After defeating the sudden outbreak of the monsters, everyone seemed exhausted. For the rest of the night, the three girls didn't talk much about preparing for the networking event. Julianna showed Beth and Simone around the house, and they ordered takeaway. Everyone went on ranting about how the monsters were 'hard nuts to crack', eventually falling asleep on the couches together.
Julianna's eyes snapped open to the silver moonlight which illuminated the glass windows. 3:00 AM. The screen on her phone lit up for a second. The networking event was on Sunday. When will Beth and Simone leave tomorrow? Can we go pick outfits for Sunday in the morning? Julianna decided that she would ask those questions tomorrow. She closed her eyes and turned to the side, trying to fall asleep again. Yet piles and piles of her thoughts accumulated. Images of the last evening played in her head on repeat non-stop — her rifle, the giant jellyfishes, the octopuses, the lasers and mists in the air, the humanoid that resembled Lilian.
Don't emotional monsters appear when someone is at an emotional low? Julianna thought about the reason her monsters emerged. Maybe she did handle too many activities at the same moment. Maybe all the stress from committing too much acted up and crumbled her.
Julianna's dream was to become a marine biologist. It was hard for her to pinpoint when she first became fascinated with biology. Eleanor and Darius told her that the photo album that came with her luggage had quite a few pictures of herself playing by the ocean, or quietly looking at jellyfishes in the aquarium as a child. She couldn't remember doing those things clearly. Those memories have been buried away in the shadows of time for too long. However, Julianna knew that she was intrigued with the biological sciences after reading an old natural history encyclopedia. The book divided floras and faunas into different chapters according to their properties, which is akin to taxonomy, the study that places organisms into their suggestive spot in the elegant, organized living world. The complex and beautiful forms of living things — from the small cells in the body to the giant blue whale in the sea — could be readily visualized and studied.
Intrigued by the forms of organisms, Julianna knew that she wanted to use science as a language to explore the stories of the living world further. She would often go to the Laurel Museum — the museum which her classmates talk about sometimes — to seek new exhibitions that synthesize natural history and creative arts. Unforgettable for her was an exhibition on glass flower sculptures. While other people were busy wandering around on the marble floors, the tickling of time seemed to stop in Julianna's mind. Her eyes were fixed on a branch of purple hydrangea, lying inside the glass shelf in front of her. Though the petals and leaves of the hydrangea were made with hard glass, the curvatures were so smooth and elaborate, as if the artist was liberating the organic, lifelike form of the delicate flowers from the block of glass. Artists were inherently masterminds, leaving beauty transcended over and over generations after they were long gone. The museum suddenly seemed like a monument of time for Julianna. She was one of the pieces in this whole puzzle of people walking past her. With ancient artworks and modern people coexisting together in the museum, she envisioned the steps and traces once left on those floors by scholars, talents, and creatives. New ideas were once born and exchanged in space and time through the casual chattering of those people. The sculpture in front of her acted as a medium that connected her as a small speck in the grand course of history.
Over the years, she had stuck with her goal of becoming a marine biologist wholeheartedly. She went to science fairs, attended Olympiads, did research, and snatched some awards in the process. Laurel Prep welcomed her. Everything was going so smoothly. The next step, naturally, was to seek acceptance from a top university, especially her dream school, Ronald Jameson Academy for the Advancement of Science and Art. On Wednesday, she sat across from the counselor solemnly in the meeting room, waiting for the counselor to confirm her abilities, and push her toward her dream. Her counselor, though, gave her an awakening call. You are a smart kid, but college application is a crapshoot. Do you know Hildegard in your grade? She is also looking at the schools that you are interested in.
Julianna proceeded to ask about how she could increase her chances for Ronald Jameson, only to find that the counselor started probing into her personal life.
What is one insecurity that you recently have had and wanted to improve on? How would you describe your relationship with your best friend growing up? I am asking these questions because they may help you in your college essay in the future.
She bit her lip and became tongue-tied. Very early in her life, she realized that kids were biased and couldn't be helped. Yet she refused to pour memories of her isolated childhood out to the counselor for the sake of crafting an essay. It felt like tearing open her past, attaching it to a price label, and putting it on public display.
A day passed and Julianna wanted to take her mind off the college counseling session. She was watching animations, and suddenly, an email notification popped up in the right upper corner of the laptop screen. It was an email from her birth parents, who would like to see her again for her Sweet Sixteen. Eleanor and Darius had already told her that they sent her photos back to her birth parents, and they would be in touch. Somehow the email triggered Julianna. She was already in a grouchy mood from yesterday. Now, she was asked to go visit her original home that she couldn't even recognize. Out of exasperation, she went to the living room shelf to take a book and go back into her room, while dropping a box of photos on the ground. A picture of Lilian came out on top. Upon seeing the picture, Julianna's heart almost burst out of her chest. An urge to leave home engulfed her. Everything happened so fast that she needed to find an outlet to calm herself down. She wiped the nervous sweat from her head, slammed the door, and sprinted straight out of her house.
The Miller household has been quiet for a day. No one spoke about Lilian again. Julianna felt relieved that her parents were out with clients at the moment. Sitting in a room where everyone masked the chaos and quarrels from last night would give her a headache. Eleanor and Darius said that she would always be their beloved daughter. After all, they were the people who saw her grow up and granted her everything she could have wished for — a life of comfort, a good education, a space for intellectual debate — weren't they? But she wondered if there was a chance that Eleanor and Darius had never loved her. They were missing a person that exist in the bright world without curves and shapes. A person whose life was cut short by the cruel hands of time.
A sudden urge to speak to someone prompted her to get out of her bed. She looked around and found Simone half-asleep on the couch beside her. Beth was not in the room.
Julianna carefully tiptoed in the corridor, trying to find Beth. She stopped at the living room as she saw Beth sitting by herself on the balcony, with a notebook and a pen in her lapse.
I...I need to talk to you.
YOU ARE READING
Dreamchasers
Teen Fiction✨Featured on YA official page, Stardust reading list✨ Beth is a fashion designer wannabe who unexpectedly got accepted into one of the best prep schools in the nation. She is creative and ambitious but secretly struggles with balancing being herself...
