WILDly (7 page)

When he
returned, I simply couldn’t stand his presence any longer and I
asked him to take me back to the dorm. And that was the end of a
bad blind date.

But it wasn’t
all bad, I had Duncan’s number as a consolation prize.

I sighed and
decided to put it out of my mind. I was at home now, and I was
going to be cheerful and make the best of my visit. I delayed going
to the kitchen and stayed in bed for awhile, but I couldn’t stay
forever and eventually got up.

In the kitchen,
there was a note for me on the oven door.

Went to the
store, back soon. Pancakes in the oven. Love.

I made myself a
cup of coffee and indulged in the spoils of a caring mom. I ate
until my tummy hurt, which subdued the feeling of anger a
little.

My parents
drove in just as I finished the dishes.

“Glad to see
that you’re better this morning,” my mom said while we unpacked the
groceries.

“Guess so.” A
little better.

“Honey, we need
to talk to you. Make us all a nice hot cup of tea and then take it
to the living room while I finish these bags.”

My dad was
already waiting, and moments later my mom came in. She sat down
next to my dad, opposite me. They were both very serious.

“Valerie, you
need to know, before we tell you this, that we love you. We always
have and always will, no matter what.” Fear stroked my throat and I
took another sip of tea. My dad never called me Valerie. Dear or
Honey or Lovey, but never Valerie. Didn’t they want me anymore? Did
my real mother find them? I braced myself for what was coming.

“We don’t know
how it happened or why it happened now, but, Valerie, we know. To
be honest, there was a time that we thought it would never happen.
We know, Honey.”

I stared at
him. What on earth was he saying?

“Know
what
, Dad?” It was difficult to hide the emotion and it came
out hard.

“We can see
your resonance colour,” he said slowly and softly.

“You can...
see...?” was all I managed to get out.

“Hank, I told
you she wasn’t ready for this. Stop now. Stop now, please?” my mom
begged.

I didn’t have
the energy to move a muscle.

They were in on
this. They knew all along.

I looked at
them, my parents, sitting next to each other with their tea cups in
their hands. Around me was the familiar living room. I had grown up
here. But it all looked different to me now. It was a picture and a
feeling that would probably haunt me for the rest of my life.

Home, but not
home.

I felt cold
inside and it wasn’t only because my hair was wet from running in
the rain to get the grocery bags.

Cold and alone,
utterly alone, like never before.

I stood up and
walked out into the rain. I walked and walked until my feet hurt,
until I didn’t know where I was any more.

When I couldn’t
walk any further, I sat down. And after the feeling in my feet came
back, I got up and walked on again.

***

Chapter 6 –
Ray of light

Alex found me,
just sitting.

An overwhelming
feeling of nothingness was growing infinitely big inside of me,
when he appeared out of nowhere. He didn’t say one word, just sat
down next to me.

I don’t know
how long we were there, sitting in silence, side by side. I had no
idea of the time or where we were and I didn’t care. It was only
when the hailstorm broke out that I looked up at Alex. He was
extremely pale, as if he had lost his tan overnight and he looked
tired. I thought of finding shelter, not for myself but for him. I
got up and so did he.

“We need to
find shelter. Do you have any ideas?” I croaked in a rusty
whisper.

He nodded.
“Follow me.”

In spite of the
hail, he walked very slowly. The hailstones stung my already
freezing body. Each step was a new layer of bruises, but my legs
were too shaky to ask him to go faster. After what felt like too
many minutes, we reached the road and his car. He took out a towel
from the backseat and gave it to me. I wrapped myself in it and
climbed into the front seat; he didn’t have another one for
himself.

We drove
through an assault of hailstones against the car. It was dark
outside and I didn’t recognise the area. I stared out the window at
the whitening road speeding by. He didn’t take me home; instead he
took me to an old log cabin somewhere in the bush.

By the time we
stopped, the hailstorm had died down. Alex and I were actually no
more than acquaintances and I belatedly realised that I didn’t know
him at all. But I didn’t have any energy left to be suspicious
about his intentions and wearily got out of the car and went into
the cabin.

The inside was
an open plan setup, with a few camping beds grouped in one corner,
the kitchen area in another and some loose chairs making up a
sitting area. He dragged two chairs closer to the fireplace and
built a comforting fire.

In the heat of
the fire my body felt frozen solid, my limbs hurt from the cold. I
guess we both warmed up a little after a while, because he moved
deeper into his chair and rested his head against the back.

I wanted to ask
where Lisa was. I wanted to ask how he found me. And why. And whose
place this was. And how he knew the area. But the silence was too
peaceful to interrupt.

My legs went
into shock later from not moving; they were screaming needles and
pins. I looked at Alex and he was asleep, I was sure. So I slowly
tried to move one foot up and down. The movement felt numb and
clumsy. When I picked up the other foot, the chair made a squeaking
noise.

Alex’s head
popped up and he looked at me with a frown.

“Sorry,” I
said.

He sighed and
got up. He grubbed around in the fridge before returning with two
frozen steaks and two cups. He gave me one of the cups, the steaks
he placed in a pan next to the fire.

I took a sip of
the liquid; it was sherry. I’ve never particularly liked alcohol,
but the sherry was ambrosia. It slowly dispelled the cold and by
the time the steaks were defrosted, I was as well.

“Are you all
right?” he finally asked.

My brain was in
remote control mode. I was on a different planet, safe and far away
and nothing was real. Off course, the sherry could have been the
reason why I felt that way.

I was tired of
keeping all the secrets to myself, and my instinct told me to trust
him. Something gave way inside me, under the pressure of me against
me. So I told him. I told him everything,
everything
.

Alex didn’t
move a muscle when I told him about what had happened with Duncan.
He glanced up when I told him about the hospital and the jump from
the window, but throughout the rest of my story, he kept himself
busy with preparing the steaks.

I told him my
whole story as if it were someone else’s, without any emotion. It
came out slow and staggering at times, especially with the
intoxicating effect of the sherry. But every word was a healing
word. It tumbled mountains off my shoulders to have someone else
know the truth.

When the steaks
were done, he conjured up a can of baked beans from a cupboard
somewhere. He filled both our cups again before handing me my
dinner. It was the best steak ever, in spite of the fact that I
didn’t even like medium-rare steaks.

“Thank you,” I
said when I had finished. He flashed me half a smile before getting
comfortable in his chair again.

I washed the
dishes with a sponge and soap that I found in the little cupboard
next to the fridge. It was cold being away from the fire, so I
hurried with the silly chore to get back to my seat.

He refilled our
cups again before he looked very seriously at me. “Valerie, I don’t
mean to tell you what to do and what not to. But I really, really
need
you... to accept who you are.” He sounded short of
breath and he still didn’t look very well, even in the half dark of
the fire.

It was strange
to hear him speak, startling the silence with something so
unexpected and so personal. In the haze of the sherry, I didn’t
grasp the full implication of his words.

“I like who I
am!” I defended.

“Valerie!” he
scolded.

The topic was
getting too personal. I didn’t want to dwell on me any further, not
in a conversation with Alex. There were other things that I wanted
to know.

“Where is Lisa?
Does she know you’re here?”

“Lisa is back
at varsity, and yes, she knows that I’m here.”

“Oh. You don’t
look so good. Lisa said you were ill. What’s the matter? Is it
because of Duncan?”

“Yes, I am ill.
If only this weather....” He stopped abruptly and then cleared his
throat before he continued. “I doubt that it’s because of some
person
like... like
Duncan
,” he said disgusted. “I
only saw him twice recently. The first time was the day that you
arrived, the second time was the night at the party. And he’s not
strong enough to do anything to me.”

I knew it. It
was
Alex out there with Duncan on the night of the
party.

“I knew it was
you!” I yelled.

“Yes, we
discovered that you were watching a little too late,” he answered
in a regretful tone.

“What were you
doing out there?”

“It’s a long
story. I’ll tell you one day, not now. I don’t want to make it more
difficult for you.”

I thought about
his words and believed him. Although I was finally getting a few
answers, I didn’t want to go against Alex’s judgement. So I jumped
to the next question.

“Why are you
saving me?”

“Well,
partially because your dad sent me.”

“Oh. So you
know my dad?”

“Yes, I’ve
known your father for a long time. You have wonderful parents, you
really should appreciate them.”

“I do,
actually. How do you know them?”

He huffed, out
of breath, but then continued at a tangent.

“Don’t you love
being outside in the bush?”

“I’ve always
loved it,” I answered, too inebriated to notice that he had made a
sharp u-turn.

We ended up
talking: well, he talking and I slurring, about nature. I told him
about my memories of being out in the wild and how I’d always felt
more alive when I was outside, told him every little detail of each
image that I still had in my head.

He occasionally
smiled or nodded, as if acknowledging or maybe recognising a
particular part that I was describing, getting up every now and
then to refill my glass.

By the time
that the fire was cold, I was completely smashed.

When I woke up
the next morning, I had a pounding headache and Alex was gone. His
car stood outside, but he was gone. The last thing that I
remembered was him carrying me to a bed and throwing a blanket over
me.

He hadn’t said
anything about his plans the night before. I eventually found a
note in the kitchen on the table next to the kettle.

Had to
leave. Clean clothes in the bathroom. Take my car and go
home
. GPS inside.

I made myself a
cup of coffee and went outside to sit on the porch. The first rays
of the morning sun were peeking through a bank of clouds above the
mountain silhouette below.

The view that
stretched out in front of me was breathtaking. The cabin was built
close to the top of a hummock that looked down upon waving, dense
bushveld. The smell and sense of the bush have always been
especially beguiling to me, And with the marvellous landscape in
front of me, I made a decision.

I decided to
take control of my life.

I’ve always
believed in an internal locus of control, and in recent months I
had not been living up to my own beliefs. It was high time that I
stopped being a victim. And stopped dwelling on past events that
I’d never be able to change.

There were a
few things that I simply had to face.

I was born this
way, whatever
this way
was. My parents confirmed that.
According to my knowledge, the people who knew about it, besides my
parents, were Alex and Duncan and most probably Lisa. And Bridget.
The fact that they knew about all the abnormal activity was
actually a blessing. It meant that I wasn’t crazy, I wasn’t alone,
and there were people who clearly cared deeply for me on my
side.

It also meant
that there were people who weren’t on my side.

I finished my
coffee and hit the shower. It felt absolutely wonderful to wash off
the past day or so. Then I jumped into the oversized pants and
shirt that looked like Alex’s. Not that I minded, I was only too
thankful.

Before I closed
the door of the cabin, the two empty seats in front of the
fireplace caught my eye. A feeling of tenderness came over me as I
thought about Alex. This cabin would always be special to me. Not
only because of the surroundings, but because it was where I had
found a few rays of light in the dark.

It was strange
to climb into the driver’s seat of Alex’s car. I wasn’t used to all
the luxuries on the inside and took a moment to figure out what was
what. Eventually, with the seat and mirrors adjusted, I slowly took
off. It was nerve-testing driving Alex’s fancy car to my parents
using a GPS on an unfamiliar road. I held my breath for most of the
way. Luckily the road wasn’t busy; I guess it was too early.

***

Chapter 7 –
Red-hot poker

A red-hot poker is a flower, also called a flameflower,
rocket flower or a soldier flower in Afrikaans. In appearance it
resembles a rocket, flame and soldier for its shape and
colour.

I was half an
hour from home according to the GPS when I noticed two black
Mercedes Benz behind me. Their windows were darkened and I couldn’t
make out any figures inside.