ETHEREAL

CHAPTER 1

       Sleepy and blurry-eyed, I step off the plane and back into America. My last day in Spain was depressingly overcast and rainy. Accidentally, as I attempt to wield my dad's guitar, I hit a man that is waiting for his flight as I squint to see through blindingly bright sun rays hitting the windows of the Philadelphia airport. Twice. Cringing, I turn around to apologize and hit him with the guitar case again. "SKYE! You need to watch where you're going!" My father apologizes for me, and I feel guilt or shame wash over me. Why do I always feel ashamed? One connecting flight later, I'm back home in Maryland with zero sense of what to do with my life after how I dropped out of the University of Maryland, College Park, prior to my Spain trip. Jet-lagged and sleepy, I shower and crawl into bed. Often, I feel like there is a gaping black hole inside of me, and I don't know - I never know what to do about it.

I wake up with a magnetic sense that I need to go to the mall.

As I browse Urban Decay's new line of mint-flavored, lip plumping glosses, I feel someone's eyes burning through me. "Damien? What are you doing here?" I mentally chastise myself for not bothering to straighten my (dyed) black curly hair that resembles a Ramones mop of curls, but also applaud my jet-lagged self for smudging two rings of bronze eyeliner around my hazel, greenish brown eyes. He gives me his sardonic smile and saunters over to me in his black leather low-top Converse and ripped up black skinny jeans, torn beyond recognition from skateboarding, with his lanky, skinny but muscular limbs. "Hey Skye... just looking for a new cologne. Want to help?" A new cologne? Does he really think I'm going to fall for that when I just caught him staring at me through the windows as he walked by with his friends?

"Skye?"

Glancing over, I realize that I'm actually standing right next to the men's cologne section. Maybe he is telling the truth. "Oh... sure, yeah. Um... what about the D&G 'The One'?" He turns up his wry smile. "So, you think that I'm the one?"

Eyes wide, I exclaim, "What! No! Ugh! I just got back from Spain, and I'm really jet-lagged."

Damien closes his mischievous eyes and laughs, a velvety sound that I could hear forever. "Spain?" He reaches out to finger my multi-colored scarf tied around my neck. "I like your scarf." I gaze into his blackened pools of eyes, and he has me in a trance. In the back of my mind, I feel a pull, or some type of foreboding intuition telling me to run far, far away.

"I have to go, lemme get your number," he jokes and imitates a womanizing, rakish player voice.

Smiling, I laugh, "Damien, you already have it from when we worked together back in high school."

He taps through his iPhone and pulls his beanie down. "Yeah, you're right. Alright, later." I watch his languid, confident walk fade away from me.

"Skye? Are you going to buy that?" My mother appears out of nowhere. She looks down at the lipgloss in my hand.

"What? Oh, yeah... I think so."