CHERRY

Chapter 2

However, nothing stays the same and I was no exception. I changed a lot. It is impossible for life to stop, it never does. Change is inevitable.

The year Neil joined the Army was the same year everything changed in my house. In my family. Damn, where everything changed. Spot.

It was because of 9/11.

My father was on the plane that crashed into the Pentagon in Washington, DC, during the terrorist attacks. He was on that flight to Los Angeles, on business, when the plane was hijacked and diverted off course. He was one of sixty British citizens who lost their lives that fateful day. My father was far from us and we never saw him again. I guess that was the moment I left my childhood behind. The previous innocence disappeared from my life... forever.

The time had come to grow up.

The horrible thing that happened that year made part of the events that occurred blur in my mind. I clearly remember some things that seemed insignificant at the time and others that I should remember... were erased.

For example, the funeral for my father. I know there was a service for him, I have seen the photos, but I don't remember anything; nor of having been there, nor of those who came to pay their respects to him, nor even of having spoken with someone in particular. That day is nothing more than a huge void. However, stupid things are etched in my mind, like what shoes he was wearing when we watched the news on television, when we looked at the images of the impacts, the debris and the scattered parts of the plane... Of the plane in which my friend was traveling. dearest and loving father.

They were red Converse with black laces.

It's funny how our subconscious clings to some memories and not others. Just like the letter Neil sent me, written in his own handwriting, shortly after it happened. I remember it very well because it is still in the box where I keep the most appreciated objects of my life.

My dear Elaina:

There are no adequate words to express the depth of my sadness at such an unbearable loss. Right now I just want to be home, but it's impossible. Your father was a good man. He loved his wife and his children, he worked very hard so that everyone could enjoy a safe and comfortable life. He was a man through and through. In this crazy world we live in, life would be a lot easier if there were more guys like George Morrison. We are going to miss him a lot. I would like to be there to support you, Ian and your wonderful mother in such difficult times. Please know that I am thinking of you and sending you all my love. You are never far from my thoughts, cherry girl, never forget it.

Always yours, Neil His letter, scribbled haphazardly on paper with a military anagram, spoke of the frenetic pace that the Army maintained after the attacks. Neil was fighting an open war against terrorism; I was trying to grow up, trying to accept the fact that he would no longer have a father for the rest of my life; Ian was studying law at university, and my mother drowned her pain in glasses of gin.

We were all very, very busy getting on with our lives and our occupations. Isolated. Alone.

We had depended a lot on my father although, after collecting his life insurance, along with compensation from the airline and the American government, money was no problem. No, what we felt was a deep emptiness; It was difficult for us to assimilate the abruptness with which we were forced to accept that he would never return to us.

Never.

It was then that I became truly aware of death and acquired new knowledge.

I closed myself off to avoid having to suffer that terrible pain again.

"Moron. "I was an idiot."

My mother always liked to cook, she still does, and she kept inviting Neil to dinner as if he were another son, just like that first night, every time he was on leave from the Army. She entertained him with copious home-cooked dinners. It was a fact that he would come to visit us, only now, when my mother was cooking, there was a gin and tonic on the counter. I can't complain about my mother, she was still a devoted mother, dedicated body and soul to my brother and me but, after the tragedy, she was no longer present or aware of my activities as before.

A path to freedom opened before me at a time when I needed a strong hand.

Being the confused and distraught teenager that I was, I jumped at the opportunity. In fact, I immersed myself in it body and soul.

The summer I turned seventeen I had already experienced everything that no parent wants their teenage daughter to experience. Yes, that was me. Parties, alcohol, tobacco and... boys. I tried almost everything and came out of the experience a little more mature, wiser and very insecure. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. Well, there was something I knew I wanted.

Neil.

I still loved him.

And Neil had been right about something...

When I matured I attracted boys like honey attracts bees. I think he would have liked me to be more selective and not allow everything I allowed. She actually knew he wanted her to be more selective. I could tell by the harsh looks he gave me every time he was on leave, by how he evaluated the boy I was dating at the time; with those dark and watchful eyes. The fact that he noticed me was both wonderful and absolutely terrifying, a nightmare. He was caught. Neil had a girlfriend who couldn't keep her paws off him.

He never looked at me like a woman while she hovered around him. Or that's what I believed.

I'd been with a lot of guys since he went off to war and Neil had been loyal to Cora. I do not know why. I couldn't stand her and I knew that she blatantly hooked up with other guys behind her back every time he left. I often wondered how Neil didn't notice. It was also possible that he knew and simply didn't care. I imagined that his friends would have told him what happened when he wasn't around; Ian had to know, she reasoned with myself, and she would have told him. Would he be with Cora just for s*x? "Agg..." I hated imagining them in bed and, at the same time, I wanted to forget about him. Forgetting that he would never belong to me. Forgetting that ours would never happen. Forgetting that I would never have the man I loved above all else.

The following summer, right after finishing high school, was when we crossed into strange new territory. When our bell rang, so to speak. When the spark that had started as a simple flame became a bonfire, a forest fire. Would it leave burns and marks in its wake? It became part of our landscape.

Neil came home on leave that summer, when I was eighteen and he was twenty-five.

That was the moment it finally happened...