The Ace of Spades

Chapter 18: Part 1

In Mea's early school years, immense focus was placed on reading and eventually analysing what was read. Mea fondly remembers the set-up and the glorification of reading. In her second year of elementary school, her teacher had an entire corner dedicated to comfortable reading. The atmosphere reminded Mea of home, which has generated multiple different feelings within Mea over the years. Notably, there was a pale blue rocking chair, a couple of hand-sewn cushions, and a big quilt. It was old-fashioned, presumably pices of furniture taken from the teacher's own house, not wanted at home anymore.

Mea's unsure of why the feeling of home comes to her, and has all this time. Her house has no rocking chair, no hand-sewn anything - let alone cushions, and no quilt. It never smelled like home and the classmates who frequented the corner weren't people she ever had at home. Regardless, Mea feels overwhelmed thinking of it. At that age, she was delighted to be reminded of home. As the years passed and time trickled on, Mea grew less and less fond of the memories associated with home and homely feelings. It's a blow to the head, in a metaphorical sense, of course, that Mea no longer feels bitter or resentment.

Nevertheless, the focus at any age in elementary school (and eventually into hig school English classes) has always been reading. Read, read, read. Analyse, analyse, analyse. The notion that one should always be absorbing thoughts and forms of dialogue, body language, and the words written between the lines is embedded in Mea's mind. Carved into the bone of Mea's skull is the instruction to go deeper, dig deeper.

"The curtains aren't blue because they're blue, they're blue because you're blue," Mea's fourth grade teacher once said.

For all Mea has always been bored of school, for all she has never done exceptionally well, for all she has told herself that she's not learning anything (this happens far too often and usually in math class), she has learned things. She learned to read between the lines. she learned that life is like a novel - a long, seemingly never-ending novel with a plot that seems mundane and uneventful to the one who's living it - and every little thing, miniscule or grandiose, has relevance to her life, to anyone and everyone's life.

"If it's there, it's meant to be there. The details are hand-picked by the author of your life, whether to you that's God or some other higher power, to accentuate the big parts of your life. Anything that doesn't make sense will make sense soon; that's called foreshadowing. It's a hint at what will come later."

All of these years later, Mea can still see her teacher pacing across the beige and black area rug at the front of the classroom. She can still feel her own eyes trained on the ankles of her teacher, which are covered in brown corduroy pants, and her back burning from the uncomfortable position in which she is hunched. The words have stuck in her mind, like honey but perhaps not as sweet.

The curtains have always, always not been blue because they were made in some fabric factory to be blue curtains. The curtains are blue because Mea is blue, because Mea has been bluer than the ocean for all her life. And Mea's life is like the cean, it's not blue while you're in it, only while you're observing it.

Analyse, analyse, analyse. Mea's mind retraces the past, tries to recall every detail about her childhood that didn't make sense. She establishes that Doug leaving doesn't produce as much logic as it once did. At the time, it seemed realistic that Doug left, what with all the turmoil in Doug and Mimi's marriage. Now, however, it seems decreasingly sensible and several gaps in the story appear.

Besides her father's departure and the collapse of her parents' marriage, Mea can't think of much else. This summer has become a chaotic panic of getting to the bottom of what was once not an issue, and so Mea likely couldn't think of anything else anyways. She is glued to the situation at hand, her only concern being the biggest thing that's ever hapepened to her.