Chapter One

I rap my knuckles on the door and it makes a hollow, little sound. I have to keep reminding myself, this is Aunt Tina’s house. You’ve never seen her before, but she’s a good person. She sends you Christmas cards without signatures or photos, but she cares enough to slap on a stamp. Dad’s never talked about her, but he sent you here for the summer. He must trust her. He must trust her.

Inside the house is dark. I don’t believe she’s here.

It hardly feels like summer. There’s this heavy wind that tousles my hair around and tries to squeeze in between the knots of my sweater and I’m glad I packed my warm clothing. Aunt Tina must have forgotten you, Andrea. I’m sure she doesn’t care. You’re just an inconvenience. I shake it out of my head.

“She’s coming,” saying it out loud chases away the nasty thoughts and I take a seat on the guardrail. Looking around, everything is so foreign. Dad’s afraid of planes so I’ve never been out of Sunset Valley. I haven’t been away from the sun my entire life, yet I still seem to fit right in Twinbrook with my pale skin and dark eyes. Dad’s eyes are blue.

Now I begin to get restless and try to think up an alternate plan. I could go out downtown and beg on the streets and buy a plane ticket and fly home. But there wouldn’t be any good in that. I don’t keep friends well and I doubt anyone misses me. Except maybe Dad.

Dad’s finally picked himself up off the floor from my hinting and enrolled himself in a summer course at Sunset Valley University. Which leaves me as the extra body once more, and I got shipped off here to the unknown. I can’t leave now – I want Dad to finish his classes and get a job and –

“Oh my,” a soft, raspy voice speaks from beside me and I turn to see who I believe, who I hope to be Aunt Tina.

“Aunt Tina?” I manage to ask and she nods, still staring at me as if I were a scab. You are a scab. She forgot about you and now you’ll latch on to her and she’ll have to take care of you. And I think I’m right.

Just as she steps up beside me the sun makes its final good-night flash and disappears, leaving me with this stranger.

“You have no idea how sorry I am. Andrea,” she says, “I had to work late over at The Red Rendezvous. I bartend and I had a crowd whose tip I couldn’t miss. I guess, I mean, there’s no excuse. I’m sorry.” I nod incredulously. I should be saying sorry to her! She’s going to have to take care of me this summer and feed me and everything and she’s apologizing to me?

“It’s okay. And, um, Andy please. I go by Andy,” I say. She smiles and rests her hand on my back, leading me inside.

Aunt Tina’s house is charming. Far better than the dingy apartment I live in back in Sunset Valley.

“You sculpt?” I squeak, staring at an overwhelmingly beautiful ice statue of a lion. Tina grins and says it’s just to make a little extra here and there and would I like it if she sculpted me. And I say only if she wants to.

“Now…Andy, you do have your own room but unfortunately I haven’t cleaned it up for you since, well, since I’ve been getting older,” she says again in her scrapy, smoker’s voice. I notice a cigarette twitching around in her hand, begging to return to her lips. She has too much pride, I think, to smoke in front of you. And I feel bad.

I’m confused by her statement, but soon learn why my room has been long abandoned. A fireman’s pole stretches up through the ceiling and into the upstairs bedroom. I’ve never seen anything like it and I stroke it’s yellowing wood. Tina still seems shocked that I’m here and I turn to her. She blushes.

“You’ve just gotten so,” so big, I finish her sentence, “so much like your mother. You look just like her.”

My mouth dries up. Dad never talks about my mother. She doesn’t exist. She never has. The first and final time I asked him about it I was told she was a loose whore. I did what my teacher’s told me to do when I don’t understand a word and looked up ‘whore’ in the dictionary but that only confused me more. I let Dad be – I didn’t want to deal with that again.

I give her a quizzical look, “Aunt Tina?”

“Tina please.”

“Tina? You know what my mother looks like?”

“You don’t?” she swallows what could be a boulder and I know I’ve said something wrong. I shake my head no.

“Oh, well, I think,” she stutters again, “I think there’s a picture of her up in your room.” And she darts around the corner and retreats to her own bedroom. Andy, what have you done?

I realize how drowsy I am, grab my things, and make my way up. A picture of my mother. I’m terrified.