…
Nadia hated airplanes. That was her prominent thought going through this flight. Although relatively short, three and a half hours, it felt like she had been in there for a cruel amount of time. Time seemed to be moving as slowly as someone trying to fill a huge bucket from a slowly dripping faucet. Nadia wouldn’t have minded so much if the plane ride had been tolerable, if she had been able to fall asleep. But she couldn’t, this plane was not sleeping-friendly. It was much more irritation-inducing. The seats were so cramped that with each sudden jolt, and unexpected shakiness, Nadia ended up elbowing the guy sitting next to her. He was a stiff, all-business all the time looking man, who glared as her each time like the turbulence of the plane was all her fault. Nadia just glared back until the man ignored her completely. The air was also stuffy and stale and omnipresent. It felt like she was breathing everyone else’s exhaled breath, which she technically was. If she thought about it too much, the recycled air made the germaphobe in her shudder in disgust. So, she tried not to think about it. And then there was the babies. Babies all over. Crying, screaming, shouting, and in general being anything but quiet all over. All the babies crying made all reproduction out of the question. Yes, this flight had ruined babies for her. Sure, she hadn’t like them much before, her little sister being pretty much the sole exception, but this ride had solidified the fact. There was also the whole issue that Nadia was a little bit apprehensive of going on a plane. She would deny being scared, so to say, but it was something along those lines. Truthfully, it probably had to do with the fact that Nadia had no knowledge of how planes worked. How they were able to defy gravity. Maybe if she had all the scientific, mechanical reason and explanations of why a heavy-as-shit chunk of metal could float like a weightless cloud in the sky, then maybe she would have felt better about the whole flying thing. But with all the crazy stuff that had occurred as of late, Nadia barely had the time to research the miracle of modern airplanes to ease her fears. (Yes, she was afraid, much to her annoyance.)
Needless to say, Nadia was relieved when the plane landed in Dallas. That calm, stress-free, I-am-never-leaving-the-ground-again, relieved feeling lasted through getting her backpack from the overhead bin, through waiting for the other passengers to slowly exit the plane, and up until she got to the waiting room. That when all she had to do came rushing back to the forefront of her mind. The plane ride had been an awful experience, but it had been a distraction to what she really was going to do. Now, it was time for her plan to find her dad to come into action.
For a second, Nadia stood dazzled and disoriented in the middle of all the rushing people, running to and from places. Clacking shoes on polished floors, a calm-pitched woman speaking overhead, and the sound of rolling wheeled suitcases surrounded her. For a second, Nadia had no idea what she was even doing here. Nadia told herself to concentrate, to not let the unknown intimidate her. For in fact, Nadia was seeking the unknown, and she shouldn’t be scared of her goal.
At the thought of her father, Nadia sprang into action. She called a cab, went to the restroom, got a quick meal from those crazy, almost-criminally-expensive cafes at the airport. In less than twenty minutes, Nadia was in the cab and on her way to the address she had found.
…
She remembered the day she found the address. It had been two weeks after her father had disappeared. The police weren’t doing shit, since they thought he had just abandoned them, or was on a drunken bender like a typical, stereotypical Native. (Although her dad wasn’t a Native American from the United States, but a Native from Ecuador. Regardless, the stereotype remained the same.) It also had to do with the fact that a note was left for Nadia and Jazz. The note, much like their mother’s, told them that he was leaving them.
Nadia had been so angry. Not at her dad, never at her dad, but at the way the policemen had looked at her when she told them the note was obviously a fake, that someone had forged her dad’s handwriting or forced him to write it, because their dad couldn’t do that to them. No way. Impossible. That look was filled with pity and superiority. Like they knew better than her. Like they knew her dad better than she did.
After storming out of the incompetent police department, Nadia took the matter into her own hands. She scoured the whole house for clues or any kind of evidence that showed her had had been kidnapped or forced to leave. She found nothing. Day after day, and nothing. Nadia determination never ebbed, but her hope of finding something dimmed. Soon, it all but extinguished. She was about to go back to the police and tell them why she thought her dad had been kidnapped, the gigantic secret she swore her dad she wouldn’t tell anyone, when she stumbled across her dad’s favorite book, a book of short stories. In the margin on his absolute favorite passage, this was jotted down in blue ink in her dad’s handwriting:
For help go to
5203 Hamilton Ave. Dallas, TX
Ask for Annabelle Steele
The minute, no, the second she saw it, she knew it had to be important. Her dad was crazy about books, and writing in them was a highly punishable offence. He didn’t even bend the corners of the pages as a bookmark. He would have never written something in a book, much less his favorite book, if it didn’t mean anything. So, also knew that this was genuine, that this was her dad’s writing, that this was written under his own free will. This was his favorite book after all.
It was based on this fact and this lone fact that Nadia decided to go find this address and the person, Annabelle Steele, and see why she was so important that it was deemed allowable to be written in a book by her dad. And if her dad trusted this woman to help, Nadia would go and find her. So, Nadia began panning to the trip to Dallas, Texas.
Freshly high school graduated, Nadia found a way to make money. She got a job as a cashier, but she knew that wasn’t enough to pay for her trip. So, she got another one, cleaning an office building. But that wasn’t going to do it either. So, Nadia made a choice. A choice she didn’t regret, not at all, but it was a choice that wasn’t look upon favorably by the law. She became a part-time drug dealer. Only cannabis and hallucinogenic mushrooms, but still drug dealer nevertheless. It wasn’t that she actively looked to become a dealer, but through an acquaintance, an acquaintance that always seemed to get into trouble, that she got the opportunity. Nadia wasn’t one to waste opportunities when they happen to fall on her lap just when she needed them.
With those three jobs, Nadia spend all her free time after she graduated, June, July, and half of August. Finally comfortable with the amount of money she had, she told her grandmother what she planned to do. She remembered the conversation well. Her grandmother, with her dark and serious eyes, stared at her.
“So this is why you have been working like a dog,” she said.
Nadia nodded.
“You expect me to take care of Jasmine while you are gone,” she said.
Nadia nodded again.
“Nadia, my granddaughter, I can see in your eyes that you are determined to find your father. Determined in a way that you never were to find my daughter, your mother. Why is that?” she asked, not reproachfully, but in a way that showed her concern for her.
Nadia paused a moment to compose her answer. “I came to understand why my mother left. It made sense. She wasn’t happy here. She was so selfish that her needs were stronger than her family’s needs. I don’t understand why my dad left. It is incomprehensible to me. I know he loved us more than he loved anything else. I need to know what happened to him, grandmother. I need to,” Nadia explained. She was telling the truth, but only partially. Her dad had made her keep her secret from everyone, including her grandmother. So, she wasn’t about to tell her grandmother that she thought that her dad was kidnapped because he could teleport. She was going to keep her promise to her dad.
…
641Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡriYiSreBDl
The cab rolled down the Dallas streets, passing by an unfamiliar landscape. Nadia tried to take it all in, to see the city that was Dallas, but all Nadia could think about was this unknown woman named Annabelle and hoping that she was the key to finding her dad.
ns 15.158.61.8da2
