by Regan Claire
“Oh sh-, sorry. Della, this is Dove. Dove, this is my cousin Della Doe Deare.” Cash loved introducing me by my full name because of the “comical alliteration”. Jerk.
“Dove, like the bird? It’s nice to meet you.” I was trying to be friendly. Having Cash around made me feel a lot more secure about meeting another peer.
“Yeah, like the bird. Nice alliteration, Della Doe Deare.”
“Watch it, Dove.” Cash scolded him, then turned to me. “He gets the bird thing a lot, Della, but it’s way better than his real name. Dover, as in ‘Ben Dover’, so don’t let him give you any flack.” So, Cash was allowed to make fun of my name, but no one else was. I didn’t even get the vibe that Dover, ‘Dove’, was making fun of me, just stating the obvious. Either way, I had to duck out of the way since Dove took that moment to grab a handful of sand and rub it all over my cousins moppy hair.
“Come on, man. That joke got old in middle school.”
“Yet it still pisses you off.”
“Whatever. You going in, Della?” Dove brought the attention back on me.
“Er, on one of those? I think I’ll just go swimming, or something.”
“What? You have to come out! Why do you think I brought my long board?” I, of course, had no idea what he was talking about.
“You can just watch today, don’t worry. It’s not like there’s much to ride, just some windswells. Not good for beginners. Just go up the beach a bit if you decide to get in the water. Don’t want your cousin here to ride over you,” Dove said.
“God, Dover, that only happened one time. But yeah it’s best to go down a bit.” Cash picked up his board and started walking to the water with Dove.
“Man, I wish she’d get on a board. You should feel it when she’s in the water, it’s like she takes the whole ocean inside her….” Cash was clearly talking about me as he walked off, and though I was tempted to follow him and listen, I knew I couldn’t do it without being caught. Besides, I was craving the water again.
I kicked off my shoes next to Cash’s, and hiked down the beach to a place that was clear of surfers before getting in the water. Getting hit by a six-foot surfboard was not my idea of a good time. As always, I swam out to the sandbar that was out a few dozen feet from the shoreline.
As soon as I got into a rhythm swimming, my mind started to relax and the prickling-sensation started again. I’d never done drugs, but this feeling is what I’d always imagined it would be like. I was a junky for the way I felt in the water. My skin was charged and everything seemed more real in the world. I was more real; more alive, and could feel the life around me, enveloping me. I swam and floated around a bit, relishing the feeling as I always did, before deciding it was probably time to head back in.
Cash and Dove were waiting for me when I made the trek back to our spot on the beach, and I could feel the wonderful tingles leave my body as I approached them. I was a little self-conscious around Cash’s new friend, as he and Cash were both staring at me when I walked towards them, and my shoulders tensed in response.
The twinkly feeling might have left, but I still felt pretty charged, like I had drunk a few cups of coffee for breakfast.
“Sorry if I kept you waiting,” I started awkwardly, as both boys had their mouths agape.
Cash was the first to snap out of it. “No problem. How do you feel?” His eyebrows were raised while he awaited my answer.
“Er, great actually. Refreshed. A little creeped out by you two, though. What time is it?”
“Almost ten o’clock.” This was from Dove, who had finally composed himself and checked his phone for the time.
“Crap. Cash, I need to be at the house like, now. Mind dropping me by there?”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sure thing. I’ve been wanting to take another look anyway. Dove, you coming?”
“Absolutely. I’ve got the day off, so I’m game for anything,” he said, and we all walked to the parking lot, stopped by an ancient blue truck where Dove dropped his board off, and hopped into Cash’s Jeep.
CHAPTER EIGHT
August 3rd, 1968
Dear Journal
Today has been another trying day with Anise. She actually showed up for her lessons and spent the first ten minutes mooning over a handful of flowers and not paying an ounce of attention to anything I was telling her. To be honest, I lost my temper a bit. I relaxed my body and let myself feel the light breeze, willing the prickling feeling to grow and taking in the power the small wind offered, just the way my own mother taught me so long ago. Gathering power is the first thing we are ever taught, and Anise already knows how to do that, and how to recognize when others are doing the same. Still, she failed to realize that I was Gathering, which is a dangerous habit! You never know when enemies are near! So I released the Wind I had gathered in a small funnel towards her, scattering the flowers in her hands, and mussing up her hair something awful. It was quite impressive.
She was, of course, awed with my display, and had no idea it was because of my temper. She’s insisting on learning how to do it, and while the funnel is impressive looking, it takes a great deal of energy to be truly destructive, an amount of energy that only the Elfennol can hold. There are much more effective ways to fight an enemy with Wind; sucking the air from their lungs or making small objects travel through the air to distract or defend take much more concentration and training, but so much less energy. I remember the first time I saw the funnel, and I suppose I reacted similarly. I mustn’t be so hard on her. At least not now that she is actually interested in her studies.
There were already two cars parked in the driveway when we got to the house, and since one was definitely Luke’s I had to assume the other one belonged to the electrician. The two men were sitting on the porch, deep in conversation, when me and the boys jumped out of the car and greeted them.
“Uncle Luke! Della said you’ve been helping her out. What all needs to be done? She’s been pretty close-lipped about it.” Cash came right out and demanded, not even bothering with the niceties of “hello”.
“Wait. Uncle Luke. Is that, like, a southern title of respect for old guys or something?” I was aware that the two of them knew each other, but I was certain someone would have mentioned our being related!
“Well, it’s a title of respect for uncles. Great-uncles, that is. He’s our grandpa’s brother. Didn’t you know?” And before either of the rats would explain, they led the electrician into my house, and left me standing on the porch like an idiot.
I’d been in town a little over two weeks, seen Luke nearly every day and he didn’t think that this was an important tid-bit of information? I guess I understand now why he was so willing to help me.
“Ugh, how could I have missed that?” I said to myself.
“How could you have known?”
I nearly jumped out of my skin. I had completely forgotten that Dove was standing right behind me.
“Don’t do that! You nearly scared me to death!”
“Don’t speak? I was here the whole time. It’s not like I snuck up on you.” He couldn’t keep the mirth out of his voice.
“Well, breathe louder or something next time.” I thought about going into the house after my cousin and apparent uncle, but couldn’t make myself. I was pretty pissed at them both. So I stormed around the porch until I got to the stairs leading to the back yard and sat on the top step, trying to calm myself by looking at the water. That lasted all of thirty seconds before I stomped my way downstairs to pace in the yard, only getting angrier when one of my feet crashed through the wood of the last step down. So, I was being childish. Get over it. Their betrayal stung, and even if it were an over-reaction, it was taking me time to process the fact that the only two people I had started to trust had lied to me. I had been lied to a ton of times in my past, but that was supposed to be in my past, and never by people that I trusted.
After a few minutes of angry-mumbling to myself while treading a path in my own yard, I looked up and saw th
at Dove was sitting on the top step I had so recently vacated, looking at me with a worried crease in his brow.
“So, what’s up Della? You okay?”
“Just, I don’t like that kind of surprise, all right?” I told him.
“Aren’t you already kind of close to Luke?” he asked as he walked down the stairs, hopping over the broken one.
“Yeah, I am, or I thought I was.”
“And I know that you’re getting along well with Cash.” He stood right in front of me, in effect blocking my pacing, and looked in my eyes.
“If you call being annoyed within an inch of my life ‘getting along well’, then yes.” I crossed my arms over my chest and looked past him to the ripples in the water. I was still plenty mad, and having this boy get in my face wasn’t helping any.
“Well, maybe they wanted it to be a surprise?”
“Surprises don’t really equate with happiness in my world, so pardon me.” Even I realized how rude I was being.
“What malicious reason could they have had for hiding it?” He sounded exasperated with me and raised an arm to push back his hair, holding it with one hand to keep the wind from blowing it around. Wait a second. The wind? I looked around and saw more evidence of it: the water was rippling and the weird grassy stuff was swaying. But I didn’t even feel the slightest brush of air on my skin. I must have been blocked by the house or something.
“I don’t know. To mess with my head or something.” But that rang false. I thought about the question for a few more minutes, but I couldn’t think of a way that hiding our familial ties was mean… That realization took the proverbial wind out of my sails, and my anger deflated to something a lot more uncomfortable to me: hurt.
“Well why wouldn’t they tell me, then?” To my horror, a couple of tears slid down my face. I hadn’t cried since I was a little girl, and here I was, crying, because I’d had my feelings hurt.
“I don’t know, Della. Maybe you should ask them yourself.” His voice held no trace of the annoyance it had earlier, and he took a step forward and hugged me. Of course, I stood there stiff as a board, not reciprocating in the least and trying desperately not to notice how he smelled like my ocean and a little citrusy, like he’d been eating an orange.
I’m not a hugger, remember?
“What are you doing?” Cash’s voice rang out from the house. Apparently I was gone long enough to worry about, because standing on the porch were Cash, Luke, and the electrician, who probably thought I was completely cuckoo. At his question, Dove jumped about a mile high, quickly released me and shuffled back like he was feeling guilty. I just stood there staring at my cousin. Or glaring. Potato potahto.
“Della, we’ve finished up and Carl here has another appointment,” Luke sheepishly injected. He wouldn’t make eye-contact with me.
“Oh, I’ll be right there.” I figured it was incredibly bad form not to personally talk with Carl while he was actually there, so I walked up the stairs (shoulder-bumping Cash as I went by him) and had Carl go over his notes with me and give me a quote for the job. And holy crap, was it a lot of money even with the discount I got for taking down all the drywall myself, and using the discount at Luke’s for a lot of the materials.
After saying goodbye to the electrician I puttered around the inside of the house for a while, too chicken to go back outside and face Cash and Luke, and anxiously twisting the same armlet I’d put on in the bank around and around on my arm. After a few minutes, I steeled up my nerves, took a deep breath, and almost walked directly into Luke. I guess he didn’t feel like waiting around for me to come talk to him.
“Cash and Dove are running down to the diner for some lunch, they’ll be back in a few,” Luke said, avoiding eye contact with me.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You’re not going to just let this one go, are you?” He asked.
“What? No! Seriously. You’ve had plenty of time to say something to me about it. I want to know why you didn’t. What’s the big deal?” It went against life-long habit to confront him like that, and I could feel my pulse speed up as a result.
“Well, I didn’t tell you at first because you seemed terrified of the idea of family. That’s the whole reason why John McCay bought you over to my place instead of dumping you on Connor’s doorstep that first day. We didn’t want to scare you off,” he said, finally looking me in the face.
“Okay… I get the first day. But Luke, seriously. I’ve seen you almost every day since then and you still haven’t said anything. I haven’t heard anyone in Connor’s house mention you either,” I found that strange, especially since Connor and Ellis were constantly trying to get me over to this or that relative’s house for dinner; I was running low on excuses.
“About that. You see, me and Toby, your granddad, had a falling out a while back. I’m not exactly a welcomed member of the family these days, ‘cause nobody wants to get on my brother’s bad side. Except Cash,” he laughed. “That boy doesn’t have the sense God gave him. To be fair, Cash didn’t know about me until he was about 8 or 9, so you’re really ahead of the game.”
“So, this is mostly about some dumb family drama? I have family drama? What are you two fighting about?”
“Girl, this is just a little peek into the drama of the American Family. And just typical brother things. Don’t worry your pretty head about it.”
“So, being a part of a family means dealing with this type of nonsense? Gee, what was I thinking all these years?” I said in my most sarcastic voice. This was turning out to be more complicated than I thought, and that’s saying something. “Anyway, I’m still mad at you. It was really stupid not to tell me. I haven’t even met Toby yet, and couldn’t care less that he’s my grandfather. Is there anything else family-wise I should know?”
“Well, of course there’s more you should know. Unfortunately, you’re gonna have to figure that out on your own,” he said mysteriously.
“What! What do you mean I have to figure it out on my own? What else is there?”
“If I told you, you’d just think I was crazy. So, what are you going to do with the rest of your day?”
“You suck. Ugh, I guess I’ll get started on the walls.”
“We’re gonna have to move out a lot of this furniture first. That way we can get to that bad spot on the floor, and don’t have to work around it all.”
“Where am I supposed to put it all?” I asked, looking around.
“Well, there’s a storage place a mile or so away, just need to rent a space for a couple of weeks. Should only be a hundred or so. We can use my truck, make a few trips. You don’t need to move everything, just the smaller stuff. The really heavy things we can just move around, keep those sheets on them for protection. And looky there, we got ourselves some worker bees to help us.”
The worker bees turned out to be Cash and Dove, who had just gotten out of Cash’s Jeep laden down with white plastic to-go bags full of food.
After eating, we spent the rest of the day in agonizing physical labor and trips to my new storage unit. Luke was right; it was close. We ended up dropping him off at his store a couple of hours in and Luke said I could borrow his truck until I got to work the next day.
We threw all the little knick-knacks that had littered the counters into the drawers of the cabinets and dressers, cushioned with old newspaper. Luke insisted on keeping all the paintings on the walls at his house in his garage. Most of the frames were in really bad shape and I was afraid that a lot of them were ruined.
It was actually kind of fun, doing all that work with Cash and Dove. I’d decided to forgive Cash since he really made it impossible to stay mad. Well, stay mad at him for only one thing as he was constantly doing little things to irritate me.
The guys talked a little about college. Cash had dropped out at the end of the last semester and was about to start training to become a firefighter, much to Aunt Ellis’s horror. Dove was taking the next semester off from school to become a physical ther
apist, said he needed a “break” before he had to start all the clinicals. Since I had absolutely nothing to add to the conversation, I just listened and relished the normalcy of my life in that moment.
We were a very grimy bunch by the time we were all finished, and I decided to leave the truck at the house for the night so I’d have an excuse for a run in the morning. I rode shot-gun in the Jeep back to the house where Cash dropped me off before taking Dove back to where he left his car.
In the shower I thought about what Luke had said, how there were other secrets that he wouldn’t tell me about. I thought about Llewellyn’s diary that I had been reading, and all the things she wrote that didn’t make any sense. The strange sensations were happening more and more often: tingly, full, energetic, and I was feeling comfortable for the first time ever. I decided to experiment a little and try one of the exercises that Llewellyn had described in the last journal entry.
Letting the water beat down on my back, I relaxed my body and tried to focus on the feeling of the water. Sure enough the tingling started in my back where the water was hitting, then spread through to the rest of my body. When I lifted my hand out of the spray, I noticed something a little peculiar. My hand was dry! I mean, it had been wet just a moment before, but my skin seemed to absorb the moisture the moment it was out of the spray. I stuck it back in the water, then pulled it out again to be sure. This time I saw the water absorb into my skin. I thought back to the times I had felt that way before. It was often after a swim in the ocean, but I never noticed the insta-drying that was happening. I’d always credited the suns rays to my quick drying.
Drenching my hands again, then holding them in front of my face, I willed the water to sink into them, marveling at my new drying power. Of course, I marveled a little too soon because as I was willing my hands to absorb the water, something funny started to happen; the water from the shower bent around me to reach my palms, which drank it up faster than a Sham-Wow.