It was raining when we had left and it was raining when we came back.
Naturally.
As I stepped out of the taxi I cursed myself for my choice of footwear. The black, frayed Chuck Taylors had already begun to take in water. Why on earth had I put on a pair of sneakers when I was going to a place where I knew for sure that it would be raining? Why couldn’t I at least have put on a pair, which didn’t have holes in them? Probably it was due to the fact that the weather had been nice on the east coast. In New York it had been sunny, in spite of the somewhat cool temperature. But at least it hadn’t been raining. So converse, a sweater and mom’s old leather jacket together with a scarf had been enough to keep me warm. But in Azure Creek, on the Olympic Peninsula however, nothing but a pair of wellingtons and a raincoat would keep you warm, and dry.
I looked up at the little white house and I could to my relief determine that it had remained virtually untouched since we had left it the previous year. If you ignored the fading of the painted green window frames and door and the severely overgrown flower beds, it looked pretty much the same. After all, we hadn’t been away for that long.
I and my mom, Ashley, moved away in May last year, after I had recovered from my injuries to the extent that I could at least walk and go to the bathroom without help. In the beginning, we were only supposed to take a break and go to Europe to visit my brother, and I would go back to school in August like any other year. But after two weeks in Italy, I broke down for the first time since leaving the hospital in Seattle to where I had been taken after the attack. Even though I had my friends back in Azure Creek and that it would probably be for the best that I went home, I didn’t want to. I just couldn’t stomach the idea that I would go back to a place where Jackson would never come back to. My life had changed forever and nothing would ever be the same without him. I knew that I had to go back at some point. I just needed more time to mend.
That was when mom suggested that we’d move to New York City for the remainder of the year. It would buy me some time and if I felt better at the end of the year, we’d go back home. And so when the summer ended and mom had pulled some strings to arrange with our move and my education, we went to New York. Apparently she had a lot of friends there, who all seemed equally as happy to see us.
For the first two weeks, while we hunted for an apartment, we stayed with a childhood friend of mom called Sunny. When they had finished high school, she left Washington for college in New York City. Sunny, an English teacher got mom a job at her school, where she began teaching music - the thing she knew best. I continued my high school education at the same school and everything moved on pretty well.
I began to heal.
During the days I went to school, which meant a quite small and liberal public one. Even though I have never been the most gregarious of beings, I tried socialized with my classmates, although more in the sense of being polite rather than for my own consolation.
The afternoons, I spent strolling around downtown Manhattan in search for old books to add to my collection of second-hand novels. I found a few good ones; it was much easier to find first editions in New York City than in any town in the Olympic Peninsula. And often to a bargain price.
When I’d get home, I would mostly pass the time with my mom. And since both mom and Sunny were single, we either went to Sunny’s place, or she came to us. We’d have dinner and then they’d tell me all about their childhood. Most of it I had heard before from Roxy, another friend of both mom and apparently Sunny. Though I didn’t mind hearing it again.
But while they talked, so dearly about their youth, I couldn’t help thinking about my own friends. When I went to New York, I knew I would miss them. Still, I thought I could handle it. But as time passed, I started to realize that I could only heal so much without my friends by my side. Of course I had talked to them on the phone, but it wasn’t the same.
At all.
Just before the Christmas vacation was about to start, mom made a phone call back to my old school and the decision to move back to Azure Creek had been made.
Tja, det var något litet... och i 1:a person! ha! Tänka sig!
och nej, jennie... jag har fortfarande inte bestämt mig... jag skrev en två sidor i fredags kväll och då var det tredje person... haha...
