Disclaimer…I don't own anything except the characters I create.
Author's Note…Here's the new chapter, un-beta-ed due to a vacation on their part. Sorry if the grammar and such is less than perfect. Also, the first part of this story is told from Johanna's point of view…tell me if you like it or not…and yes, this means Johanna finally comes into the story!
"Whosoever
wishes to know about the world must learn about it in its particular
details.
Knowledge is not intelligence.
In searching for the
truth be ready for the unexpected.
Change alone is unchanging.
The
same road goes both up and down.
The beginning of a circle is also
its end.
Not I, but the world says it: all is one.
And yet
everything comes in season."
-Heraklietos of Ephesos
Photographs, you know, are the absolutely, positively best way to spook somebody. They're just like ghosts. Not the nice ghosts like Casper, but the real nasty ones like The Flying Dutchman and other spirits whose feet don't touch the ground. That's why people only put up a few pictures in their house. One Foster-Dad said too many would hurt your eyes but he left in an extra word…too many just plain old hurt.
Me, I make lots of mistakes, but I'm not a total idiot. I only keep one, count 'em, one picture with me. That's just one ghost, one spook, and one thing to keep track of.
It was taken on December 31, 1999. My birthday. I was born at exactly 11:59, no joke. And you can think about that however you want to. But anyway, I used to know to whole other people that have the same birthday. One of them is a foster lady and now she's a real mommy. She used to have a foster-kid but last month, she had her very own baby. The other one died last year.
I like the picture. I looked at it so much during the plane ride that I remember everything about it in my head. And I guess I mostly look like my dad (who Ms. Harding has told me a little bit about) because I look nothing like the lady in this picture at all. She has reddish hair; I have hair that's the same color as almonds. She has nice, clear, skin and I have freckles that look like they're chasing each other from one side of my nose to the other. Maybe the only thing that's the same is that nothing is the same and I think that's a really stupid thing to share because it doesn't even make sense.
I wonder if she thinks about me as much as I think about her, which is every single day, just so you know. I wonder if she made a double of the December 31 picture and has it on her dresser. I wonder if she is as nice as she looks. I wonder what her job is. I wonder if she'll think I talk funny, because I've lived in a bunch of places.
Maybe instead of staring at that darn picture the whole plane ride, I should have been making an "I Wonder" list.
The flight attendant that Ms. Melissa told to Keep-An-Eye-On-Me taps me on my shoulder and asks me if I'm ready to go. I'm not, and I try to tell her this, but she unbuckles my seatbelt anyway. She starts to march down the aisle with me, and almost grabs my hand, but I run ahead and push the other people out of my way. I don't even stop to get the cool pair of wing-pins the pilots always give out.
I run so fast that I'm the second person that walks into the airport. I see Ms. Harding and she points to the kinda freaked-looking lady next to her, but I don't need anybody to tell me who it is.
She has ripped jeans. Thank goodness she has ripped jeans because I suddenly can't imagine her without ripped jeans. Out of the blue, my cheeks feel wet and it's all because my mother decided to wear pants today that weren't totally perfect.
My mother.
She recognizes me too, and I know this because her mouth kinda drops and her eyes get all wet and everything about her softens up a little bit. That, or the old guy with the cane that's standing in front of me makes her feel funny.
I don't know when I started running and I only know I am running because I can hear my dirty sneakers hitting the ground. I see her crouch down real low to the floor so she's as short as me and open her arms so it's like she's this great big hole that I have to fill up.
Finally, after running for a million years, I reach her and press into her. She feels warm. "Mommy," I whisper so quietly into her hair that I can't even hear it. "Honey," she answers. "Johanna."
That's exactly what if feels like right now; like I'm just a giant question mark and she's the even bigger answer.
XXXxxxXXX
Cameron always thought a good job would be at the airport. Being privy to all those tearful reunions would have been the perfect job for her. No terminal patients, no complications, no diagnosis's. No time of deaths.
But; apparently; it wasn't so simple. Because at airports, people also say good-bye. On her way to the terminal, Cameron had seen one couple breaking up; two parents sending their child back to college; and three power-suit mothers chatting quickly on their cell-phones to their daughters. Terminal. Fatal. Incurable. Deadly.
But…but this wasn't terminal anymore. Perhaps they should have an alternate name. Rebirth. Revival. Beginning.
Cameron twisted her head around to the child, her child, in the backseat, for a brief second. "How ya doing back there?"
Johanna's head popped up and her fingers left the small, toy rabbit she had worried between her hands. "I'm good." She paused. "How ya doing up there?"
Cameron grinned. "I'm good."
Johanna beamed. "Good." Suddenly hungry, she leaned over to the backpack she had brought with her on the flight for a snack. And noticed it was alone. "Mom!"
Cameron's heart jumped into her throat. "What is it?"
"We forgot!"
Cameron felt her blood pulse through her much faster than what was considered "healthy" as she mentally compiled a list of the possible things she could have left behind. "What did we forget?"
"My baggage!"
Oh. The baggage. Damn irony.
Cameron turned her head again. "Well, we couldgo back and get it now, or…"
Johanna smiled. "Or…?"
"Or, we could put it off until tomorrow and just get some dinner. What do you want to do?"
"The second choice. Definitely."
Cameron pressed her foot lightly on the breaks as she came to a red light. "So, that rabbit have a name?"
Johanna nodded slightly. "Tipsy."
Cameron's mind immediately raced to images of a drunken foster-parent naming it and thinking it funny. "Tipsy," she repeated.
"Yeah. Because when I got him I was learning to walk and I kept falling. Get it? Tipsy."
There was a breach in the conversation until Johanna broke the ice again. "Umm, when I called you Mom before; if you don't want I won't call you that anymore. I just didn't know what to say. I can call you Allison, if you like that. Or Ms. Cameron."
Cameron shook her head. "Mom," she said, "is absolutely perfect."
Johanna pressed her face into the window and looked up at the dark sky, remembering when a few hours ago, she had been almost eye-level with it. "Hey, Mom?"
"Yeah?"
"Did you know that the sky isn't really blue? We just think it is because that's all that we can see."
Well, of course Cameron knew this. She had long ago learned that nothing is at it appears to be.
