Tempest: Chapter 1

It was an uncharacteristically warm day in Florham and the scorching hot sun shone harshly down onto my father’s hand-painted Volkswagen. Even with all the windows rolled down, the air conditioning on full and a mini fan perched in my hand; the sun was merciless, causing sweat to drip steadily down my body, soaking through my white tank top. Although this dense, moist, torturous place was the last place I wanted to be, anywhere was better than staying inside my house.
My dad was an architectural designer and had rather a crazy fetish about rebuilding old houses. We’d once lived in a regular house with regular windows and a regular door and no crazy window walls at all. But when he found a huge house that needed renovation he vowed to make it into a home for us. And he did. Just like he promised he cleaned up the house and fixed the broken walls. But, being my dad, he couldn’t just fill in the walls with plaster and bricks. Oh no, my dad wanted a unique house so he decided to fill the missing walls with glass! I’m not kidding you, he actually did that! It was just a good job Florham wasn’t renowned for getting much sun. However, when the sun did make an appearance, the house was basically a greenhouse.
That was one of the reasons I had agreed to move away from my precious Florham. I would miss the cool crisp air and the fresh damp greenery, but I had to do this – my mother had recently been divorced from her husband, Barry, and was taking it really badly. My grandad had recently gone to see her Bluestone, America, where she now lived and I believe his exact words were “she’s a mess and somebody needs to sort her out before somebody mistakes her for a Yeti.” My dad had found that joke particularly funny. So now I had been exiled to the sunny, humid village of Bluestone.
My father drove me to the airport; Liz, his wife, sat in the front seat while I had to climb into the bed with my luggage. It was a very long and uncomfortable journey and I was relieved when we finally arrived at the airport. As I clambered awkwardly out of the van, I caught my foot on the side and fell right out of the truck onto the muddy path. Typical I thought sourly. My dad pulled me up out of the mud roughly, looked me up and down and made an exasperated sigh. I looked down at my clean white outfit, splattered with mud and leaves, and sighed as well. The look my father gave me rather scared me – he looked positively furious. Yep. Typical that the one time I wear white I fall in mud. Just my luck I thought angrily, grabbing my tiny suitcase out of the truck. “What are you like, eh, Carmen?” Liz smiled, obviously trying to keep the peace. “How about you get some clothes from your suitcase and when we get to the airport you can get changed in the bathroom?” Liz was smiling encouragingly and linking arms with my father all the way to the airport, probably trying to keep him from strangling me.
My dad had absolutely no patience when it came to my clumsiness and regularly grounded me for falling over. Usually he was a calm, placid man, who hardly ever lost him temper with anybody. Even when a stupid learner driver crashed into his car, he was completely cool about, not raising his voice even one decibel. But when it came to my clumsiness, he was very short-tempered and thought I did it on purpose. Yeah Dad, course I do it in purpose. I just love to get injured and grounded. It’s my favourite activity ever. Sometimes my father could be such a pain in the neck.
His wife, Liz, was a pretty nice woman. I still thought she was bit young for him though – he was 48 and she was 32. Liz always dressed really nice, after all the only clothes she owned were designer, and was really sweet. They’d been married seven years now and I’d always really liked Liz. It was sad to have to leave her now, she’d become somewhat of a mother to me and I couldn’t even begin to imagine not seeing her every day.
Once I had gotten changed into something a little more practical I hugged them both goodbye and apologized to my father for falling over in the mud. For the first time in my life, my dad actually told me that it wasn’t my fault I’d fallen over. My eyes almost came out of the sockets. I waved them goodbye once last time and headed off to catch my plane. I’d been a while in the bathroom, washing all the mud out of my hair and off my skin so I was running a little late. I tried to run, but fell over almost instantaneously so I just decided to fast-walk. It worked at least. I didn’t fall over once, although I did trip and stumble a lot, and caught the plane just in time. I had a little trouble in customs when they thought I had a knife in my sleeve and made me take my top off in front of the guards when it was only my watch. Then they said my hand-luggage was too large and I had to throw away some things because my suitcase had already been taken. It was a very stressful airport run.
The plane journey was pure, undiluted hell. The kid behind me kept crying so I screamed at the woman to tell him to shut the hell up. The woman screamed back at me and we ended up having a full-on catfight right there on the plane. The attendants had to break us up and kept insisting I was drunk. I hadn’t drunk a little drop of alcohol in my life, I wasn’t even old enough. It was night-time when we had the fight so we woke up the entire plane. Nobody was happy, especially not me. I hated being in the spotlight, especially when I’d done nothing wrong. She’d started it. She’d been the one to throw the first punch. I was simply acting in self-defence. Not that they’d believed me anyway because they thought I was drunk. I felt like screaming at them I’m not drunk! I’m just a very clumsy person!
When I finally arrived in Bluestone I was practically itching to get off the plane. Of course, being me, nothing was that simple. First I got stuck in customs again and then they lost my suitcase. When my suitcase finally arrived, it had a huge slash through it and half my clothes were missing. They asked me if I wanted to wait to see they could find my missing clothes, but I refused – I really couldn’t be bothered to wait that long and I was very sleepy because of the twelve-hour flight from hell that included very little sleep due to the fact that they thought I was drunk and when I did fall asleep they woke me up because they thought I’d fainted.