Smaller Things

Chapter Four: Fully-Crescent Moon; pt1

It was a week into the five-and-a-half-week summer holiday and I was getting way too anxious than I had ever been on any summer vacation ever IN.My.LIFE! It was a week, can you imagine? I am a TEENAGER, a typical kid in her period of adolescence. And anyone would freak out if their parents keep something-s hidden, secret from them.

...

Okay... so, um... I understand that you are understanding nothing... Right?

Okay... So I will start it the right way. I gotta stay calm... So, right now I am going to tell you something because before I begin my long story, I feel that you should at least know my name. But you need to take some precautions, alright? Mmm... So, um, is there a sofa or a cushion or something soft nearby? Sit down. Make sure that there is absolutely no chance of you falling from the seat on something hard after you hear this, okay? If you have anything breakable in your hand, then make sure that it is safe and well away from you so that when you freak out after learning my name, you would not break it.

So, here I go...

Ready?

Okay.

My name is Lagoona Clause.  See? Are your eyes wide now? Are you now giving this story a bit of interest? But do not get me wrong. I am so not a pole dancer. It is not like I have got anything against pole dancers but the name my parents gave me shortly after my birth (actually they had decided what to name their baby if it were a girl way before they even thought of having me!) sounds so like the sort of name pole dancers might have. And NO- I am not named after any kind of mocktail or cocktail; you know what I mean; I am not named after the drink Blue Lagoon. But it is true that I liked its taste. Not the alcoholic one, the non-alcoholic one. You see, I am sixteen and I am, of course, not allowed to have any kind of alcohol.

So, continuing my story (sorry for blabbering so much... I can be annoyingly talkative sometimes... so, whenever that happens, you just remind me not to talk okay?)...

The reason my name is Lagoona is that my parents fell in love with a lagoon at Java where they had their honeymoon on a floating hotel! So, you just, like, kind of have no choice when your parents fall in love with a salty water body and decides over dinner to name their only offspring after a place which is full of blue ocean water. And thank goodness I am not a boy; they literally decided to name me Blue if I was a boy because the name of the place, as you now have realized, is Blue Lagoon. And I do not want to be named after a color. And speaking of lagoons, I have never really visited one.

Our family is a typical middle-class family; I am in high school and two years are still left before I fly off to Germany for an undergraduate course in Geo-science. Both of my parents work for the same company, under the same project in the same department. You might wonder why am I telling you all these, but remember, this is not the end of the story but the beginning. And whatever I say now, is going to be important later when we get going through the main part.

So, as I said, it was summer. The weather was sweaty and the gardens of all the houses of Crescent Drive were in full bloom. In my house though, it seemed, the weather was totally opposite. I was alone in the house almost for the whole day, sitting idly with my unfinished homework or feeding our pet tortoise, Snuff or scrolling through my Instagram account, or rereading a thousand times read storybook even though there were new books to read. I also cooked my lunch because I fed the food my mom cooked for me to the neighbor's cats. My mom cooked really well but I have this certain softness towards underfed animals even if they are cats. And my neighbor has got so many cats in her house that she can not feed them properly; she is way too old and small to get out of her house every day to buy cat food for fifty or so cats. So after I fed them my lunch, I felt kinda bad for myself and ate two fried eggs, a couple of buttered toast, and warmed cup-noodles.

These days, my parents were leaving for work extra early and getting back late for dinner. And then, all the time while they were home, they kept to themselves in the living room and whenever I turned up at the bottom of the staircase to find out what they were up to, my mom started acting weird and my dad, who is a really soft person, started fussing over why I was still awake. And when I pointed out that it was only nine and that all my friends were probably wide awake and also it was summer holiday, he started lecturing on how if I maintain a timetable for the whole summer holiday, I would be able to achieve a sense of discipline which would help me in life and blah blah blah...

It was a week of these dramas and I just could not take it anymore. So I started acting as if all the saintly words they said actually helped me and I even convinced them that I was doing as they wished me to do. Only, they did not know that I was lurking, halfway on the staircase, trying intently to listen to their conversation, which was in an audible whisper, which, again, was muffled by the door. I carefully climbed down the stairs, barefoot, and strained my ears as much as I could to listen to their secret chat. I caught a few gasps and sighs and squeals and then a certain high pitched voice of my mom, full of excitement, saying, 'Oh, Johnathan! I really really love you!' But then I heard them switching the room's light off so I had to rush off to my bedroom and fake sleep because, after a mere twenty seconds, Mom came in and kissed my forehead and bade my faked asleep state good night. After the door was closed behind her I let out a horrible rasping sigh which I never imagined could have belonged to me, but under the circumstances, I acknowledged it.  I felt oddly alone and separated from my parents. All this secrecy was really annoying. My parents, who never stopped from telling me which of the hot boys in my school I should date, or how much they supported me for my bisexuality, or the fact that they never stopped being like a friend to whom you could even talk about your love life and ask them permission for kissing your girlfriend; it suddenly felt so odd and it enraged me so much that I could not sleep that night. I do not know why, but I cried. Silent tears rolled out of the sore corners of my eyes and burned my cheek, and as I was lying on my back, they rolled down to my ears on both sides, impairing my hearing temporarily for an hour.

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To Be Continued in the next chapter...

Until we meet again, love love.