Summer Heat

The Name from Hell ~ Prologue

Adelaide Odelia Elspeth Valentine.

What the hell kind of name is that?

Two middle names — Odelia from an alive-and-somehow-still-kicking great-grandmother and Elspeth from a distant deceased aunt... It was a little redundant, don't you think?

Not to mention I have the last name Valentine. And to add to it, I was actually born on Valentine's day. No, this isn't a joke, though my life - and my name - often feel like one.

I was named Adelaide after my sister. She wasn't born yet; my mother's first pregnancy was with a little girl that she and my father lovingly named Adelaide before her birth. My mother had just started her third trimester with Adelaide when she had a nasty fall down some cement stairs in their one-star apartment at the time. My mother was injured badly... She lost the baby and my father almost lost her.

God, can you imagine? Being 10 weeks away from carrying a baby full-term and one day you trip over your shoelaces and lose the most important thing in your life...

Anyway, off that depressing note, I was named after my sister, but please, for the sake of my sanity and everyone else's, don't call me Adelaide. Call me Addy. Only my mother calls me Adelaide, and it's when I've pissed her off. She sometimes likes to add the 'Odelia' in there if I've really pissed her off.

Haha, like that one time I banged a scratch on her precious bright red Audi with my car door. Or when I dropped her keys down the sewer at the end of our driveway.

Or when I made my brother late for his graduation ceremony.

Adelaide Odelia Elspeth Valentine... It was kind of a mouthful. I don't know what was going through my parents' heads when they decided on that atrocious name, but I swear they were praying that I — or my sister, if she'd lived through that tragedy 23 years ago — would get bullied in school.

I suppose I should be grateful, though. At least my name isn't Harry Balls. A man is actually named that, I'm telling you. I read it on the internet.

HOLD UP. Alright everyone, let's address something here quickly.

I... am I... breaking the fourth wall here? I am, aren't I? Is that what's happening here?

Ah, damn. I'm gonna have to work on that.

Alright everybody, let's back-track and try it again:

My name was Adelaide Odelia Elspeth Valentine. My mom lost a tumorous growth in her stomach when she literally tripped on her own sweatpants and tumbled unceremoniously down a flight of stairs.

Whoops, maybe I shouldn't compare a baby to a stomach tumor. Hmm... Just add it to the list of things I need to work on.

Alright, back to the task at hand:

I was named after I dead baby and I was ninety nine percent positive that my parents resented having a little girl because they named both of their daughters an atrocious name while my brothers had names such as Tony and Robert. I mean, Tony and Robert weren't great names either, but I definitely had it worse, just saying.

You know, maybe I'm not so good at avoiding this fourth-wall sin all storytellers try to avoid. My bad.

So, anyway, that was my life; two older brothers who were off at college across the country and I was stuck at home with my parents for the summer until I left for school, too. I'd just graduated high school and my parents were starting to get depressed; they were about to be empty-nesters and they didn't know what to do with themselves.

Well, mainly my mother was upset. She was just going to "miss her little babies so much and she'd rather die than not live with us anymore". A little dramatic, if you ask me.

I was 19 years old and done with high school. Summer was finally here and I was ready to spend my days in the sun until I got skin cancer, get stung by a soggy jellyfish in the Atlantic ocean, and prepare myself to attract those lady-hungry boys at college.

I wasn't usually rebellious. I did my homework, rarely partied, and I could count my boyfriends on one and a half fingers. I'd only ever snuck out of the house once, and it was to drive to my best friend Paisley's house to grab a homework assignment I'd let her cheat off of for class the next morning.

But now, after 13 years of public schooling, my first summer free from my honor's class's torturous extra homework was here. I had one more summer to do what I wanted, before the inevitable pressures of adulthood took over my life.

I had one more summer to experience everything life could give without having the responsibility of work or summer classes or internships.

It was my last chance at true freedom.

And this year, out in the heat and the rippling waves of the ocean...

It very well may be the best Summer of all.