Parallel: The Secret Life of Jordan McKay (29 page)

Heidi followed me to the car in her housecoat and slippers as I threw the last bag in the back seat of the old rusty green Datsun. I was finally able to afford the car after my summer working at the Market downtown. I did everything I could to scrape enough money together, to make my escape from the city.

Heidi’s eyes had dried and I looked at her with nostalgic love and admiration as I climbed in. The old vinyl seats yawned against my sweaty skin and I winced at their searing heat. I squeaked the door shut, slamming it with as much force as I could muster before putting my hands on the plastic wood grain steering wheel. She waved to me with hopeless vigor as I coaxed the vehicle to life and forced it into reverse.

“I will visit soon!” I yelled from the window as I drove off, “The college is not too far.”

Heidi took a sad and tired step forward as she made a final attempt to wave goodbye. I would miss her as my foster mother, but this was my time to make something of my sad life. The upbringing she had given me was all I could have hoped for, but something inside me was driving me away, pushing me to another place.

As I drove down the crowded streets, the shadows cast by the towering buildings of downtown Seattle always left me somewhat disappointed. The tiny house where I had been placed when I was ten glared at me as it disappeared between the apartment complexes of the west side in my rearview.

I took a deep breath, exhaling with a labored heart. I had decided the city was not for me. After years of adoption and rejection I couldn’t stand its cold cement and moist dirty air any longer. Why the city had let me down I was unsure, but as the depression in me grew deeper as the years passed, it had become a sort of cancer. There was death here, and everyone took their happiness for granted. I would have given anything to feel a smile, to muster out a happy laugh.

I rolled my windows up, closing out this world as I headed north toward the Cascades. As the hills of Seattle whizzed by, each growing less crowded with houses, I felt a sort of liberation. The stern grip I’d had on the steering wheel slowly released and soon I was casually driving with one hand. My lonely life had never granted me the experience that was ahead of me, the chance to be with nature as my heart had so longed.

The college brochure had promised a tranquil and secluded experience and that was just the thing I was hoping my dark heart needed. College had always been a goal for me, and despite my graduation from high school, with a bachelor’s degree that I had earned taking night courses, it still didn’t satisfy my insatiable need to learn.

As the sun finally released onto the calm valleys of northern Puget Sound, the density of forest began to creep ever closer to the road and I felt a strange pull from the plants that sat there, each bowing toward the concrete as though a wall between it and the other side of life, much like my mind. I envied their freedom, their simple happiness and ability to adapt. I on the other hand, had never belonged, and despite how hard I tried, I always stood out. The world hopelessly saddened me, as though somewhere in my past life, it had let me down, my soul now darkened by my evil existence.

I reached into my bag, retrieving my bottle of medication and popping one pill in my mouth as I habitually did every day for the last twelve years. Each clouded thought further stifled by the power of Prozac. I allowed myself a second to close my eyes as I once again opened my windows, releasing the seal as the wind whipped through my angelically white hair. As the sun touched my pale skin, it felt warm and soothing like a bath of heavenly light. Opening my eyes, I felt discouraged that even a moment like this could not muster a smile.

Even as a baby I had never laughed, never let out even so much as a delighted coo. Smiling was something I did because I had to in order to fit in. I learned what was funny from my peers, and practiced for hours in front of the mirror, my facial muscles stretching with pain in a way that came so naturally to everyone else. Tears never came either, though I knew what I had was sadness, I never felt that was the true definition of the feeling either. It was as though someone had ripped my soul out, leaving me helpless and empty.

I thought about all my adoptive parents, and how many times each tried to create a happy life for me, how relentlessly they urged me into activities designed to muster a laugh, though one never came. It was an inevitable truth that each failed as they rejected me back to the social workers, apologizing for their failure as parents. After a while, I gave up and moved in with Heidi and her other foster kids, for what I planned to be forever. I was like a poisonous berry, beautiful on the outside, damaged and sick on the inside.

I exhaled from deep within my charred soul as I finally reached the town of Sedro-Woolly, where I turned onto highway twenty, heading east into the North Cascades. The small town of Sedro-Woolly was far north, close to Canada and the San Juan islands, and just far enough from Seattle to leave it all behind. The town was the gateway to my future, and a new life.

As I headed into the wilderness, the trees that edged the roadside seemed to welcome my presence as the branches swayed in the light wind. The air seemed magical, and I saw the glimmer of bugs flying between thick rays of light like fairies in the trees. With my windows opened, the gentle clamoring of water casually whispered in my ear as I passed spring after spring, cascading down the granite rocks and into the roadside reservoirs.

The mountains closed in around me like a blanket, casting deep shadows on the road, but not the same depressing shadows I had grown up around in the city. These shadows revealed a whole other world beyond the dirty streets and sadness, a world of soulful life. For the first time, I felt a soft warmth flicker in my charred soul and I gasped, the feeling ripping the breath from my lungs.

Rounding the corner with caution, the trees parted in a dramatic wave and the sun poured into the car. The river that had followed the road burst open into a large lake that was choked back by a small dam. The water sparkled cleaner than I’d ever seen in Puget Sound and the glimmer made my eyes water. The air that poured into the car was crisp and moist from the glacial waters and I breathed deep, allowing it to heal my polluted lungs.

I stared in disbelief, wondering how I’d let this whole world hide from me for so long. As I followed the lake, I kept glancing toward it, feeling that it would disappear as fast as it had come. I blinked hard a few times, my mind wondering if this was just a twisted dream, a taunting memory set up to cause even more pain.

Like a meandering stream, the road wound to the right and I crossed over the lake on a delicate bridge. I felt a rush of something cold enter my body as though the water were pulsing through me, becoming a part of my blood and filling every vein. I allowed the feeling to control my thoughts, and I imagined a tidal wave washing through my scarred mind, cooling each itching gash.

With a sudden pulse, just when I thought I couldn’t have seen anything any more gorgeous, the lake further expanded and an even larger dam loomed before me, grand in its amazing power. I took in the complex construction and it amazed me to believe that as a human race, we could create something so powerful. I could see the college now, nestled into the hillside on the other side of the dam, I was almost there, almost free.

As I turned from the main road toward the complex, I slowed as my car rolled onto the cobblestone blocks. The gentle vibration was calming as the cobbles shuddered under my weight. The college had utilized this dam as the crossing to the school and a part of me felt like it was a bridge to my fairy-tale castle.

To my left was the drop to the lake that I had drove along on my way up and as I peered over the ledge, my head felt the gripping vertigo as my eyes focused on the rocks below. To my right, the water brimmed against the wall, swirling in its attempt to escape, the churning water anxious and foamy. The lake itself was a milky crystal blue and sharp rocky peaks surrounded it as they reached into the even bluer sky. The unique coloration was unbelievable and I recognized it to be Diablo Lake, where the College sat along the waters ledge.

As I neared the other side of the bridge, I noticed a gorged waterfall drop like a graceful veil from a far peak and into the lake on its final decent. Its raw power humbled me as I watched in silence as it misted the air around it, rainbows flashing in its wake. As the wild wind whipped toward me across the water, I noticed a sort of untamed beauty that felt so normal to me.

I closed my eyes and held my breath as I saw the gust of wind tickle the small waves of the lake on its approach toward me. As it finally fell through the window of my car, I found it to be wet and cool as it wrapped through my long hair, beckoning it to dance. My body shivered from the cooling touch and my arms erupted with sudden goose bumps.

When I reached the other side of the bridge I released my breath, my body heavy and grounded as my car rolled onto the gravel drive, the water no longer flowing below me like a force of energy greater then I could control. I circled Diablo Lake and just a few hundred feet farther east, the road became even rougher as my tires struggled to find their grip. I drove with caution up the hill toward the front of the small cluster of buildings, my curious mind now beginning to rumble.

An anonymous donor had created the Cascades College a few years back. Its purpose was to provide a Masters in Environmental Studies through hands on experience and practice. There were also primary classes but mainly it was a place to get your hands dirty and experience the real world, in its truest sense.

When I had learned about the College I had remembered that it was the first time I’d felt my heart truly beat. Something about its design, location, and description felt more like home than anywhere I had ever been. I needed to be close to the earth, close to the place where life began.

I was never the nature lover type, but my choice to come here had been purely selfish. Ever since I could remember, I possessed a strange talent for growing plants, a green thumb if you may. But my talent did not simply involve using the right fertilizers, and making sure to water. My talents seemed to involve something much more magical and indescribable, something I was here to figure out.

I turned my car off with a heavy sigh as I sat in front of the main learning center, the large ‘Welcome’ sign looming over me. I felt the flicker beat again in my heart and it again ripped the breath from my lungs. Taking in the small modern buildings, I began to wonder if this was still just a dream, just a figment left by my heavily sedated mind.

A tall thin red headed man seemed startled by my abrupt arrival as he jumped from a bench by the office doors and ran toward my parked car with a smile plastered across his face. He couldn’t have been much older than I, but instantly seemed to act years younger. He was bounding down the hill, his legs becoming perilously tangled as he tripped with inherent clumsiness, regaining his composure in an embarrassed but well rehearsed manner before continuing toward me. He was wearing a green plaid short-sleeved shirt and your run-of-the-mill pair of hiking shorts and Columbia boots.

He breathed hard as he placed both of his hands on the window and knelt down to my eye level, locking his gaze on mine. “New arrival?” he asked, his voice full of carefree delight.

I looked at him with nervous eyes as fear gripped my stomach. “Yes,” I managed to squeak.

His eyes were a light blue like mine but full of life and happiness. “Great,” he paused, sticking his hand out toward me through my window, “I’m Scott.”

I stared at his hand for a moment, allowing my shock to subside to comprehension. Finally, I deduced that Scott was harmless and I grabbed his hand between two fingers and gave it a soft shake.

Scott yanked it back just as quickly as he had thrust it forward, unfazed by my reluctant personality, “Well, it sure is great to meet you. Would you like some help with your things?”

He opened my car door and I cringed as it shuddered and scraped, rust falling to the ground. “Um…” I was processing the information as quick as I could, “Sure. That would be great.” I pulled myself out of the seat. “Thanks,” I added, smiling as well as I could.

He stood there with his hands on his hips, looking like a dog ready to be thrown a bone. “So what’s your name?” As soon as I was out of the way he jumped forward, lunging into my backseat and loading his pale scrawny arms with my three somewhat small bags, the makings of my whole life.

“I uh…” I stuttered as I grabbed my throat, begging it to stop. “My name is Estella.” I finally managed to gather my thoughts as the time caught up around me. My medications always caused me to think slow, like fighting a fog of information that was always clouding my reflexes.

“Alright Estella,” he grabbed a sheet from his pocket, maneuvering his full arms and struggling to bring it to his face, “Looks like you got your own cabin.” His eyes got wide with excitement as though the cabin was his own.

I nodded in agreement. I had worked a few extra shifts at the fish counter of the Market to make that possible. I wasn’t about to bunk up in a group dormitory again, not like I had for a good bulk of my life at the orphanage.

“Well then,” he smiled with a sweet glow as he urged me forward, “Follow me.”

“Thanks,” I grabbed my shoulder bag from the passenger seat and rushed to keep up.

“So, Estella…”

“Oh you can call me Elle,” I quickly corrected him.

He looked back at me as I followed behind him, “Ok then Elle, what brings you here?”