Upside Down

El Empaque y La Despedida (Parte Uno)

The Packing and The Goodbye (Part One)

"Ugh! Why do I have to have so much shit!" Valeria groaned as she threw herself on her bed covered in piles of clothing she should be packing. She was supposed to be done by now but she would take short breaks to complain about how much she had left to pack and would procrastinate some more rather than actually packing.

"I told you not to buy all those clothes." Rachel's voice came from her doorway and she lifted her head enough to see her standing there with a smug smile on her face. She had always told Valeria that she was a shopaholic and she needed help for her addiction. Retail therapy was her go to when finals or mid-terms came up.

"Yeah, but I do it anyways. I think I have a problem." Valeria huffed as she tossed the clothes under her head that was making her lying position uncomfortable off the bed. The clothes added into the already present mess in the room, not that she cared because it was eventually just going inside the luggage.

"You just noticed?" She asked motioning to her room that made it seem as if a tornado flew around her room before she came.

"Hey, admitting you have a problem is the first step." Valeria joked as she opted to close her eyes and lie in bed trying to ignore all the other clothes she had to pack up. She should have just asked her friends to pack it for her and mail it to avoid having to doing all the work.

"Finally you admit you do. I have been telling you for years that you should see a professional but you don't believe me." Rachel placed a hand on her hip to show her joking serious stance on Valeria's obvious addiction. She had a habit of buying clothes she would never use just to buy them because she was currently working so she was earning her own money.

"Okay mother," Valeria smiled at her closest friend that she had in this big city and small school. They had been friends since middle school and had history longer than most people had with most of their friends. "What are you doing here?" She asked in the most gentle way possible so she wasn't offended, she was just generally curious.

"A little birdy told me that you were leaving. I wanted to know if it was true, and apparently it is. Your mom told me you were packing your things." Rachel tried not to show her hurt because yet again she was being abandoned.

"I didn't know how to tell anyone about everything that's going on. I was going to wait a couple days to wrap my own head around everything that's going on." She admitted looking at her best friend.

"You know you can tell me anything, right? I'll always be here for you." She said sitting gingerly on the bed. Valeria was usually an impulsive person but she had never been this spontaneous to randomly leave the house she had grown up in.

Valeria sighed not knowing where to start but simply began with the day at the restaurant that allowed Natalia's honesty [or as her mother called it, her big ass mouth] to tell her dad about Valeria's existence. Everyone that knew the situation was well aware that Paloma never planned on telling anyone anything, she was set on taking the identity of her daughter's biological father a secret she would take to the grave.

Rachel listened intently and interrupted once in a while to clarify things about the story line. "So your mother never wanted you to know who he was?" She asked shocked at the idea of such a sweet woman like Paloma to keep something so significant within herself for many years. "She let you believe that you were the reason why your parents split? Wow, that's - oh my god. Excuse me, but your mom is so selfish. She wanted to keep you in a leash so that you would never find the man that helped create you."

"I know, that's why I'm leaving. Partly to get to know my dad but also to get back at my mom. I'm doing exactly what she wanted to avoid, me getting to know him or fly away from the nest." Valeria admitted that her rash decision to move to a new city with a man she didn't know well was also out of vengeance and rebellion.