Road to Arcadia: the Path East

Chapter Thirty-eight: Where the Water Rises

There was a half-lidded memory floating somewhere in his mind explaining how he woke up in the position he was in. There was some point during the period in the darkness of the night where he had gotten up, changed clothes, turned the lights off, and crawled back into bed, but whoever did that was as good as a ghost now.

By the time he had woken up, the sun was high in the sky, light barging through his window like it had personal matters to settle with him.

It took him a minute to get his bearings. Judging by the position and intensity of the sun, he had to have been out for easily over twelve hours. It would've been the longest he'd slept since--well, since before leaving home.

He shook off the thought and peeled himself out of bed. He hobbled off the morning grogginess before opening his door and leaving his bedroom.

The house was quiet. Kai noticed that almost immediately. A sudden influx of thoughts flooded his mind, concocting all kinds of scenarios that would explain this scene.

That's right, he remembered. He had fallen asleep right before Sara had told their mother about Arcadia.

If anything, the house should be bustling with last minute preparations, shouts of asking where important documents and family photos were.

But it was quiet.

He descended the steps, holding his arms close as the last bit of sleep clung to his body. The only noise that filled the space was the creak of wooden steps.

He found his answer in the kitchen, stuck to the refrigerator. It was a scrap piece of paper attached with an old magnet collected by his parents on some cheeky vacation before his birth. Its faded paint matched well with the light scribbles of the message:

MOM GONE TO WORK

SARA AT HOSPITAL

WE WILL DISCUSS WHEN WE GET HOME

Kai chewed the inside of his lip. He tried not to think through the implications of his mom thinking it was necessary to go to work. To be fair, he always said if she won the lottery, she would finish her shift before claiming her prize. In the part of his mind he reserved for imagining unrealistic scenarios, she was spending her final day telling off her jerkwad bosses.

He glanced at the kitchen clock. Even with his borderline hibernation, there were still a few hours before his mother's shift finished. There was time to kill here, time he wasn't thrilled about wasting.

He would make the most of it, even with his limited resources. After raiding the pantry for a quick bite to eat, he headed back upstairs to his room. He opened the bag he'd brought with him, examining the available space inside it. He had enough room to take a few personal items back to the Arc, items that he had to forgo on his first trip away from home.

After getting changed and washing up, he began to comb through his room. He uncovered years and years of layered memories. Some were good, while others hit with a sharp sting. He volleyed between wanting to take everything with him and wanting to burn the rest to the ground. He racked his brain, trying to think of things he had missed while he was on the road, but he couldn't think of anything.

Kai was not made of creased posters and faded theme park admission tickets. He was made of blood and cells and an intense desire for the world to be something it was never going to be. If anything, every item in this room was a piece in a mosaic screen covering up the part of him he wasn't able to discover until he left home. If anything, he should have been more tempted to leave things behind to prove to the malcontented folk of the east coast that he was here and he was alive and he had the nerve to leave it behind.