Page 32 of Cloud Storm

“Then surely you can take care of me too.”

They didn’t say a word, since we all knew it was an impossible task, as if I stayed, I would be married off and forced to leave them.

I sobbed, opening my arms to hug them again. “I don’t want to be away from you.”

“It’s going to happen anyway,” Nahum added. “So if you have to leave us, it’s better to do it on your own terms, don’t you think?”

I listened to my brothers’ plan with great attention, absorbing every detail, every indication. Willing us not to fail, not to be wrong.

They explained to me carefully what to do, where to go, who to ask for.

“Remember, Ariel,” Joshua warned me. “Get away and don’t ever look back. Never give up.”

“But you are my family, my past, my roots,” I replied, suppressing a sob of despair.

My heart was breaking, like a dry and withered oak with its branches breaking off and falling apart, by force of fate.

“Don’t make me to do this,” I begged them one more time.

They didn’t answer, they just hugged me in silence, filling me with their strength, the same strength that I was going to need so much of. Well, my resistance was going to be tested again and again.

A few nights later, when the weather was cool and it had stopped raining, we left the house in as much silence as a troop of five inexperienced young people can have. We waited behind the barn for the right time, then my brothers and I ran toward the main road.

It was around one or two in the morning, so the gravel road was deserted, and we walked through the darkness until we reached the highway.

We waited there, waving at the few vehicles that passed. No one wanted to stop, and we began to think we were wasting our time, until finally a truck carrying several cows in the back stopped on the curb by our side. When the driver asked us where we were going, Joshua came forward to talk to him. After that he turned and spoke the last words I would hear him say: “Be strong, sister, be free, be happy and remember, never look back. We will be fine.”

I said goodbye to my brothers and the life I knew with a heavy heart, then I did what they had asked me to do.

I left everything and everyone behind.

The driver was traveling with his wife, a chirpy lady. The woman tried hard to cheer me up, putting something in my hand. A lollipop was my first taste of freedom.

After that, I never stopped to think too much about my past.

Until now.

From: Arthur

To: California Girl

Date: September 27, 2019 23:50

Subject: RE: Confession

I wish you wanted to talk to me, I have so much to tell you.

I’m afraid that I lost you too.

Talk to me, come back to me, my shooting star. I am lost without your shining light.

Always yours,

A x

Chapter 9

I think of my brothers, the promise I made to them and that for the first time in years I’m not honoring.

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