Bottle it Up

Chapter One

            The heat hit me like a wave. It was sticky and muggy outside. My skin was feeling like it was being bathed in some odd sort of soupy air. The sun was beating down on me, my auburn hair knotted at the nape of my neck allowing beads of sweat to form on the back of my neck.

            They say if you haven’t tried something you shouldn’t out rule the thing, but I regretted ever thinking a warm summer in the south could’ve been pleasant. I wasn’t sure the exact definition of the word, but I’m sure feeling as if you were about to melt onto the cobblestone house in front of your grandparent’s house wasn’t in the right one.

            Never less, here I was, spending a “pleasant” summer in the small town of Hendrix, Georgia because I needed to spend more time with my grandparents. My parents chose my eighteenth summer to do so though, and the boiling of my blood on the inside didn’t help the extreme temperatures on the outside.

            I felt a gush of air behind me, and I looked over my shoulder, watching as the yellow tax made off toward a city it could find. No running away, or pretending I got lost now. I was standing in front the traditional house with a wraparound porch on both floors. The shutters were painted an off white color, and the rest was brick. I’d seen the house in family portraits before, but this was the first time I was seeing it with my own eyes.

            There was no one to rush out onto the doorsteps and envelope me in a hug when I arrived. My grandparents were out at lunch like they apparently had done every Saturday for the past fifty years of their marriage. It made my heart swell to think that they were still very much in love, but it also made my heart shrink thinking I’d be waiting in a foreign house for a few hours before anyone showed up to wish me welcome.

            “Here we go Haze,” I muttered as a motivation, my hand loosely holding the handle of my duffel bag as it scudded the dry grass on the ground. I didn’t bother to lift the bag up and make my procession faster. The banging of the bag against the ground and my legs just gave me time to think before I entered an environment even more foreign to me than humidity.

            If someone were to pass by this little house, they would’ve seen a redhead who may as well been related closely to zombies, dragging her feet and luggage as she walked down the grass covered stone walkway to her grandparent’s house.

            “Only three months to go till you can go to college in a place with cold weather,” I murmured, and saw the door grow larger and larger as I grew closer. “You’ll be wearing an infinity scarf, and you’ll be wearing cute mittens while sipping hot chocolate,” I continued, shuffling up the first step, my floral bag still on the ground. “Maybe you’ll even have a smart boyfriend who’s helping you study for a test-“ I started, pausing my motivation when I realized that isn’t the most romantic thing in the world. “Maybe you’ll even have a loving boyfriend who’s ice skating with you,” I corrected, a smile on my lips as I said the words. “That’ll be good Hazel,” I finished softly, reaching the porch of the house.

            My mom had been given me instructions before I went to the airport, and I still remembered them now, even through the jumble of thoughts in my mind. I moved forward to the doormat and lifted it, waiting for a shiny object to catch my eye. When I did notice the object, a spare house key, I lifted it up and clasped my hand around it, the sharp edge cutting into my palm. My mom had told me that grandma and grandpa had planned to leave the door unlocked for me, but like everything, she wanted to change their opinions.

            A little twist in the lock, and a tug of the door handle, and I was welcomed to a paradise otherwise known as an air conditioning. Up North, not to say we didn’t have our warm days, I didn’t want the sanctuary of a cool escape as much as I did just moments before I entered that house.