Closer to the Sun || A Fairy Tale on Hiking Trails

1.3.1 - Nora - Boom Chicka Boom

Nora couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong. Or that something had happened. Or that something was going to happen. She wasn't sure, but she'd been feeling it for days; a butterfly had gotten inside her and it beat its wings inside her ribcage whenever she sat still.

She'd been thinking about it all afternoon. But now, she wasn't thinking about it so much. Right now, as she dragged the back of her hand across her eyes, she was most preoccupied with corporeal matters.

This was the sixth time Nora had cried alone in Callum's bedroom.

Crying ran in Nora's family, like bad decision-making and low blood pressure. Minor arguments, stubbed toes, frustrating days at the office... no incident was too small to merit tears. The Bandiera family was leaky, as Nora's aunt Charlie put it. Charlie had married into the Bandiera family, so she was well used to emotions worn on sleeves.

Nora's cousin Luís cried every time he left for a long backpacking trip. He cried when he came home, too. Her aunt Lucy, Charlie's wife, cried whenever a movie had a dog in it. Didn't matter the movie, didn't matter what happened to the dog. Her grandmas cried whenever they looked through old photo books, throwing little jabs at one another for ancient fashion faux pas. Nora had cried on every last day of summer camp back when she'd been a camper waving goodbye to her counselors, and she cried on every last day of summer camp now that she was old enough to be a counselor waving goodbye to her campers, drowning out the sorrow of a summer at its end with the defiant cheer of campfire songs.

I said a boom chicka boom

I said a boom chicka boom

I said a boom chicka rocka chicka rocka chicka boom

I said a boo sniffa hoo

I said a boo sniffa hoo

I said a boo sniffa rocka sniffa rocka sniffa hoo

And Nora cried over Callum. A lot. Sometimes it was because he was cruel. Sometimes it was because she was cruel and she regretted it later. Sometimes it was because she didn't know what she wanted. Sometimes it was because she knew exactly what she wanted but was getting less sure that she'd be able to have it.

Nora uncurled herself from the blanket on Callum's carpet. Her arms and legs wore prickly carpet-fiber swirls, red and tight and itchy. She rubbed hands along her legs and sniffed a final sniff. Callum would be in the living room listening to records, or in rec room shooting an angry solo game of pool, or in the pool doing frustrated laps. Sulking somewhere in his mansion of a house – actually, it really was just a mansion, wasn't it? – just as he always did when she cried.

I said a boom chicka boom

I said a boom chicka left me all alone inside his room

The MacGowan house had plenty of places to hide from your own feelings, or from anyone else's, for that matter. If Nora's family was overemotional, the MacGowans were under-emotional. Maybe they'd sold their feelings long, long ago, for a six-car garage and part-time cleaning staff.

Nora wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and helped herself up, pressing into Callum's wrought metal bed frame. His entire room looked like a catalogue, too influenced by his mother's overbearing taste to feel properly his. The unassuming places where he'd managed to squeeze in some amount of personality – the plastic CD player with the cracked lid, the photos of himself and Nora in the photo booth at their senior prom – were shuffled off into the corners of shelves, or had been carried off to his college dorm room in Boston.

Nora swung open the bedroom door. Living Room Numero Uno was empty. The purely decorative, heinously uncomfortable leather pillows sat in polite stillness atop burnished upholstery that smelled like shoe polish. The curtains admitted soft-filtered afternoon light, cut through the middle by the silhouettes of jagged Colorado mountains beyond. There was no sign of Mrs. or Mr. MacGowan; they were off schmoozing wealthy donors at a fundraiser for Chronically Sleepy Orphans or at a car show for old restored German two-seaters or at some gala drinking champagne from elephant tusks.