Prologue Prologue
I close my eyes as I float, light as a feather, becoming one with the waves. I let the warm, salty water wash away my fear and my fate, take control of my sadness and my pain. My body has become my enemy, perhaps it always has been, but now I’ve accepted it. The scale of fairness has tipped for me, and I can barely stand it, the injustice, the resentment. The only place where I’m just another particle of the earth is here in the water. The ocean doesn’t care about sickness or health, life or death, love or hate. It’s balanced, ever changing, never longing for more or less than it has, never lingering or stagnant. It keeps roaring, keeps us floating.
If I wasn’t such a cynic I would be inspired by its forgiveness, but I’ve become bitter and find it hard to appreciate something so graceful, so fair. Naïve and easily taken advantage of. There is nothing lavish or luxurious about water, and even though our survival depends on it, we mistreat it, drain it, pollute it, but even still, it comes back to us, always, to nourish and keep us alive while we go out of our way to destroy it. If I were the sea, I would wash away every inch of this world, no regret.
Chapter One Chapter One
The airplane seat belt signal dings me into consciousness. My eyes slowly blink open, welcoming the sunlight bursting through the small airplane window. The flight attendant approaches with a warm smile, her heels clicking as she leans over to speak to me. She smells like coconut and sunshine, though we’ve been on an airplane for over twelve hours.
“Do you need anything else before we land, Miss Oriah?” she asks.
I shake my head, quietly thanking her.
Her accent is beautiful, Italian, maybe? I slept most of the flight, so I had little to no interaction with her during our trip across the North Atlantic sea. I hope that made her day easier and that my mother didn’t hassle her too much during our private flight. When my mom told me we were flying, which I haven’t done often and barely remember the trips, I was excited for the hustle and bustle of the crowded airport, eavesdropping on strangers’ conversations, and people watching. Even the lines and the stressed-out flyers who left their houses too late, huffing and puffing as they make their way through security. The chaos seemed exciting, but my mom’s company, SetCorp, graciously afforded us one of their many private company jets to Spain, which I would never complain about to anyone but my mom, but it felt a bit excessive and wasteful. The trip was seamless, quiet and luxurious, the way my mom loves her business trips to be.
Looking over at my mom seated across from me, neatly applying a layer of deep burgundy lipstick, I’m not remotely surprised. She packed her carry-on full of beauty products to make sure she didn’t miss her ritualistic skincare routine. I respect the discipline and it’s absolutely paying off, but a few steps in the morning is enough for me, I don’t have the energy. I do love watching other people on the internet do their fancy nighttime routines, but for my life, it’s not realistic.
I lean over and grab the handle of my mom’s Dior tote, embroidered with her name, another gift from her boss, and drag it toward me. Taking the pack of makeup wipes to clean my face with, I rip one out and swipe it across my bare skin. The smell of cucumber fills my senses, making me sneeze, causing my mom to panic mildly momentarily. My sensitive sense of smell should be the least of her worries, yet even a sneeze makes her body react.
“I saw a video that wipes are harmful to our skin barrier and oil cleansing is the new thing,” my mom says, her dark eyes moving from the wipes to me. She keeps up on every single beauty trend, religiously following them. I’m more of a love to watch cat videos and people falling off things kind of woman, but to each their own.
I smile, ripping one out of the little crinkly holder. “I don’t have an oil cleanser on hand, but I’ll keep that in mind for the future.”
She smiles, gently rolling her eyes at my sarcasm. We’re two sides of different coins, always have been, always will be. We quietly exist in each other’s worlds but aren’t quite connected. A hopeful bubble floats across my chest that being in the town she was born in will change that. That a little bit of her walls will come down.
“Did you take your medicine?” Her voice is a bit more tired than usual, from working the entire flight. She’s always on a call, a Zoom, or making voice memos, I’ve learned to completely drown her voice out 99 percent of the time.
I nod, gulping down the slight guilt. Her eyes move to the flight attendant, and she nods, joining me in my deceit. I smile at her.
“Did you even sleep at all?” I ask my mom.
She presses the lid of her lipstick back onto the tube and makes a popping sound with her lips. “I’ll sleep tonight after our meetings. I didn’t want to mess up my cycle.”
What cycle? She never sleeps, I know that for a fact. I roll my eyes and look directly at her so she knows I’m not buying it. She’s completely unbothered and moves to putting mascara on her long lashes. She drags the wand up and down, dotting the corners with the jet-black liquid. I put in my contacts methodically, wanting to avoid the constant comments about my eyes, even across the globe.
I sit back and sigh, looking out the window of the company jet at the calming and vibrant deep sea below us. We’re about ten minutes from landing, and I can’t help the smile pulling at my lips. It’s finally here, my summer of freedom, my great hurrah. My coming-of-age story is beginning at twenty-three, and I’ve never been more ready. Just like the main character of a nineties film, this trip will be life-changing. Finally, I’ll discover who I am, what the purpose of life is… maybe even fall in love. I laugh quietly, covering my mouth at such an absurd thought. How pointless that would be.
“Isn’t it just stunning?” the flight attendant softly asks.
I nod, gawking at the view, and we haven’t even touched the ground yet. “It’s my first time in Europe. First time leaving the US, actually,” I tell her.
Her hazelnut eyes widen. “Really?” she asks in disbelief.
“Yeah, I know, it must seem like I travel often, given the whole private jet damaging the ozone and my mom’s in-flight skincare routine, but I’ve only been on a few planes, and never for fun, but honestly, I barely remember them.” I don’t tell her why. The last thing I need is any more pity.
She laughs, and we both look at my mom in all her beauty. She’s now putting on a pair of earrings, thick gold hoops. She really is striking, in a frightening, evil-queen kind of way, but one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever laid my eyes on, and she knows it. One thing that I admire about my mom is her confidence, not only about the way she looks, but her ability to rise from less than nothing to one of the highest-paid women in her industry. Granted, there aren’t many women in luxury hospitality real estate development and investment, but it’s still a massive accomplishment.
“You’re going to love it here,” the attendant tells me, pulling my attention back to her.
I smile from ear to ear. “I really hope so. I’m so excited,” I admit. “You must have a passport full of stamps. Have you been a flight attendant long?”
She pulls out a dark red passport, and I read the words Italiana. I was right, she’s from Italy. She flips through page after page full of stamps and hands it to me.
“I promised my twin sister I would travel the world for both of us,” she tells me with a small smile, proud of herself.
I run my finger over the Paris passport stamp on one of the pages. “It’s a shame they don’t stamp them much anymore, but you should buy the stamps and do it yourself. I do that now,” she tells me.
“She must be so happy, you’ve been everywhere.” Russia, Brazil, Mexico, the stamps and visas go on, and her passport has double the pages of mine.
“She’s… she passed away last year.”
Shit.
“I’m so sorry. I—”
She shakes her head, her dark hair moving off her shoulder.
“Don’t worry, I don’t want you to be uncomfortable. People always get that look on their face when I talk about her, but she was at peace and death is sometimes a relief. I had wonderful times with her, life-altering memories that I’ll cherish forever. I’m grateful to have them and to have had her in my life for the time I did. She was a gift to me, and not all gifts last forever.”
I soak her words in for a moment. What a healthy way to look at and appreciate something with the most intense stigma around it. Death is always dreaded, but her take on it was refreshing to me.
“You’re right. We tend to have such fear and judgment when it comes to losing someone, but you’re doing it right. This is amazing, you’re amazing,” I tell her, full of honesty, wishing I had taken that approach when I lost the person, outside my mother, who was closest to me.
“Thank you.” Her deep olive cheeks turn slightly pink, and she gently cups my hands while taking her passport back. “You’ll fill yours soon. This is just the beginning.” I don’t say anything. There is nothing to say, so I return her smile and sit back, enjoying the view as we get closer to the ground.
“Just the beginning.” I repeat her words as the jet’s wheels touch the ground.
