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.
I was forced to switch off the shower when the hot water turned lukewarm. I toweled off with one of the plush rose colored towels my mom and I had special ordered when we still lived up north. We both hated stepping out of a hot shower and at least the plush towels helped ward off any chills. Of course, the mild temperatures in California were a lot different than the frigid temperatures we were used to.
I pulled on a pair of blue and green plaid board shorts and a Roxy t-shirt. I let out a sigh of contentment; I loved being able to wear such light weight clothes in March. Though before the move, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you the difference between a Roxy shirt and the standard Target t-shirts I usually wore during the summers back in Montana. I have never been a name brand junkie, but there was no denying that the Roxy shirts were super comfortable, not to mention they were very flattering, even for someone as flat chested as me.
Of course starting tomorrow, I would be wearing a uniform everyday and my new Roxy shirts would have to wait until the weekends. This thought didn’t make me cringe like most teenagers would have. I liked the idea of not having to decide what to wear each morning and never having to second guess my outfit choice. Even in the small town I had moved from, I had always been one step behind all the fashionistas.
I spent the hours waiting for my mom to wake up by getting my school supplies ready for the next day. I’d been out of school for two weeks for the move and had enjoyed my time off. I almost wished I had opted for early graduation. School had always been easy for me, but this past year it was ridiculously easy since I had finished all my core classes the year before. I had enough credits to graduate early, but I decided to do the whole graduation thing for my mom’s sake. Being an only child, I didn’t want to deprive her of my last few high school memories.
I was a little apprehensive about starting a new school, and hoped that I could remain unnoticed until I graduated. I just wanted to finish high school and move on to a big university where it would be easier to blend in.
I had organized my backpack about a million times and had stuffed it with plenty of notebooks, pens and pencils. I had also packed an extra book on the off chance that I forgot my current novel I was reading.
Finally, I set my backpack aside realizing it was as ready as it could be. I moved to my desk, but I was a perpetually neat person, so there really wasn’t much to organize there. After a few minutes of just reshuffling things around, I sat on my bed.
Settling against my mountain of throw pillows, I picked up my favorite teddy bear that I had made at Build-a-Bear Workshop when I was ten. We bought it when we went to Las Vegas on vacation. It had become a ritual for my dad to buy me a new stuffed animal from B.A.B.W. every time we went on vacation, and I had a whole shelf of different animals we had purchased over the years. My favorites held court on my bed; like the cute orange tabby cat that we had bought in Orlando and the monkey from our trip to Colorado. Each one was special to me since my dad had helped me pick all of them out. I had fourteen in all, to remember every trip we had taken together.
I held my bear loosely in my hands as I studied the ceiling trying to keep my mind off the topic that was lurking in the back of my mind. At first I was successful as I studied the fine cracks that boarded the crease where the wall met the ceiling. The cracks had alarmed me at first, but mom explained that they were common in houses that were built on softer soil.
“We can hire somebody to caulk over them and then repaint the walls,” she had said.
After a few minutes, I could no longer ward off the thoughts from the twist my dreams had taken. I had a nagging feeling that something was going to happen.
From the moment we entered Santa Cruz, I knew this was where I was supposed to be. If asked why, I would not be able to give you a straight answer, it was just a feeling I carried around in my heart.
I had done plenty of research on the city over the years and knew probably more about it than the locals. I knew before we moved here that there were approximately 58,000 people who lived within the city limits and that the city itself was 12 square miles. I knew that it was 74 miles south of San Francisco and 30 miles away from San Jose. I even knew that Santa Cruz meant “Holy Cross.” I knew all of these things, but I didn’t know the most important thing, which was why I felt I had to be here.
I planned on finding out some of the answers today. My mom and I were going to visit the Boardwalk that had made Santa Cruz popular. When I found out that Santa Cruz had an amusement park on the beach, I wasn’t surprised, it all seemed to fit. In the background of every one of my dreams, I could make out an amusement park in the distance. I had researched the Boardwalk enough that I was pretty confident it would be the one from my dreams. If I was right, at least I would be moving in the right direction.
“Krista, are you ready? I want to get there before it gets too busy,” my mom called up the stairs.
I patted Feline on the head and grabbed my purse before I headed downstairs.
My mom was waiting at the bottom of the stairs wearing a cute peach spaghetti strap sundress, with a light ivory quarter sleeve sweater over it. I couldn’t help admiring her sense of style. She could pick something off the rack that looked ordinary and turn it into something extraordinary by just adding the right accessories. No matter how hard I had tried to mimic her style, I was never able to achieve the same results.
I was fashionably defective.
All the gardening my mom had been doing recently had given her skin a nice honey glow that seemed even richer against the pretty peach of the sundress. With the golden highlights throughout her hair from the sun, she looked ten years younger. I couldn’t help wishing my dad could see just how lovely she was in this laid back atmosphere. My parents had often talked about their plans for retirement and had always planned on living near the ocean.
I avoided looking directly at her as I stopped at the bottom of the stairs to put on the cable knit sweater that I had left draped over the banister.
“I’m ready. I’ve been up for hours,” I said, still diverting my face from her eagle eyes. I had used a liberal amount of cover up to try to minimize the obvious dark marks under my eyes, but though they were lighter, they still remained.
Thankfully, my mom was in a hurry and didn’t give me a second glance as I grabbed the keys off the hall table and headed out the door and down the porch stairs.
I used my own keys to lock the front door while my mom started the car; I twisted the knob once to make sure the door was locked, and then skipped down the three shallow porch steps, glancing back over my shoulder to take another look at the house.
I felt a warm glow just looking at it. The front porch was one of my favorite things about the house. It was at least ten feet wide and ran the whole length of the house. My mom had placed an oversized swing on the far side of the porch. On the other side we had added two Adirondack chairs that we painted a clear blue that reminded us of the ocean that was just a block away. My mom had also hung baskets of flowers along the rafters that ran along the ceiling of the porch. The overall effect was nice and inviting and seemed to beg you to spend a long lazy day relaxing your cares away. Even the rustic paint job added to the overall charm of the house.
I climbed into the front seat of my mom’s Focus and slammed the door behind me. The car was only a few years old, but for some reason the doors had started sticking after the move. I was convinced that it missed the arctic temperatures it was used to.
“I think the car is protesting the move,” I joked to my mom.
My mom steered the car toward the downtown area, driving along the pretty roads that made up the town. I loved looking at the foreign sight of all the lush lawns and pretty flowers that seemed to be in abundance at this time of year. Back home, you were lucky if you could even see the ground under all the dirty gray snow that covered everything.