Twin Flames

I | Scarlett

Saturday. October 4, 2018

   In the three days since we've moved to Outer Banks, North Carolina. Thus far, I have been unimpressed.

   My mother bought a house in an area I've heard several of the locals who have given us directions call "the Cut". Our house is nothing like the one we had in our old town of Homewood, Alabama.

   Homewood was a pretty town, hours from the ocean and filled with historical colonial homes. My mother was a partner at a vet clinic in the nearby English Village, and my father worked as an accountant in the nearby city of Birmingham.

My mother tries to sugar coat our situation.

"We have one of the nicest houses this part of the Island. We need to be grateful."

"I was a partner back in Homewood, here I get to run my own practice."

"We don't have to drive five hours to the beach, now we can step out on our front porch and see the waves crashing."

Now we don't have to deal with your father.

That was another positive that my mother secretly thought...that we all thought, but none of us dared say.

"How is it?" My friend Molly texts me.

"Surf. Fish. Bums." I reply. Molly sends back a laughing emoji. I miss her already.

I haven't gotten any texts from Grant, my boyfriend since seventh grade. I suppose he's my ex-boyfriend now. We decided it would be unfair to impose a relationship on each other when we live 12 hours away. It's better this way, I think. He doesn't agree.

I can't judge my new town fully until I check out the school. My old school was a private school. Highly competitive and set on sending all it's students to Ivy League schools. Academics wise, the Academy here is similar and has high statistics of Ivy League acceptance. It's a far better school than the only local school, Kildare County High School, where most of the local Cut kids go.

It's going to be difficult starting a new school in the middle of the semester. I wanted to go ahead and start Thursday, once all the boxes were in our new home, but my mother insisted I help her with the vet office.

   The office has been closed since August, when the old vet died of a heart attack. He was solitary in his business and had no employees unlike the busy vet clinic my mother worked at in Homewood.

   The only employee number that was left was one of a local high schooler who used to be the dog walker. My mother is assigning me the job of dog walker until we have enough clients for the high schooler to be hired back.

My mother spends today organizing her medical equipment and setting up her office. My half-siblings, Myles and Daisy are playing out in the fenced in yard of the clinic with our dog, Ranger.

   Myles is 8 with curly brown hair like our father and chubby boyish cheeks. Daisy is 6 with pale blonde hair like my mother had in her youth.

   They are the real children of my father, while I'm the daughter of a forgotten drug addict. It's a fact I easily ignore most days, until I see my raven hair, identical to his, in the mirror. I dare not dwell on him too much. He's dead and gone.

   My mother stations me at the front desk. I don't mind. I enjoy organizing and it's cathartic. I just finish organizing the sticky notes by color when the phone rings. Our first call since opening.

My mother's heels click vigorously as she races from her office to the front desk. Her dark curls bounce with every step. I reach for the phone, but she reaches over the desk and snatches it out of my hand. A grin spreads across her face as she answers.