Begin - Chapter One - Mia

Begin
Chapter One - Mia

He is very attractive. The young man sitting next to me. It's my dream - so that’s a given. The thing is, I can’t see his face. But my heart races every time I turn towards him or he bends his head to speak to me, so I guess he must be hot. There are a million reasons why I can’t see his features. His face is in shadow, or every time he turns towards me I turn away or his arm moves up to obscure my vision just I’m about to get a glance. It’s like that dream I’ve had since moving to Grand Coulee where I can’t find homeroom…I think I’m heading in the right direction, but a million things happen to throw me off course– the hallway stretches out for miles; I can only walk in slow motion; suddenly I realize I’m not wearing a shirt so I need to turn back to find one.

I’m sitting on a bench – a hard one. I reach down with one hand and touch the wood of my seat, it is smooth and cool. On the other side, the boy’s thigh is pressed against mine and where we make contact I feel heat, even through the fabric of my dress. It’s quite a dress too, long and straight, rich purple shot with gold embroidery. It is uncomfortably heavy.

His hand I can see. It’s resting on the trestle table next to my own. After I’ve given up trying to peer into his face I study his hand. It looks big next to mine and his fingers are long - not slender though. They don’t look delicate. They are thick and they look strong. And in the notch between his thumb and forefinger there is a small scar. A bite mark maybe. Even though it’s healed over, it must be recent because the scar tissue is angry and red.

My gaze moves to his tanned wrist and when he shifts I see a sliver of white skin just where his wrist disappears into the sleeve of his jacket. But it’s not exactly white, that sliver of skin. In fact, when he reaches across the table it expands by several inches and I can see it is grey with dirt and grime and sweat. My eyes travel upward and alight on a grubby halo surrounding his neck. For all his presumed hotness I guess he’s a guy who believes personal hygiene begins and ends with a hand wash. Strange dream.

And it gets worse. I look at my own wrist and see it is as bad or worse than his. Embarrassed, I tug down my sleeve. That discovery is followed by another, equally mortifying one. I’m not smelling too good. And really, he doesn’t smell so great either. I lean self-consciously away but the man to my left smells even more gamey than we do. And my head itches. I resist the urge to start scratching…a little afraid of what I might find. My dream is heading south fast.

And it’s so vivid. I don’t remember ever smelling anything in my dreams. Now I can smell myself, my neighbors, and the tangy odor of strange spices and foods I am unfamiliar with . Not only that – I can feel a blast of heat from a nearby hearth and at the same time feel the chill of drafty air coming from the side of the room near the door.

My dream boy fishes something off a plate with his fingers and thrusts it towards me. Well. Gross. Can I say I’m not hungry? That I’m dieting? “For heaven’s sake, Mia,” I tell myself, “just go with it. No one ever got food poisoning from something they ate in a dream.” Tentatively, I reach for it, but no, apparently whomever is controlling this dream, and it sure isn’t me, won’t be satisfied until I’m thoroughly sick, because Dreamboy pushes my hand aside and thrusts the morsel of nastiness towards my mouth. I open my mouth and close my eyes…pretty sure I’m going to get a big horrid surprise…and he pushes the food past my lips. Except it’s actually kind of tasty. Some sort of meat, venison maybe, so tender it melts in my mouth, the spices sweet and unfamiliar on my tongue.

Others are watching us. Not everyone in this overcrowded room, but we definitely have an audience. He is aware of it…I can tell. He radiates awareness in the stiffness of his posture. He wipes his fingers on the tablecloth and watches me chew my food for a minute, which is a little embarrassing, then his hand brushes down my cheek, feather light, quick, a personal act made somehow impersonal and perfunctory. And in that instance, when he touches me, I’m struck with the knowledge that I am, or more accurately, my dream self is, deeply, deeply in love with this boy. I’m struck by something else as well. He doesn’t love me. He doesn’t hate me. He feels nothing at all.




Mia was the last one up in the morning, again, so she knew she had somewhere between two to five minutes in the shower before the hot water ran out. Concentrate on the hair and face, she decided, anything that needed to be shaved could wait another day. Except, wasn’t that yesterday’s script? She grimaced. What about the day before that? How many days could a girl skip shaving her legs before she started to look like a yeti? One more day, she figured. Just wear long pants and pray that gym isn’t coed.

As she slipped into a t-shirt and a pair of jeans, both slightly past their expiration dates, she thought about last night’s dream, not quite sure how to classify it; not quite sure why she wasn’t content to let it float away, like dreams always did, with each moment that stretched between sleep and wakefulness. It wasn’t a particularly scary dream. Two grubby teenagers sharing a meal wasn’t exactly the stuff of nightmares. And it didn’t hit any high marks in romance either. Clearly, dream-Mia wasn’t going to get the guy, and unless he learned the basics of personal hygiene, did she really want him anyways? It felt real, though. More real, in some ways, than what was waiting for her once she stepped out her door. She pulled her hair back into a ponytail and headed down the stairs.

“Dressing down a bit, are we?”

Mia slipped into her seat, trying her best to ignore her dad’s comment. But the fact that her father, who thought formal wear meant a shirt with a collar, had noticed what she was wearing wasn’t a good sign. Or it was a good sign. It was a sign, anyways.

Mia’s grandmother looked up briefly from her coupon clipping. “Leave her alone, dear. Everything’s covered that should be covered and everything’s clean. She paused for a minute giving Mia a more thorough once over before adding, “…relatively clean. Seems like that should be good enough. “ Mia made a mental note to get some laundry done after school and shot her grandmother a grateful look.

“Yeah Dad, leave her alone. It’s a free country. If Mia wants to look like she mucked out the stables before school then more power to her.”

Right, Mia thought. And the more often I opt for crummy jeans and a t-shirt the freer you feel to raid my closet. She examined her younger sister’s outfit: black mini skirt, red scoop-neck tee, Cleopatra earrings. Everything Emily wore, except the shoes, belonged to Mia.

Grandma made a small sound, a huff that indicated she’d love to say something more but was refraining. Mia guessed that it wasn’t because Emily was appropriating Mia’s wardrobe. It was because, in Emily’s case, everything that should be covered wasn’t. Mia felt a surge of defensiveness. It wasn’t like Emily, or the Mia of old for that matter, dressed like sluts. The problem was that Emily was several inches taller than Mia. Mia’s mini skirt was, on Emily, a micro-skirt. It looked pretty good on her though, Mia realized. Her little sister, was growing up, catching up, maybe even surpassing her. Mia wasn’t sure how she felt about it. “You should ask before you borrow my things.”

Emily eyes widened a little in surprise. Mia hadn’t said anything the other times she had raided her closet. “It’s all just going to waste,” she said finally.

“That doesn’t mean it’s yours to take.”

The two girls locked eyes for a second before Emily’s gaze shifted away, towards their father. Mia didn’t miss the quick look of sympathy that passed between the two of them but he didn’t say anything in Emily’s defense. How could he? Mia had worked summers and weekends to pay for the wardrobe that Emily was picking her way through. Mia suspected he wanted to though. And why not? He and Emily had always been a team. They were so much alike. Not just blond and tall, but easy going. Placid, her mom always said, Type Z’s (although Emily had been bucking that tradition a bit since the move).

Mia resembled their mother in both looks and temperament. She was dark haired and petite. To Dad and Em, paradise was vegging out on the couch watching X-Files reruns, a bag of M&M’s perched between them. She and her mother thought paradise was just around the corner. They were strivers, always running to the next activity, sticky notes and text messages their communication devices of choice. There was always that one thing in the horizon to work for, a spot on the cheerleading squad, a promotion, a higher GPA. A better husband. That had caught all of them by surprise. It shouldn’t have though, Mia thought. Of all of them, Mia should have seen it coming.

Mia poured herself a bowl of cereal and idly stirred it, not sure she wanted to commit to a cereal that had fiber in its name. She could press the issue, she knew. Insist that Em go upstairs and change her clothes. She’d probably win, too. Even now her little sister was casting longing looks towards the door, willing the minutes forward, hoping to escape with the clothes on her back. And her father had his eyes glued to the morning paper, probably hoping that by avoiding eye contact he could avoid a fight.

Their mother had loved that skirt, Mia remembered now. How many times had she helped Mia put together the perfect outfit, anchored by that stupid black mini skirt? Mia took a bite, chewed slowly, decided against another bite. “You can have it,” she said after a minute.

“Have what?”

“The skirt. You can have the skirt. I hate it.” She got up and brought her breakfast dishes to the sink. “Take it all in fact. I don’t want any of it.”

“Oh my God! Are you sure?” Emily’s cheeks flushed with excitement.

“Yep. I’m sure.”

Dad looked up then, his glance traveling back and forth between the two of them. “No. She’s not sure,” he said finally.

He was right. In fact he’d hit it out of the ballpark, although Mia doubted he realized it. Sure was something she hadn’t nailed for a while now.

“Dad. She said she was…”

“Sorry kiddo. New rule. Nobody gets to make any life-altering decisions for the next thirty days…the next sixty days. Let’s just take things one day at a time for now.”

“Dad!”

“Give it a rest, Emmy. And next time ask before you borrow your sister’s clothes. Now get going before you miss the bus.”

“I don’t think giving away clothes should qualify as a life-altering decision.” Emily grumbled, her voice heavy with resentment.

Mia didn’t blame her. Dad was taking the wrong side, speaking up for the daughter who never had time for football or fish stories. The daughter who , even now, flinched away when he reached over to pat her shoulder.

He dropped a quick kiss on Emily’s forehead and left for work.

As Mia stepped out into the scorching sun and trudged up the dusty road to the bus stop, she inventoried the morning and decided that there actually were quite a few things she was sure of. The things she was sure of were these: that the commercials saying fiber cereal was as good as regular cereal were lies; that it would be unbearably hot again today; that she hated it here; that she had backed the wrong horse.