Rika's Wings - Chapter One

Chapter One

Rika Blake kicked at an empty coke can. It went rolling across the sidewalk stopping at the grass. She gazed at the can feeling the fury she had felt moments before melting away into a feeling of exhaustion. It seemed like anger came so easily to her now. It would come bubbling up like water boiling too long, overflowing, scorching everything around her. Hate came easier. She had never liked the word hate. “Too strong a word, too hurtful,” she remembered her mother saying long ago and she had always agreed. She didn’t even like to think that she hated anyone, but now she hated everyone... the whole world, including herself.

Rika threw her head back as a gust of wind blew by carrying the scent of salt water, dead fish, and rain. She looked up at the dark sky. Gray clouds were rolling in, looking darker and deadlier than before. Rika loved the rain, loved it when the sky grew dark and scary, loved it when thunder boomed threateningly and lightning flashed cutting through the sky like one of those laser swords on Star Wars, whatever they were called. Her caramel hair blew in her face and she smiled nastily at the storm clouds, daring them to try to scare her.

This intense anger at the world had started a year and a half ago when her brother left, just left her like one would leave an old worn jacket they cared nothing about anymore. He had escaped and left her to burn, burn into ash with the fire kindled inside her. How she hated him for leaving her… Now, she lived with that old woman alone. The woman was Sallie Castillo, the woman Rika had been living with since her father had left two years ago claiming he was going to fix his problems and come back a new man, a better man. Well, here she was two years later and he still wasn’t back. There was no one left... no mother, no father and now no brother because of Gwen.

“Zack,” Rika pronounced the name as one would pronounce something foul, horrible, hated. How she hated Gwen for taking Zack away, helping him escape and leaving her behind and how she hated him for letting her.

She walked slowly toward the old wharf. She was stalling. Let Sallie scold her when she got home soaking wet dripping on the rug. Oh, how she would tut and Rika would ignore her. She loved ignoring people, making them share the frustration and anger she had come accustomed to.

The pier was abandon; there was not even one fisherman here today. Rika was glad. She didn’t want to talk to anyone or even see anyone she was too angry and aching, exhausted and lonely. She wanted to stay lonely, she wanted to keep aching and she didn’t know why. Perhaps to punish herself since she could punish no one else or maybe she just felt like dwelling on her problems… alone. She had always been a loner. Kids didn't like her or maybe it was just their parents. Rika Blake, the bad kid, the one who ditches school, snaps at her superiors and is the daughter of the drunken lunatic with the beat up ford. She was the one who wore black t-shirts with skulls, pierced her nose, died her hair blue, smoked behind dumpsters, and cursed the world. Besides all that she had always been weird.

Walking to the end of the pier, she looked out at the waves sloshing against the barnacle-covered beams below the pier. The waves were gradually picking up, another warning of the coming storm. She looked out toward the horizon, endless, dark blue, dangerous. There were no boats out, not even a lone sailboat sluggishly making its way back to shore... to safety. She looked past the jetties and scanned the water, her eyes falling on the little white Styrofoam float that marked a crab trap. The wind blew hard against her spraying salt water on her face. She smiled and kicked off her black boots spreading her arms out wide as though she could take off in a moment and fly away from this place. She would fly high above the sea, over the immense dangerous ocean into the storm clouds, they were better than what she’d leave behind. One day she was going to sail away. Get on a sailboat and sail off into that horizon. Leave this place behind and become something new, better.

She dropped into the waves. The cold water shot sharp thrills up her spine. She was soon numb with cold. She hung onto the pier and ducked her head under the chilly water. When she surfaced her lips were blue, her skin pale and covered in goose bumps, but she ignored everything as she kicked against the push of waves.

Suddenly, she saw a flash of a memory pass through her mind. A memory of something that had happened or just a memory of a dream. She was five her family was going to a beach party some friends were having. They had stopped at a gas station to fill up her father’s broken down truck. Rika and Zack had to sit in the back of the truck on beanbag chairs because there wasn’t enough room inside. She remembered her mother’s window was rolled down and the sound of her mother’s laughter. As her father filled the gas tank a group of teenagers pulled up laughing as they filled their ice chest. Rika had been watching a butterfly; it was a monarch, fluttering over the black asphalt. Suddenly the teenager’s truck pulled out and rolled over the little butterfly. Rika had stood up and looked for it frantically. She saw one of its wings torn and battered blow with the breeze across the parking lot. The rest of the butterfly’s body was squashed against the road. Rika had begun to cry. Her father had finished filling the tank and leaned over the back of the truck to see what was wrong. She told him and he comforted her until her sobs died. He told her the butterfly would go to heaven she had smiled at that. He grabbed a beer from the ice chest and grinned at her, ruffling her hair. “How you doin’, kiddo?” She had grinned back her front teeth missing and her face damp with tears. “Okay now, Daddy.”

Rika slammed her fist into the water. She hated the memory, hated her father for pretending he cared. It was worse than it would have been if he had never pretended at all.

Slowly she pulled herself out the water and crawled onto the pier wrapping her arms around her damp legs and shivering as the wind continued to pound on her. She leaned her head back against the railing and closed her eyes as the first drops of rain fell on her face, slipping down her cheeks, clinging to her eye lashes. She felt exhausted, a deep tired feeling that even her soul could feel. It was like a dull ache for a warm bed she could never get. She felt almost too exhausted to walk back to Sal’s place, but she did. With a sigh, she got to her feet, grabbed her boots and sloshed back up the flooding streets to that horrible house where the world had abandoned her.


Rika stood dripping on the rug of the back porch listening to the rain patter against the tin roof. She had cut through the backyard instead of going through the front. Maybe she could get to her room without even having to see Sal.

She dropped her boots and reached out to open the screened door, but she suddenly froze hearing voices. Frowning she yanked the door open wondering what company Sal could possibly have. She walked toward the kitchen her curiosity making her not care if Sal caught her and screeched about the wet footprints. The voice she heard began to sound familiar. She reached the kitchen doorway and stared in at Sal and… her father.

Rika felt her heart skip a beat and her body go as cold as it would have if she had been doused in the freezing sea again. Her father turned and grinned at her toothily. His face was unshaven; he wore a ragged dirty overcoat, damp from the rain, and his left eye showed signs of healing from a nasty bruise.

“Hey, Kiddo! How you doin’?” He said in a rough hoarse voice. “Glad t’ see your old man again? I’ve come t’ take you back.”

The fire flared up worse than ever, the steam grew hotter and the anger boiled over. Rika’s clenched fists shook with fury.

She turned and ran ignoring Sal and her father scream after her. She grabbed her bag from the old armchair in the hall, flung herself out the screened door, slipped her feet in her soaking boots with a loud squelch and burst through the back door into the rain. She dimly heard the door bang against the wall and heard Sal howling her name and her father cursing as he attempted to catch up to her, but it was all very faint and far away as a loud buzzing sounded in her ears as she ran.

“Hey, Kiddo! How you doin’?”

She ran faster, her boots pounding the sodden earth harder. She leapt the fence and cut through the Nelson’s neat lawn, ignoring the furious barks of the chained Rottweiler. Her heart pounded with fury. Her palms bled from her black nails digging so deeply into her skin. Her camo cargo pants were splattered with mud while grass and mud stuck to her boots. Her wet hair clung to her face. Her face was contorted with a frightening fury.

“Glad t’ see your old man again?”

She smashed a snail with her boot and continued on running down the streets, picking up speed rather than slowing down. Water splashed against her face as she ran through a murky puddle.

“I’ve come t’ take you back.”

She wasn’t a book you could loan off to a friend for two years and then decide you want it back. No, dammit! She was a human! She was his daughter!

At last, she stopped and sunk to the ground. She was back at the wharf, at a place where there was a little shelter. She brought her legs to her chest and laid her forehead against her wet knees wrapping her arms around her legs. The fury slowly abated as her heart beat calmed. The anger was turning to a painful throbbing ache in her chest.

“I hate you,” she whispered, her voice oddly calm and foreign. “I hate you.”