Thalia is anxious, and wants things to be done her way. Sebastian loves to listen to the sound of stories. When the two meet for the first time at a celebration for the famous dancing activist act, The Fabulous Four, they find that they might have m...
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Going to the commemoration of my grandmother was not how I would have preferred to start a casual Saturday, but my Father had been begging me to attend for weeks now, so I figured I had no choice. My grandmother died about a year before I was born, and she was somewhat of a mystery to me, despite how often my parents would rave about her. Because of my nonexistent attachment to her, I never really saw it as productive to think much about what she had done in her lifetime. I had never met her, after all.
My mother had picked out a little polka dot dress from my closet, which had been shoved as far back as it could go quite a while ago. I was hoping never to see it again, its baby blue material had always been itchy and uncomfortable to me. My father says I just have sensitive skin. That I've always been like that, even when I was a little tiny baby, back when he used to give me baths. I try not to think about a time where I was completely out of control of what my body could and could not do.
I push the skirt of the dress farther down my legs, hoping for some more coverage, but it doesn't help much. I twist my legs and notice the stripes on the back of my knees. "Stretch marks," my mother said while I was trying on clothes at Target. She sighed and told me to pick a pair of shorts that weren't so short. That they showed off my thighs, which would rub together as I walked, too much. When I went back into the changing room I looked at all of the things she had picked off and decided were bad. I always thought they had been beautiful. Signs of growing. Becoming a woman. I cover them now with a pair of tights from my dirty laundry pile.
"Thalia!" My mother screams from the kitchen, signaling my need to hurry up and get out of the house. I grab my phone from the charger and check my appearance in the mirror one last time. I would much rather be wearing my school uniform, its bits and pieces created for the purpose of not looking a certain way. They were comfortable and familiar. I try my best to toss those two words out of my vocabulary for the next few hours.
I slip out of my bedroom and past my father as he tightens his favorite dinosaur tie. My mother holds a box in her hands, one I've never seen, and begins to usher me out of the front door. I struggle down the steps in the white heels my mother had given me to shove my feet into. They were at least two sizes too small, and the cream color of the dots on my dress were just a little bit off from the stark white of the shoes, which irked me. My mother lets out an exasperated sigh, clearly disappointed in her daughter, who was taking each step one at a time like a two year old.
Eventually I got down to the driveway, lunging to the back seat door. I opened it and jumped in, trying my hardest to take as little steps as possible to get seated. I relaxed into the leather seats, eyeing the pair of converse that I wear for gym class laying on the ground beside my sardine feet shoved into the whitest can to ever exist. I decide then and there that I would not be able to deal with heels for even a few seconds later, let alone hours. I slip them off, grab the socks shoved into the converse, and slip into the beautiful utopia of slight comfort. Finally, I can live out my Demi Lovato daydreams.
My father rushes out of the house, three bananas in hand, shoving himself into the passenger seat. He tosses one of the fruits into the back seat, telling me that if I'm hungry I should eat something nutritious to start the day off with a "pep in my step!" My Dad has always been the weird one. My Mom pulls out and begins the drive towards the community center closer to the heart of the city.
Baltimore wasn't always my home. I grew up in Oregon, where my parents met at University. They moved back to where my dad was born when I was seven. Now, nine years later, I'm still not completely in love with it here. Driving down the streets feels like watching someone go from happy to angry in less than a few seconds. Each area looks distinctly different, and during the winter everything is covered in the doom of freezing cold temperature. The summers aren't much better, more sweaty than anything. I don't complain though, because my father loves it here, and would probably be buried here if he could. Not that I think anyone would stop him.
After a 24 minute and 38 second drive, which I timed with my phone, we pulled into the parking lot of a particularly large building. Old, with its original signs still attached, I wonder if it might fall over just at the right time and smash us into pancakes so that we wouldn't have to go to this stupid memorial thing anyway. It's been 17 years since she passed. What else could we possibly celebrate her for?
We park and pull ourselves out of the car, my mother mentioning the shoe change as we walk in. I try my hardest to ignore her petty remarks. I slowly pull open the glass front door, which encases the overwhelming sound of small conversations surrounding one another coming from a small staircase behind a check-in counter. Why are there so many people here?
(Word Count: 978)
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