Elemental Awakened by Helen Scott

5

Tessa

My phone buzzed on my nightstand, and I picked it up, only to see my foster mom’s name on the screen, along with a photo of her smiling beatifically. I swiped across the screen and pressed it up to my ear as I said, “Hey, Linda.”

“Hey, sweetie. I just wanted to check in and make sure you had everything you need for tonight.” Her voice radiated pride, and it made my heart swell.

“Yeah, I think so,” I replied as I stood and walked to the small closet that may have actually been meant to be a pantry or something similar. I opened the tiny door and pulled out the dress I planned to wear.

“Good, good. Are you nervous?” she asked.

It wasn’t hard to picture what she was doing, since I knew she’d be nervous for me. I had no doubt that she was worrying at her bottom lip and had consumed at least one cup of tea before giving in and calling me. She knew how much this meant to me and was rooting for me the whole way.

I’d been incredibly lucky when it came to my foster parents. They were genuinely good people, and they’d dealt with a lot when it came to raising me. When she got me, I’d been an angry teenager, one who’d been convinced by her actual parents that she was crazy. I’d wanted to watch the world burn for all the pain it had caused me already. It was only with Linda’s coaching that I was able to channel my rage into my art and to learn that I wasn’t crazy, at least not technically.

“Yeah, I’m nervous, but that’s not a bad thing.” I’d been nervous for most of my life, and she’d drilled into me that it was my superpower, that I could channel it into being more alert, more aware of my surroundings, and able to plan my responses to likely situations and conversations. It was what had got me through high school, when the only thing anyone cared about was the fact that I was a foster kid who had crazy parents and had a burn that had almost disfigured my hand. It hadn’t exactly won me lots of friends.

“Damn straight it’s not.” The grin in her voice was evident by her tone, and I couldn’t help but smile in return.

“Linda, can I ask you something?” The words were out of my mouth before I could think better of it.

“Always, dear. You know that,” she admonished gently. I heard a crunch and could almost see her biting down on those fancy cookies of hers that she loved so much that had the chocolate between the wafers.

“I know you were more…involved in my case than we’ve ever really talked about before, but did they tell you what happened to my birth mother and father?” My voice went squeaky at the end, as though I had just taken a hit off a helium balloon.

The chewing noises stopped, and I heard her swallow the remainder of the cookie with a gulp.

Just like she’d told me throughout my life, I’d used my nervous energy to imagine how this would go, how she would respond to me asking this question, and I’d always put it off until now, not wanting to make either of us uncomfortable. Tonight felt like it was going to be different, like it was my presentation and I was a debutante. Though I was definitely not from a high society family.

A girl could dream though.

“Where’s this coming from? Surely you don’t really want to talk about this now before your big event?” Linda was evading. She didn’t do that often, but it usually meant that there was something that she didn’t want to talk about.

“The event isn’t for hours yet, and I was just filling out some information on a form for Cait and it got me thinking.” It wasn’t a complete lie. I’d thought about it when I filled out the forms for Cait, but that was at the beginning of my internship. I couldn’t exactly tell Linda that it felt like people had been watching me, or that the memory of a black cloud that seemed to smother me had been coming to life in glorious detail in my nightmares every night. That wasn’t even mentioning the increase in dragon sightings.

She worried enough about me as it was, and I didn’t want to add to that, especially if it was all just in my head. I wasn’t sure what had kicked all this off, but I’d been drawing more than ever. My notebook was practically full, and I’d only bought it a few months ago. Plus, it felt like I’d been watched ever since the incident with Brok, and anytime I caught someone watching me, their eyes always had that weird gleam to them if the light hit just right.

“We should have dinner soon and we can talk about it then,” Linda said carefully.

“Why can’t you just tell me now?” I pestered.

“I don’t want the memories of your birth parents to ruin your evening. You should be so proud of yourself for everything you’ve accomplished despite them, and I’m sure tonight is just the first of many celebrations you’ll have throughout your life, professional and otherwise.”

“Linda, please, just tell me. Not knowing means that it’s all I’m going to think about,” I replied, playing the curiosity card. She knew I fixated on things and that if I was admitting it, then it was likely true. Whether or not that was what would actually happen, I wasn’t sure.

She huffed and sighed on the other end of the phone, clearly knowing what I was doing, but nonetheless, she said, “Your birth mother committed suicide a year after the state took you away, and your father just…vanished. No one could track him down. He was listed as a missing person, and that was the last I knew.”

I sat down heavily on my couch. “She killed herself?” I whispered.

“Yes.” Her answer was like a hammer falling in my mind.

“And everything she did to me?”

“She maintained that she was trying to save you. In every interview, every hearing, every single time she was asked about you, she always said that it was because you had demons in you, that you needed to be saved. And that she’d do it all again.” The last part was whispered in horror. Linda was about as opposite from my birth mother as she could get. In the few memories I did have, my mother had the same dark hair I did and the same brown eyes, even if I only had one brown eye. Linda had blonde hair and blue eyes, though her hair was greying now. It only added to the light color and made her appearance match the kind heart I knew lay within.

I replayed her words in my mind, and they sent a chill down my spine as my brain tried to remember that day, but I shut it down. I was okay talking about it, so long as I didn’t let myself replay the memory of her holding me down while she burned the birthmark off. I shook my head, trying to dispel the images, trying to get the scent of my own burning flesh from my nose.

“And my grandmother?” She hadn’t wanted to take me in. I remembered that much. As soon as that had been made clear to me as a child, I’d tried to draw an iron curtain over the family I thought had loved me. If they didn’t want me, then I sure as hell didn’t want them. That was what I’d told myself over the years anyway.

“She had health issues, and after your mother took her own life, your grandmother went downhill extremely quickly. It was like she just gave up. She didn’t seem to want to live with her husband being gone and then her daughter as well.”

“Why haven’t we ever talked about this before?” I murmured as my eyes watered. If there was anyone who could understand losing their family, it was me. Some of the animosity I held toward my grandmother dissipated slightly with this new revelation. Even in my memories, she wasn’t in great health, so I knew that what Linda was saying was probably true. Plus, she had no reason to lie to me.

“You told me once that you never wanted to know. We’d had a big fight about something, I don’t even remember what now, but you told me that you wanted nothing to do with your birth relatives and that you never wanted to even know anything about them. That they were all as good as dead to you,” Linda replied. I could tell from the tone of her voice that she was repeating what I’d said, and that it had been something that had replayed in her memories time and time again over the years.

The words sounded vaguely familiar, but they were also lost in a haze of teenage hormones and drama. I had no idea what we’d been fighting about either and even less of an idea about why the fight prompted me to tell her those things.

“You didn’t ever ask unless you were in a dark place, and I never thought it was a good idea to share those things with you when you were in such a fragile state to begin with,” Linda added.

I hadn’t thought of myself as fragile, but I supposed to someone who thought seeing dragons was a sign of mental illness, I was perpetually on the edge of a complete breakdown. It was why I hadn’t mentioned the drawings since I moved out. For a while in my senior year of high school, I’d tried to only draw the dragons from memory, not when they were right next to me, and I only ever did it at night after Linda had gone to bed or I’d disappeared into my room for the night.

Lying to her was not something I enjoyed. She’d always been in my corner, always looked out for me in the best way she thought possible, and I hated betraying that by keeping things from her.

“And no one knows anything about my dad?”

“Sorry, dear, no. Your mother always said he left when you were young, and though he was fairly easy to track down with a last name like Morningstar, he just disappeared one day, like the earth had swallowed him up. There wasn’t even the slightest trace of him or where he might have gone.”

“The only memory I have of him is knocking the pills from my hands again and again, or occasionally my mouth.”

“Your mother believed you had demons in you and needed help, your grandmother agreed, but your father? Not so much, from what I could gather. He did get you that ring you wear though, claimed he’d had it specially made for you and blessed by every holy man he could find, or at least that was the story your mother told us. Honestly, I could never tell what was the truth with her and what was delusions.”

“I wish I could remember them more, but it’s like everything is just gone, with the exception of violence, which I wish I couldn’t remember.” I sighed and leaned forward, pinching the bridge of my nose as I rested my elbows on my knees.

“Take it as a blessing in disguise. You didn’t want to remember them growing up, so your brain protected you from the memories of them for a reason. Let sleeping dogs lie.”

“You’re probably right,” I said with a sigh. I just hated the fact that my past, my childhood, with the exception of a few detailed moments, was a black hole.

“I usually am.” Linda chuckled, and I heard her crunch down on one of her cookies again. “Now you go and eat some real food and get ready for your fancy opening tonight. Be careful, and knock ’em dead, sweetie.”

“Thanks, Linda.”

She hung up, and I missed the sound of her voice almost immediately. There was something about Linda that was incredibly comforting and always had been. I wasn’t sure how I was lucky enough to end up with her as my foster mom, but she was the best thing that had ever happened to me. Sure, we didn’t have a lot of money and things were tight, but we never went without and she never let me forget that she loved me just as I was.

The thought had always brought me comfort. Now I just had to hope that everyone I was going to meet tonight felt the same way. No pressure.