Barbourville

On that faithful day, as my mother drove me to the airport with the windows rolled down.

It was fifty-five degrees in Scottsdale, the sky is so perfect and cloudless blue.

I had my favorite sleeveless shirt on, with my white eyelet lace; I had it on as a farewell gesture and my carry-on thing was a parka.

In the Olympic Peninsula of West Virginia State, a small town named Barboursville exists under a near-constant cover of clouds.

It rains on this trivial town more than any other place in the United States of America.

It was from this town and its gloomy, ubiquitous shade that my mother fled with me when I was just only a few months old.

It was also in this town that I had been coerced to spend nearly a month every summer until I was fourteen.

It was until that year that I finally put my foot down; these past three summers, my dad 'Klaus' always take me with him on a vacation to North Carolina for two weeks instead.

It was in Barboursville that I now exiled myself, an action that I took with great blight. I so despised Barboursville.

I loved Scottsdale. I loved the sun and the blistering heat. I so loved the vigorous and the sprawling city.

"Aria," my mom said to me, the last of a thousand times before I got on the plane.

"You do not have to do this."

My mom resembles me, except with the short hair and laugh lines. I felt a pang of panic as I stared at her wide, childlike eyes.

How could I leave my loving, dropstone mother to watch over for herself?

Of course she had Phil now, so the bills would conceivably get paid, there would also be food in the refrigerator. There would also be gas in her car, and she will have someone to call when she got lost.

But still, I lied. I had always been a bad liar, but I had been saying this lie so often lately, so that it sounded almost convincing now.

"Tell Klaus I said hi."

"I will"

"I wll see you soon," she asserted. "You can come home whenever you want"

"I will come right back as soon as you need me."

But I could really see the sacrifice in her eyes behind the promise.

"Do not worry about me," I prompted. "I will be great mom. I love you, Mom."

She hugged me so firmly for a minute, and then I got on the plane, and she went home.

It is some hours flight from Scottsdale to Santa Cruz, another hour in a small plane up to Santa Clara, and then an hour drive back down to Barboursville.

Flying does not bother me, even the hour in the car with Klaus never bothered me too, though I was a little uncomfortable about it.

Klaus had really been relatively nice about the whole thing. He seemed genuinely delighted that I was coming to live with him for the first time with any degree of permanence.

He had already gotten me registered for high school and was going to help me get a car too.

But it was certain to be awkward with Klaus. Neither of us was what anyone would call verbose, and I did not know what there was to say regardless.

I knew he was more than a little perplexed by my decision. Just like my mother before me, I had never made it a secret of how I disliked Barboursville.

It was raining when I landed in Santa Clara. I did not see it as an omen, just that it is unavoidable. But I had already said my goodbyes to the sun.

Klaus was already waiting for me with the cruiser. This was exactly what i was expecting too.

Klaus is a Police Chief Swan to the good

people of Barboursville.

My primary courage behind buying a car, despite the deficiency of my funds, was that I declined to be driven around town in a car with red and blue lights on top of it.

There is no one nor anything that slows down traffic like a cop.

As I stumbled my way off the plane, Klaus gave me a one armed but awkward hug.

"It is good to see you, Aria," he said, smiling as he automatically grabbed and steadied me.

"You have not changed much my dear. How is Zoe?"

"Mom is fine. It is good to see you too, Dad."

I was not allowed to call him Klaus to his face.

I had only a few bags with me because most of my clothes were too spongy for Santa Clara.

My mom and I had joined our resources to supplement my winter wardrobe, but yet, it was still not much to what I needed.

All my luggage fit easily into the trunk of the cruiser.

"I found a nice car for you, it is really cheap," he said when we were strapped in.

"What kind of car?" I was skeptical of the way he said

"good car for you," he responded.

So I asked him "what kind of car dad?".

"Well, it is actually a truck, a Chevy."

"Where did you find it?" I enquired.

"Do you remember Achmad Black down at La Push?" La Push is the tiny Indian reservation on the coast.

"No" I responded.

"We used to go fishing together during the summer," Klaus prompted.

Well, that would explain why I did not remember him, because I do a good job of preventing painful and needless things from my memory.

"He is in a wheelchair now," Klaus continued when I did not respond, "so he can not drive anymore, and he offered to sell me his truck at a cheap price."

"What year is it dad?" I could see from his change of mood that this was the question he was hoping I would not ask him.

"Well, Achmad's done a lot of work on the engine and it is only a few years old."