Dilettante (GirlxGirl)

Chapter 1. Well, Shit

Author's Note: Tari's name is pronounced as (Tar-Ree)

                                                                                             I am from silent evenings-

                                                                                                       Paintings unpainted,

                                                                                              a dreary glow in the dark

                                                                                     and tales of way-back-whens.

Days came and went miserably for her like shit passing through the colon. The dull and repetitive cycle of simply existing is Tari's definition of death and that is not even close to the worst of it all. She has not said a word to a living human being for 395 days. Not to her mother, her father, her friends-- nobody. After the day Tari was murdered, anything that escaped her lips would have been a lie. And she was a terrible liar. 

She almost did not make it to day 396.

Tari constantly blamed herself and others for feeling hopeless, but deep within she knew that there was only one person worthy of taking all of the blame. That is why she is going to find the boy who took everything from her. She is going to kill the boy who killed her. Because that was how he unraveled her. Thread by thread. Until she was bare. 

Wearing nothing but her skin. 

And her bones. 

And her blood.

  _______________  

Moving into a mental home to live with the strangest and most troublesome teenagers was the last place on the entire planet that Tari wanted to stay at and the sad part is that it came with a bonus. But it was not like those bonus salaries people received after working their asses off for twenty years, performing honest-to-God gracious things. Imagine how happy those homo sapiens would be.

It was different for Tari because she knew that even if her stay did magically grant her a cashed prize, she would still feel miserably fucked.

Living in a mental home in the middle of Dayton, Texas meant: brutal heat, people whom she won't talk to, and going to a shitty new school. Fast forward nine days, nine nerve wracking days and here she was with her mother at the steering wheel driving to Mildred Halls, rolling down a deserted road bounded for some potholes in the earth.

"You are going to love Dayton, Tari." She adjusted the volume on the radio so that Tari can hear her.

Tari's mother expected a lot of things from her that she was never going to get. Loving Dayton, Texas; a town that may be identical to the slums is an easy thing to do, but if her mother meant loving the Mental Institution in Dayton as well, then the woman was not getting anything.

"You could at least give me a sign that convinces your father and I that you will be okay."

Tari knew it wasn't going to be okay. She was not okay. In fact, she is never going to be okay. She looked away from her mother from the passenger seat and stared out the window. Tari and her mother were carbon copies of each other. They were both a little taller than average height and had light brown hair that fell just below their shoulders in loose waves. 

The only difference in their appearances were their eyes. Her mothers were a vibrant hazel, while Tari's were darker than charcoal. She always wondered if it was her mother's bronze skin that made those hazel irises more luminous. Her mother looked like she could walk down a runway. 

Tari looked like a corpse.

She and her father shared more similarities. They had the same personality, the same love for art, the same smile, and the same laugh. But since the day she died, their similitude died as well, and they haven't spoken for as long as she can't remember. The reason he proposed for not being able to come along was that he had to travel overseas for some kind of business promotion, and will not be back for a while. For him, "a while," meant, "probably over a year." 

Tari quietly scoffed at the thought of it. It was not like she actually wanted to see him hold a conversation with her for a millisecond before he was gone again.

The scenery changed fast once they crossed over into Texas, and Tari is looking out the window at miles of sunbathed mountains that were concealed under crispy and shriveled up willow trees. Close up, the foreground was a flat ocean of sand already dented with rippled ridges that appeared to snake their way up towards gigantic sand dunes. 

Her mother made a left turn on the road and they passed a park enclosed in old fashioned, rusty, and blacked painted gates where more trees were inhabited than the number of children.

Beyond the park was a few deli stores and the school she will be occupying. There was a large picture of a black bird in a taking-off stance on the edge of the building and she contemplated on how incredible it is that something so small can easily accomplish something as complicated as human flight. Birds can fly and be free and Tari was sorely in need of freedom right now.

Dayton Public Library. Sunshine Daycare. Joe's Jam Bar. Gunner's Grocery and Deli. Alba's Boutique. Smith's Cafe and Diner. Tari leaned back in her seat and huffed annoyingly from imagining how her day could get any shittier. 

Her mother made another left while craning her neck to carefully scan every sign for the correct address and slowly pulled into the driveway. The dry and cracked path crunched under the tires of the silver van as it came to a stop. Tari patiently waited for a response as her mother looked at her a little longer than usual when her character suddenly changed very dramatically. Just yesterday and every other day before that, her mother was always unbearably irritable, frustrated, and angry, but by reading her facial expression and body language right now, she appeared to be caring, concerned, and... hopeful? Or was that sympathy?

Whatever it was, Tari knew that it was clearly not normal, especially when it comes to her mother. Then, she did something even more unlike her motherly self by reaching out an arm and gently placing her hand on Tari's shoulder.

"I am sorry, but this is the best way for you honey," she said softly.

Her hand moved down to Tari's arm and landed on top of her tightly clasped fingers. She was unprepared for her mother's strange behavior that her body naturally shifted away uncomfortably from her touch.

"Just-- try at least. If not for me and Paul, then for yourself?"

Tari glanced over at Mildred Halls and saw that the house was old and suffering for a paint job. It was beginning to tilt like a hunched over shack rotting under the sun. It looks like she was not the only one screaming for help.

The front door opened and she watched as a tall curvaceous woman who was probably in her mid-thirties with disheveled, shoulder length, and dyed like crazy red hair descend from the steps and strolled towards their van. Tari knew that this woman would be the manager of this dumpster and the one who owned her ass from now on.

Tari opened the passenger door as she strapped on her brown messenger bag and stepped outside into the scorching heat. Before shutting the door and turning away, her mother smiles her most beautiful cover-girl smile through the glass window. 

Tari nodded and smiled in return because standing under this radiating temperature at 12:30 in the afternoon was all she could manage to do.