Tear Tracks Forever

I sat on my chair, closed my eyes, gnawed on an apple slice, and sighed as I complained into the phone to my best friend Karina.

“Oh, I know! He is such an asshole. He doesn’t care shit about me and then he just has to go and make my fucking life worse by shipping me off to Virginia Beach to be a ‘lifeguard,’” I groaned, putting air quotes around lifeguard, and then continuing. “Karina, he doesn’t want me to get experience about how a real job is, he wants me to get away from him so he can fool around with Ana, who I know he’s gonna marry!”

Karina whined into the phone. “I know! It sucks. I wish you could at least come and stay with me if he wants you out of the house, but noooooo. You have to go stay with a family that you don’t even know!”

“Exactly! I cried. We talked for a few minutes more, until I heard my dad calling from downstairs. “Rheeeee! Rheeeyadh, come downstairs!”

I gritted my teeth. I hated it when people called me by my full name, Rheeyadh. I go by Rhee. God only knows why my dead mother decided to name me after the capital of Saudi Arabia, only spelled differently. I’m not even Saudi Arabian. I’m Indian, with thick, curly, black, long hair that I hate, and dark, big, chocolate eyes that I love.

“Coming, dad!” I shouted, and then sighed. “Okay, Karina, I got to go. Talk to you later?”
I hung up the phone and then walked downstairs. “Yeah, Dad?”

“Rhee, come here. Frank just emailed me some photos of Carmella and Alex. I can’t believe how much they’ve grown,” he twisted his neck backwards and glanced at me, then scrolled down some keys on his computer. There was Carmella all right, ten years old, the most whiny and bratty creature on the planet. She was still a little plump, and she has those brown beady eyes, but she looked better with her straight brown hair cut normally at her shoulders, flying behind her back. Lat time I saw her, she had cut her own hair and it had looked horrible.

But my legs almost melted when I saw the guy next to Carmella, his hand on her shoulder. It was Alex. Damn, I don’t remember him being this cute. His ashy blond hair fell in waves over his forehead, and you could see his perfect six-pack through his wet white T-shirt. He was wearing red swim trunks printed with black Hawaiian flowers, and he was gripping a blue and silver surfboard. His flawless skin was perfectly tanned from all those hours of surfing in the sun. His crisp white teeth gleamed, and his blue eyes shone in the sunlight. Straight at the camera. Straight at me. Hottt.

My dad silently scrolled through some more photos, and then turned to me. “What do you think?”

“I think Carmella’s hair looks better, and they’ve certainly grown,” I told him. My lips suddenly felt dry and I went over to the kitchen and poured myself a glass of water, gulping it down.
“Rhee, you haven’t asked for my dismissal,” my father prodded.
I nodded quickly, and then said, “Sorry father. May I be dismissed?”
He nodded curtly. “You may.”

I left the room, running back upstairs. The first thing I did was switch on my laptop and log onto Facebook and search Alex Markin. I finally found his profile, and his profile picture was of him holding a surfboard by the beach in the wing. The only difference was that his shirt was dry. I quickly Friended him and wrote a message to him.

haii. this is Rhee, yknow…the gurl whos gonna b spending the hole summer with u? yeah. sooo….wats upp

Okay, dumb, dumb, dumb, I know. But what else was there to say?
I looked through a few of his photos and checked his relationship status, which was listed as Single.

Maybe this summer wasn’t going to be so bad. That would be hard to tell. Oh well, I would find out next week, when I met Alex Markin.