The Wicked Blessed

EVERYTHING'S GOING TO BE ALRIGHT

Her absence greets me first thing in the morning, shaking me awake on a cold bed run through with hot bars of sunlight. I count the wrinkles in the navy blue curtains, six times they dance over the rim of my backpack sitting on the floor.

I contemplate it, I really do, settling into a lifestyle that reigned pre-Montana. My comforter isn't made of the same smothering material I used to yank over my head, shut out the world. I'm on display in a room that hasn't been visited in years, resting on polished glass.

There's no hiding. Not here. Not on my first day back to school in two weeks. Lydia would never hear the end of it.

Condensation hangs on the bathroom window, a used toothbrush balancing on the rim of the sink. I let my curls bleed onto the carpet after a shower and down a cold cup of coffee left on the round dining room table. I hate coffee, love the smell.

I slip on my shoes, twirling a lanyard with useless keys—keys for charred doors, ghost doors, fraudulent doors—around my wrist. Usually, Muffin meets me at the steps, his wet tongue brushing against my ankles, head bobbing for an ounce of attention as my father rushes to answer a phone call from his office. But here, there is just quiet and lots of empty space filled with books and coffee, throw pillows, and a fireplace that never gets used.

I take her directions sent from a text to the sidewalk in front of our yard. The grass glistens with dew but I don't remember it raining. Little red-capped mushrooms spring up from the ground bringing cotton fluff white and yellow blossoms I haven't seen on the west coast before. I take a minute to admire the large flowering dogwood tree planted on either side of the pebble path leading to the front porch...how alive it is. I'm intimidated. Awed.

The greenery is going to take a while to get used to.

My father paid for my jeep to get here by the end of the week so Lydia, like the Samaritan guardian she is, plans on driving me to Helena to pick it up Saturday. But at the present moment, I'm stuck taking the bus, something I've never really done before.

I'm a Californian but I didn't grow up rich. More the suburban lower-middle-class where the best place to eat is a whole-in-the-wall shack serving pan-fried birria in a tinfoil wrap. Saying that here, I might seem crazy. But I'm just lucky to have a car. Eventually, anyway.

At my languid pace, it's a twelve-minute walk to the bus stop at the end of the street, placed in front of a shroud of pine trees that look like they snatch lost souls and leave only bones. A few kids lounge on the misted royal blue bench beneath the coverup, hands stuffed into their pockets, earbuds hanging from hoods. I stand an awkward distance away with my corduroy hood pulled over my head, eyes on everything but the people beside me.

The air smells sweet...rustic even. I notice it's less humid in Whitefish, no briny ocean to make the air stick to my skin.

The high school, Garden Grove, has a population of 1,190 mostly white students (because who wouldn't miss the unparalleled diversity that is the shores of California?) of whom I'm supposed to convince I'm mentally stable by spring's end. It isn't much by old standards but then again I never really grew up with the people I'm about to meet. Their tolerance for my bullshit might be quite low. It isn't a heartwarming thought, knowing I'm given the chance to start over. I'm afraid of failure. Of people poking at or huddling into a husk of what I used to be, expecting warmth.

I don't have to be the ruefully smart wannabe-valedictorian with straight As and a 4.5 GPA. I can slouch, rest my head on my desk, sit outside beneath the shades of a tree, and plot reincarnation as a bird, turning over rocks for a heavenly obolus. I don't have to attend football games, and parties, or stay after class to satisfy my need to get in a word with teachers for recommendations. The hard part is over.