First, this isn't about her.
Secondly, this is about what she finds.
Thirdly, the kinsmen are all having a party in her honor at this very moment.
Our girl trusts no one--not him, not Jay, not the Prince and certainly not the news about the King. For all she knows, spaghetti is as good as perfect for her. Simpleton.
--
The evening was painful as she got into bed after washing the dishes and then her face and teeth. Strangely the idea of cleaning felt futile. She would have to get up and wash her face again, her teeth, her hair, everything. She thought of the repetition of washing. Cleaning away the dirty, even though the dirty would never stop accumulating again and again. What's the point, she thought. It felt endless, and everything was wrong and cruel, and life without him was mean to her.
At least they won't disappear on me, she faintly mused. Then it clicked in her mind that most of her life was a routine, a somewhat controllable sequence that repeated itself in some dirty-to-clean or worse-to-better pattern. Always re-doing or maintaining, but for what? The dishes would get dirty again, and she would need to go to doctor appointments, car washes, haircuts, and class over and over because that was life. The Desirables in the restaurant photo had something different. They looked different, moved and smiled differently. They were attractive and beautiful, and they were intellectual. The Prince was a genius and had studied in three different ivy leagues for three deferent degrees including a PhD in social psychology. He had earned his title and position just as the campaign promoted for all citizens to achieve, and the longing of it all filled her body and thoughts like lava.
She searched for a memory of him to acquiesce the pain of it all. It was no good, he was gone. The sensational reality of that dried up the hope in her and it was that hideous emptiness again. The empty black hole in her chest that roared like a monster ready to eat her into nothing. It felt as though she fought the air with her passionate fists. Hitting nothing, looking ridiculous, while the Prince and all the Desirables seemed to be beckoning her into their inner circle.
Tears began rolling down from her eyes as she lay there in a swamp of unwanted thoughts. Every thought that made him farther away, and the pain of distance only made her feel worse. He was no routine, she couldn't control him, but she fought to try. She tried to get him back mentally, to recall his face, his letters, his laugh and his passion, but he had erased all of it. He even erased himself from her. It didn't make sense.
She tried to fall asleep, but the emptiness and the longing for what the Desirables offered pulled her in opposite directions. Both caused her pain because none of them gave her what she wanted most, none of them brought him back. That was the most painful reality she had to reckon with. The anger mixed with sadness produced weary tears until she softly drifted into sleep.
She woke up later than usual since it was the start of the weekend and she had no immediate engagements. A flashback of last night's torture was quickly shoved down, and she got up to make herself coffee.
Without class she had an opportunity to catch up on all the reading she had neglected for the past week. She also needed to consider the sculpture she was to work on with Jay, but that task seemed farther down her list of priorities. Hundreds of pages from the French Revolution and modernity called to her from her art text books and journals. Today would be a lot of sitting.
The thought came back to her about him, especially when things got still and quiet. He was the light that lit up everything mundane and made even the most ordinary tasks like homework feel amazingly profound. His passion for liberty somehow always reached every inch of where he stood. But now that he was gone she felt the world around her become more like a prison than a free country. She opened up her laptop and set the text books next to it.
This wasn't right. Something felt wrong, but she heard his voice from a past memory telling her that she was safe. She was safe. I am safe. "You're safe," he had said on the night they got lost on the trail where they went hiking. The sun was lowering fast, and the rustling of the trees sounded like animals were hiding in them. Earlier in the day they had gone farther than usual up the mountain and on an unmarked path that they were told lead to a hidden hot spring, and after having spent the afternoon in its warm waters they found the way back was not as simple. After a few wrong turns and what felt like a hopeless search, she thought she saw something moving in the trees up ahead. A wolf or a coyote of some sort, and was scared to go any further. That's when he had turned her around by the shoulders, looked her square in the eyes and told her she was a worry-wart.
She hugged him and at that he let out the most reassuring words she had ever heard, because she believed it, "You're safe" he said.
She believed him because he had said it.
Now when things felt unsafe, as if the emptiness in her chest would cause her to drop into the black fears of the woods again, she held tightly to his words saying to herself "I'm safe, I'm safe, I'm safe." Taking a deep breath she cracked open the textbook to chapter 12 on the influence of the French Revolution on artists and democracy alike.
4 hours and 2 intervals of snacking later, she brewed her second cup of coffee. She rested from the world of art, and allowed herself to take a moment of reflection. It seemed more pertinent than ever that she find him in the kinsmen. Her conclusion over the matter remained the same, the struggle to actually begin her search for him in these kinsmen she knew nothing about was indeed discouraging and difficult, but on the other hand, to altogether never find him again was exceedingly more unbearable.
Find me everyday. His words echoed in the hollow emptiness she felt inside. It brought a kernel of hope and a field of doubts and worries.
She decided to take a walk and get some fresh air, but as she put her shoes on she compulsively grabbed her purse and car keys and instead headed to her parent's gravesite. She stood in front of the two plaques that lay on the ground side by side reading "In love and grace lie Ben, a father, husband, and son." Next to that one she read "In love and grace lie Tabitha, a mother, wife and daughter." Breathing in the cool breeze swirling around her she closed her eyes and just stood there.
From behind her came a voice all too familiar as when she first heard it the night at the gala for troubled teens.
It was the Prince.
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