Pointe Hard | on hold |

02| the ride

Ｅｌｉｚｂｅｔｈ

The wind was howling, the trees were bending to mother natures every whim, and the cumulonimbus clouds blanketed the sky. A storm was in the midst, and the humidity had risen ten-fold in the past hour. The aroma of oncoming rain had started to overpower the slight remaining whiff of burnt enchiladas from my aunt's disastrous experiment with the oven earlier in the evening. Trying to cook dinner in half the time already sounds like the makings of a half-baked thought. Add a slightly insane scientist to that equation and the fire department is used to making rounds to your house in all hours of the night. Shocking as it seems we (my aunt) had never burnt anything down.

Since enchiladas in the oven for ten minutes at 730 degrees didn't work out too well, we decided with a collective vote that it would be a pizza night. About fifteen minutes after I had placed our order (one our local pizza delivery place knows by heart) the phone started ringing. I expected it to be Tony calling us back to make a joke about how long it would take to get to our little cottage. (Exactly 15 and a half minutes) Instead there was a female voice on the line I didn't recognize. I couldn't place her accent but it sounded something similar to Indian.

"Hello, may I please talk to Glenda Peckett." It was most definitely a call for my aunt. I could also count on it being a call from work. I wasn't exactly what she did at the genetic lab but when my parents all worked together, Glenda and my mom were co nominated for a Nobel Prize for their advancement in the sciences. If that wasn't impressive I didn't know what was. I knew the call was for my aunt but locating her was another feat altogether.

Our cottage may have been small but that didn't mean that people were easy to find. This became especially more difficult with my aunts hobbies. Much to my dismay my aunt loves books. It started with one bookcase, which grew into an entire room. From there they were stored in the cupboards and on any flat surface we could find.

Finally we started piling them in columns by genre throughout the house. They grew from a little column here and there to a sprawling city of words built on the foundation of ideas. Any time I walked through the house I imagined I was the BFG, but instead of searching for children I was searching for the likes of Steinbeck and Tolkien. It was becoming increasingly harder to find a book in the house that I hadn't read. The cable and internet were canceled years ago because neither of us used them enough so I took to reading. Since then the book piles have grown but I haven't.

After traipsing around the house in a circle two or three times I found her behind a poetry book building stacked precariously high. The only notion she gave of my existence was holding her hand out for the phone.

"Hello? ... Subruta... oh... well that doesn't sound good... Wait what happened? No you need to call the supervisor... that's who's in the body bag? Oh um I will call Vanessa. This is very troubling."

I had heard enough to know that there was a serious emergency going on at the laboratory. As soon as she hung up the phone I grabbed the keys to the Pathfinder and tossed them back to her.

"Oh no sweetie you need to go get your letter at the post office."

I didn't register at first what she was talking about until I remembered it was the day I would be getting my letter from The Academy on whether or not I was accepted into the school of my dreams. Practically screeching I questioned,

"MY letter's at the post office?!" laughing my aunt just shook her head yes and tossed the keys back.

"But what about the lab?" I was worried about the supervisor who was apparently in a body bag but without any explanation my aunt just waved me off.