Jade Aldebrandi (heliolatrous) wrote in forgotten_gods, @ 2010-09-13 16:07:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | ailani giles, bast |
WHO: Ailani Giles & Bast
WHEN: Saturday morning / Midday Monday
WHERE: Halifax, Nova Scotia / JFK airport, NYC
WHAT: Losing a father and gaining a mother.
It had been a stupid argument really. The party that was on that night was being thrown by one of her friends and it should have been no problem for Ailani to be there, but all of a sudden dad had stepped in and told her it wasn't going to happen. She would have been less angry and upset about this if it wasn't because he'd read her Facebook and found out she was sleeping with the girl having the party. (Ailani was pretty sure it was the having sex at all and not that it was with a girl that bothered him, but either way he was way too late for the birds and the bees conversation.)
So they argued on the drive home from her ballet class. Ailani called him a fascist and a dictator and her father told her she was way too young and immature to be having sex. (Too young? She was seventeen! God, he clearly wanted her to be a nun or something!) They were both angry and the energy in the car swirled around them as they traded angry words for even more furious silences.
Ailani told him that if he didn't let her go to the party then she'd just go anyway.
"Over my dead body!" her father had snapped, and that was when they collided with the second car.
A blur of activity, of pain, of flashing lights, and the next time she really knew what was going on she was lying in a hospital bed, the time before it a confusing mix of people in white coats, screaming metal, and yelling voices.
"Dad?" she'd asked the empty room as she pulled herself up, her throat dry and her body sore. The nurse had been there quickly enough, followed by a doctor who explained so clinically that her father was dead.
Ailani cried and cried and cried and she only stopped when it exhausted her so much she fell asleep, curled up in the bed and sucking on her thumb like she used to when she was little.
It was Sunday morning when child services came to explain to her what would happen. She listened without a word and though it might have appeared calm to anyone not understanding, it was clear the teenage girl was in shock. The woman from child services with the slightly graying hair told Lani that her mother had been contacted and that that was where she would go now.
A few days ago the idea of leaving all her friends and home behind would have made her fight furiously to keep it. She had a whole life here! But now Lani knew she didn't want to stay in this city where she'd always miss her dad at every street corner.
She packed hardly anything at all - her mom would buy her new things if she needed them, and she didn't want her Old Life things. So with one big backpack she boarded the flight that would take her to New York and her waiting mother, the mother she hadn't seen since Christmas. Ailani wasn't quite sure how she felt yet. She'd always wished that for some reason she'd get to go live with her mom, but she hadn't want it like this.
Her heavy legs carried her off at the other end of the flight and she made her way out to the waiting area on auto-pilot. But at the first view of her mother she let out the breath that had been caught in her lungs and broke into a run to hug her, burying her face in her mother's chest and starting to cry again at how familiar and comforting she smelled.