Story: Zürich (chapter 8)

Authors: smfan

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Chapter 8

Title: Prayers

#8 – Zürich

In the week that I was asleep, it seems Mom and Dad talked things over and found that, while working with Joe was not desirable, Mom also had an uncle who worked in Illinois and ran a ranch. They weren't close, which was why she hadn't thought of him first.

Uncle Charles was the former deacon of a church until he found that his faith was not something that others shared and had then decided that working with honest animals was much better and had his own horse ranch.

I'd seen Charles occasionally at family reunions. He was a solid man, the same height as Dad with a sun-beaten face and hair streaked with gray and blond. He'd been intimidating then, but I was more concerned with his son.

Charles Junior was his daddy in all but age, height and temperament. Where Uncle Charles seemed apathetic to me but not avoiding, his son took time out of his busy schedule of shoveling food down his gullet to seek me out and terrorize me. He was like a bull-dog; fat, slovenly, and ready to bite. I was going to be on his territory and he was going to eat me.

When I told Mom that she simply waved it off and said to go pack. Dad was less enthusiastic than usual about getting me out the house. He sat on my bed as I packed my stuff up and helped me carry it to the car. Mom waited in the front-seat for us and was the only one smiling when we left.

I knew already, less than two blocks from my house, that I would be lonely. Dad wouldn't be there to ask me random questions, Taylor wouldn't be all rapid bi-polar and shove me and hug me in the same breath, Phillip wouldn't shyly ask me for a little help on his math homework because Rose, “uses big words to much.”

I wouldn't have James to pester me and monkey around in my tree house or Lance to tell me goodnight over the phone. No Alfred or Genevieve to give me an angry look when I said something that made Rose burst into giggles because she was the only that got it, no Elga to hand me sweets when my Mom wasn't looking, no Yolanda to nervously flutter her hands from my hair to my shirt and back and there would be no Jordan to look at me over his wine glass and raise an eyebrow.

Worst of all, there would be no Samuel to say something rude to break me out of my thoughts, to remind me that the majority of humans may have been morons but there would be a few that would help restore my faith in the whole. I doubted I would find them in this country.

Samuel decided that, although I was no full-grown I still needed to test my independence and decisiveness without him. He'd wished me the best of luck and sent me off with prayers to Ursa. I'd never had a chance to ask him just what that meant because Dad had come to help me get my things.

I looked at my Dad's steely face, lined with the bases of frown lines, and my mother's face, filed with laugh lines and happy memories. I could also see the lost nights under their eyes, deep dark bags. In the rear-view mirror I saw my own pale face between them, nothing happy yet nothing sad, nothing lost, nothing gained. I was not a hopeful person but I wouldn't automatically assume the worst if the world hadn't always shown me the worst. But perhaps it wasn't the world, so much as this town that had done this to me.

I sat back and asked, just as we got on the highway, “I won't be the same when I come back, will I?”

Mom looked at me but it was Dad that said, “Hopefully not.”

I wasn't sure whether or not to be scared.

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