I monitored my emotion- tested my self-control. Concentrating hard, I delved into my own skin, searching. I sorted through the fear, the sadness, the rage… and I erased it. Good. Feeling as composed as I’d ever be, I turned to my mother, who was inspecting the interior of our moving van.

The U-haul truck sat in the center of the shining driveway like an old, fat cat sits on a beautifully upholstered couch. It was an eye sore. On one side of the van was a large painted Venus fly trap labeled with the name of our new home: North Carolina.

“Remind me again how we fit all of this in here?” I asked. The blistering rays of summer heat burned the exposed skin on my back. If it’s this hot in May, I thought, It’s going to be a long summer.

“I have no idea. It looks like a piece of art,” my mother replied, tilting her head to the side. She turns to Jake and I and exclaimed, “Welcome to Raleigh!”

I didn’t want to move, not really. My mother had always been the type to run away from her problems instead of facing them. Although the memories of my father haunted our home, I could deal with it. Apparently, she couldn’t.

The unpacking lasted a few hours. Finally, I sat on my favorite chair, staring around my newly acquired room. It was so boring, so dull. No posters, no pictures, no character. The room was a blank disc, ready to be burned. It was a clean slate. It was a new start. It was me.

********

During the past few months, I’d been in a trance. Memories flashed across my eyes for a fleeting moment before disappearing. I wasn’t sure what everyone else thought of me.

At night, I fell away. I dreamed. And as I dreamed, I tossed and turned. My mind was stuck between the realms of sleep and consciousness. A boy was quite often featured in my dreams. Crouched in front of a stone, cold house, he held his head in his strong hands. As I stared he lifted his head, peering towards his visitor with inquisitive black eyes.

Breaking away from my dream, I sat bolt upright. Sunlight shone into my bedroom through the still uncurtained windows, slamming into my face like a hammer. Ignoring the light, I closed my eyes and tried to remember the dream. Every detail was smudged, yet still stored somewhere in my subconscious memory.

Time for a walk, I thought, and I drifted like fog through the oddly smelling house. The calendar on the refrigerator told me that it was Saturday, July the twenty-fifth. It’d been five weeks since the funeral, I noted mentally. From somewhere upstairs, Jake’s computer shouted out the clamorous noises accompanying his game.

“Turn it down!” I yelled. “The neighbors can probably hear you.”

“Shut up, Ray. I’ll do what I want,” was the response. I smiled at his defiance, so much like my own.

Silently slipping on shoes, I broke through the barrier that was my door and stepped out into the sunshine.

There it was- my favorite area of the shady forest. The trees parted just slightly like the lips of an expectant lover, calling me to join the aura of quiet peace. I sat on a rock above the water, letting my toes just barely brush the rippling surface. I closed my eyes and concentrated.

Suddenly, the sounds of those recognizably soft whispers filled my ears. The voices all spoke in different tongues, too quickly to catch. They grew louder and louder, filling my thoughts with only their voices, all of the sounds joining together like a symphony. Finally, it came- that moment of clarity in which I could distinctly hear the whisper of one voice over all the others. It was speaking directly to me in a language which I could understand. I loved that voice. It reminded me of home and love and bikes and snow and rain and trees and everything. It repeated itself again and again, but I couldn’t catch what it said, its now scarcely audible words jumbling together like shards broken glass. Finally, I could almost comprehend it… Say it again, I begged, just one more time…

“What are you doing here?”

A bubble broke around me, and I screamed.