Ethereal (Re-Writing)

New Places, New Faces

Chapter 1: Present Day

 My plane landed in such a way that I had half a mind to clench my teeth, so they didn't come flying out of my mouth.  The sleeping woman next to me flew face first into the back of the faded blue seat in front of us, and the startled look on her face set the child in the adjacent aisle into a fit of giggles.  The skies had opened up just in time for my arrival, clear droplets jumping from the dark clouds, descending to their death as they scattered on the concrete.  No one seemed too excited to exit the plane, as they all moved stiffly, faces blank as people filed out.  I was still sitting in my seat when the last passenger had finally left, toting his wife's luggage along with his own and barely making it out the door.

"Ma'am?" The stewardess asked gently. "It's time to exit the plane, this is the last stop."

The last stop.  The last stop now? I wondered. This year? Forever?  I had no clue, as I rolled my one carry on out of the plane, my own crippling fear weighing me down.  My backpack was securely fastened to my shoulders as I made my way to the luggage claim as though I were making my way to my own execution. I wasn't always this pessimistic, but with each growing day, my cup began to look more and more empty, until I wondered if it had ever been full at all. 

(Before)

All that had been heard for hours was the insistent blaring of car horns set to match the pitch of my little sister’s screaming. I rested my head against the window, staring at the same landscape we'd been seeing for quite a while.

“Shut up already!” My dad yelled, face red, and at the end of his rope in the bumper to bumper traffic we had been stuck in for six hours in downtown Manhattan, heading towards East Harlem.

We’d slowly been inching through the thick morning mist from the underground subway and the hundreds of people that lined the walks. I sighed for what seemed like the infinite number of the day as the taxi driver next to us displayed an obscene gesture to the man in front of him who had gotten out of his car to yell.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Taxi guy screamed at the other.

“What’s it look like? Waiting for everyone else to move, just like all the goddamned rest of us are! Cool it asshole!” And with that, the other guy stormed away in a cloud of anger.

I uncovered my sister’s ears and she promptly burst into tears, wailing at the top of her lungs. Since the car wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon, I unstrapped her from her car seat and put her on my lap. She buried her face into my neck, snot transferring from her nose to run down my shirt. Lovely.

At two and a half years old, Katie barely knew how to talk, much less what was going on with our family. This was like a long vacation, and I had no doubt that she would adjust alright. I was just worried about us all, for some reason. It had been a nagging feeling ever since my dad had gotten the news that he was getting a much needed promotion in the inner city. We were just about broke and as hard as my parents tried to keep it a secret, I knew that was the real reason we were re-locating again. We couldn’t afford to stay in the suburbs. There wasn’t enough crime there to give my dad the promotion we desperately needed as a family.  My mom was a kindergarten teacher who made even less than my dad. Despite the financial hardships, I always held solace in the fact that wherever we went, we were together.