I finally put myself back together to writing again, and here is one of my newest projects. I'm really excited with this one because of the characters I want to develop and everything, so yeah, hope you enjoy the chapter and the fic! Again, english is not my first language so bear in mind there could be many erros, if you wanna be my beta, just dm me. XX - Lavs.
It was the noise of the torrential rain on the window that eventually woke me up. Or maybe my body was already showing signs that I should wake up long before and the rain was just something that caught my sleepy attention. I always had the habit of immediately falling asleep when I get into a car, my parents even joked that when I was a baby they put me to sleep driving all around the block, then, on a nearly 4 hour drive from Seattle to our future city with some traffic points due to the weather it was safe to say that I slept all the way, to the point of my cheek numb to be leaning against the car window.
Seated immediately to my left side, squeezed into the middle space that was normally reserved for children because Ezra - my brother - occupied the furthest place from me, was Nolan, my oldest brother, who let out a low, mocking laugh that I did not deserved as he looked at me. He pointed his finger at one of his cheeks and then at mine and immediately taking my hand to them, I could presume, only by the heat, that they were red and crumpled. Definitely not funny enough for someone stoic like Nolan to laugh, but he always laughed at my expense.
I rolled my eyes and sent him a middle finger, but without raising the arm too much and taking the risk of our parents seeing our interaction in the rear view mirror of the vehicle. Nolan did not even answer me, but I did not need it either, I was already looking back through the window, to get the first impression of the city whose name I did not remember at the time.
The rain kept getting stronger so the view wasn't the city's best posycard and no matter how many curves we made in little streets, nothing very interesting stood out besides the greeness of the forest on the side of the road. Eventually we reached the urban area of the city, with its small houses and a simple neighborhood, with some stores that I could not pay attention to its content. But I still missed the city's name.
"Where are we really?" I whispered the question to Nolan, but did not look away from the window.
"Forks, or something. Don't put too mane expectations, it doesn't even have five thousand inhabitants." He answered and tried to lean in to see through my window, but I pushed him away, not wanting his weight on me. He would have enough time to meet Forks when we reached our destination, and besides, the frontal view from where he was sitting was the best.
"I see." I added. Everything in Forks screamed typical and simple and itbeing a small town explained all its simplicity. We turned a few more streets and everything seemed exactly the same, the shade green continued to jump out and there was no living soul in the street, even with the rain, that would not be something so strange in most populated cities.
I let out a small sigh, in preparation for the new journey that was drawing for me, a new adaptation. Unlike most teenagers my age, I was completely neutral with the decision to move to this Forks, even though it presented itself as uninteresting and completely different from Seattle, where we live most recently. I mean, I did not have valid reasons to contest our move to Forks, just as I had no reason to appreciate. In my hectic and ever-moving life, several 'Forks' have already existed and I have learned to survive, our whole family eventually learned. Adapting was almost as natural as breathing when you were a Kingsley.
Big cities, small cities, rainy ones, dry ones, cold ones, hot ones, southerners, notherners, cities further north almost on the border with Canada, of all the varieties of universes that the United States could offer, we Kingsleys, had already inhabited or at least called home for a few weeks. Since I had been conscious enough to remember what I was involved, we were on the move.
Reed and Pauline, my parents, have created this tradition of moving around the country, in a kind of perpetual journey across these roads. It began as an exercise to bring out the creativity that their work needed, nothing like a complete change of environment to inspire a transcendent new work - or so we thought when we were kids. My mother was a plastic artist with a fascination for the gothic theme and that made her slightly famous in her circle of artists. Famous enough that her freedom and creativity was always encouraged, without any concern for money.
My father was a writer who had never stayed on only a genre in his works, but I always associated them with the place we were at the moment he was writing. He wrote a modern western when we lived in Texas, a police thriller back in New York, one of the longest periods as well as one of the biggest books and a bucolic romance in the regency period when we live in North Dakota. There were too many standards to ignore, and I always felt that I understood my father more when I noticed how much the city or the change of city affected his spirit.
They were my parents and the only figures of authority we, since we had no contact with any other relative; or even the confirmation that they existed, - that's the reason we hardly celebrate holidays, we have no one to turn our daily bases into something different to be celebrated, was one of our peculiarities -. Living without relatives meant that my brothers and I never knew the stability of a life in a city, we were always on the road with our parents, moving from city to city, experiencing and living new routines.
And, besides the two of them, completed my little big family, my older brother for only a year, Nolan, Ezra, who was actually my twin brother and Andrew, or Andy, the youngest with his newly completed 13 years. And although I did not have experiences with other lives, I knew that there were no groups of brothers who were as close as me and mine, although this was changing recently, slowly and only I had realized.
Sometimes I wanted our unusual lifestyle to be reflected in our appearances; I'd love to be more physically different in some way that would make me stand out more, and maybe that explains my choice of visuals ever since I hitted my teenage years. There was a clear dominance of my father's genes, for he, Nolan, Ezra, and Andy were extremely similar. Their hairs were ebony dark, their eyes emerald green, though Nolan's were more greyish, the same tallness and lean phsyique. I, on the other hand, was more of an intersection between my two parents, because I was not a copy of my blond and tanned mother either. I had the pale skin of the Kingsley, but my hair was brown rather than black, which I had recently painted red, and my eyes were a light blue.
I barely had time to nap again in the window, because we finally parked in a tiny street that resembled all the others. My father hung up the car with a loud and excited sigh and I could bet my mother was feeling as refreshed as he was. We all got out of the car right away and ended up leaving it for me to leave the door open and help Andy, the youngest of us, get out of the recliner of the seven-seater car. It had stopped raining hard, now a light, harmless drizzle fell on our shoulders. I was accustomed to the cold, coming from Seattle, so there was nothing to complain about.
To the surprise of nobody, for my family as a whole did not hold the same sense of ridicule as the rest of the world, my father, comically, stretched out in front of the sidewalk of our new home. A few simple movements to stretch the spine and leg, but still made me laugh a little.
"Definitely better than the picture, don't you think?" He asked, looking adoringly at the new house. Anyone who saw the shine in his emerald eyes would think that the property is the fulfillment of his dreams and not just something temporary, until he or my mother got bored with the new environment and decided it was time for a new place. Standing there, with the icy wind on my shoulders, my immediate possessions in hand and frizz in my messy hair, I could not decide whether Iwanted to leave soon.
"You ended up not showing it to anyone, Dad." I pinned him, approaching him to face the house he admired so much.
"I've seen it!"
"You don't count, Andy"
One of the effects of being always moving, always leaving things behind to find another different things that I've seen in my personality and also on my brothers, our parents did not have it for some irony of fate, but we were clearly the fruit of our environment, it was that almost nothing impressed us anymore. The house in Forks was darned-down and pretty in comparison to its neighbors, but we had better and we had worse, it was difficult to feel much excitement.
This house seemed to belong to someone who lived in it for a long time and who was very zealous for his estate, because it was perfectly organized but not in the way a broker tried to sell, but rather someone who cared for each tile. It had a well-groomed lawn on the front and some decorations like goblins and miniature fountains. It was painted a very pale blue that almost reflected the little sunlight of Forks and the wood of its classic American style was painted white and had only two stores, but was wide enough to make space. I could see a window that could only be a room and I was already determined to claim it as mine.
"How did you get this one? It looks like it belongs to a movie, " My mother asked, with the same awed expression as my father.
"Ah, the last residents were an elderly couple. They died together last summer and no one has taken an interest in the house until now. They were well loved by the neighborhood. Looks like they died hugging each other on that porch." And then he took my mother's hand and they exchanged passionate glances, as if imagining the scene happening to themselves in a few years' time. It was extremely uncomfortable to watch, I was saved by Ezra approaching me to comment something in my ear, away from the attention of the two adults.
"Is this not how all horror movies begin?" It was not something that needed an answer, but since my brother and I were not exactly on speaking terms since we left Seattle and if he decided to extend a helping hand for the first time in our history, I decided that it would not hurt my ego to maintain a good mood.
"Stay away from the porch then." He gave me his familiar smirk - just a tilt of lips that could mean a lot and at the same time nothing, which I had too - and I knew we were one step ahead of peace.
"Let's enter, then? Or do you want to wait for the pick-up truck out here? "The sneeze Andy let go was the answer my father was waiting for and we all went inside carrying everything that came with us in the car.
I had to fight physically with Ezra for the room with the window facing forward and I onçy won because of a surprising advantage that my height, a few inches smaller than his, gave me, my brother was easily knocked down when his legs were attacked. With him on the ground and no one coming to separate us or complain about our childishness and exaggerated competition, I finally ran to lock myself inside my prize and there was nothing he could do once I was already inside; I conquered the land. I didn't have to turn my back to see that my brother had sent me deadly looks from where he was, any truce we made would be undone.
With that safe then, I finally had room to breathe properly. My back was leaning against the door and slowly I let the gravity take me to the icy ground with no purpose other than the drama of the movies I always wanted to emulate. The room would prove to be the largest apart from the suite that would stay with my parents, which was a novelty, but it was still an empty space, clearly because the walls were painted a bleak white. I gazed long into the void and it also gazed into me.
The truth was that I was not uncomfortable because of the city, the color of my new room or any radomness that I had complained in my mind all day long, but rather from the problems I had brought with me in an unwanted Seattle baggage. Friends. My little clique, as they used to whisper in the corridors, people whom I trusted so much and who probably hate me at the moment. I closed my eyes in self depreciation with the sting in my eyes, but I knew I would not cry. No, I had already exhausted my rate of tears and now there was nothing left but to learn to live with the pain. And I was good at it.
Our travels and changes were more often than the standard, I was aware that I did not have the normal life of an American teenager. Spen more than 6 months in one place was a rarity, but that time both my father and my mother were involved in more extensive projects, covering some awards and analysis groups. So we almost spent a whole year in Seattle, which gave me enough time to get more emotionally involved with the young people I walked with, to build the truest friendships I've had with someone who has not been my family in my entire life.
It all started as everything starts, I was extroverted to start conversations and our personalities and interests worked to get along. Gwendolyne Hansen, or as everyone called it, Gwen, had some classes with us and we walked together back home because she lived only a few blocks from mine own house, and while Dylan Bellucci was always my duo when we played mixed volleyball or my favorite opponent when the game was chess. The three of us became close almost instantaneously, that was not the news thing, but rather, our closeness that continued throughout my period there.
And I had betrayed them in the most detestable way that could exist. Hiding that our stay in the city was coming to an end, hiding that there was the possibility of gathering our things in one afternoon and abandoning everything and everyone without any hesitation. Gwen and Dylan were at the corner of my house when we passed with the car and I could not do anything but wave pathetically.
Thinking about them made me want to see them and, without thinking of the consequences and how much that went against what I was trying to bring to myself, I pulled out my purple backpack that held my personal belongings and everything I needed, while the rest came with the shift truck and quickly scoured its interior, I pulled out the small set of revealed photographs. It was just a few dozen photos that I had planned to put together on an album but gave up halfway.
They were simple and spontaneous in their majority, none of us possessed many skills in photography, not like my mother, but they were loaded with nostalgia. I ran my fingers through each one, turning them to see the notes in their verses, about the time they were taken, dates, among other things, in my own handwriting. And there was Gwen, with her long, golden hair and elfin features, a typical California girl and Leo, who despite the Italian surname, had taken more to his Hispanic side of the family, with long and stylish hair. In some of the photos, Ezra appeared too, but they were all focused on our trio.
Again the heat came to my eyes, but I did not cry either.
I could have done so many different things. Not leave Seattle was not a valid option, I would never be able to not accompany my family in our adventures; I actually had the explorer spirit in me. But I could have said goodbye without seeming completely insensitive, but it was all in the past now. As soon as we left the city I promised myself that I was old enough to understand that connections beyond family was something I would never have, and that I would be safeguarding myself from much pain in just accepting it. I could never fail to have my spontaneous and outgoing personality, I just should not create ties.
I had my first experiences in Seattle. My first pajama party with girls my age. My first escapade at a club late in the night. My first bonfire. My first prom with someone different from Ezra as my date, it didn't went better, just differente. My first kiss. My first time. It had all been in that little space of a year when I was normal. The first time I had felt normal and mundane. And like everything else in my life, I could not tell if this was a good or bad experience, there was a lot to consider. I liked the brotherhood we created, but I did not feel at my core that it was in Seattle that I should settle down; take root, stay.
The window of my room was open, allowing some of the rain to come in and soak the room a little, but also let me see the green immensity of the trees meet the gray of the cloudy sky. Forks. What would Forks have to offer me that Seattle failed? Maybe there was a faoult in my code and I was just too Kingsley to not keep wandering around the country. Nolan grunted about college somewhere, maybe that was not for me either.
It was that thought that triggered my following actions. Rising to my feet, I left the room and went down to find one of the suitcases, trying my best not to draw too much attention. Luckily they were all busy satisfying their own curiosities and I was able to return to my room carrying Nolan's lighter without anyone seeing me.
With one last look at each of the photos in one hand, which lasted longer than I had anticipated, I fired the lighter with the other and took the small flame to the edge of the images. They quickly picked up the fire and in cadence, were undoing. The figures they immortalized slowly darkened as the paper deformed and finally turned dust. I blew before the flames reached my finger and it was as if they had never existed.
Burning the photos would not necessarily make the memories I had also turn to ashes and disperse with the wind, but I was feeling better; more okay with the future of news that would lie ahead.
A blank page. Exactly what I needed.
When I looked away, I could see that through the open door, Nolan was sneaking up, just his head inside my room with a curious expression. I had not even realized I was not alone anymore. He sure saw everything and I braced myself for the unnecessary comments.
I made a point of narrowing my eyes to make it clear that I was not going to tolerate any bullshit.
"With whom have you learned to be so dramatic?"
"Get out of here, Nolan." It was my short answer, and as I leaned forward to push the door, he managed to hold it - and not get hurt, because if I had been faster, I would have jammed his head hard.
He laughed, with less irony than usual.
"Relax, I will not give away your pyromaniac tendencies. They're calling you to dinner and to packing. The change truck is here. " His mood varied abruptly during the sentence, all the lightness of the moment of play turned into the block of ice he usually presented, if I had not already been so accustomed to my brother's mannerisms I would be frightened. Nolan gradually became more serious and unrecognizable, I always wondered when it would be time to intervene; or if I even should.
He did not stay long enough for me to respond, but he was kind enough to close the door behind him. And I was again, gazing into the void and it also gazed into me.