Authors Note:
First, thank you to all those who have shown their support these last few months. Your comments, emails and votes drove me to finish this chapter. I can't get into details of the reason for the delay, but I can say that if you'd known my reasons, you would forgive me.
The first passage of this chapter was inspired by the writings of my very talented and very dear friend, Lun. Thank you for lending me your intellectual property for the spirit of this story.
Hope you all enjoy this story. This is not the last chapter. More to come.
Cheers,
Nora
—
Renascence
Noun:
The revival of something that has been dormant.
—
There are two ways in which the body speaks, and one of them is in complete silence.
Open your mouth and talk, listen to how your voice sounds, hear what people hear when you form your syllables. This is where you can tell lies, where you can conceal, where you can make something out of nothing. This is where lies freedom, this is where lies opportunity, this is where lies all the lies you want to tell. Suppress the truth that cages you, speak the lies that free you—and do it because you can.
Because the second language is spoken through the eyes, and here you have no power, here you cannot do anything. Even the blind speak here, even the blind have emotion in their eyes. Here are where thoughts linger, here are where truths are told, here are where lies dissolve. And while the words here are spoken in silence, they are loudest of them all.
—
Gabe is the physical manifestation of dreams, and I am the physical manifestation of chaos.
I thought about him while I worked on the homework he'd assigned, writing words, writing thoughts, writing everything loud in my mind until it became silence on paper. From the roots embedded in my brain, the words flowed like a river, cutting through the rock until it was smooth, until my words became clear enough to make sense. I was pushing myself to weave together a creative writing paper on inspiration.
Inspiration stems from all sorts of places, at least that's what Gabe had said. He'd glanced at me as if he was telling me personally, knowing that I needed to hear it. Inspiration didn't have to come from the good places; it could come from the bad, from the ugly, from the places where broken dreams and broken windshield glass resided. Inspiration, like art, didn't have to be beautiful. It just had to be enough to make you feel something.
Except it's hard to feel anything these days. All I feel is this numbness, this emptiness that gets deeper and deeper, swallowing me whole, plunging me into the darkness. All I think about is Napa, of the entire life I'd had over there. It came in snippets of random things, like the way Dad used to play the piano on rainy days, his fingers moving like spiders, and Emma's voice, pure and clear, singing along with the notes, belting out all the lyrics that I could never seem to remember. Marta, the housekeeper that practically raised me, praising me for the B I got while Dad gave Emma a high-five for the A+ on a math test. The trails out behind the vineyards where Emma and I sometimes snuck a ride on our neighbor's horses (with their permission, of course), riding until our thighs got sore and our hands blistered from the reins. Mom's laugh, so fucking loud, the kind that practically echoed in the big house, the kind that always startled strangers because of just how truly
loud
it actually was. The annual fall festival where everyone, the employees, the neighbors, our friends, all of us, got together to participate in stomping all the grapes that didn't make the cut. It was just for fun since it ended up becoming fertilizer afterwards, but Dad insisted that we keep up the age-old tradition. Emma had been there, smiling and smiling, so goddamn happy all the time.
Then all of it—Dad, the vineyard, the horse trails, Marta, grape stomping, Mom's larger-than-life laugh, Emma—all of it was just fucking gone. And it made me empty, so fucking empty that I felt like I was drowning in it, like I'd died a long time ago and all that was left was a shell that went through all the motions of being human, like I was my own puppet master, twisting and pulling all the strings to pretend that I was still a real girl.
I did it for Mom, this whole being alive thing, just so she wouldn't have to be alone. I wasn't entirely sure if she could survive any more loss than she already has. I masked all my emptiness by getting up, going to school, and coming home to show her that I was still there, still somehow functioning even though I carried my numbness inside of me like a dark secret.
Then along came Gabe.
Gabe with his wry smiles. Hair just a couple brushes away from looking neat. Crisp shirts and dark slacks and thin ties and black leather shoes. Long sleeves, hiding the stories told by scars that looked healed, but underneath the skin probably still hurt where the heart was. Knuckles that jutted out on a hand that was slender and long, hidden in pockets, buried away from the world to hide the physical proof that his brother had died and he'd survived. The mind that was intuitive and methodical when it worked, eyes that read fast, brows that sometimes furrowed in that cute way that made me want to just squeeze him around the middle, to feel his warmth, to feel his arms close around me again. Hazel eyes that darkened when impassioned, and then softened, melting like chocolate when thoughtful, kind, generous. The way our raw kisses tasted, the way fire had filled my veins, the fragile heart of mine that he cracked open, finding out exactly what made it tick in that way that watches do.
And this was how I got the lunatic courage to let myself want him. Because around Gabe, around him and all the beautiful and ugly things that tore us apart and pieced us back together, I could
feel.
He took all my numbness in his capable hands and stripped it off my skin, showing me that sometimes, being vulnerable was what could make you strong. He was the thunderstorm, challenging the rain, saying
I will not let you fall.
So I wrote about him. About the thunderstorm that inspired me. I poured myself into my homework assignment, writing page after page in metaphors, telling our story without using any names, telling him how it hurt so badly to want him, but how it hurt so much worse to pretend not to. Paragraph after paragraph, I told him that I saw him, that I knew that he was beautiful, but that I also saw other things: the way his brilliant mind worked, the way he could move people, the way he could
inspire.
After seeing him, really seeing him, I knew that beauty was the very least of him.
And so, inspiration—
It's you, Gabe. It has always, and will always, be you.
I finished the paper, signed it, dated it, spelled out some more words with those same 26 characters until you could tell that it was mine. I wrote to the dream with my chaos. I hoped he could decipher my meaning.
—
"Drop me from the AP Spanish class. Ms. Hanley, excuse my French—uh, Spanish, whatever—but I
hablas
the shit out of it. It's a waste of my time to drive all the way over there. "
Ms. Hanley had her chin perched on her hand, watching me with an expression of mild amusement. Her wild curly red hair was down today in soft ringlets, and her makeup was much better suited to her face. She looked like a normal person, even though I knew she was weird—and I kind of suspected that she knew she was weird too. But she looked pretty.
