Impossible Geometry

Stranded in Parallel [Chapter 3]

Life kind of goes by quickly when you never know what to expect next. One night, you’re sleeping on the couch because your normal sheets, even your normal mattress, are going on a truck early the next morning. The next night, you’re sleeping on that same mattress, except it’s bare, because labeling moving boxes is beyond an afterthought. It’s also eating cereal straight out of a box because the bowls and spoons are packed. Later that night, it’s eating fast food from the nearest place still open because it’s too late and too dark to remember where the grocery store is. The very same grocery store my mom was supposed to transfer to.

What about being woken up suddenly because you and your mom both overslept and you’re about to be late for your doctor’s appointment, and you were both exhausted from just moving? At least this time we didn’t have to drive two hours to get to it. That was the whole point of moving, after all. At least we were able to get to the hospital without getting lost. At least the appointment was under two hours that time, and there wasn’t another long drive to get us home.

“This is your first time moving, huh?” My mom had asked the day before as we trailed the moving truck on that final long drive. She said it like the answer wasn’t obvious. “I thought I was going to live in that house until the day I died, honestly. Heck, your Aunt Winona lives in the house we all grew up in with our parents. That’s tribal land, for you. But… maybe a different subject. Grand Forks is gonna seem like a big city for us. Lots of things to do.”

That was the sort of talk meant for someone who was chasing an opportunity, not escaping their misfortune.

After that second round of treatment at the hospital, I felt helplessly sluggish. It was almost the same as how I felt when I was coming down with something. It may have been waking up suddenly without warning. It may have been the fatigue from moving stuff around just the day before. It may have been the junk food. It may even have been the treatment doing something to me. Whatever it was, I wasn’t going to complain. Loading up my mom with another worry was out of the question.

That night, I managed to sleep in my own bed, freshly set up in the new room in the new place. I was hoping to sleep off whatever I was feeling, but once more I was awoken earlier than my body wished for.

“Natalie,” hissed my mom as she nudged me awake.

“Huh?” I rolled over, eyes barely open. “Another appointment?”

“No,” Mom sighed, seeming to realize the panic she had induced in me. “It’s just me this time. I’m heading into work for training.”

‘Training?” I laid back and looked up at her, staring down at me. “Don’t you already know how to do your job?”

Mom smiled and chuckled. “Let’s hope so. Probably just standard stuff they have to do. Learn the layout of the new place. But I’ll be back sometime in the afternoon. Don’t worry about unpacking anything that isn’t yours. There’s not a lot in the kitchen, but you can eat whatever. I’ll bring back something for dinner, and we can sort out more of our stuff after we eat. If either of us are up to it, that is.”

I blinked up at the ceiling past her and nodded. “Yeah.”

With one last stroke of my hair, Mom stood up and slid out of my room. A few minutes later, I heard the front door downstairs click and lock.

Any other time I would have simply shut my eyes and been off to sleep again, but everything in that moment was wrong. The window was on the wrong side of my bed. It had yet to get any curtains, and the morning light was beginning to leak in. Somewhere on the other side of one of the walls, I could hear people— our neighbors— doing whatever they were doing. Outside, more than the occasional car puttered by. When my feet touched the ground, the feel of the carpet was wrong. Before I knew it, I was shuffling about the house, trying to find out whatever else was wrong.

I had either been too frazzled or too tired to properly look at our new place up to that point. I explored the second floor first, a space completely alien to someone used to living in a house with only one floor. Everything was as narrow as it seemed livably possible. On one end was my room, with my mom’s room on the opposite side, with a hall, bathroom, closets, and a stairwell running down the middle between them.

The bottom floor was a similar layout, just with a front kitchen and back living room instead of bedrooms. The walls and cabinets on both floors were made up of dark wood paneling, probably made for someone who liked living in a cave.

In the kitchen, I opened the fridge and cabinet doors. Not because I was hungry yet, but just to feel how they felt. The absence of anything besides a box of cereal and half a jug of milk didn’t make me feel particularly hungry.

What we didn’t lack were boxes. Most of them hadn’t made it out of the entryway, there by the kitchen and dining area. Despite what my mom had said, I was going to have to open them up and move them about to find out which stuff was mine.

But at that rate, unpacking them regardless of contents was going to be the obvious thing to do. I think if it looked like I made an effort in sorting out my things, then mom wouldn’t think that I was just bored at home all day. That way, she could worry about something productive for once.

Beneath my mom’s clothes and books, and kitchen gadgets, I found a box that was lighter than the others. When I saw the colorful jumble of fur beneath the cardboard flaps, I knew why it weighed so little. My collection of stuffed animals had come with me, despite my desire to just leave behind the dregs of my childhood. After all, most of them had been given to me by my dad during or after one of my long bouts of sickness. But they were here anyway, and they had to go somewhere.

The one room I had yet to even give any attention was mine, likely because it didn’t even seem like mine. At that moment, the only sign of my stake in there was my bed. But obviously, several people, families, had probably lived in this narrow little apartment before me and my mom. There were a few scuffs on the wood paneling, a faded stain on the carpet, a reddish pen mark near the baseboard, worn-down edges on the closet door from being tugged open and closed countless times.

If I had been a few years younger, I would have been afraid to open the doors of a dark, supposedly empty closet for fear of something hiding in there. But the only thing hiding behind the wide, dark sliding door was the faint odor of musky clothes that had long been cleared out. It was more than big enough for all my clothes, plus it had a shelf for storing things out of the way. The lonesome stuffed animals surely needed to be out of the way.

I lifted the box of old memories up as high as I could and tried to shove it in, the view above my line of sight. It met something partway in, refusing to go any further. Even with some shuffling, the box refused to slide all the way back. I managed to find a workable spot a little ways down, but the blockage was still there. With toes pushed into the carpet like a ballerina, and hands flailing against the shelf above, I was able to graze the edge of something slim and rectangular. With a slight jump, my fingers were able to finally rake it forward. With another jump, I managed to fling it out and down to my feet, a standard composition notebook.

Apart from a little dust on the dark cover, it seemed completely unused. I sat back down on my bed, wiping it down before flipping it open. Maybe it had a name written inside. Instead, a few pages in, my eyes fell upon the curly symbols, concentric circles, scribbles of numbers, and a handful of letters that didn’t seem like English or anything like it. About a quarter of the pages were filled in with these writings before abruptly ending.

I flipped through the pages again, looking for anything else that could have identified an owner, but found nothing. With hunger suddenly coming to me, I tossed the book back on my bed and headed downstairs.