The Girl in Lace

Chapter 3

As I stood there staring at Paula, waiting for someone to say something, I began to feel the stack of nerves inside me strip away one by one as her face slowly transformed into an appetizing smile. Curiosity began to replace the now almost gone bundle of nerves. Why was she smiling?

“ Are you Nalia?” She asked curiously, still smiling.

“Y-Yeah, I a-am,” I just about managed to stutter, guilt tearing me up inside for leaving her here this long. I walked slowly over to her.

Her eyes lit up and she pulled me in for a hug.

“You look even more beautiful than in the picture your mother sent me,” She smiled again warmly at me.

What was with people calling me beautiful today? I began to wonder. Well, I guess mom’s friends didn’t really count, they were bound by being my mothers friend to tell me I was beautiful.

I laughed awkwardly, wanting to disagree, say No, I’m not beautiful. It was a habit I’d long had, but I was trying to break it, because it just made it awkward for the other person, and that wasn’t fair.

Paula questioned me about why I was so late but she didn’t seem to mind too much, she said she had gone for a nice lunch in a restaurant and she was sorry she hadn’t waited for me, but she had saved me a chocolate they gave her. I couldn’t believe she was apologising. I tried apologising but she kept talking over me, telling me that it wasn’t my fault, and how horrible it is for that to happen to me, especially since it was my first time flying. I nibbled nervously on the chocolate she stuffed into my hand and followed her through the unfamiliar airport to the car park where her old, silver, battered looking car was parked.

She lifted up the boot and we swung my bags in. Once we were out of the dark, grey car park, I began to feel better. I knew now what it meant when you say your spirits were lifted, because mine certainly were. I wound down the window and let the warm air rush in and sweep past my face. The streets were bright and colourful, and my ears were filled with the foreign tongue. The blazing sun promised never to give a cold day and Paula beside me was chattering away happily about Rio and the orphanage and asking me about Ireland and my family. I listened and answered, but mostly I was interested in soaking it all up, like a sponge begging for water, which suddenly finds itself in the middle of an ocean. It was all too much to take in, the beauty and the foreignness, everything was just so different here, even the way people drove, which was more zig zaggy and hazardous. People were a lot more inclined to beep here too.

Gradually, the streets started to get less colourful and more bland. The surfaces of everything more dusty. The people less, but not by too much. We left the main street in the town to drive down some side alleys and then we pulled up in front of a tall, plain building on which was written Orfanato de São Teresa. Tentatively, I pushed open the light car door and stepped out into the sweltering heat which threatened to sizzle my fair skin since I didn’t have any sun cream on yet.

I began to wonder if what I was doing was really going to do any good. I looked down at myself, with my pale freckled skin and un-made up face, my curling hair at the bottom and my not so tall stance. I looked young. Young and innocent and completely out of place in a world where people were forced to grow up a lot quicker and their skin was used to the suns striking rays. What the hell was I doing here? I immediatly thought, and began to panic. I couldn’t just turn around and go home though.

A loud thud awoke me from my tenous thoughts. My heart jumped and I turned to find Paula taking all of my bags out of the boot. Guilt rushing over me again, I hurried over to her to help her. They were my bags after all.

I tried to swallow my growing fear of just being a nuisance here, and only making things worse, as I usually do, when I saw a shadowed, eager face peek through the dirty window. It was a girl, I’d say she was about ten or eleven. Her mouth widened into the sweetest smile and showed her white teeth, with a gap where one of her teeth were missing. Her curly, black hair was tied up in a messy bun and she pointed excitedly at me, her hand bobbing up and down as she jumped and waved at someone behind her. Oh wait! Nope, not just one person, a whole bunch of kids came running up to the window and tried to get a look out.