon, having been discovered by Spaniards passing by in 1608. By the 1800s, white people from Oregon and Seattle arrived at the shores, ready to begin life, where they were intrigued by the fertile soil and plentiful fish in the harbors.
By the present year of 1951, San Diéz was the home of merely five thousand, all of whom had lived in peace in the last hundreds of years. Every once in a while there would be one corrupted soul who thrived in causing havoc, but overall, the islanders were non-violent to one another.
Armingdale was the island's only town, a village where you earned what you made. Farmers, fishermen and tailors brought in their stocks, and the town rarely needed to interact with outside towns. The citizens would eat their fish, eat their meat and vegetables, occasionally making profile in export of their fine products, but life altogether was simple for the folks of Armingdale.
It rained a lot. The skies were almost always cloudy at the end of the year, providing wind and other tiring weather to the citizens. The fishermen thrived nonetheless, the rain coming down gave their fish confidence to keep coming back, and the farmers needn't worry about their crops drying out. However, due to the constant weather, traffic and blockage of roads were a part of life for Armingdale folks, and many would hide away from the lashing winds and the stinging cold whenever winter would arrive.
Business was essential for the small town, with the main stores all lined up on one street, conveniently. Main Road consisted of a café, a retail store, Reba's Grocery Store, a drugstore, fisherman's Hardware Center, a post office, a four-star restaurant and a seamstress run by the two Clausen sisters. By the wharf, fishermen would line their boats up proudly where every night they would set out and pull in a catch, selling their load at dawn and bringing home the money that very same day. Salmon was the life source for Armingdale.
Outside the town, there was a forest where one could take a long walk and perhaps disappear and not be found for weeks. It was a serene and almost holy area, and in respect it was spared being knocked down. Cedar trees grew by the dozen, lining up alongside the hazel and elm, their roots covered in moss and fern from the rainfall. Deeper inside the forest, there was a small waterfall that provided the main water source when the rain wasn't enough to feed the hunger of these fifty foot giants.
The cedars were most beautiful in spring, as well as in winter when they were flaked with snow, the coldness not even bothering them, and they stood upright with such pride and dignity all year round. They grew around the town as well, along the rims of the cornfields and others.
The islanders built their lives around their products, such as strawberries, which grew plentifully in the fertile ground. The livestock such as cows and cattle grazed all day in the fields, stinking up the air with the fresh scent of manure that smelt the worst in the summertime. The farms and fields parallel Armingdale Beach, where the crystal blue ocean waves crashed down onto the white sparkling sand. The beach ran all around the island of San Diéz, no matter in what season, it would glitter with unique pebbles and stones that peered up from the sand like hidden treasure.
Away from the ocean, inside Armingdale County courtroom, the low murmuring of the jurors and the citizens continued throughout the short recess. Up above, opposite the windows where view of the court case would be the finest, newspaper reporters sat in their seats at a table set up especially for them. Many of them were from out of town, all of them now bored and twirling their pens between their fingers as they observed the trial. Some of them were journalists from Seattle and Portland, come here to watch a trial, the first trial ever in the island's history, to involve a Puerto Rican. They had none of the eagerness and seriousness of the citizens below them; they had no personal connection to this case, besides the fact that it was their job to record the event. Many had removed their jackets and had slumped back on their chairs, some almost about to fall asleep as their eyelids fluttered, while the rest commented on what was for lunch.
Ryan Evans, the local reporter, however, watched with alertness without shifting his eyes in case anything was to happen. He was a man of twenty-nine, blond hair and a stealth physique with brown eyes that had been hardened by the war.
He wiped his forehead of the beads of sweat with the cuff of his sleeve. He noted with dismay, that of course none of the out-of-town reporters were able to understand the trial as he, a native to the island, did. A couple of them had loosened their ties and yawned loudly during the trial, merely written down all of what had been said in a monotonic manner. Ryan, however, knew he couldn't look at this event with such indifference.
He knew Antonio Calderón. He had gone to the same high school with him, and Ryan couldn't bring himself to show even the slightest disrespect at his murder trial.
In the morning as he arrived at the courtroom at around nine o'clock, he had spoken with the wife of the accused man, Gabriella Calderón.
She sat with her back turned on the hall bench as she waited for the trial to begin. The courtroom was, so far, empty, and Gabriella's head was bent down and her lips moved in silent prayer. Ryan had only dared to peer in as he entered from the front door.
"Gabriella?" he said softly. He watched as her long eyelashes swept up and down, but she didn't turn to him. Ryan moved closer into the room. "Gabriella, are you alright?"
Her head tilted just slightly, but she did not look at him.
"Go away, Ryan," she whispered. It was so soft, almost a plead that sent a surge of pain through Ryan's heart as he realized she must have been crying.
"Please Gabriella," Ryan said.
Gabriella finally turned her eyes to face him. The darkness in her brown eyes reflected that of her heart. It wasn't hatred, though her stare was cold and hard, but Ryan could feel the distance she set between them. Her chocolate brown hair was braided and pinned down neatly and allowed to drape down the back of her neck, covering the top part of her ears and leaving enough of the wavy strands on her forehead that it did not get into her eyes. Her lips, pale from the exhaustion and stress of the trial as well as the weather, were tinted with red lipstick, but even the colour couldn't lift the sadness of her face.
"Go away," she muttered again. Her eyes for a moment shone with a new emotion, one that left Ryan uncertain of what it exactly meant. Sadness, anger, pain… "Go away."
"Gabriella…" Ryan said. "Don't be like this." Gabriella turned away again, her eyelashes sealing themselves together as she shut her eyes tight.
"Go away," she repeated. Her head lowered again, her eyes still shut. "Just go away."
As he sat there at the newspaper desk, he regretted having not said anything else to Gabriella, but he knew she wouldn't let him. Now, he watched as she re-entered the room from the hallway in time for the proceeding of the trial.
Her black dress swept against her knees as she tried unsuccessfully to walk past the plaintiff's family without having to be stared at. Ryan watched her hug the jacket in her arms as she sat down in the row behind the defendant's table, where her husband was. One of the reporters next to Ryan wolf-whistled quietly and pointed her out to the others. Antonio, as if sensing her, turned around on his seat and the two made eye contact for a few seconds. Gabriella struggled to give him a smile, despite the horrible thoughts and overwhelming urge to cry.
Ryan bit into the end of his pencil unconsciously as he acknowledged the brief moment between the Calderóns, knowing this was the first time in weeks they had seen each other's faces. His gaze shifted over to the windows and the snow, memories of his past youth reigniting.