Touched by an Angel

The Greatest Dread

When my mom sent me to a three week long camp, called Lab, I thought it would be the end of my life, and practically social suicide. I’d never be able to get new friends before school started, and I would be the loser of the junior class. You see, my mother was sending me during the weeks she and dad would be moving all of our stuff to the chilly northern part of Wisconsin from the warm beaches of Florida… I hated the cold.

I knew that the move was coming, I’d known since the beginning of the year, January 1st, not September 1st, the start of the school year. So I had begun to separate myself from my old friends, and started making memories that would last, and began planning for my social appearance at the new school. I knew exactly how I was going to do it. As soon as we would reach our new house, and have everything moved in, I was going to go to patrol the city, or rather town, for my kind: scenes, Goths, and emos… Biracial kids would work too. But, at the start of summer my mom dropped the bomb. I would be going to camp.

I had heard of the camp, it filled my parents’ stories of childhood memories, and tales that my mother would make up. I had always wanted to go to the high school aged camp, Lab, where my parents had fallen in love. And by always, I meant until seventh grade. My friends had convinced me that the idea was lame, and I could see my mom’s utter disappointed when I had first snapped at her for talking about her most treasured place, but, I hadn’t cared; I was too young, and too cruel to realize that I was being mean to her.

My mom stopped talking about camp by the time I was a freshman, so the announcement had totally hit me as a surprise that she was sending me, now a soon to be junior, to it. I had complained and cussed about it, which earned me a good smack on the head from my dad, but nothing I could do would budge my parents. I had originally thought the reason why my mom was sending me was so that I could be like her, find true love and become a goody two shoes because of it. It took me a long time before I could figure it out, even beyond the end of camp. It took me even longer to find out that my mom wasn’t always a good two-shoes, lab had just been the start of the change.

So that was why I was standing at the tiny, rink-a-dink airport, waiting for some aunt I had met only once as a small child. I was tightly wrapped up in a zip up sweatshirt with paint splatters, combat boots, red skinny jeans, and my panda bear hat, cold as though it were winter, and looking around for her, gripping onto my two suitcases, which I hadn’t the slightest idea what was in them, my mom had packed them both, and refused to let me make any input into what went in and what did not. I feared what would be inside.

As I was looking around, I skipped over my aunt several times, for two reasons. One, my mom had not given me any picture of reference, and two, I was excepting her to look like my mother, as I was told she was related to her. She did not, in fact, she was far from it. My mother naturally is a very pale woman, but due to living in Florida for such a long time, she had a very slight tan. Her hair is dark brown, with a touch of mahogany, and curled gently; she stood at 5ft4, and had very delicate and cauasian features. The only similarities my aunt and my mother shared were their height, and their athletic builds. This woman had tanned skin, straight jet black hair that fell to her waist, and her features, though delicate like my mother’s, were delicate in a different way. And she was very obviously Asian; I was guessing Korean or Chinese.

The only reason I finally figured out who it as was that she spotted me and smiled, brightly. I guess she could tell who I was by pictures my mom had sent, and not because I looked like my mom, because I didn’t. She headed over to me and grinned, and said,

“You’re Elpis, Lulu’s daughter right?”

I grimaced a little before answering, my voice quiet and bitter,