“Daddy when are you coming home?” Edana cried into the phone. She couldn’t have been more than seven years old.
“I’m not, Edana!” Her father snapped.
“Honey, let me talk to her. Why don’t you go make a cup of coffee?” Edana heard the voice of Evelyn, her new stepmother.
She heard the phone pass hands and her father leave the room.
“Okay, listen up, Edana.” Evelyn’s voice was no longer sweet and sugar coated as it was when she spoke in front of her new husband. “Casey’s a good kid – a normal kid – but you… I don’t know what kind of freak you are, but your father and I are starting a family together and I don’t want you anywhere near our future children!”
“But – my daddy –”
“Your daddy is gone. He’s with me now. I don’t know how you do that weird mindreading thing, but I do know that the cutlery and crockery shakes every time you walk into the kitchen, that any cat within five hundred metres follows you around and I know that that’s not normal! So, whatever kind of weird satanic, demonic things you’re into will be kept the hell away from me and my family, which now includes your father. Goodbye.”
Edana heard the dial tone and dropped the phone. Casey came up beside her and took her hand.
“What happened? What did he say?” He asked.
Edana had no idea how to answer that. How do you tell someone that the reason they’ll never see their father again is because of you? Edana shook her head and cried as her brother held her.
*****
Edana stood in their bedroom doorway watching her brother change. Their bedroom could barely fit the bunk bed that was the room’s only furniture. It was a few weeks after that significant phone call.
“Why won’t you tell me where we’re going?” Edana moaned.
“We aren’t going anywhere, Ed,” he sighed. She could feel his frustration at having this conversation.
“What do you mean? We go everywhere together!”
“This is just for boys, though! I can’t bring my sister along!”
“I can play with boys! You know I can! And I’m your twin they’ll understand!”
“Just stay home, Ed, okay? You can’t come.”
*****
A month later, Edana was curled up on a dilapidated old sofa watching a tiny black and white and television that was connected to an old VCR. She was alone at home again. Her mother was at her job at the local supermarket and Casey was out with friends again. He hardly spent any time at home anymore, even less with Edana.
Edana was more miserable than she had ever felt. She was losing her brother. She could feel it. So, she did the only thing she could think of to substitute the crucial connection she was losing: she was watching home movies.
There was her dad teaching her and Casey to ride a bike… The day her dad took them to the public swimming pool… Her and Casey in a one-on-one rugby match…
Her and Casey’s fifth birthday… Her and Casey having a food fight with cereal on a Saturday morning… Always laughing… Always together…
YOU ARE READING
Fearless Fiery Beauty
ActionHow do you tell the difference between adventurous and life-threatening if you are impervious to fear? You could ask Edana Keelia Greenwood, a 17 year old girl that most would refer to as ‘delinquent’, but considering the mess she got herself into...
