shifting sands
“I wish you had told me sooner.”
Karyn watched the rotation of the ceiling fan flash and change in the fading light. Her dirty blonde hair spread over the patchwork quilt on her friend’s bed, framing a face that certainly didn’t look her sixteen years. A buildup in her increased with her roaming thoughts. The bed shifted as Alli pushed up onto her elbow. Hazel eyes stared down at Karyn from under dark brows that were creased in frustration.
“I wish I could have. My parents really didn’t want word getting out, though.” Karyn attempted to ignore that piercing gaze, instead imagining how the past months had escaped her. Living in the Middle East had been as complex and exotic as any life, not close to as terrifying as the media painted it. Until the attacks that forced her family to leave on a wave of well-meaning concern from friends and family. Even then, everyone just seemed scared. Like the hush in a bomb shelter as explosions riddle the unseen sky above your head. The roiling mass of unspoken fear pounding in her ears had made it feel like the whole world was caving in at the edges. The most striking scene was still their neighbor, in her house slippers, praying a blessing over her broken country. “Everything was just so hectic, you know? And resettling will take a while yet.”
“Oh, I know that.” Alli agreed. “We’re still not quite settled.”
“You’ve been back three years now, though.” Karyn protested, looking around at the messy bedroom. It looked lived in, like her favorite pair of jeans. A faded blue armchair slumped in the corner, clothes were strewn over the pale carpeting, and a rack of cross-country medals gleamed from the wall. “I mean, look at those! You’ll be in the Olympics in no time.”
Alli scoffed, but grinned in pleasure, revealing perfectly straight teeth that her friend shared from their time of metal-filled smiles. “Yeah, right. I’m not that good. I just mess around, really.”
“Pfff. You’re like, an expert athlete. I don’t understand why you love running so much.” Karyn looked dejectedly at her definitely not-toned physique.
“You don’t have to love sports, you know.” Alli pointed out. “You have your art.”
Karyn sighed. “I know.” She closed her eyes as the harshness of burnished gold enveloped the popcorn ceiling. Her forehead wrinkled against an oncoming headache.
Alli toyed with her braid. “Anyway, just because we’ve been here three years doesn’t have to mean we’ve settled. I still get reverse culture shock sometimes.”
Karyn stared at her friend, envisioning her old home, meticulously scanning every street in her memory. Her mind painted car rides through endless olive groves, screaming Taylor Swift out the window. Midnight discussions in Alli’s pale pink bedroom, listening to her sister sleep-talk in French. Wondering in the comforting darkness about guys and cultures and the origins of the universe. The sobs as family after family left, until she simply refused to greet new people. “I know. I missed you, those three years.”
Alli sighed and stared out her window onto the roof of her family’s garage. The sliver of gold slipped behind the silhouette of the neighbor’s box-like home, dousing her face in a sudden grayness that made her blink. “I missed you, too. I wish you guys could live here.”
“Texas pride, right?” One side of Karyn’s mouth quirked up in a smile that nearly made her eyes vanish, looking down at her borrowed Texas A&M sweatshirt. Words continued to build inside her, pressing against the walls of her body.
“For sure.” Alli chortled. “So, do you have any idea what you’re gonna do now?”
Karyn shrugged. The words deflated before they coalesced, slipping out of her like air from a balloon. “Go north with my family, I guess. Buy a bunch of blankets. Try to avoid being eaten alive by mosquitoes.”
“No, I mean after high school.”
Karyn heaved a sigh and fell back on the bed. It bounced slightly under her. “College? I dunno. You still planning to be a nurse? Even with your blood problem?” She smirked from under her fingers at her friend’s exasperated expression.
“Just because I don’t like blood doesn’t mean I can’t be a nurse!” Alli protested.
“Fair enough. I just, I dunno. I don’t know what I’ll do. Something big happens like this, and it just takes so long to recover.” Karyn rifled around in a brownish, sturdy backpack and withdrew a battered journal. Muted orange and yellow butterflies fluttered from the softly worn cover. Messy, childish handwriting crammed the pages, flickering as she thumbed through entries that spanned the years that they had been gone, years of brightly-hued loneliness. The penciled words quivered, but Karyn’s voice remained steady. Alli’s tanned fingers gently took the tiny volume. “After so many people left…” She rallied her courage and admitted, “It’s hard to open up to people as fast. Each airplane trip multiplies the difficulty in making new connections… it’s harder to trust now.”
“That time we went rock climbing…” Alli’s eyes widened in realization, staring down at the page in her lap. “That was why, wasn’t it?”
Karyn wrenched her eyes shut. She had practically slid up the mountain, outstripping Alli. But when the time came to coming down, she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t lean back. For the most terrifying half hour of her life rain lashed her face, her dad’s anger and fear for her shot up from below, but she couldn’t trust the rope.
“Yeah, that was why.”
Alli’s arms encircled her friend and they sat like that until Karyn’s leg went numb. She felt paint dripping, forming a scene in her vivid imagination. A shifting landscape, from the fine dunes of the Sahara to crowds of indifferent faces. In the center of it all, they blundered through it together. When the dark pressed against her throat, Alli directed her gaze to the stars.