So it turns out the slum girl my parents hired on, who I know I mentioned in here pages and pages ago, has moved in with them in order to be hard working, loyal, and sweet full time. I found that out today, though it happened nearly a week ago. I don't need to say how the maternal parent feels about this. The girl is staying in that one little room off the kitchen, the one from the original house plan with an ancient door that locks with a key. It's not much, but she is still blushing with gratitude. Then again, she does come from the Draigon District, and a house stuffed with seven sibs. She must think it's a great deal.
She must be around seventeen. I'm not good with ages, but I do know she's in her first year at the tech school. She is always nice, and probably too nice. She has sleek dark hair, and fragile doll skinned wrists, and a little whispersoft voice.
Oh, I know, I know. The maternal unit—who has been spending her day off flitting around in this new wine-red silk dress—has delusions of having a handmaiden.
But I must have learned a few things, because I haven't made one comment.
My parents seemed happy to see me. It's hard to tell with my mother, but she did show me the newly redecorated sun parlour. She might have wanted to mention my present hair color, but she didn't. Dad had to stop by the office for a few hours (Daddy Darsk hasn't the time for days off—not even Empire Day), but after he came back, and we had the luncheon the girl had made, we went walking through the nature park behind the house.
Dad doesn't talk much (my mother said once, with one of her friends, that he is sensitive yet silent), but he did point out a few plants I hadn't had names for before, and he recognized all of the bird voices flying about. He's always been interested in that.
I had always liked wandering around the park. Perhaps it's because I have so many bad memories of my life there, but I had forgotten that. When I wasn't walking along the paths, I would sit on this one bone-white wooden bench hidden back in the forest grove. Sometimes, if I had gone there after school, I would bring along my old dusty-black datapad with several novels inside, but I don't think I ever once opened it. When I was little, I always thought I find, suddenly, and inevitably, something wonderful in there. I never did.
Then at dinner, my mother told me her oh so important news. Yes, she has been appointed to a position on the social board.
Well, her life is now complete. I think that is all one could possibly say.
Anyhow, the girl showed me up to my room. She had the reading lamp burning, and the blankets and the (petal silk pink) sheets turned over. I took a moment to stare around it after I set down my travel satchel. There are some of my old things here, including a cloud-white stuffed bear, and the row of books I inherited from one of my great-great aunts, but my mother has changed everything else. It's hard to believe I ever lived here.
I had just woken up this morning, at an early and dark hour, when my sinuses went off. And (of course) I hadn't thought to bring any pills. I had brought three holobooks I might get around to glancing through, and a pair of cute black silk knickers, but not that. My parents only keep an old tube of bacta gel in the guest fresher, so I went downstairs, with a damp bio-tissue in my fist, to look in the kitchen. The birds were already screaming out in the trees. There was a light glowing under the door, so I slid it open several tiny inches to look in.
The girl was sitting at the table with her datapad, probably reviewing notes for the test I had heard about. I sneezed. She looked up, but she must not have seen me, because she shrugged and turned back to her ghost-lit screen. I ought to have just gone in—she would have left me alone while I searched the cupboards. But I didn't.
I found a half-used packet of pills in a tea table drawer that the droid must have put there. It did get confused at times, even after my father worked on its brain. Then I waited the few minutes for my face to turn numb, and went back upstairs, and back to bed.
But while I waited to fall asleep again, my thoughts drifted, off to that time I made that loud and stupid comment in class, when Professor G. was not actually leading a conversation. It still makes me cringe in bright, glaring loathing. As I wrote last night, I have many bad (and stupid, and miserably unhappy) memories. And no: I will not make them immortal by writing them down. I have to remember it all, and that's bad enough. Most of them are from that one especially awful term in secondary school, but I don't remember ever being happy—at least, not in the way other people seem to be.
That is all true. So I don't know why it seems, when I write it down, that it's only a story, and not a particularly good one, I made up.
But it's also true that my mother arranged for my (sadly multiple) stays at the clinic, and my melancholia diagnosis, to be erased from my records. I was relieved. I don't have to worry that D. will call me into her office for a private meeting that will not begin well. No one who knows me would think it happened, because it didn't. And thanks to bacta—the perfect wonder goo—I don't even have any scars.
I don't know when I went back to sleep, but finally, while I was trying to decide if I should give it up, and turn on one of the holobooks, I did.
When I woke up again, sunlight was spilling through the window, and I had a dull rockhard headache. It turned out I had slept in, past luncheon, and an hour into the afternoon. But I am, after all, on holiday.