Read Meant to Be Online

Authors: Tiffany King

Tags: #Romance, #Love, #Angels, #Paranormal, #Young Adult, #dreams, #teen, #YA, #fallen angels, #tiffany king, #meant to be

Meant to Be (2 page)

BOOK: Meant to Be
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The Department of Children and Family
Services had no information to pass on about me, except the fact
that some woman found me sitting on a park bench at a rest stop in
Utah, when I was two. I was found clutching a bear and a small
backpack. I couldn’t tell them my name, and all the social workers
could get out of me was that “Franklin,” or what sounded like
Franklin, had told me to sit until someone came to help me. The
authorities searched the area high and low for anyone close to the
name of Franklin, but their searches proved to be fruitless.

“Santa Cruz,” I had repeated. Saying the name
out loud filled me with an unexplainable rightness.

Now, two months later, here we were. From the
moment we drove through the town limits, I had felt it. I didn’t
know why, but I knew I belonged here.

I studied my reflection in the mirror over
the sink as I smoothed moisturizer on my face. The sea air was
playing havoc on my complexion. I hated the constant gritty texture
my face seemed to have and the dark black smudges under my eyes
that made me resemble a NFL football player. I couldn’t help
feeling a little frazzled about starting school the next day. It
was one thing to feel like a freak on the inside, but a whole other
thing to look like one.

I traced the dark smudges with my fingertip.
The gritty texture of my skin could be fixed, but the smudges would
be harder to cover up. The dream had shaken me more than I was
willing to admit. I was terrified at what they meant. Was he going
to leave me after all these years? How would I function without
him? Who would I turn to in my times of need?

All of these thoughts filled me with despair,
and sleep was now a double edge sword. I longed to see him, but I
feared for the day he would no longer be there.

I stepped into the shower after laying down
an extra towel under the bathmat. The shower door was older, and no
matter how hard we closed it, it still leaked around the edges.

Hoping the water would wash away the last
lingering side effects from the dream, I deliberately twisted the
knob to the hottest setting. Of course it took a while, since the
hot water heater in the house must have been installed when the
house was built twenty years ago. My mom told me that it couldn’t
be that old, since typically hot water heaters only lasted about
ten years. It may not be twenty years old, but it had definitely
seen better days, and was another item on the endless “to do” list
hanging on the refrigerator. My mom and I aren’t the handiest with
tools, so the list keeps growing while nothing ever gets crossed
off. My mom promised to call a handyman last night after the pantry
door fell off its hinges. I could only laugh; the new house may be
in a great location being only a block from the beach, but it
definitely needed some work done, my mom called it T.L.C (Tender
Loving Care). I felt it needed a lot more than that, like maybe a
bulldozer.

I rushed through washing and conditioning my
hair to conserve some of the limited hot water for shaving my legs.
The sunny California weather was nice, and I definitely liked
wearing shorts, but shaving my legs every day was getting old fast.
At least it was better than wearing my regular attire of jeans and
long johns like I would have to if we were still in Montana.

I was forced to switch off the shower when
the hot water turned lukewarm. I toweled off with one of the plush
rose colored towels my mom and I had special ordered when we still
lived up north. We both hated stepping out of a hot shower and at
least the plush towels helped ward off any chills. Of course, the
mild temperatures in California were a lot different than the
frigid temperatures we were used to.

I pulled on a pair of blue and green plaid
board shorts and a Roxy t-shirt. I let out a sigh of contentment; I
loved being able to wear such light weight clothes in March. Though
before the move, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you the
difference between a Roxy shirt and the standard Target t-shirts I
usually wore during the summers back in Montana. I have never been
a name brand junkie, but there was no denying that the Roxy shirts
were super comfortable, not to mention they were very flattering,
even for someone as flat chested as me.

Of course starting tomorrow, I would be
wearing a uniform everyday and my new Roxy shirts would have to
wait until the weekends. This thought didn’t make me cringe like
most teenagers would have. I liked the idea of not having to decide
what to wear each morning and never having to second guess my
outfit choice. Even in the small town I had moved from, I had
always been one step behind all the fashionistas.

 

I spent the hours waiting for my mom to wake
up by getting my school supplies ready for the next day. I’d been
out of school for two weeks for the move and had enjoyed my time
off. I almost wished I had opted for early graduation. School had
always been easy for me, but this past year it was ridiculously
easy since I had finished all my core classes the year before. I
had enough credits to graduate early, but I decided to do the whole
graduation thing for my mom’s sake. Being an only child, I didn’t
want to deprive her of my last few high school memories.

I was a little apprehensive about starting a
new school, and hoped that I could remain unnoticed until I
graduated. I just wanted to finish high school and move on to a big
university where it would be easier to blend in.

I had organized my backpack about a million
times and had stuffed it with plenty of notebooks, pens and
pencils. I had also packed an extra book on the off chance that I
forgot my current novel I was reading.

Finally, I set my backpack aside realizing it
was as ready as it could be. I moved to my desk, but I was a
perpetually neat person, so there really wasn’t much to organize
there. After a few minutes of just reshuffling things around, I sat
on my bed.

Settling against my mountain of throw
pillows, I picked up my favorite teddy bear that I had made at
Build-a-Bear Workshop when I was ten. We bought it when we went to
Las Vegas on vacation. It had become a ritual for my dad to buy me
a new stuffed animal from B.A.B.W. every time we went on vacation,
and I had a whole shelf of different animals we had purchased over
the years. My favorites held court on my bed; like the cute orange
tabby cat that we had bought in Orlando and the monkey from our
trip to Colorado. Each one was special to me since my dad had
helped me pick all of them out. I had fourteen in all, to remember
every trip we had taken together.

I held my bear loosely in my hands as I
studied the ceiling trying to keep my mind off the topic that was
lurking in the back of my mind. At first I was successful as I
studied the fine cracks that boarded the crease where the wall met
the ceiling. The cracks had alarmed me at first, but mom explained
that they were common in houses that were built on softer soil.

 

“We can hire somebody to caulk over them and
then repaint the walls,” she had said.

After a few minutes, I could no longer ward
off the thoughts from the twist my dreams had taken. I had a
nagging feeling that something was going to happen.

From the moment we entered Santa Cruz, I knew
this was where I was supposed to be. If asked why, I would not be
able to give you a straight answer, it was just a feeling I carried
around in my heart.

I had done plenty of research on the city
over the years and knew probably more about it than the locals. I
knew before we moved here that there were approximately 58,000
people who lived within the city limits and that the city itself
was 12 square miles. I knew that it was 74 miles south of San
Francisco and 30 miles away from San Jose. I even knew that Santa
Cruz meant “Holy Cross.” I knew all of these things, but I didn’t
know the most important thing, which was why I felt I had to be
here.

I planned on finding out some of the answers
today. My mom and I were going to visit the Boardwalk that had made
Santa Cruz popular. When I found out that Santa Cruz had an
amusement park on the beach, I wasn’t surprised, it all seemed to
fit. In the background of every one of my dreams, I could make out
an amusement park in the distance. I had researched the Boardwalk
enough that I was pretty confident it would be the one from my
dreams. If I was right, at least I would be moving in the right
direction.

“Krista, are you ready? I want to get there
before it gets too busy,” my mom called up the stairs.

I patted Feline on the head and grabbed my
purse before I headed downstairs.

My mom was waiting at the bottom of the
stairs wearing a cute peach spaghetti strap sundress, with a light
ivory quarter sleeve sweater over it. I couldn’t help admiring her
sense of style. She could pick something off the rack that looked
ordinary and turn it into something extraordinary by just adding
the right accessories. No matter how hard I had tried to mimic her
style, I was never able to achieve the same results.

I was fashionably defective.

All the gardening my mom had been doing
recently had given her skin a nice honey glow that seemed even
richer against the pretty peach of the sundress. With the golden
highlights throughout her hair from the sun, she looked ten years
younger. I couldn’t help wishing my dad could see just how lovely
she was in this laid back atmosphere. My parents had often talked
about their plans for retirement and had always planned on living
near the ocean.

I avoided looking directly at her as I
stopped at the bottom of the stairs to put on the cable knit
sweater that I had left draped over the banister.

“I’m ready. I’ve been up for hours,” I said,
still diverting my face from her eagle eyes. I had used a liberal
amount of cover up to try to minimize the obvious dark marks under
my eyes, but though they were lighter, they still remained.

Thankfully, my mom was in a hurry and didn’t
give me a second glance as I grabbed the keys off the hall table
and headed out the door and down the porch stairs.

I used my own keys to lock the front door
while my mom started the car; I twisted the knob once to make sure
the door was locked, and then skipped down the three shallow porch
steps, glancing back over my shoulder to take another look at the
house.

I felt a warm glow just looking at it. The
front porch was one of my favorite things about the house. It was
at least ten feet wide and ran the whole length of the house. My
mom had placed an oversized swing on the far side of the porch. On
the other side we had added two Adirondack chairs that we painted a
clear blue that reminded us of the ocean that was just a block
away. My mom had also hung baskets of flowers along the rafters
that ran along the ceiling of the porch. The overall effect was
nice and inviting and seemed to beg you to spend a long lazy day
relaxing your cares away. Even the rustic paint job added to the
overall charm of the house.

I climbed into the front seat of my mom’s
Focus and slammed the door behind me. The car was only a few years
old, but for some reason the doors had started sticking after the
move. I was convinced that it missed the arctic temperatures it was
used to.

“I think the car is protesting the move,” I
joked to my mom.

My mom steered the car toward the downtown
area, driving along the pretty roads that made up the town. I loved
looking at the foreign sight of all the lush lawns and pretty
flowers that seemed to be in abundance at this time of year. Back
home, you were lucky if you could even see the ground under all the
dirty gray snow that covered everything.

I looked out the window as we drove along the
coast, admiring the beautiful houses that sat directly on the
beach. I would have loved to live right on the beach, but even with
the insurance money from my dad, they were still way out of our
price range.

Soon we turned off the beach road onto
Delaware St. and then made a left onto Pacific Ave. We had driven
through the downtown area a couple of times, but had not had a
chance to browse the stores yet. My mom saw an advertisement for
the local art store that she wanted to check out.

There were no parking spots in front of the
art store, so we wound up parking a block away, in a parking
garage.

We took our time as we strolled down Pacific
Ave. looking at all the store fronts. We passed an old fashioned
hardware store, and I smiled at the dated posters hanging in the
dusty windows that looked like they had been there since the
fifties.

Next door was another store called Chocolate
Galore that stopped me right in my tracks as I paused to drool over
the attractive displays in the front window. The small sign on the
door taunted me when I discovered that they were closed on Sundays.
With one more regretful look at the inviting delicacies in the
window, my mom finally succeeded in dragging me away.

“So long candy store,” I said with great
sadness. “I will be back.”

My mom burst out laughing. “We’ll get you
your chocolate fix later.”

Linking her arm through mine, I couldn’t help
joining in on her laughter. She knew I was a lost cause. What could
I say?

I pushed the door to the art store open for
my mom and followed behind until I abruptly ran into the back of
her.

“You have to walk through the door if you
want to browse,” I joked.

Looking around, I could see why she had
stopped so suddenly. I had never seen a store with so much stuff.
The space was relatively small, but looked even smaller with the
overflowing shelves. Only four rows made up the interior of the
shop, but they were stuffed to the gills. The first row held
painting supplies. They offered paint in every imaginable color and
every kind of brand. There was acrylic paint, wood paint, water
colors, and even paint you could use on the sidewalk. They sold
spray paint and small jars of paint for fabrics. Then there were
the countless racks of paintbrushes, from as cheap as 99 cents, all
the way up into the hundreds, which I personally couldn’t imagine
anyone spending that much money on one paintbrush.

BOOK: Meant to Be
2.22Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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