“Because we are never going to let go of him if we stay in this town, everywhere we go reminds us of him. The movies, our favorite restaurants, even the mall. I’m reminded of him wherever I go, and I know you are too. We need a new beginning.”
“Isn’t moving expensive?” I asked, not sure my mom had thought this through completely. We weren’t poor, but I knew that both my parents had to work to maintain their lifestyle. I had been worrying about how we were going to make ends meet since my dad had died.
“We have the money from your dad’s life insurance.”
“Dad had life insurance?” I asked surprised.
“Yes, we both had policies in our name. We took them out after we adopted you. We wanted to make sure if anything ever happened to us, you would be taken care of.”
I felt the familiar pang in my heart. I knew I should get over being abandoned, but for some reason I could not let it go that my “real” parents didn’t love me enough to keep me. I knew my adoptive parents loved me like I was their own flesh and blood, but I couldn’t help wondering why I had been left behind by my real parents.
“How much money is the policy?” I had asked, shaking off the bothersome thoughts.
“Enough that you never have to worry about college and you get to spend your last couple months of school in private school.”
I was thrilled. Attending a private school had been a lifelong dream of mine. Not because I was vain and wanted to surround myself with other smart kids, but because I felt if I attended a school where there were other kids with high IQ’s, I could get lost in the crowd. Don’t ask me why I had assumed everyone at private school were smart, I had just always perceived it that way.
In public school I always seemed to be the smartest in my class, and my teachers were always trying to get my parents to have my IQ tested, but I always fought it. I didn’t want to skip grades. I didn’t want to be tested for gifted classes. I just wanted to be like any other teenager. For years my goal was to fly under the radar. I always got straight A’s, but I never went beyond that. The less attention I got, the happier I was.
It was easier when I had teachers that didn’t care much about their jobs, and had only gone into teaching for the summers off. They appreciated kids like me who made their jobs easier. The teachers that actually liked their jobs were harder to fool. Usually, after a couple of months, they would catch on to just how smart I was and then the cycle would start over again. They would meet with my parents.
“Do you know Krista is gifted?” They would ask.
“Yes,” my parents would reply.
“Would you like us to test her?”
“No,” my parents would say. “We think Krista is comfortable where she is.”
I had seen this cycle many times and just wanted to put it all behind me. I felt a private school was the way to go, but they were expensive and I knew that it would be too costly for me to attend one, so I had never asked.
“Yes,” my mom replied.
“There’s more, I’ve been researching private schools and guess where one of the best in the nation is located?”
“Santa Cruz?” I asked, not daring to believe my good fortune.
“Yep!” she replied, using one of my favorite slang words.
Except for being overly sensitive and dreaming about some guy I had never met, the next craziest thing about me was my ridiculous, burning desire to visit Santa Cruz. My parents could never explain this strange desire of mine, but I couldn’t help wondering if I was born there or something like that.
The Department of Children and Family Services had no information to pass on about me, except the fact that some woman found me sitting on a park bench at a rest stop in Utah, when I was two. I was found clutching a bear and a small backpack. I couldn’t tell them my name, and all the social workers could get out of me was that “Franklin,” or what sounded like Franklin, had told me to sit until someone came to help me. The authorities searched the area high and low for anyone close to the name of Franklin, but their searches proved to be fruitless.
“Santa Cruz,” I had repeated. Saying the name out loud filled me with an unexplainable rightness.
Now, two months later, here we were. From the moment we drove through the town limits, I had felt it. I didn’t know why, but I knew I belonged here.
I studied my reflection in the mirror over the sink as I smoothed moisturizer on my face. The sea air was playing havoc on my complexion. I hated the constant gritty texture my face seemed to have and the dark black smudges under my eyes that made me resemble a NFL football player. I couldn’t help feeling a little frazzled about starting school the next day. It was one thing to feel like a freak on the inside, but a whole other thing to look like one.
I traced the dark smudges with my fingertip. The gritty texture of my skin could be fixed, but the smudges would be harder to cover up. The dream had shaken me more than I was willing to admit. I was terrified at what they meant. Was he going to leave me after all these years? How would I function without him? Who would I turn to in my times of need?
All of these thoughts filled me with despair, and sleep was now a double edge sword. I longed to see him, but I feared for the day he would no longer be there.
I stepped into the shower after laying down an extra towel under the bathmat. The shower door was older, and no matter how hard we closed it, it still leaked around the edges.
Hoping the water would wash away the last lingering side effects from the dream, I deliberately twisted the knob to the hottest setting. Of course it took a while, since the hot water heater in the house must have been installed when the house was built twenty years ago. My mom told me that it couldn’t be that old, since typically hot water heaters only lasted about ten years. It may not be twenty years old, but it had definitely seen better days, and was another item on the endless “to do” list hanging on the refrigerator. My mom and I aren’t the handiest with tools, so the list keeps growing while nothing ever gets crossed off. My mom promised to call a handyman last night after the pantry door fell off its hinges. I could only laugh; the new house may be in a great location being only a block from the beach, but it definitely needed some work done, my mom called it T.L.C (Tender Loving Care). I felt it needed a lot more than that, like maybe a bulldozer.
I rushed through washing and conditioning my hair to conserve some of the limited hot water for shaving my legs. The sunny California weather was nice, and I definitely liked wearing shorts, but shaving my legs every day was getting old fast. At least it was better than wearing my regular attire of jeans and long johns like I would have to if we were still in Montana.