Status: Trying something different. Hope you like it. (On Hiatus until I get more free time.)
The Last Winter
Prologue
The day my mother and father left, was the day I realized my life was never going to be normal.
The clouds were getting darker, the wind was picking up. Just like yesterday, it was probably going to rain. The crumpled paper between my nail-bitten fingers threatened to escape and my long hair blocked the ephemeral view of the finishing line. A tall grey building. A building that could possibly give me some closure, some kind of sense of purpose. A place for my dreams.
It’s easy to believe in a story about a teenage kid who runs away from their parents, but not the other way around. But my life had never been believable, so when my parents decided to walk away from the sixteen year-old me, no one believed in the truth. No one would ever believe, I already knew it. People often choose which truths to believe and which lies to condemn. So I lied. And no one condemned me, because that lie was an acceptable truth.
My feet made no sound as I crossed the paved road, heavy eyes crawling on the sidewalk and swinging from the streets lights to the building’s outline. There was no one outside. Not a single shadow in that small ghost town.
“I’m here for an interview.” My voice was steady, unlike the beating of my heart. This was not my first job interview, but none of them had ever been as important as this one. In a way, my life depended on it.
But let’s go back a few weeks.
The place: Another restroom of another all-night restaurant in just another city, California.
The main character: A skinny, young, white girl, born, and raised until the age of sixteen, in Ireland.
That girl was me, Iris Callaghan. Using my fingers as a comb, I did my best to tame my hair into a more beautiful mess that its current bedraggled state. My backpack was always at an arm’s reach away, it contained my whole life.
It was in that moment, when I glanced at it to make sure no one had stolen my life, like it had happened to my bike a few days ago, that I saw it. A classified ads page ripped off from a local newspaper.
Goose bumps rose on my arms. Shivers raced up and down the back of my neck. Whatever strange angel had left that page, it seemed to have brought it directly from the back of my subconscious mind. The idea expressed there matched my hope and fear precisely. I would never be a weirdo anymore.
I ripped the tiny ad and folded it neatly. In that job opportunity resided my fate.
You see, two years ago, on the first day of spring, I had arrived in Santa Cruz, California with $90 in my pockets, after spending all the money I had saved on the trip from Ireland to the United States of America.
People could wonder what I was running from, if I was running from something. Yes, I was, but from what was something I couldn’t understand quite yet.
Washing dishes at restaurants or working as a farm laborer in apple orchards had removed me from the state of gleefully homeless. In just a matter of months, I rented a tiny studio apartment in a basement beneath a garage adjoining an old woman’s house.
My enrollment at the University of California at Santa Cruz had helped, too. For a few sporadic quarters I was able to get government loans and grants in return for attending once-a-week poetry and creative writing classes. I was basically willing to do anything, within decency, for money. Monthly allotments of food stamps also aided the cause, but even then, I barely made my rent.
The moldy basement I called home had nothing but a temperamental space heater to warm my fingers. My wardrobe? Bought from warehouses which charged a reasonable price of one dollar per five pounds of recycled garments.
What did I have to lose? Nothing.
So, me and my rickety bike decided to leave. We left to wherever my dreams told me to, and suddenly what I feared the most was now my compass.
A compass that had led me to the restroom where my future was presented to me.
Are you lost? Someone had once asked me. No, I was no longer lost. That tiny job ad, although with a probably equally tiny paycheck, held the promise of something better. An escape.
The clouds were getting darker, the wind was picking up. Just like yesterday, it was probably going to rain. The crumpled paper between my nail-bitten fingers threatened to escape and my long hair blocked the ephemeral view of the finishing line. A tall grey building. A building that could possibly give me some closure, some kind of sense of purpose. A place for my dreams.
It’s easy to believe in a story about a teenage kid who runs away from their parents, but not the other way around. But my life had never been believable, so when my parents decided to walk away from the sixteen year-old me, no one believed in the truth. No one would ever believe, I already knew it. People often choose which truths to believe and which lies to condemn. So I lied. And no one condemned me, because that lie was an acceptable truth.
My feet made no sound as I crossed the paved road, heavy eyes crawling on the sidewalk and swinging from the streets lights to the building’s outline. There was no one outside. Not a single shadow in that small ghost town.
“I’m here for an interview.” My voice was steady, unlike the beating of my heart. This was not my first job interview, but none of them had ever been as important as this one. In a way, my life depended on it.
But let’s go back a few weeks.
The place: Another restroom of another all-night restaurant in just another city, California.
The main character: A skinny, young, white girl, born, and raised until the age of sixteen, in Ireland.
That girl was me, Iris Callaghan. Using my fingers as a comb, I did my best to tame my hair into a more beautiful mess that its current bedraggled state. My backpack was always at an arm’s reach away, it contained my whole life.
It was in that moment, when I glanced at it to make sure no one had stolen my life, like it had happened to my bike a few days ago, that I saw it. A classified ads page ripped off from a local newspaper.
Goose bumps rose on my arms. Shivers raced up and down the back of my neck. Whatever strange angel had left that page, it seemed to have brought it directly from the back of my subconscious mind. The idea expressed there matched my hope and fear precisely. I would never be a weirdo anymore.
I ripped the tiny ad and folded it neatly. In that job opportunity resided my fate.
You see, two years ago, on the first day of spring, I had arrived in Santa Cruz, California with $90 in my pockets, after spending all the money I had saved on the trip from Ireland to the United States of America.
People could wonder what I was running from, if I was running from something. Yes, I was, but from what was something I couldn’t understand quite yet.
Washing dishes at restaurants or working as a farm laborer in apple orchards had removed me from the state of gleefully homeless. In just a matter of months, I rented a tiny studio apartment in a basement beneath a garage adjoining an old woman’s house.
My enrollment at the University of California at Santa Cruz had helped, too. For a few sporadic quarters I was able to get government loans and grants in return for attending once-a-week poetry and creative writing classes. I was basically willing to do anything, within decency, for money. Monthly allotments of food stamps also aided the cause, but even then, I barely made my rent.
The moldy basement I called home had nothing but a temperamental space heater to warm my fingers. My wardrobe? Bought from warehouses which charged a reasonable price of one dollar per five pounds of recycled garments.
What did I have to lose? Nothing.
So, me and my rickety bike decided to leave. We left to wherever my dreams told me to, and suddenly what I feared the most was now my compass.
A compass that had led me to the restroom where my future was presented to me.
Are you lost? Someone had once asked me. No, I was no longer lost. That tiny job ad, although with a probably equally tiny paycheck, held the promise of something better. An escape.