Mouthfuls for names -- it was what all four of the Bixley children were all cursed with. Their mother was thoroughly convinced that by naming them such elaborate, superfluous things, it would make them become better people.
As if the character of a person lay solely within their name.
Yes, it was a good thing Margaret Bixley didn't name her son Tim or her daughter Ann -- they would have become miscreants for sure. But a name like Ambrosia Cosette Bixley? Why, she would clearlybecome something of grand importance, someday; she was destined for something great, something unique, something world-shakingly wonderful.
What terrible, heavy expectations to put on a child, with nowhere to go but down.
Wilson Bixley would not have been seen as anything extraordinary if not for the wealth his father had acquired when he accidentally struck oil in 1952. He was a car salesman -- and a mediocre one at that -- with a meek, slightly cold demeanor and a taste for black licorice, which seemed to be hanging from his mouth almost constantly, the way the stereotypical farmer might have a piece of hay hanging between his lips. Still, he was wealthy, and his father was anything but meek, and anything but ordinary to the town of Everleaf, Arkansas, and it was only for those reasons that people gave Wilson Bixley -- and the rest of his family -- any sort of respect.
If they'd have known he was also protecting them from the monsters under their beds and the ones that lurked deep in the woods, perhaps the respect would not have been so shallow and forced. Or, perhaps, they would have feared the meek, small man.
The line between fear and respect was always so thin.
Hunting was not a family business for the Bixley clan. Not really. Margaret wanted to turn her daughters into debutantes and her sons into gentleman, and Wilson did not much like the thought of his children hunting either; it was dangerous and he had lost his own brother a few years prior to a pack of werewolves. Yet, there was hunting blood on both sides of the family going back generations -- although Margaret had been shunned from her family due to the differences in the way she wanted to run her life -- and it was hard to deny that all of the children were eager to join in on the hunting, always begging their father to teach them all he knew, to bring them along with him as he tracked werewolves and shapeshifters.
Well. All, that is, but Ambrosia; she would never long to be a hunter, never even try to feign interest in the subject. She nearly wept at the sight of a dying bird on the sidewalk, and the idea of taking anyone's life -- even something deemed a monster -- made her stomach twist. She understood the dangers of these creatures, but couldn't understand how killing them made them, as hunters, ashumans, any better. It was the sort of compassion that only existed within the innocent bones of a child, but it wouldn't die as she aged, not even with her most jaded thoughts wishing to suffocate it.
Where most children were sat down at eleven to discuss the birds and the bees, Ambrosia and her siblings had been sat down to talk about witches and werewolves and all the things that children were meant to believe were made up to scare them into not staying out late and to eat their vegetables. Third born, Ambrosia had already known what the talk was going to entail; in truth, all of the children knew, and their parents had never actively gone out of their way tohide what their father was really doing when he wasn't selling cars. If anything, the talk was more of a detailed overview of exactly what he had been doing -- the details that might have been missed as the children tried to eavesdrop on the whispered conversations between their parents in the kitchen. But there was more to this talk than even that.
The talk was a warning, a warning of the dangers of the world. "There are bad things out there, Rosie," her father had told her, his voice serious, but his eyes staring right through her. They always stared right through her, making her feel as if he were talking to the wall, or himself, more than he was talking to her.
Ambrosia merely nodded at his warning, not realizing just yet that the bad things were not just werewolves or shifters or witches.
But humans, too.
"Wash that paint off your hands right now, Ambrosia!"
A disgruntled, "Yes, Mama," would fall from her lips before she set down her brush and scrubbed her hands clean, heading over to the long dining room table which was set as if the Queen herself was going to attend dinner that very evening; then again, it was always set as such. ("You never know who might show up!" her mother always said, but if she was expecting company, they never arrived.) Lessons on how to hold a fork -- and which fork to hold -- were about to ensue, and while her older sister had found these sorts of lessons to be intriguing, Ambrosia found it difficult to pretend she cared at all about the difference between a dinner fork and a salad fork, or how to fancily fold a cloth napkin. Then again, most fifteen-year-old girls didn't.
Her brothers only wanted to hunt. Her sister only wanted to become a trophy wife. Ambrosia only wanted to paint.
"Honestly, Ambrosia, what am I going to do with you?" Her mother clicked her tongue and shook her head at the mere sight of her, and Ambrosia could only sigh and look longingly at her paint set which seemed to be calling her name then, begging her to use them, coaxing her into not wasting her time with such frivolous things as table setting. If she could have, if such a power existed, she would have painted herself straight out of Everleaf right then and there; she always thought Paris seemed like a lovely place to go, full of twinkling lights with the air smelling of passion and wine (Everleaf only smelled of manure and car exhaust and sunburns -- if such a thing could ever have a smell). She imagined herself meeting a boy who would teach her French, give her bucketfuls of inspiration as well as encouragement. No one here inspired her; no one here encouraged her.
"Elbows off the table," her mother commanded. Her elbows fell, along with her daydreams.
"Sorry, Mama."
She did not know him, but she loved him.
That was her biggest downfall, her heart that seemed to constantly yearn for something that felt so far out of reach. She found love in the eyes of strangers more and more as she grew older, but this particular nameless man was more special somehow. He had kind eyes, a soft smile, and, Ambrosia believed, a heart which fit perfectly with her own.
Twenty years old, and desperately in love with a man who said hello to her every morning as they boarded the bus to their perspective destinations -- hers was college (Everleaf Community College, despite her wanting to go elsewhere; next year, she promised herself, next year she would leave, but the promise was always so empty) and his, work. At least, she assumed as such, since he always had his dress clothes on, his Sunday best.
He inspired her the way no one else did in the hot, dreary town; she found herself no longer lacking in ideas of what to paint.
For the longest time, she'd only ever seen him on the morning bus, but one night, they each were each on the late night bus, and they each had the same stop.
Ambrosia thought it was fate, was so sure it was some sort of cosmic sign from the universe that she was meant to know him, meant to speak more than a shy, "hello," to him, and she tried, she tried so damned hard to say something to him as they each stepped off the bus, and she followed a few paces behind him -- for it wasn'ther fault they both just so happened to be going the same way -- but no words ever came.
Just when they were about it, she saw it happen. Saw the man come, seemingly, out of nowhere. Watched as he held a knife to his throat and viciously asked for his wallet. Noticed his shaking fingers as he dove into his pockets for what he wanted and handed it over without a word. Watched as the man with the knife took it and turned his face up in disappointment before he plunged the knife into the object of her desires, who fell to his knees and was close to dead before he even fully hit the ground.
Neither of them saw her, frozen in her place, useless, helpless, barely even there.
The man with the knife took off. Ambrosia still couldn't move, the sound of the man's shallow, struggling breaths gluing her in place until it stopped altogether. The girl who wept for dying birds did not weep for the dead man before her, did not even call out for help or say goodbye to the man she was convinced she was madly in love with. She felt as empty as the streets, as deflated as his lungs, almost as if the man had not just taken his life, but hers as well. Watching someone else die, as it turned out, took its toll on a person.
All she remembered after that was blood. Blood on his no longer beating chest. Blood on her hands. Blood on the empty, quiet streets. Blood, and one simple fact:
The real monsters of the world, were men.
She often felt too much.
She often felt nothing at all.
When she found something that stirred something, anything at all, inside of her, she held onto it as if it were the only thing keeping her tethered to reality, as if it was the very thing that would keep her lungs from caving in.
And perhaps it was.
She never felt colder than when she stood under the Southern sun that sweltering day in June, three days shy of twenty-three, her suitcase in her hand as she finally, finally escaped the town of unrealistic expectations and broken dreams. (North Lawrence will be better, she was convinced, although she wasn't sure what made her believe it, only that the man she'd watched die was from that very town; it was crazy, but then again, she was hardly the poster child for sanity.) Still, its beams tried their hardest to warm her skin which was already growing red; she had always burned so easily. Little did the sun realize what a lost cause it was.
You cannot warm someone who has convinced themselves they are dead.
