Dreams, Not Angels

“Are you there, God? It’s me, the idiot you just tried to kill.”

These were the only words I had the strength to mutter as I pulled my suitcase down an already bustling airplane terminal. I wasn’t one to talk to myself, usually, at least not aloud, but the woman strolling ahead of me had white earbuds jammed all the way into her cochleas and showed no interest in my delusional ramblings. Besides, I’d had a rough day. My lack of religion wasn’t going to stop me from venting.

My heart was still pounding. I couldn’t believe it—not even a day ago, I had been writing in my worn little notebook about a world that I was no longer in. And as I rolled slowly across the white tiles of LAX, I found myself drifting back to that moment: the moment the sun came up for the millionth time, and everything changed.

~~~

I never paid much notice to the sun—at least, not until I saw it rise for the first time, while I peeked through the thick black curtains shrouding my five-year-old bedroom in total darkness. The sight was instantly captivating: gold melting into fiery orange that dripped against the horizon and contrasted the clay blue that was gradually dawning above my head. The single moment felt like an eternity, but in reality I could only bear to look at it for more than a few seconds. After that, tears welled from my pale eyes, and I tore my small body away from the light before it caused me more pain. Without it, I became frigid, swallowed by the shadows that I had always treated like home but now caressed my skin in betrayal. Even thirteen years later, I still feel that sensation of coldness in my chest.

I was diagnosed with a particularly inconvenient subcategory of albinism only days after being born. The moment my parents got home from the hospital with my miniscule body bundled in layers of fabric, I was shut off from the world—or maybe the world was shut off from me. The breezy nonchalance that encompasses California summers never stepped foot through our doorway again, and the lack of warmth radiating through the glass panes made me understand exactly what a graveyard felt like to walk through before I had ever been in one.

“Are you still writing in that thing?” A voice snickered abruptly from over my shoulder, and I flung my journal closed to see my older sister Spencer leaning against the door frame. Her honey-brown hair was tied in a droopy bun atop her head, and pieces of it wavered in front of her bleary green gaze. “It’s almost ten in the morning, Elena. You should get ready for bed and go to sleep before the sun comes up all the way.”

I rolled my eyes at her, adjusting the thick gold-rimmed glasses perched on my face. “Shouldn’t you be getting ready for class or something?” I challenged, prompting the spray of freckles across her nose to warp as she twisted her face distastefully.

“Yeah, I guess. You know—” her voice faded as she traipsed back to her own bedroom— “you should count yourself lucky that you’re not in university yet. Waiting for rejection is the easiest part.”

“Good thing I’m not gonna get rejected!” I yelled after her, but a bolt of nerves laced through my chest. What would NYU want from me, truly? If anything, I would be a distraction; a detriment; dead weight. The wisps of cream-colored hair surrounding my thin face and the startling red flash behind my icy blue eyes were enough to turn heads even in the dark. 

Sighing, I flipped the spine of my time-weary journal and traced the gritty leather affectionately. The silhouette of a city was embedded across the back cover. I drifted out of consciousness while dragging the tip of my thumb over the imprint of the Chrysler building, as I did every night. And in my sleep, I dreamed of Central Park, imagining all the open fields I could run through in the middle of November when the sun was engulfed by snow.

I awoke in the pitch black to voices carrying through the hallway.

“She’s not awake yet,” a woman—my mother—whispered softly, her fragile alto mingling with my father’s bearish grunt. “But I’ll tell her the letters are here.”

Letters?! My letters! Sickly excitement grabbed hold of my windpipe, and I leapt out of bed to rip them from their hands—but the bitter taste of silence stopped me. My spidery fingers hovered on the doorknob, well aware that making my presence known would cause their conversation to dissipate faster than a lone cloud in the desert.

“Juliette.” A pause followed, and I imagined my dad pinching at the bridge of his bony, crooked nose. “How are we supposed to lie and tell her she got denied to every college she applied to? She’ll be heartbroken.” 

“She can handle it, Mark.” The sharpness in my mom’s tone slid like a dagger between my ribs. “She’s lived like this for years. We told her not to get her hopes up. We didn’t actually expect her to get in.”

“But she did, and it was for a reason. They need a student like that.”

“A home-schooled one?” She replied incredulously. “One that can’t participate in normal college activities because she could get second degree burns in twenty minutes?”

“New York weather is absolutely miserable for eight months of the year!” He snapped. “She would love it! She could go outside during the day for once!”

My mom’s voice became accusatory. “She could have had that anyway, if we’d moved to somewhere that isn’t Los Angeles. You think I enjoy wondering if she’ll one day sneak out in the middle of the night to God knows where? This neighborhood isn’t safe for anyone! But you didn’t want to uproot your job and the other kids—”

“Because Elena isn’t the only one that has a life here!” He exploded.

A foreign, pulsing buzz was spreading through my chest like wildfire. I don’t remember pulling my suitcase from my closet, or tossing clothes inside, or slipping my debit card into the pocket of my sweatpants. I only remember the rage.

Two hours later, I stood in front of our fridge. Before me, in a myriad of colors and handwriting, was my family’s communication system for the last five years: sticky notes. The dates and times were labeled on each one of them. Rage boiled in my chest at all the pitiful smiley faces, the miniature love letters, the reminders to buy bread. My parents had long since gone to sleep, but the echoes of what they’d said were tattooed over every inch of my body. I spent the last eighteen years shrouded in darkness because they told me I couldn’t have it any other way. They didn’t even give me a chance to try. 

I tore them all down. Every single picture and note and message fluttered to my feet. And as I turned back to the scene I had caused, one foot already out the door, all that was left of those memories was a sky blue sticky note with the outline of the Chrysler building scrawled messily across its surface.

I’d spent years mentally picking apart New York City through a three-thousand-mile tunnel. I could unveil hidden doorways with a twitch of a breath, and the dainty rivets in my bedroom floorboards each told the story of a new street. But Los Angeles was a different monster. I had no journals depicting its skyline. No maps guiding the plea my heart created. I had no inkling to where my house was, and no idea how far I’d already walked.My own home was turning against me, stacking and folding atop my trembling shoulders until I thought I might collapse.

Anxiety crawled up my throat. I don’t know where I am. I don’t know where I am. I don’t—

 “Hey, get out of the way!” A voice barked, and I turned just as a cyclist catapulted by my wiry frame. I lurched back, stumbling into the road as my glasses were knocked from my forehead, effectively blinding me. My vision was blurred by tears, and for a moment I felt like a child, learning to walk in the dark with no inkling to where I was headed. I just needed to go. 

A car horn screamed to my left, and I screamed with it, blinded by the sharp crimson of brake lights. But without warning my body was wrenched sideways, and my knees scraped viciously against cement as I stumbled. “Get up!” A voice shouted in my ear, and hope slashed through me like lightning. “Get up before you kill the both of us!”

“Spencer?” I gasped. “How did you—”

“I saw your sticky note on the fridge. Keep your damn eyes closed,” she growled, and then we were moving, hurrying away from all the cars and the noise and the cruel twinkling of a million shades of light. Moments later, bricks scraped against my skin. I cracked my lids open, realizing where we were: an alley. We hunkered down to the ground, panting unevenly and gripping each other’s hands with so much strength it started to hurt. “That was crazy,” I breathed into the empty air. Is this what I had been missing? The adrenaline, the excitement? Then it hit me, like the car that had almost rammed my body into the concrete. The fundamental difference between me and everyone else wasn’t my condition or what it did to my life. The difference was my lack of fear—because while Spencer shuddered in terror at the thought of a nearing threat, I closed my eyes and pretended it was still there, just so my heart would beat a little faster.

Silence filled the air as we stared up at the moon, too scattered to look at each other and too afraid to let go. A chasm had been torn between us. Then our gazes met, and the pressure in my heart burst, tumbling out in heaves of laughter. Her high pitched giggle contrasted my raspy one in a strangely melodic way. When the music faded, a question lingered in her eyes. What happened?

I looked away from her, staring straight ahead with a rigid composure. “Mom and Dad were planning on telling me that I got rejected from every university because they don’t think I’ll ever be fit to be on my own.” Her mouth popped open, but I kept going. “So I’m flying to New York. In less than two hours.”

“What?!” She gasped. “You’re leaving?! Are you being serious right now?”

“Obviously,” I snapped back. “And, what were they planning to do?! Change my email password and give me the news of my rejection themselves? Forge letters and stuff them into our mailbox? They’ve been keeping me in this bubble for eighteen freaking years, Spencer! And I’m finished.”

She glared at me reproachfully. “You can’t just be finished. We changed our lives for you. I sacrificed my summers for you. Don’t you remember any of that?”

“That’s not fair! I didn’t wake up and choose to live like this, and I didn’t ask you to do those things for me. I’m just doing what I can with what I’ve got!”

“Well so are Mom and Dad! They asked me to help lie to you and I said no, but I couldn’t tell you what was really going on because they’re just trying to protect—”

“You knew?!” I gaped at her, trembling with fury, and her soft green eyes kindled with shame. 

“Elena, I’m—I’m so sorry.”

I slumped to my knees, my heart tearing and straining down the middle as agony scraped through my nerves. Is this what sunlight feels like? This burn, this fire? Because it’s too much. I want to go back to the dark. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it, it hurts—

Suddenly, warm arms wrapped around mine, cloaking my pale veins like a shadow and tugging me in. I lifted my chin in shock, watching the landscape of my sister’s face as it shunned the darkness. “I hate your freckles,” I blurted. I really did.

Her green eyes shimmered, allowing me a glimpse into the forest trapped within them. “Yeah, me too.” 

So I let her hold me anyway. I’d never been hugged like this, like I was a piece of the sun being cradled in someone else’s hands. Eventually she shifted, leaning back against the grimy brick wall with her knees balled up to her chest.“I was always jealous of you, you know.”

“You were jealous of me?”

She nodded. “Yeah. You’re so—so tiny, Elena, and the way mom and dad talk about you..it’s like they think you’re a porcelain doll. But you have this fire in your eyes, and I don’t mean the red tint that comes from your albinism. I never understood why it was so easy for you to just do things until now, and I wish I was wired like that.”

I twined my fingers together. “You say that even though I’ve never left the house of my own free will.”

“But you’re leaving now. That’s more than I can say, isn’t it? I go to UCLA, for fuck’s sake. My college is ten minutes from our house. And you...you’re flying across the country on the same night you found out our parents are trying to ruin your life and you nearly got hit by a car. Wait…” She rubbed her forehead. “Car! You’re gonna be late!”

I yelped as she yanked me to my feet, shoved my glasses onto my face, and marched out of the alleyway with my suitcase rolling behind her heels.

“What the hell are we doing?”

“Getting a taxi. You have a plane to catch.”

By the time we reached the airport, glimmers of peachy light were dawning in the distance. Figures peppered the sidewalk, signaling the first wave of civilization unfortunate enough to fly at this ungodly hour. Determined to mirror their confidence, I tightened my grip on the handle of my suitcase.

“Wait,” Spencer pleaded as I stepped towards the entrance. “Do you even have a plan?”

No. For once in my life, I didn’t, and maybe that was my problem all along. Plans were easy; convenient. This was a thousand times more riveting. I turned back to look at her, lifting my bag with a smile to banish her question. “I love you too. And I’ll call you.”

She stood on the sidewalk, fidgeting with the rings on her hand, seemingly frozen. She’ll pick them, I thought to myself. She always does, but I can’t blame her for that. Then she stuck out her hand, and I took it as if we were suddenly strangers. “What, no verbal goodbye?” I asked.

“No.” A tender smile tweaked at the corner of her lips. “I’ll write a note on the fridge.” That garnered a soft laugh from my throat, and we both paused, quickly wiping our faces before speaking again. We both knew I would never get to read it. “Are you crying too?” She teased.

“Nah,” I murmured softly. “It’s just the sun in my eyes.” Then I stepped through the sliding doors and into the lobby.

Not more than an hour later, we were speeding down the tarmac. For the first time in my life, I watched the sun rise from the dingy, speckled window of an airplane I’d never sit on again, clouded by dust and fingerprints belonging to all those that had passed through here before me. 

It was the most beautifully chaotic thing that I had ever seen.