Intertwined

Chapter One

After a seven-hour flight with a three-hour delay in New York, the aircraft finally touched down at the Denver International Airport. I tried my hardest to focus on anything other than Aunt Marie while the plane cut through the clouds that turned thinner and thinner as we ground closer and closer to my new home. Morbid images wared to get through useless facts about colorado I spent all night researching. I tried to picture them in my head: the towering mountains, dusty blue skies, and the raging heat.

Sadly—or gratefully, depending on how you looked at it—the images built in my head matched nothing to my surroundings. The sky shadowed the mountains blanketed in a caution of grey. The heat, though, was what I imagined.

I stifled another sigh as Rosie, my mother, for all purposes except emotional, told me about the hour-long trip to 'home.' When my mouth didn't flinch in either direction, she stopped explaining and turned away. I could have sworn a pinch of pain resided in her blue eyes. Even that didn't pull an emotion out of me.

Even if Rosie's bone structure could be found incrementally in my face, with our thin cheekbones and thicker set of lips, we couldn't look more unrelated. Aunt Marie told me several times that I looked like my mom, but once I reached fifteen, the comparisons stopped. I guess the years of absence, the years without her, changed me emotionally and physically. Maybe where the Colorado sun kept her hair a radiant set of auburn, the clouds of Maine darkened mine.

No matter how hard I tried in the car, I couldn't fall asleep. Whether because of my racing thoughts or the jostling of pothole after pothole, I couldn't tell. Even if oblivion evaded me, the scenery gave me something interesting to watch.

Colorado was nothing like Maine. Where I used to live, the land spread out, stretched long, fading into the horizon with a subtle curve. I used to pretend I could run so fast that my speed would launch me off the planet's surface, landing me in the world of stars. A place where endless possibilities existed—where people never died.

That pretend fun couldn't exist here. On either side of the interstate, high mountains scratched at the dismal sky, letting shafts of light crackle down to the shallow valleys. Where there weren't mountains, valleys outstretched, but not in the same way I'd grown used to. The flatlands were stable—plateaued—no proof of the earth's roundness. The oranges and browns chased the car. I was never going home again.

After a couple of hours, Rosie became restless, and Mason tapped impatiently on the steering wheel. I wondered what the shift was for until I looked through the window. The change in scenery directly correlated with their moods. Where the scrupulous mountains were moments ago, clusters of trees, grass, and dirt took over like a spreading disease, encapsulating the highway and creating a canopy of leaves. The wooden sign flew past the car so quickly I wasn't sure I read it right, though the relief that pumped through the driver and his second hand, I knew exactly what it said.

We'd made it to Duskfall.

Mason deliberately slowed as we passed the town square. The significant buildings pleaded the antiquity of it all. In rows, brick buildings stood in shades of red, beige, and white. Storefronts and apartment buildings, all crusted with intricate moldings bordering windows and doors. Even the road was cracked with age. It was so green and lifelike, with grass and trees, I couldn't be sure we'd still been in Colorado. I prepared for orange dirt and tumbleweeds. Not lively town centers and beautiful historic architecture.

For the first time, I held a gasp at the pit of my throat—a strange feeling that was a murky shadow of what was once an overpowering emotion—when the biggest and oldest of all the buildings passed the passenger side window.

Town hall hid on a dead-end lane, building itself upon a sloping hill. Wide and constructed out of brick and concrete, it looked like a mixture of a church and a clock tower. Its white steeple reached for the sky, imitating the Colorado mountains. I would've believed to be back in the 1900s if not for the signs of modern technology—streetlights and phone cables that crossed high above the streets in criss-cross patterns. None of it felt real, and I couldn't decipher if it were because of the town or because I'd still been in that hollow state.