If Only I Could Read The Stars

CHAPTER 1

"Dear diary,

I wish I could tell the whole story, but I don't know what's written in the stars. It's said that you feel when you meet your love, but I met mine so quickly and out of nowhere, without even knowing what love means or how it feels like. Maybe it came in the form of a push from Someone to get me talk to him, or maybe in the form of that strong desire to sit on the bench near the lake, next to him. At least, this is what I thought.

My brain has completely lost the control over my mouth, my heart was taking precedence. The sun was setting silently, and the shades of pink, red and orange were dancing in a perfect harmony on the sky that was beginning to turn into the color of his eyes, black. I wonder if he noticed the one of my eyes. The frame was damp, but my soul was thirsty to get to know him.

Took the courage and walked pass his bench. The air became so different near him. His cheeks flared as I approached him, one of the only visible things in the dim light of the lantern. But his warm soul was emitting enough light, so I could see deeper than the surface, the most beautiful part of him! He was sitting alone on a small, narrow bench- but perfect for two people- next to a lake that was reflecting the beauty of the stars. It was as if they ordered in the form of our initials, because blinded by love, the world around me was containing only the two of us.

Enchanted by his charm, I..."

Visible regret appeared on my face because I shouldn't have read that out loud while writing it.

'Dad! It's... uhm... I-... uhm... w...I'm studying literature at the moment. It's uhm a narrative text found in my English book!'

He was standing still, near the open door, looking visibly affected by everything I was saying. Well, everything I was trying to say.

'It sounds great, I'd love to read it too one day! It seems like I came at the right time to call you to eat, you can barely talk, Lena!'

I was looking at him straight in the eyes, trying to understand whether he was being serious or not.

'You're right! Hunger's side effect.'

My mum was waiting for me downstairs at kitchen table. She prepared my favorite food, white rice with seafood.

I could sense something was not right, my parents had been too nice to me for a while. They've been cooking my favorite foods the whole week, have been buying me new clothes every day that now I need one more wardrobe to have enough place to put all of them-but I'm not complaining. My dad even tried to do my homework, and although I liked it, I had to stop him before he could find my secret books.

At first, I thought they were giving me for adoption, then I realized I'm fifteen. It could be anything cause when it comes to my parents, you have to expect the unexpected. I just wonder how long they are going to keep doing that for!

Maybe they are just protective of me, new city, new undiscovered dangers. But I'm a teenager now, I need to start experiencing life on my own skin, just like they did when they were my age. How am I going to predict when bad things are going to happen to my kids, just like they do to me, if I don't have some life experience in the background?

It's been nine months since we moved, nine months in which a series of unexpected events happened to me. But the greatest one is and will forever remain my diary, an endless and sacred book of poetry, written in prose, that records my life. Prose poetry because my life is a story everyone can read, but not everyone can understand. I am myself a metaphor, seen on the outside differently from who I really am. My parents are complex hyperboles, deliberate exaggerations of stereotypes. And my life is just as thrilling and rhythmic as rhymes are.

The moving has also moved things in me. My grandma's death was the cause of this change and also the cause of the open wounds in my heart from which all the blood filled with love left had shivered. Because I loved her. More than anyone else did.

'Everything about this city will be just the memory of her. We need fresh air. We need something new. We need to move.' my mum said firmly one day after the funeral, the first one I've ever been to. She always knows what she wants and somehow, what everyone around her wants. She is determined and strong, traits taken from her mum, my grand mom. She was born to be a leader; this is what nanna always used to say.

And she was right, everything in that city was just the sad memory of her, starting from the people and ending with the plants. My grandma dedicated her life to saving lives, the doctor with the purest heart of them all.

I did not have any friends to miss, any people to say goodbye to, so for me, moving was the easiest. But for my dad, not everything has gone as expected. My parents are like two different colors on the spectrum; while my mum is red- purposeful and strong, my dad is blue- tender, sensible, a true sentimentalist. They're opposites because they complement each other. He cannot say goodbye that quickly to things he attached himself to. But somehow, he managed to move over the pain and... we moved.

Standing at that kitchen table and noticing every single change in their normal behaviors is something I should worry about. I have already started a new life, I don't want another change.

'What were you doing in your room, darling?'

DARLING? Eew, she never calls me like that!

'She was reading a beautiful text, found in her English book, about some complex emotions. It seemed so real, like Lena wrote it because the narrator introduced the content with <<Dear diary>>', my dad quickly answered my mum's question.

I was looking at him puzzled and motionless. I started feeling a lot of blood rushing through my cheeks and I bet my mum saw that too. My dad was looking at us very confused.

To hide the obvious, I picked up my glass of water and as I was sipping from it, I felt my mum's scary and penetrating gaze coming towards me. Streams of perspiration began to wet my forehead and that was the moment I dropped the glass on the floor. It shattered into millions of shards and some of them got in my foot. And it immediately started bleeding.

When I was little, I wanted to become a doctor, just like my grandma was. That dream vanished as soon as I fainted when I saw blood coming out of one of my third-grade classmate's knee. She fell during PE class.

Streams of blood started flowing from the affected part of my foot and as soon as I saw that, I began to drown with the few sips of water taken a few moments before I dropped the glass on the floor. At that point, my face was redder than the blood.

'Mum...' the coughing could not let me breath at all 'where are... are you going?'

This is the end of Chapter 1. Want to find out what happened next? Chapter 2 is waiting for you!!!