(Invisible) Red Thread

Storms

It’s painfully ridiculous how much things can change in a blink of an eye and how drastically it can happen, like how just a couple of hours ago I was laughing and now I don’t know what to what to do with the pain I feel inside my chest, like how a sunny day can turn into a night of storms. It’s the same way my life changed ten years ago, since time have probably erased the most insignificant details, leaving me with the bitter taste of the extreme change I experienced.

The air outside was hot, but I felt fresh after taking a shower under the garden sprinklers. The smell of fresh baked muffins came from the kitchen, where Mary’s been making them since earlier that morning for Alex’s eleventh birthday. He looks at me from his side of the garden as he dries his hair with a towel. When we played soldiers, we used to pretend that the garden is our battle field and we used to draw a border line with branches we took from the willow tree. This time, our guns were balloons filled with water, due to the warm day. At some point, Alex father got sick of the mess we the balloons were leaving on the grass when they broke and for using them before the party started, so he decided to do us the favor of turning the sprayers so no one would win our battle. In the end, both of us were so wet we had to call a truce.

Alex crossed our border line, raising a white towel with one hand in peace and then, he handed it to me so I could dry my hair, as well.

“What time is it?” I asked him without taking my wide eyes off his face.

He stares down at the watch on his wrist: a big, black, square-shaped device that overhung his thin wrist. His father had given it to him when he woke up that morning and I didn’t ask my question because I was worried about the time, but to check if was going to be able to remember to use it. I smiled knowing he was.

“Nearly one p.m.” he answers with a frown.

I was startled because as if the clock was synchronized with my mother, she poked her head from my bedroom and called me to get in to get ready for the party. I waved Alex goodbye and he said he must go too.

Inside the house, my mother scolded me for getting wet, arguing that now I had to take a shower once again. One hour later, I came out of the bathroom, dressed with a beautiful pink gown that I had chosen for the occasion and I get set for my mom to comb my hair with a large collection of braids. I ran to the garden, cut off some flower and started putting them between the braids.

The three ghosts that currently lived around me came closer, with quiet steps, to where I sat; each of them took a handful of little flowers and helped me decorate the elaborated hairdo my mother made. One of them, a thirty-five years old woman, had arrived here after the Spanish Civil War and she spoke in a rather strange accent; the other one was a teenage boy who died in a car accident; and the last one, an old man who could barely talk. They were all very kind to me and the played with me all the time Alex wasn’t around. They said he intimidated them and that really made me laugh.

I talked to them for a while, but I can’t remember about what.

When they were finished, they made me spin over my own heels to watch me carefully from head to toes and, just then, Alex appeared behind them. I remember having asked the ghosts to not disappear because Alex had asked me a lot of times to let him speak to them. He stared in fascination to the place I told him they were standing and he asked them a lot of things; I had to be the translator between the living and the dead. Those kinds of things were the one I loved so much about Alex: that he was so aware and full with reality that I couldn’t understand even half the things that came out of my own mouth and that he so carefully was listening to.

“Alex!” his mom yelled from the door to their kitchen, with her arms folded on her chest and one of her feet stomping the ground. She looked angry.