4,299The Story of My Life
Mom drives me to the airport with the windows open. The a/c is broken, and she's been waiting until her next paycheck to fix it. Technically, Phil is supposed to help with things like that, since they're married now, but he's only twenty-something and a baseball player, of all things – just minor leagues, just starting out. All that makes him kind of like a big brother to me, kind of like a little brother to my mom, and pretty much broke except for his advance from the team. That's already been spent on his ticket to training camp down in Jacksonville. As for Mom's next paycheck, it's also her last – at least from her job here in Phoenix – so I guess it will be going for gas and stuff as she follows Phil to Florida in the car. With the windows open.
Outside the windows, the bright, dun-colored land races backward. On the radio, Chuck Wicks is stealing Cinderella, and in my hair, the barely warm wind makes tangles that I will need two doses of crème rinse to comb out. I have goose bumps on my arms because I'm wearing my favorite shirt – the sleeveless one in white eyelet lace that I got when I was twelve. My grandma gave it to me, and she's gone now, so, I guess I'm glad that it still fits me. The boys at school can call me stick-girl all they want. My grandma's little fingernail is worth more than all of them put together.
North by northwest – from Phoenix that's about exactly where it is – is a town called Forks. It's a tiny little town tucked away on the Olympic Peninsula of Washington state. I guess it's not that far from Phoenix. It's still in the United States, and the flight from Phoenix to Seattle is only three hours and eleven minutes. But it really might as well be on another planet. It's that different. It hardly ever rains in Phoenix, Arizona. It hardly ever doesn't rain in Forks. I know this for a fact. I lived in Forks the first four years of my life. And I went there two weeks out of every summer, from third grade to end of middle school. If you've guessed that's where my dad lives, you get the prize.
Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport is all pale concrete and glass, and blinding at mid-day. Even in January. Inside, the air conditioning is on too high, and I'm freezing at the check-in counter. Everything is not the way I wanted it to be, but I've stubbornly left my big, poufy new parka inside my carry-on. At least let me get off the ground before I pull it out.
"Why are you doing this, Bella?" Mom asks, right to the last. "You hate Forks. Don't you remember how you used to cry and carry on each time I drove you up?"
That's because you always left me there, Mom.
"Come to Jacksonville with us. You'll like it there. It's warm. And sunny."
Like Mom's hair. Except now her hair is cold, because of the air conditioning.
"Got beaches, too," Phil chimes in.
But I have my ticket in hand. And my bags are checked. There isn't anything left to do but hugs and kisses all around, and then wave through the glass.
From above, the airport looks like one of those Art Deco papyrus fans, except that the stem – the highway leading in to it – has kind of an S-curve. It gets small real fast as the plane climbs up. I look hungrily at the desert, pretending it's summer, until that, too, passes away behind me.
When wisps of cloud start blocking the ground below, I pull out my parka.