I checked my phone. There was a text from Tia, but no content. A message at the end of the text said the contents were lost because they were sent when the “signal strength was low.”
I grabbed my mobile and sent a panicked text to her immediately.
She never responded. Tia was already gone.
Chapter 2 – Life Goes On
Domestic terrorism is what they called it. In actuality, it was an unstable kid pissed off at his girlfriend. He'd gone into the school – trench coat and all to cover the firearms. He'd found his girlfriend at her poster, pulled out a pistol, and shot at her three times. The first bullet hit her square in the chest. Before she could crumple, he aimed at her head and fired. He missed her as she started to collapse. Right then, Tia had reached the end of the aisle behind her. The bullet hit Tia in the left temple, killing her instantly.
The shooter emptied the pistol into other students, then pulled out a semiautomatic rifle and began shooting indiscriminately. Eventually, a couple guys got him from behind and wrestled him to the floor, beating him senseless in the process.
It was over. Nine wounded, four seriously, and eleven dead, including my Tia.
I should have been there. I probably wouldn't even have been walking in that aisle at that point in time. Tia's project was actually far from where she was shot.
A girl called me several days later. She’d been at the science fair, her project placed next to Tia’s. She’d been talking to Tia, who was upset because she’d been trying to send me a text, and couldn’t get a mobile signal in the auditorium. She said Tia had just been judged and had headed outside to text me, since she was finished, and wanted to try to get hold of me, her “best friend and lover,” according to what she’d told the girl next to her – the girl who called me.
Tia only made it to the end of the aisle leading outside.
My spoiled, self-centered, unthinking, cruel, selfish actions killed the best friend I'd ever had. The most wonderful, promising person I knew growing up. That should have been me with a bullet in my brain, not my sweet Tia. There was nothing I could do, no great feat I could accomplish in all my life – for the next 80 years – that would be worth a month of Tia’s time on earth.
**********
I was inconsolable. I spent the summer in and out of mental facilities. By mid-August, I had become conscious again, thanks to my parents, my other friends, Xanax and a new drug, Perspektiv. The big school in Uptown was starting classes in late September. I started on time, weened myself off the drugs, and tried to throw myself into the college experience.
Life goes on; time passes; we have little control of life, and no control of time. Most every day, I took Metrorail to college in Uptown, along with more than 45,000 other students, about half of whom commuted like I did. I majored in anthropology and archeology as planned. I kept some old friends, some of whom had stayed in town for college like I did, and made new ones. What I didn't have was a best friend.
No, that's not exactly true. Mimi Eversole, from Coeur d'Alene, Idaho of all places, was a very good friend – probably a best friend. The problem was, she wasn't Tia. But we hung out and double dated and commiserated about college life and growing up and all that non-academic stuff that seems so important when you're late-teens/early-twenties and trying to find yourself, trying to find your way.
I lived at home so I had to work at it to personalize as much of the college experience as the kids on campus. That even extended to very late nights in someone's dorm room or apartment, having those long talks, or studying, or just acting our age. Once in a while, I'd spend the night on someone's floor or couch – if they had one. I would conscientiously text my mom, telling her I wouldn't be home, so she wouldn't worry. I was neither loose nor irresponsible.
I was with Mimi and a handful of other girls on one night in November. It was six months to the day that Tia had been shot. They all knew the story, of course, and most knew the date. I would have been crying in my beer, if I’d had a beer, which I didn't. I was making the whole evening a downer and the other girls didn't know what to do about it. One of them, a pretty, Native American girl from Arizona named Waki, went back to her place and returned with a small glass of orange juice.
"Drink this, Destiny, it'll help relax you, make you happy, and maybe a little high."
"What's in it?" I asked. It was obviously not just orange juice.
"Shrooms," Waki told me.
"Oh! You're reinforcing a really undesirable stereotype," Mimi said. Everyone, including Waki, laughed. I even chuckled a little.
"Hey, this stuff works," Waki replied, faking defensiveness.
"Yeah, and it'll make me see blue dinosaurs and flying toilet bowls with wings," I noted.
"Probably not, because there's only about half a gram in there. It usually takes two to tango."
"Two what?" Someone asked, confused.
"Two grams. This should only relax her a little."
"Oh … that's real encouraging," I told her.
"Suit yourself." She picked up the glass and was getting ready to drink it.
I was down enough to realize that I didn't care what the stuff did to me. At that moment, I was fully aware of what I’d done to Tia, the love of my life. If it weren't for me, she would be here, or safely off at another school somewhere else. I took back the glass and downed it.
I expected to be flying the next minute but it didn't happen. Ten, then fifteen minutes passed. Finally, after about twenty minutes, I did think my spirits were a little better. I wasn't communing with talking bowling balls or clocks eating pasta either.
The conversation among us girls went on for another hour or so and then began to wind down. I left to head home before the last Metrorail train, feeling a lot better than I had earlier. Three cheers for the shrooms.
I still felt relaxed as I turned off the light and slid under the sheets in my own bed. I think I was in that state between awake and asleep when I heard someone call my name in a small voice from another room. I thought it sounded like a younger version of my mother. I sat up in bed, facing the window on the far wall. I was going to go to my parents’ room to see what was wrong when someone stepped in front of the window, near the foot of my bed.
The moon illuminated her in silhouette, but my nightlight allowed me to see enough of her from the front.
It was Tia.
"What the hell?" I said quietly, to myself.
"Must be pretty good shrooms," Tia said. "Blue meanies, I'd guess."
That was just plain weird - especially because I had no idea what a blue meanie was, since I'd never heard the term before that moment. This had to stop. I reached out and turned on the light.
The light was on. Tia stood there. I gasped, then I started to cry. My Tia was there! Standing right in front of me, there in my room!
That was impossible, of course.
I didn't care at that moment that it was impossible. I just needed to talk to Tia, tell her how sorry I was, beg her forgiveness, find out where she was, ask her what I should do, offer her my life in exchange …
I said all those things. She looked at me impassively, save for a faint, melancholy smile that seemed to materialize only on her lips. Her eyes appeared to be looking at something far away.
"I'm lost without you, you know," I said, trying to get a response.
"I hope that's not true. I don't believe that it has to be true. I wanted to help you achieve your potential, your future, not be the reason for how it turns out."
"I'm no one without you. You defined me, Tia."
"You're mistaken."
"I was always Tia's friend. Now I'm nothing."
"If what you say is true, Destiny, then who was I? I was, of course, Destiny's lover."
"No."
"No? Then who was I? What was I?"
"You were only Tia. You needed no further definition. We all orbited about you, Tia. Me, closest of all, most tightly bound, most in your aura. I was the moon to your earth. Beside you, I
was pale, colorless."
"I’m no longer here, my Darling, my Friend, my Love. You'll have to seek, find and fulfill your destiny without me, beyond me, Destiny."
"But I told you, I'm lost. I'm nearly without motivation or hope. Had you been here, I would have had a focus, a raison d'être."
"Oh, Destiny …" Tia, or her image, wavered, darkened, then steadied but remained darker.
"Help me Tia!" I called out.
"Oh, Love, I can't do anything now. I'm not of this plane any longer …"
She began to darken further. I thought she was becoming somewhat transparent.
"Tia …" I wasn’t sure what she was telling me. A moment later. I sensed a huge, circular room with dozens of doors leading from it all around. I knew they represented the many options emanating from what appeared to be my present position in life. Some were ornate and beautiful; some were plain; some were tattered with chipped wood or peeling paint; some were dark and foreboding. They were all equidistant form me. I was positioned in the center of the room, giving me no way to choose one of them, though I was sure only one could be selected. Once I passed through the chosen door, I could never return to this point and select another.
I had this creeping apprehension that the obvious choices, what seemed to be the beautiful, tempting doors, might not be the right ones. My confidence had been shattered with Tia’s death. With Tia gone, I felt that all of the desirable lines of my future life were entwined with things that would probably go wrong. My future was hopelessly convoluted, because the vector of my reality had been warped, my choices interlaced with discord.
I could simply give it up. What was the point without Tia? How could my life ever atone for the selfishness and self-serving obstinacy that had caused her to be lost?
At that point, I should have taken a step back and formulated a new future. Too much of what I saw ahead was tied up with Tia, who was no longer here. I had interests in so many other things: history, travel, cultures, the emergence of civilization, teaching, sexuality in contemporary societies, documentaries, writing …
It would have been easy to walk a sufficiently different path. But I couldn’t get myself to change direction. That would mean a move away from my Tia, and I couldn’t do that. I feared losing her forever if I did, not being able to grasp at that time that she was already lost. More than that, I feared forgetting her, and I was culpable, if not actually guilty, in her death. My life should always remember and honor her because of that, right?
“Tia!” I shouted, “How important are my choices? Can I sit back and let the future happen? Do I have any control? Can I find you? Can I join you? Can we be happy together again?
“Is my destiny already written?”
Though I could still make her out faintly, I heard her voice from far away whisper, "Your destiny may no longer be in your hands, Destiny.” As she said that, one-by-one, the doors began to vanish. In a few moments, only a handful remained. It seemed like a preponderance of the remaining doors were dark, foreboding.
“What do you mean, Love?” I begged her to tell me.
“As I look ahead, I see your destiny being seized from you, almost surreptitiously, such that you don’t know it’s happened until it’s a fait accompli. Without knowing it, your success will place you in grave danger. It’s a danger you won’t ever recognize until it’s much, much too late.
"Perhaps I could have done something, Destiny, but I’m no longer able. Chose as best you can. If you fail to do that, a truly disquieting destiny will find you, and own you. Your only escape is to turn completely around, and make something of your future that would, I’ll admit, appear mostly alien to you."
“I can’t do that!” I shouted. “I can’t stray from the Destiny you knew! I can’t abandon your memory!”
“That is lovely, and yet so lamentable at the same time,” she said in a muted voice which I barely heard. Her diaphanous image smiled sadly and faded away.
I felt lost. Maybe everyone comes to think that some decision they made turned their life in a direction that wasn’t where they wished they’d gone. They should have known it and avoided that decision. Unfortunately, they probably didn’t realize it until years later. I knew it at that moment, and I was incapable of finding a way to prevent it.
I had the strong, insistent feeling that any choice I made as the years moved forward would result in a life less than I would have enjoyed with Tia here.
But I’d lost Tia. I could no longer lay claim to any future that included her.
I had a disturbing, haunting feeling that chilled me from head to toe, that my future was already being written, and it would lead to the loss of everything I’d known.
What made me feel cheated, thinking back on that moment many years later, was that I was just a naïve, inexperienced eighteen-year-old. The fates were terribly unfair in expecting me to know what to do. Yet my future was being written, or at least projected firmly, and I would pay a price for not interceding right then in my own destiny – I’d pay a terrible, lasting price.
I honestly didn't know what to do with Tia’s thoughts or her advice. I didn't know where I was going, except to classes, on a dig from time to time, out with the boy du jour, to my job at Macy's or hanging with friends. I'd decided, by ignorance or neglect, to go where my experiences took me. Whatever happened, I deserved it. I had lost my Tia. I was following a path that wandered through the woods in which she’d perished; I wasn't blazing any new trail of my own design. I would pay the toll the fates charged me.
**********
Not all my memories of Tia weighed heavily on me. There’s no doubt that those three, high-school years of Tia's influence had gotten me into clothes and makeup and exercise and looking my best, whether dressed up for proms or down for cleaning out the garage. That uniquely feminine world view was tempered by my streak of fashion recklessness that used to crack Tia up.
Even when I was with Tia, I fulfilled a need to demonstrate my individuality. From time to time I liked to be a little unconventional or bold in my appearance – in the clothes I wore and how I looked overall. I'm sure Tia's glamor and evident sexiness had the larger influence on me, but my rebellious tendency went all the way back to when I was very young. When I was five, I decided that I needed to wear all my clothes inside-out, and my pull-over shirts inside-out and backwards, sometimes with both my head and one arm through the neck opening. That went on for months. It's hard to believe that my parents were that understanding for that long.
Being a child who would often march to the beat of a different drummer, I wasn’t satisfied with wearing my clothes backwards only at home, but I had to wear them like that to school also. I absolutely knew my clothes needed to be worn that way, in order for me to feel fashionable. I wanted people to notice me. When I was older I enjoyed dressing sexy and capturing the eye of those around me, but I did try to draw the line at slutty. At least, I think I did. I now know that slutty is only in the eye of the beholder.
When I was older, what I did seemed innocent enough. I would leave a button or two undone on my blouse or wear a mini-skirt with spiked heels that looked nice. I wouldn't wear patterned black nylons that would make me look like a hooker, though sometimes I would wear pretty heavy makeup that sort of gave me that more in-your-face-sexy look. My ears were only pierced once - I didn't have holes in any other part of me. I didn't have tattoos. I mostly tried to be edgy, without looking tarty – maybe save for the heavier makeup. That was my opinion, anyway.
I’ll admit that I liked to dance commando in a mid-thigh, sweet little evening dress, but that’s a long story in itself, and I have a better one to relate now – to give you an idea of how my personality developed after I was left without Tia, post high school.
Of course, that assumes I can still accurately remember the story. My thoughts get muddled sometimes. The only stories that are totally clear to me involve Tia.
I get confused all the time, truth be told. I’m pretty sure that’s not my fault. Wha
t’s happened to me has done that to me, as far as I can tell.
If everything I've experienced happened to you, you’d be at least as befuddled as I am; I’d bet on it. Especially if you’re a matiahng, a submissive. I never thought that I was, but I am now. They messed with my mind, you see.
I've come to the conclusion, having lived among these weird, misguided, tribal people for years, that it’s not important that I tell you the truth, only that I give you an explanation. Or several explanations. They can even be mutually exclusive. The more ways something could have happened, the truer it is, right? That’s called mythopoetic thought. The ancient Hebrews related their experiences that way, because that’s how they viewed reality. Don’t believe that makes sense, that it actually happened? Check out the book of Genesis: two conflicting accounts of creation. Mythopoetic thought in action. Hooray Yahweh. Mythopoetic’s sister process, mythopoeic thought, adds to this concept. That’s when every [significant] event is believed to originate from the will of a superior being.
No. That doesn’t mean my Master.
Here's what I’m trying to tell you, bottom line: there are a large group of societies on Earth that don’t think about anything, including life and reality, like you do. By and large, they wouldn’t even bother to read this tale. But you are. You expect cause and effect. You expect “I think this is right, because of …”
Sorry … not gonna happen here. I, Destiny, fell under the control, and therefore the destiny, of people who viewed the world differently than I did. Differently than you do. Everything that follows is based on that premise: what they did to me was totally justified in their world view. And that understanding of reality wasn’t what you would believe, nor what you would accept for yourself, or your loved ones.
But it was the reality that defined my future. You may feel that I was treated unjustly and, by your standards and what mine used to be, I was. But that carried no weight. You’ll see, when you get a glimpse of my future. At that point, we were not in Kansas anymore.
Destiny Taken (Destiny Lost Book 1) Page 3