Catchfly: Seeing Stars

Chapter 3: Deer In Headlights

September 3 – 2:28 PM

"Afternoon, Paisley." Rhonda smiles as she stirs her coffee. She's been the receptionist at my grandma's retirement home as long as I can remember. She mostly works weekends, so she's here just about every time I come to visit grandma.

"Hi Rhonda. Is she upstairs?"

"She is, she woke up from her nap around two. She had a feeling you'd come today."

I give her a smile and take the stairs. I yawn twice on the way up. Avery and I watched the Madeleine McCann documentary when we got home last night. We were so paranoid by the end of it, we spent another hour just blasting music and dancing in my bedroom to get us in a good mood.

This morning I woke up with the urge to text Levi: say good morning, ask how his night had been. I looked at the picture of him and I on my bedroom wall, and I couldn't take it down. Then I cried for a good half an hour. Solid morning routine.

Grandma's soft voice tells me to come in after I've knocked. She sits by her window with a book in her lap. Her gray hair curls at her jaw, her reading glasses rest on the tip of her nose. Her concentrated frown shifts to a smile when she sees me.

"Hi grandma."

"My girl." She takes off her glasses and comes to hug me. Her hugs have been frailer since her stroke last year. She's weakened a lot since then. She loses track of her words, she forgets entire days have passed, and she's always cold– though she refuses to wear pants. Grandma loves her skirts and dresses. They make her feel younger.

We get some tea in the common room downstairs. Grandma makes it herself: she forces herself into the daily cooking all the time, the staff of the Carolina House just gave in, and they let her help. When she still lived at the old house, she was always cooking. She would have a variety of self-made snacks on the table whenever we visited her and grandpa. Now, the only thing close to a kitchen is the sink in her room. It makes her sadder than you can imagine.

It's quite crowded in the common room, which is typical for a Sunday afternoon. Families come to have a cup of tea with their elders.

I take a sniff of my tea. "Smells kind of sour."

"It's citrus sunrise. Shall we?" Grandma raises her eyebrows, lifting her cup to her mouth. We sip at the same time.

"I kinda like it." I sip another time.

"I hate it." Grandma puts her cup down. I snort, almost spilling hot tea all over myself. Grandma and I have spent the last couple of years trying out an endless variation of tea flavors. Her cabinets are overflowing with boxes of tea. We've come to find that grandma's more of an herbal tea gal and I'm more into sweet flavors, like strawberry and blueberry.

"There's something wrong, isn't there?" Grandma eyes me.

I've said this a million times, and every time I do my parents laugh at me square in my face: but I think my grandmother's psychic. She must be, she sees and knows everything. She knew I was coming to visit her today, and here I am. I haven't even been here five minutes and she knows something's up.

"Well... Levi broke up with me. But it's fine."

Grandma peers at me as she sips her tea. "It is? That's strange."

I sigh. "It's not fine, but you know. I'm not... dying."

"No, I certainly don't hope so." She smiles. "You're so young... When you're young and in love it's often one of two things: either it is everything you want and need... or it is an imagination of that."

"But... why would I imagine something that isn't there?" I ask.

"Because part of it is. Levi is a sweetheart. He's got a nice family. It's comforting to find yourself standing next to someone like that. You know he'd never do you wrong. But it's not... everything."