Orna Puella

Part I


- I -

HERE

Great, I thought bitterly. This is like one of those stupid cliché stories. A new girl in town who has to go to the new - for her - school. Ugh… To make it even better, the new girl who had some sort of traumatic experience and lives with her dad who is, get this… A freaking police chief in this God forgotten place!! Seriously, could you get any lamer than this?!

I carefully put my brush on the dresser and got up. Come one, Kristine, I thought. Move it. Just go there, survive your first day, and then you’ll be the old news. I sighed. Why the hell did my dad live in this stupid little town?! Why couldn’t he live somewhere normal, like L.A. or D.C. or New York for crying out loud?!

I moved in with him in late May and now I felt somewhat all right. I would still have nightmares in the middle of the night once in a while, but at least it wasn’t as frequent now. It would always be the same one. I am walking into my house - my old house where I lived with my mom before everything shattered - get into my living room and then I see my mom. She is taking a nap on her favorite sofa, looking really peaceful. I smile and decide to sneak up on her, I’ve done it before, and she would always look really scared even though I knew she was just faking it to please me. So I sneak up on her with my usual “BOO!!” and she doesn’t react. Even her breathing doesn’t change. Come to think of it, there is no breathing.

So I think, all right, she changed her act, right on. This is new. I laugh and playfully pull her arm and then I feel like her skin literally burns my fingers. It’s beyond cold. Feels like marble covered with ice. I start to feel just a little freaked out by that point but I still think it’s the part of the game. So I laugh somewhat shakily and say okay, you got me. Let’s go get some Chinese food now… And she just lays there, still no breathing or movement. So I keep saying “Mom… Mom!… Mom?!” And then it hits me hard. She is not playing.

Every time I hope to wake up at this point but it never happens. I keep dreaming about calling 911, about the paramedics coming almost five minutes after I made the call… About how they take a single look at my mom and I immediately see that there is no hope to bring her back. One of them says softly that she was gone for at least six hours now and I just stare at him. Then I see them putting her into a black bag and zipping up the zipper, and I can see one of her fingers getting caught in between and the zipper bites into it, and I start screaming that they should stop, that they are hurting her, that her finger will start bleeding… That’s when I usually wake up and at first I almost cry with relief, thinking oh thank God, it was just a dream. But then I realize that my brain was just replaying the real events over and over again and I start crying and I am nowhere close to the relief.

I would have this nightmare every single night ever since the funeral. Then sometimes at the end of July, I noticed that it wouldn’t come back every night. Now it was more like every other night. I was thankful for that. And then in the middle of August it would happen once or twice a week. Now, at the end of August, it would visit me once every ten nights or so. I knew that eventually it’ll be gone - not completely, of course. It would haunt me for the rest of my life - and I would be actually able to go to sleep without fear that I would have to re-live those events again. The damn nightmare felt extremely real. Down to the last detail.

Today was my first day of school and I was scared. Also I was glad. I mean, the fear of being a new kid in a small town high school where everyone knew each other since birth probably, was nothing compared to the fear of falling asleep and finding my mother dead on the sofa again.

So I got my backpack and marched out of the front door. My dad was trying to talk me into using his car since he would usually use his cruiser, but I kept saying no. I will probably succumb once the weather turns colder but right now, I wanted to walk. It was warm, slightly breezy, and to be honest, I always enjoyed walking. It would always put my mind at rest. Plus, the school wasn’t even that far from my dad’s house anyway.

I got to school in less than fifteen minutes and was somewhat surprised to see that everyone looked better than I thought they would. I mean, somehow I had this picture in my head that all the kids in school would look like a mix between Amish and white trash, since the town was quite small. But everyone looked like your typical teenager in your typical high school. I snorted softly. This was way too normal. Well, maybe it won’t be as horrible as I expected. I mean, I should mesh pretty well with the rest of the crowd with my jeans and shirt that I was afraid were way too fancy.

It was funny how I could care less about curious looks and whispers. I thought it would get to me more than it did. I shrugged to myself, figuring that the normality of the whole scene probably put my mind at ease and I accepted it as somewhat of a gift. I looked like everyone else, maybe slightly underdressed compared to a group of girls who stood aside from everyone else, and it was more than fine with me. Those girls were most definitely the local “clique.” You know the type. Short skirts, tight tops, long wavy hair, makeup, and whatnot. Every school has them. I was pretty sure that every single one of them - there were like six or seven - was a cheerleader.

“Hey,” someone said to me and I turned my head.

It was some girl. She looked curious and actually friendly.

“Hey,” I said casually.
“I am Liz,” she said with a smile and I smiled back.
“I am Kristine.”
“You are the chief’s daughter, right?”

I blinked. Wow, news did travel fast here… But then again, I moved here at the end of May so by now, everyone probably knew my social security number, let alone who my father was.

“Yeah,” I smiled again.
“Cool,” Liz nodded. “Come on, let me introduce you to people…”
“All of them?” I blinked again and Liz laughed.
“God, no! Just a few. The normal ones.”

I chuckled at that. Normal, right… Some guy walked by us and thumped Liz on the head. Liz jumped and whirled around.

“Hey, fatso,” he grinned lazily. “Messing up the new person?”
“Get lost, Kennedy,” she grumbled angrily.

Fatso? I looked at Liz. She was around five-six and weight maybe a hundred thirty pounds, maybe even less.

“I am Michael,” the guy shoved her aside and looked at me.
“Kristine,” I said without offering my hand. I mean, what the hell, he never offered his.
“Chief’s daughter, huh,” he didn’t even try to make it sound like a question and I shrugged. “Well, better be careful around you then… Don’t want your daddy to arrest me or something…”
“Get lost!” Liz pulled me away from him. “Ugh! Okay, Kennedy is a dick, stay away from him.”

I sighed. Oh man… This is getting lamer and lamer… A bad boy, a new girl… Good God, if we will end up together, I will probably die from shame. I will be known as the Cliché Queen for the rest of my miserable life.