“American Horror Story The Second,” Dad said. “That’s a great name, Vika.” He had always been my number-one supporter of the one thing I was good at: writing.
I stuffed my face with the snacks Mom brought from Blue Hill and admired Maine’s open, rocky landscape, my window down to take in the cool air. It was twenty degrees cooler there than in Charleston, but I wasn’t sure if the water was comfortable to swim in… unless you were really hot, like I had been in that Charlotte airport.
The coughing fits had finally ended, but now I was sniffing. Yep, I definitely messed up my sinuses. I assumed a cold was the post-flight thing I would get, like COVID and food poisoning—just a normal trip with Catherine Victoria Christie.
“There’s a restaurant in Blue Hill that we’ll get dinner at,” Mom said from the back of the Acura. “And then we’ll head home, and you can go to bed.”
Thank goodness. At the moment, the food was the only thing keeping me awake.
“Sounds great,” I said. I felt like it was a little sad when, really, the only people I knew who wouldn’t judge my “Sixteen Since Sixteen (SSS)” brain were my parents. They always said that they adopted me because of how sweet and playful I was in the orphanage. They weren’t prepared to get a child with a lot of difficulties, and now they felt somewhat guilty about not getting me tested in elementary school.
“It’s okay, Mom and Dad,” I had to keep reminding them. “I’m sure this happens more often than you think. We know nothing about my birth parents.” Just that my mom’s name was Marina, my dad’s was Victor, and poverty was one of the reasons why my mom gave me up. It was okay, though; we were learning as we went.
I finished my snack, looked out the window, and finally thought about something other than that looming exam: the next five days with my parents and brainstorming that new story. E.B. White, one of my favorite childhood authors, was buried in Brooklin, and I couldn’t wait to see his grave, as well as the last house he lived in. I was finishing up The Trumpet of the Swan. Louis had become one of my new favorite characters because, like me, he managed to live even with his disability.
As for the story, I hadn’t done creative nonfiction since 2022, so that may be a fun approach to it. Yeah, that sounded good. American Horror Story The Second had been born right there, right then, on that day.
With my mind no longer hurting and my sensory overload improved, I lowered my window further and smiled. Like Louis, I had my trumpet and was ready to fly, even with my handy-dandy fourth-grade workbook, my NLD, and Dyscalculia. I knew that whatever happened on that return trip home and at the exam, two people still believed in me: Mom and Dad.
76Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡrvtWPnM8Nq
Final Word Count: 4,500
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and then Add to home screen.