Czytaj książkę: «The Book of Tomorrow»

CHAPTER ONE Field of Buds

They say a story loses something with each telling. If that is the case, this story has lost nothing, for it’s the first time it’s been told.

This story is one for which some people will have to suspend their disbelief. If I wasn’t me and this wasn’t happening to me, I would be one of those people.

Many won’t struggle to believe it, though, for their minds have been opened; unlocked by whatever kind of key causes people to believe. Those people are either born that way or, as babies, when their minds are like little buds, they are nurtured until their petals slowly open and prepare for the very nature of life to feed them. As the rain falls and the sun shines, they grow, grow, grow; minds so open, they go through life aware and accepting, seeing light where there’s dark, seeing possibility in dead ends, tasting victory as others spit out failure, questioning when others accept. Just a little less jaded, a little less cynical. A little less likely to throw in the towel. Some people’s minds open later in life, through tragedy or triumph. Either thing acting as the key to unlatch and lift the lid on that know-it-all box, to accept the unknown, to say goodbye to pragmatism and straight lines.

But then there are those whose minds are merely a bouquet of stalks, which bud as they learn new information—a new bud for a new fact—but yet they never open, never flourish. They are the people of capital letters and full stops, but never of question marks and ellipses…

My parents were those kinds of people. The know-it-all kind. The ‘if it’s not in a book or I haven’t heard it anywhere before then don’t be ridiculous’ kind. Straight thinkers with heads filled with the most beautifully coloured buds, so neatly manicured and so sweetly scented but which never opened, were never light or dainty enough to dance in the breeze; upright and rigid, so matter-of-fact, they were buds till the day they died.

Well, my mother isn’t dead.

Not yet. Not medically, but if she is not dead, she is certainly not living. She’s like a walking corpse that hums every once in a while as though testing herself to see if she’s still alive. From far away you’d think she’s fine. But up close and you can see that the bright pink lipstick is a touch uneven, her eyes are tired and soulless, like one of those TV show houses on studio lots—all façade, nothing of substance behind. She moves around the house, drifting from room to room in a dressing gown with loosely flapping bell sleeves, as though she’s a southern belle on a mansion ranch in Gone with the Wind, worrying about worrying about it all tomorrow. Despite her graceful swanlike room-to-room drifts, she’s kicking furiously beneath the surface, thrashing around trying to keep her head up, flashing us the occasional panicked smile to let us know she’s still here, though it does nothing to convince us.

Oh, I don’t blame her. What a luxury it must be to disappear as she has, leaving everyone else to sweep up the mess and salvage whatever fragments of life are left.

I haven’t told you a thing yet, you must be very confused.

My name is Tamara Goodwin. Goodwin. One of those awful phrases I despise. It’s either a win or it’s not. Like ‘bad loss’, ‘hot sun’, or ‘very dead’. Two words that come together unnecessarily to say whatever could be said solely by the second. Sometimes when telling people my name I drop a syllable: Tamara Good, which is ironic as I’ve never been anything of the sort, or Tamara Win, which mockingly suggests good luck that just isn’t so.