The Hybrid (12 page)

10
Sensitive

Tru woke up the next morning a bit later than normal
⎯ due to her late night adventure. But part of her kept
thinking that everything that had happened, up until that
moment, was still just a dream that was slightly out of
reach. It was hazy, like a memory of a day that she hadn’t
actually lived through. She almost wanted to go back to
bed just to see Edyn’s face again.

Tru rubbed her eyes as she lay in her warm bed, completely covered by the flowery comforter and plain white
sheets. She rolled over onto her back, and stared up at the
ceiling for a few minutes before pushing herself up with
the heels of her palms.

Tru stayed there, with her arms outstretched behind
her to support her body, as she stared out of the bedroom
window. The sun beat down on the lawn in the backyard.
It had been a while since the sun had made its way out
from behind the clouds and its bright light made Tru
squint.

“Knock, knock!” Maggie called as she pushed open the
door with one hand and walked into the room. Tru leaned
forward on her bed some more, crossing her hands over
her lap in front of her.

Maggie’s voice was quiet, but held a cheerful tone. “Are
you up yet?”

Tru looked over at the woman as she stood in the
doorway, waiting for a response. Tru’s eyes still stung
from the light. She gave them a quick rub before responding. “Yeah, I’m up.”

Slowly, Tru slid a foot out from under the covers, then
the other one. The carpet felt warm on her cold feet, making her toes tighten and curl, trying to absorb every bit of
the warmth the fibers held. She could feel her grandmother’s eyes intently watching her as she sluggishly
stood from the edge of the bed.

“Good. We have a busy day ahead of us.” Maggie stared
at Tru for a moment, looking puzzled at first, and then
almost as if she was about to laugh. Tru watched as the
woman turned and walked back out the door. It was like
she had never seen a teenager waking up before. Though
Tru couldn’t really blame her for acting so strangely.
When someone says, “she resembled a zombie,” there is
something slightly terrifying about witnessing it in person.

Tru was instantly upset. She had hoped to go back to
the meadow to see Edyn again. He said she would be seeing him soon, so why couldn’t soon be today? Plus, she
still had so many more questions to ask him.

Because today my grandma needs me.
And after the stunt she had pulled the previous day,
she knew she owed her grandmother at least one day of
her dedicated assistance.
Tru looked out of the clear, sun-drenched window as
she walked across the nearly empty room and over to the
dresser. The sun gleamed off of the photo of her and her
father, instantly putting blind spots in her eyes the minute she looked at it. Tru didn’t bother hopping into the
shower. She had a feeling that she and her grandmother
would be working out in the yard and around the house,
so there would be no point in it if they were going to be
getting sweaty and dirty anyway.
As Tru pulled the oversize t-shirt over her head, and
threw it to the ground, she glanced at the alarm clock on
the nightstand.
8:24 A.M.
Quickly, she threw on an old pair of jeans and a fresh tshirt, and tied her hair into a loose ponytail⎯ the ends of
her lengthy waves landed just above her waist. Then, she
headed toward the door, stopping just shy of the threshold.
No matter how much Tru wanted to see Edyn today,
she would have to block those desires from her mind,
completely. Today was her grandmother’s day and she
would have to be one hundred percent, completely, and
irrevocably, focused on her.
Tru looked over her shoulder, taking one last look out
of her bedroom window.
“Gertrude!” Maggie called from the kitchen. Tru could
hear the faint sound of something sizzling in a pan, followed by the sweet aroma of butter and sugar.
“Coming!” Tru replied. She turned back to face the
hallway and slowly made her way to the kitchen on the
opposite side of the hall. When she entered the room,
Maggie was standing over the stove, waving a large black
spatula in the air, as if she were using it as an extension of
her arm.
“Did you want one or two pancakes?” she asked, turning to face Tru as she sat down in her usual spot at the
small, fifties style, metal and plastic yellow kitchen table.

“One is fine.” Tru didn’t feel very hungry
⎯ not even
for a single pancake ⎯ and the thought of trying to eat
one made her stomach cringe in fear. But she knew that if
she told her grandmother that, then she would feel offended. And Maggie
did
make the best pancakes known
to man.

“One it is.” Maggie slid the spatula under the golden
brown disk in the skillet and placed it lightly on one of
her light yellow plates. “Did you want any syrup with it?”

“I’m fine Grandma, thank you.”

Maggie carefully carried the plate to the table and set it
down on the simple, plastic, black and white checkered
placemat in front of Tru. When it hit the table, the plate

made a slight clanking sound. Maggie waited by the chair
for a moment, like she was waiting for Tru to take a bite
to make sure she was going to eat it. So, Tru picked up
her fork, and from the corner of her eye, she could see her
grandmother slowly walking back to the stove.
“Did you want anything to drink with that?” Maggie

called, facing the stove once again. “There’s milk in the
fridge. Your grandpa picked it up this morning.”

“Oh, sure. Sounds good.” Tru stood up from her chair,
walked to the counter, opening a cabinet located right
next to the window above the sink, and grabbed a cup.

As she walked to the refrigerator, Tru couldn’t help but
glance out of the window that looked out across the front
yard. Then, she paused.

“Trudy?” she heard her grandma ask. But Tru did not
move. Instead, she simply watched as the glass gradually
slipped through her fingertips. She could see it falling to
the ground, as if it were moving in slow motion, but she
did nothing to stop it. As the glass shattered into a million
pieces against the hard floor, a loud crashing noise echoed throughout the house.

Tru looked down at the pieces of glass that had scattered around the room, remaining still.
“Don’t move, Gertrude. I’ll get a broom.” Tru gazed
over at her grandma as she walked out of the kitchen and
out of sight.
The room slowly adjusted in and out of focus, as Tru
continued looking around. Her head was pounding, and
every noise in the house sounded as if it had been amplified tenfold. She could hear the sound of the television in
the next room. She could hear every voice of every person
on the screen as if they were standing right next to her in
the same room. As she focused on their voices, she continued to look around the room, noticing how it came in
and out of focus again, blurring dizzily before becoming
instantly crisp and bright. The voices in the other room
began to fade slightly, and as they did, Tru could hear
something ticking. She focused on the noise, trying to
decipher
what
it
could possibly
be.
When she
began
counting the ticks, she realized she was listening to the
small grandfather clock ticking away on the mantel above
the fireplace.

“Weird,” she said to herself.

Maggie quickly fumbled through the laundry room,
gathering all the items she was looking for. And within a

few short seconds, broom and dustpan in hand, she reentered the kitchen. Tru watched silently as her grandmother
began
sweeping the
floor. Her
eyes
adjusted once
more, returning to the seemingly normal eyesight she had
been used to.

“What happened?” Tru asked, looking at the shiny
pieces of clear glass that lay casually on the off-white and
black floor tiles as she reached a shaking hand to her
temple.

“I don’t know,” her grandmother replied. “You were
staring out of the window for a while. Did you see something?” Maggie looked at the ground as she continued
sweeping.

Tru also looked down at the remaining shards of glass
on the floor, and then quickly back up at the window.
“No.”

“Are you okay then?” Maggie asked.
“Yeah, I’m fine.” Tru felt her eyebrows come together
in the center of her forehead as she stared out of the window. A thick sheet of clouds now blanketed the sky, but
even in the dim light, the front yard teemed with vibrancy. The colors were so bright and so vivid that Tru almost
felt the need to shield her eyes.
Maggie emptied the contents of the dustpan into the
garbage can under the sink and looked up at her granddaughter. “Well, try not to scare me too much today,
okay?”
Tru blinked as she turned away from the window to
look at the woman. “Okay,” she replied.
Maggie patted her granddaughter on the shoulder, and
then walked back into the laundry room to put the broom

and dustpan away. Tru could hear the broom sliding
against the wall before it finally hit the metal washing
machine.

What just happened?
Tru thought to herself.
What did
I see?
But the more Tru thought about it, the less she could
remember. She remembered everything up until the moment she looked out of the window, and then watching as
the glass slipped through her fingers, but she couldn’t
remember why she was looking out of the window in the
first place.
Had
she seen something there? And why did
she just stand there and watch the glass fall? Why didn’t
she move? Tru tried to remember looking out of the window, but she couldn’t. There were no memories of it.
Nothing at all.
“Well, are you ready to go?” Maggie asked as she reentered the room⎯ her keys were in one hand and her big,
light pink purse was in the other. But her bag looked
more like a tote or an overnight bag than any purse Tru
had ever seen. But her grandmother was the type of person who was prepared for anything. Knowing her, she
probably had a first aid kit hidden in it, along with every
type of medication known to man.

Tru casually looked over at the plate resting on the table. The pancake had remained untouched. “Yeah, I’m
ready,” she replied looking back up at her grandmother.
Slowly, Tru walked back over to the table, picked up the
plate, and carried it to the counter, setting it carefully
next to the porcelain sink.

When Tru had turned back around, her grandmother
was already heading out of the kitchen and into the entryway. Tru quickly followed her lead, only stopping to
grab her raincoat off of the hook in the kitchen, and
walked all the way out to the car in silence.

Leisurely, Tru opened the door and climbed in. The
smell of freshly cut roses grew in her nose immediately as
she closed the door behind her. Slowly, she craned her
neck to look in the back seat, but there was nothing there.
She turned back around, holding her breath as she looked
over at her grandmother closing the heavy driver’s side
door behind her.

“When did you buy flowers, Grandma?” Tru asked. The
last time⎯ to Tru’s knowledge⎯ that she had seen Maggie actually buy any kind of flower, or plant for that matter, was when Tru was about ten years old. She had given
her granddaughter a bouquet of yellow daisies for a dance
recital Tru had performed in. After that, Tru had never
seen another real plant in her house. Maggie’s excuse was
that she couldn’t keep up with watering them anymore, so
she stuck to buying the fake ones.

“I didn’t,” Maggie replied. She looked at Tru with a
very confused expression on her face as she put the key
into the ignition and started the car. “Why?”

Why? Can’t she smell it?

The scent was almost sickening. It practically flooded
the car now that both doors were securely closed. Suddenly, Tru found herself gasping for fresh air. As soon as
the car purred to life, Tru quickly rolled down the window
and breathed in the cool morning air.

Maybe it’s just my mind playing tricks on me again.
Tru looked at her grandmother’s face. She didn’t seem
at all like she couldn’t breathe. She looked fine.

What is going on?
Maggie looked at her granddaughter, completely confused. She tried to smell the flowers that Tru was talking

about, but all her nose would pick up was the scent of wet
pavement and a woody pine smell as the air wafted into
the car through the open window.

“Never mind,” Tru said after a few breaths. She slowly
rolled up the window, making sure the car was completely
free of the scent before letting it close all the way. Casually, she placed her hands on her lap and began twirling her
thumbs around one another. Tru took a few more moments to collect her thoughts before speaking again. But
each time she began to formulate a word, she would
quickly shut her mouth closed, deciding against whatever
was on her mind at the moment.

When Tru had finally looked out of the window again,
the two women were sitting in a parking lot, surrounded
by vacant cars. Tru had been so distracted that she didn’t
even feel the car move after her grandma had put the key
in the ignition and started it up.

“Where are we?” Tru asked, confused.

 

Did it really take that long for me to compose myself?

Did I really just miss that entire car ride?
“We’re at The Market Place.” Maggie smiled in Tru’s
direction as she spoke.
Of course,
Tru thought, immediately recognizing the
tops of the rustic, cabin looking buildings just behind the
row of cars in front of them.
The Market Place was the small⎯ but only⎯ outdoor
mall they had in Woodcrest Hills. Tru had many memories of visiting the small stores as a child with her parents.
They would spend a day shopping and walking along the
storefronts, just so Gail would have a reason to leave Ben
and Maggie’s house for a while.
But why are we here today?
Tru looked at her grandma. It was almost scary the
way her smile practically stretched from one ear to the
other. It slightly reminded Tru of the Joker from the
Batman comic books.
“I wanted it to be a surprise.” Maggie looked at her
granddaughter for a moment. Her eyebrows rose on her
forehead, as her smile grew wider.
“What
Grandma?” Tru
grabbed
the
woman’s hand
from her lap. Maggie knew Tru hated surprises. “What is
it? What did you want to surprise me with?”
“I’m buying you some new clothes and a whole new
bedroom set. I keep getting the feeling that you don’t feel
like you belong here. I thought buying you things you
liked would help you adjust better. Is that okay?” Her
slightly wrinkled fingers tightened around Tru’s hand.
Tru felt as though her face had shattered into a million
pieces, just like the glass against the floor. She couldn’t
contain the emotions that seemed to flood her mind at
once. She wanted to laugh, cry and scream all at the same
time, but all she could do was giggle a little bit.
“You thought I wasn’t happy here?” Tru paused. “You
thought I felt like I didn’t
belong
here?” she managed to
say through her tears of laughter.
“Well, it seemed that way for a while.” Maggie looked
at her granddaughter, her eyes unmoving.
Seeing how confused the woman was, made Tru laugh
some more. She was happy that Maggie seemed to care
more than she thought she did. But Tru knew that the
gesture her grandmother had proposed was unnecessary.
“Grandma, you don’t have to worry about me so much.
I have actually started to like it here, and changing the
way my room looks isn’t going to change anything. It’s
just a room to sleep in. Besides, you’d be wasting your
money on the clothes.” Tru looked down at her outfit.
“Jeans and t-shirts work just fine.” She couldn’t help but
giggle again.
“So you’re saying you don’t want to go shopping?”
Maggie
looked
at
Tru
with
her
usual
overly-curiousgrandma face and placed a hand on her granddaughter’s
shoulder.
“No, Grandma. I would be much happier spending the
day watching you and your normal routine.” Tru placed a
hand on top of
Maggie’s.
The
older
woman
smiled.
“Whatever you need, I’m here to help.”
“Are you sure?”