"Red? Little Red?" Wysteria hears the nickname and a memory jolts through her of a boy with a toothy grin and shaggy hair. She turns slowly. Behind her is a lanky guy with hair almost as long as hers, if not longer. His head is tilted slightly in di...
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〖 chapter i: MOVE OUT OF THE WAY THOR 〗
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Wysteria Redbird stands at her locker, meticulously organizing her books and binders in her bag in the order that she will need them in before putting away the books she won't need until closer to lunch time. Around her is the chatter of the new day and the shuffle of feet on tiled floor and outside the dark clouds threaten to break loose with a torrential storm. Wysteria glances absently at the photo tapped to her locker door. It's the only photo she has of her mother. Actually, it's a photo of all three of them and it's so old and faded, Wysteria almost didn't recognize the people in it. She touches it now, fingering the edges gently. If her father knew she had this photo, he would be livid.
When Wysteria and her father first arrived in Florida, the first thing they did was rid themselves of their heritage. He made Wysteria throw away presents from relatives and articles of clothing that reminded him of the Reservation. He even took away some of her Quileute jewelry and her mythology stories from their tribe and burned everything in a fire pit. Wysteria only has two pieces of jewelry left from the reservation. One is a necklace from her grandmother and one of the earrings from a pair that her mother had given her the day she left.
Wysteria tries to recall her mothers face on her own, without looking at the picture but she can't. She knows that her mother cried when they left but that's all she can recall. Everything else is like one big blur and once her father made her get rid of everything that connected Wysteria to Forks, Washington, it was almost like they had never even been there at all. This photo was something that Wysteria had found just a couple of days ago wedged between the pages of a book she had taken from her fathers room. It clearly hadn't been opened in a while, as dust had covered the spin and the top of the book. Wysteria had taken the book because it was listed as one of the books suitable for an upcoming project her English class was doing.
She hadn't planned to actually read the book, she felt more inclined to read the cliffnotes for it online but late one night she had picked it up and began to page through it, flipping the pages quickly. That's when the photo caught her eye. She paused, went back through the pages and wrenched it free from the book. When she didn't immediately recognize her family, she turned the photo over and found in neat handwriting the words Redbird Family, 1998.
