The Long Game

Isabella raced down the street on her skateboard, her bag flying off her shoulder and her blond hair streaming behind her. She risked a look back, he was chasing after her. Oh drat she though to herself and she picked up speed and almost knocking over 2 of her fellow students. The sun was shining in Massachusetts and it was a Friday, so everything should be perfect, except from this guy. He was quite nice most of the time and wasn’t too bad looking either, but some idiot at school had thought it would be funny to ask him out for her, as a joke. Unfortunately, he had taken it seriously, and now he was after her. The street leading down from the high school was a little like the mall leading down from Buckingham palace in the way it was built. Isabella, or Issy as she was known to her friends, skated down the middle of this street, known as Lincoln Street, while all the other kids walked back on either side of her. She leaned to one side to steer into her own street that adjoined Lincoln Street and skated all the way down to number 21. She jumped off the board, flipped it up into her hands and hopped over the gate. Opening the door now, she noticed her helmet on the table where she left it this morning. It’s not going to save my life lying there is it, she thought, picking it up and laying it on top of her skateboard by the door. There. I might not forget it now, she thought.

“Mum?” Issy called out into the bungalow, and got a reply from out the back of the house. She walked through the house, stopping outside her stepfather’s study to admire the fact that a man who always badgered her to keep a clean house couldn’t even keep his own office clean. Issy continued through the house and came to her mother out in the back yard, working on the over grown flowerbeds.
“Hi darling, how was school?”
“I’ve got a guy following me who thinks that he is going out with me!” Her mum looked round and gave her a smile and a wink.
“No, you don’t get it! I don’t want him to think that!” Her mum turned back to the flowers.
“Right. So, let me guess, don’t answer the door, throw out any mail in pink envelopes and don’t answer the phone at all. Yes?”
“Mum, you know me too well!” Her mum got up and gave her a hug. It was just at this point that Issy remembered a question that she had been wanting to ask her mum for her whole life,
“Mum, what was dad like?” Her mum pulled away and looked her in the eye.
“What’s brought this on?”
“I don’t know. I just…we were talking about family trees in biology and,” Issy sniffed “, I guess, you have brown hair, and I wanted to know where my blond hair came from. After all, I am half his.”
“Well, you definitely got your blond hair from your father.” She turned away and Issy could tell that she was crying. Her mother reached into her pocket and pulled out her wallet. Opening it now, she reached behind the photo of Issy’s stepfather and the photo of Issy herself and pulled out a photo she had never seen before. It was a photo of her mother and a guy who was taller than her mother, had blond hair and was, she’d admit, quite handsome.
“That is your father.” Issy reached out for the photo, it had been taken by the lake 2 blocks from her house, on the bench where Issy always went to read when she was upset. Ironic.

2 hours later, Issy grabbed her skateboard and left the house through the gate in the garden to avoid her stepfather as he came in. He was alright really, it was just that it was a Tuesday, which means that he had a board meeting last thing, meaning that he would either be extremely happy and would want to spend time with mum in their bedroom, or he would be really angry and he would probably have taken it out on Issy, verbally of course, but never the less, she wasn’t hanging about. Issy made her way down the street, she lived on the outskirts of Boston and it was he start of the tourist season so the tour buses were out in force. As she sped down the sidewalk, she started to think about the photo of her father and, thinking about it, she did look a bit like him. Because she was wearing her helmet, Issy didn’t hear the commotion until she was almost on top of it. There was a crowd of people hanging around the middle of the sidewalk and there was a lot of shouting, from what she could here, there were 3 different languages being spoken, tourists. Issy came to a halt, flipped her skateboard up to her hands, and made her way through the group to see what all the fuss was about. She found a man holding a women who had fainted, both European, the man speaking rapidly in Italian to anyone who would attempt to understand him and a young boy of about 8 on the ground, unconscious, who appeared to be the couple’s son. Issy made her way over to the boy and knelt down beside him to take his pulse. The man attempted to push her off him, but she shocked him by replying to his cries.
“Guarda! Sto solo prendendo il polso! Si prega di suonare l’ambulanza!”
The man stepped back, visibly both shocked and amazed that this 16 year old could speak his natural tongue. The man switched to English, his native Italian must have come out in his shock.
“Si prega di giovane dona…could you ring an ambulance for me, my mobile has no charge.”
“Sì, certo.” She walked out of the crowd and rung for an ambulance. Issy suspected anaphylactic shock and she told the paramedics this when the arrived; they confirmed her diagnosis. The man and woman (when she came round) thanked her for her help and complimented her Italian.

Issy watched the couple climb into the ambulance and drive away in the back of it, before collecting up her skateboard and looking at her watch. It had been half and hour since she had left the house and Issy though that her stepfather would have calmed down by now, if he was angry to start with that is. She turned her skateboard round and made her way back home, coming back through the back way to avoid walking straight into the kitchen. She found her mother in her mother and her stepfather’s (Robert) room looking at the wall, she guessed that the board meeting hadn’t gone so well. At that moment the doorbell rang and Issy went to get it, leaving her mother with her thoughts for a while. Answering the door now, she found a parcel delivery man standing there.
“Parcel for Isabella Montez.”
“That’s me.”
“Sign here please.”
She signed and took the parcel from the man and shut the door. She grabbed a pair of scissors and opened it, finding inside, a Red Sox baseball cap and a sheet of paper with her name written on it. She unfolded it:
Dear Issy
So, you want to find out about your father.
www.thunderstorm.com
From G.D.J.I.M + T.G.P

Well, Issy thought to herself, that made sense (sarcasm). Anyway, what harm could it do, she thought. Her mother wasn’t going to tell her anything else about her father, it was a too sensitive subject for her. Issy logged onto the computer and entered the web address into the web bar, pressing the enter button on the keyboard. She didn’t know what she had been expecting, but what she saw next, was defiantly not it.