How To Disappear - KiVi [Engl.]

Chapter 16

Chiara's sister meets her at the airport, eyes already wet with tears when she emerges through sliding, glass doors. Chiara cries too, but she thinks that it's more so because of the crying girl with their arms wrapped around her. She feels guilty for even thinking it. When her sister suggest that they stay with Chiara for a few nights in her new place, she politely declines – arguing that she needs some time alone to think.

The disappointment that flashes through her sister eyes doesn't go unnoticed by Chiara, but she doesn't change her mind. She knows that she wouldn't be good company to her and the thought of prolonged intimate, human interaction at all after being virtually alone for a year terrifies her.

...

Chiara slides into the back seat of a private car and watches her sister fade away into a sea of tourists' faces.

And, well, Madrid is different. Or, it's not different, really, but it feels different to Chiara. She's driven down these streets hundreds of times, blaring whatever was on the radio and hanging her hand out the window. She knows all of the restaurants and department stores that go flying by, remembers where sub-par street art is sprayed onto the sides of buildings.

When Chiara catches her reflection in the backseat window of the car that's speeding through a tunnel, she realizes that it's not Madrid that feels different. It's her. She feels out of place and unwanted here – like the loud, bright city moved on from her a while ago and she's somehow stumbled back in without invitation.

She continues to look at the girl that stares back at her in the window – wonders how even after removing her extensions and taking out her god-awful brown colored contacts, she still doesn't feel like herself. After spending nearly, a year dressed up and disguised as someone else, becoming Chiara Oliver again feels like just another charade – another character in her story.

Chiara runs her fingers across the short hair. She had told the hairdresser to dye her hair darker - not back to black - she wanted a dark brown shade. She wasn't the same person that she was when she left Madrid all those months ago – but her dark hair her was still a part of her.

...

"This is it," Chiara's driver says, clearing his throat, "Looks like a nice place."

Chiara stares out her window at the beige house. It's only a couple of blocks down from her old place, but it still feels entirely new. Though Bea had offered to pull some strings to get Chiara her old apartment back, she had told him not to bother. There were too many memories there – too many reminders.

Boxes of Chiara's things are already stacked in the living room of her new home, lazy handwriting scribbled across worn cardboard. She exhales, and drops her backpack to the floor, immediately making her way to the lonely couch and collapsing onto it.

"Well then," Chiara says to herself, looking at unfamiliar walls covered in god-awful yellow paint that she needs to cover up, "Welcome home."

Chiara knows that she needs to let people know that she's back, but the thought of it makes her stomach turn. Instead, she decides to turn in early – putting clean sheets on the king-sized mattress in her bedroom and crawling under the covers.

As her eyes begin to grow heavy, Chiara thinks about the fact that Violeta could be in her own bed, in her own apartment, no more than ten minutes away.

She dreams of brown eyes and red hair until the sun rises.

...

Chiara doesn't want to call Ruslana because she's pretty sure dead people aren't supposed to call up their friends and say 'hey, guess what? I'm actually totally alive. Isn't that crazy?' But she also doesn't just want to show up on her doorstep unannounced because, well, that seems like another thing dead people aren't supposed to do.