#diary3

LA was burning so my brother came down to San Diego with his ex girlfriend and we camped out at our grandparents’ old house in the suburbs with the overgrown lemon trees in the backyard. 

I stayed in the room my grandpa died in and in the dresser there was still a notepad that our family and his nurses used to communicate with him when he was dying since he couldn’t hear. 

One page:

(mom’s handwriting)

We just measured Max and Hayley

Max - 6’-[?]”

Hayley - 5’7-3/4”

(nurse/dad/grandma’s handwriting?)

WHERE IS PAIN

In the bottom drawer of the same dresser were bunches of white socks and white handkerchiefs.

The bedroom had a sliding door that opened onto the deck so every morning at 8:30 when I couldn’t sleep any more I crawled out and sat on the warm splintery planks and took my vitamins and stayed there sitting leaning against the house until I was blinded and my forehead was burning. Tired of waiting for the others to wake up so I’d go walk through neighborhoods to get breakfast in some shopping center and all the roads and sidewalks on the way there were empty.

At the house there were a lot of records mostly jazz but also some classical compilations, the kind people buy to educate themselves or maybe because they really liked them. We put on Beethoven cranked it up loud so we could hear it from the backyard where we’d sit in the sun and smoke and try to read. 

In my grandmother’s room I found an issue of Elle from November 1995 that had an article interviewing little girls about clothes they liked and one of them was named Hayley, she said she thought boys should wear braids. In the margins my mother’s handwriting testing - Halley Hailey Hailea Haylei Hayley

One night we felt like going to a bar so we took a car to this place called Parky’s Saloon in the same shopping center where I got breakfast. It was old and small and looked like a cave inside and was just what we were looking for. Old men with bandaids on their faces and a bartender named Becky who ate a lollipop and called them by their first names. Later we told my dad we went there and he told us about how his childhood friend Jerry Dollar’s mom was a city bus driver and every night she’d give Jerry a Dollar for dinner at the Jack in the Box and then go to Parky’s and stay all night. My dad said he never went to Parky’s because he had this idea that Jerry Dollar’s mom might still be in there.

On my last day we wanted to go to the ocean so my brother drove us to Mission Beach and on the way we saw the old wooden roller coaster against the sky so we decided to ride it for some excitement, since I didn’t get to go shooting in LA. Behind us in line to get on a boy scampered up whose flat hair and nerdiness reminded us of the 1950s. 

My spirit has been broken today, and life keeps proving me that no matter how successful I will be, my destiny is to be destroyed and lose everything I own. Years of work are gone, and I don’t have enough money to recover from this disaster.

What an awful morning it was.

I was going to work, thinking the day will be a complete boredom as yesterday, and hoping that I will get a bit of excitement today; but my god, it was definitely not the “excitement” I was looking for. Something seemed suspicious as I walked towards the shop and saw a rather large group of people standing nearby the store. Confused, I shoved the people away for them to clear my way, only to find out my store is ruined; the windows were broken, and most of the inventory was gone. If it weren’t for all the people around, I would cry as if my eyes were a waterfall. I just stood there, shocked. The police came a bit time afterwards.

Luckily, I was smart enough to buy an insurance, but the ministry of magic has decided to give me only 2,500 galleons- definitely not enough money to fix the store and to go back working as usual. I don’t think I have ever asked help from anyone (god knows I definitely despise of asking for help), I certainly need someone to help me recover from my finance problems.

I can’t go back to poverty, not again. I can’t even describe how frighting is the thought of going back to the painful past of mine, a past I try so hard to forget, but it seems as it will never fade away. I was, and am, a girl with nothing. No matter how much money I’ll make, or how much dresses I have in my closet, I will never feel truly belonged.

The thing that scares me the most is the thought of someone breaking in to the store, vandalizes it until there’s nothing but the ashes and shreds of my work. Who would do such a thing? A random burglar, or someone I know? And if I do know him, is it someone who came back to haunt me from my past, or someone I have met from the last few years?

Luego de ese lapsus, te resumiré lo que han sido estos días en tan solo una palabra: Vick.

Así es. El chico que te conté que me gustaba. Todos estos días los he pasado junto a él, y no los cambio por nada. Todo ha sido tan perfecto. Todo. Incluso hasta la noche de ayer. Fue algo tan... hermoso. Todo comenzó cuando se enteró de algo. No quise incomodarlo con tantas preguntas, pero sé que algo no anda bien. Sea lo que sea, quiero estar con él, para que no se sienta solo. Ese día, pidió quedarse en mi casa. Le dije que está bien, y que dormiríamos juntos esa noche. Subimos a mi habitación, y todo se pasó de besos y abrazos. Lo mejor de todo fue despertar junto a él esta mañana. Se veía tan precioso dormido, con un mechón de rizos sobre su frente y una sonrisa en su rostro. De cualquier manera, me alegra también que mamá no haya llegado temprano y haya querido saber si estaba en casa, o de otra manera nos hubiera ido mal. 

Aunque de todas maneras, me inquieta mucho algo. Vick me dijo que me quiere, y yo también lo quiero... Pero ¿qué es todo esto? Nos besamos, nos abrazamos, nos mostramos afecto. Pero ninguno le ha dicho al otro nada... sobre lo que somos. Es más, no sé que sucedería o cómo reaccionaría yo si el me lo preguntara. O peor aún, qué pensaría él si yo se lo digo. Estoy un poco confundido sobre esto, y no sé quién me podrá ayudar. La única persona que consideraría mi amigo es Vick, de hecho. Talvez si voy y le pregunto a alguien por ahí me ayude, aunque no quiero que se enteren que soy yo. Habrá que usar el viejo truco de "a mi amigo le pasa que" para intentar escuchar algunas opiniones...