#46 UNDER THE WAVES
Easter Holidays were approaching. This year these holidays were quite late, in April. Everyone at school already enjoyed the atmosphere and talked about what they are going to do with their free time. There is even a catchword in Poland: “Prove what is more important: Christmas or Easter Days?”, if you don't know the order. Easter is one of the most important celebratory in Poland and you could feel it in the air.
-And you, Mia, what do you associate with Easter holidays? – asked Justyna, one of the classmates and looked curious at her friend. Mia looked at her and pushed her book a little further away from her.
-What do I associate with Easter? –She repeated the question and for the first time she had no prepared an answer for it. She scratched her forehead and after a short break said:
-When I was a little child, we celebrated Easter with my parents. I helped baking cakes: I helped to melt the butter, put a full hand of raisins into the cake mass. At this time, I sat on the floor of mum’s kitchen where you had a fascinating coal range. Of course, painting eggs belonged to my main duties. Sometimes we used the old way to paint: an onion, beetroot and grass. How ecological!
-Oh! – Justyna was involved. – Did you blow eggs, too? I wasn't really good at it, my sister was much better, and I was always wondering how she was doing it. But I painted them colourful.
-And we sometimes even stole eggs! – said Magda.
Mia noticed that girls were pleased by having even a short conversation with her. Last time Mia didn't talk much. She never talked much, but it was getting even worse during the last weeks. Nobody knew what was going on with her, but somehow this attitude didn't annoy anybody. She looked just tired and sometimes you had the impression that she would fall asleep during boring lessons.
She got a medical certificate that she wasn't allowed to participate in school sports and she could go home earlier. However, she usually stayed for these lessons and watched her classmates playing basketball or volleyball. You almost envied her for not being allowed to take part in sports. Before, she sometimes played with them, but she wasn't a good player. She never knew where the ball was and whom she should play it to.
Because of Easter Holidays, everyone was glad and excited. It was a free time and you could do with it whatever you wanted to do. Just Mia wasn't so pleased about it. She should spend the complete time alone. Even running wouldn't help much. Knowing that Jonas had her grandmother was already a continuous missile that shot her every morning.
Then Sebastian called her and asked whether she had time to spend Easter with him. Mia didn't know what to answer. She liked him very much, but it was impossible to spend Easter with him and his family. She was so not a family-girl!
Sebastian said something that changed the whole situation:
-I have no family. My parents died, when I was a boy. I invited Julian, too. He has no family, either.
Mia answered she would think about it. She had never been so unsure of what to do before. It was a shock for her that Sebastian, a person who was so sociable, was an orphan. She wanted to know how he was brought up and how his parents died, but it wouldn't be polite to step by and ask this kind of question. She didn't want to be asked in this way, either, and she assumed that he was similar.
Moreover, Mia felt strange thinking about spending the time with two boys who were very important for her. She loved them both in different ways. She came to this conclusion some days ago when she was lying in her bed starring at a camera in her room. She had just returned from a visit to Jonas and she was tired. This time he didn't cut her, he barely slapped her and it was a weird change. Mia was happy about it, but she was searching for reasons. Nothing happened without a reason and such a calculated and mean person like Jonas had to have a reason to behave the way he did. From the very moment she came into the dark and large room, Jonas had observed her with a different expression in his eyes. He came to her smiling with satisfaction.
Mia had no clue what he was thinking and why he was so pleased.
Then he pushed her on a wall and as she fell on the floor after she crushed with the wall, Jonas smiled even more.
-You can rest quickly. That is impressive. – Jonas said observing her successful effort to stand up.
Mia didn't answer; instead, she stood straight again. She was like a soldier who is waiting for commands.
Jonas came to her rapidly and then he went away with the same incredible speed. He was a step aside from the opposite wall and started to walk here and back. He was thinking about something. Every now and then, he looked at her and he touched his cheeks with his right hand. His left arm laid on his chest. There was something in her, which changed his attitude. Mia was reflecting her past, but she wasn't able to concentrate as long as she was here, in his company, in the danger zone.
Jonas jumped and was almost in front of her. There were just some steps, which separated them. His aggression was written in his eyes, but his face stayed calm and controlled.
Mia wished she could be so cruel and mean as he was. She wanted to slap him back and see how he would react. Maybe he felt her attitude, because he slapped her as if she were a matchstick. She was almost broken into two parts. The pain in her stomach took control over her mind and she felt nothing but something tumbling in her tummy. She hoped her ribs were OK. Everything else was already infected with the pain syndrome. She fell on her knees and hugged herself.
Jonas went again to the opposite side of the room and was unsettled. He apparently wasn't sure what to do. On the one hand, he was smiling like a winner, and then he was afraid of something. While he was moving from one end of the room to the other, Mia tried to persuade herself that the slap wasn't so heavy and her body should not be sending so many negative signals to her head.
She didn't even notice when he appeared next to her and bowed himself over her.
-We finished for today. Go home.
His words sounded like crushed ice thrown into a cocktail. It was the first time when she was glad to hear his voice. However, she wasn't able to stand up fast; she took her time. In the meanwhile, Jonas left the room without saying anything else.
With fever and pulsating pictures which her mind perceived by looking around, Mia finally managed to leave the room and stood in the corridor. Two of Jonas bodyguards grasped her arms and pulled her to the black BMW. They didn't help her to get in, they just threw her into the cabin as if she was a piece of something and not a human. Nobody waited until she clasped the belt, the car was already in motion. Mia wasn't able to put anything on her stomach right now. She felt unwell and she was physically sick. She was embarrassed by puking in his car, because even in such a situation she wanted to keep good manners. She wasn’t able to control her body anymore. Afterwards she used her sweater’s sleeves to remove the vomit from her lips.
When they finally got to her street, one of the bodyguards opened her door and waited until she slowly got out of the car. The world still looked fuzzy, and she needed to steady herself on the house walls to reach her apartment. It was as if she climbed the Mount Everest: it took long until she achieved her goal and she was exhausted.
Mia opened the door and stepped in. She stayed in the hall a longer while and breathed deeply. When she was able to move again, she got into her room and took other clothes from the wardrobe. Then she went at a snail's pace to the bathroom. She filled cold-water into the bath tube and took her sweater and jeans off. The sweater landed directly in the washing machine. Her pants were lying messily at the floor. She stepped into the bath and the cold water was gingering her up. She was lying there and looked at the opposite wall without any expression in her eyes or in her heart. Everything was so. Whatever right now!
She let herself fall and in the next moment, she was totally under the water surface. She opened her eyes and watched the water’s surface from below. Mia didn't feel the cold stitching her body from everywhere. She felt her fever was going away, and instead there was a feeling of flying.
She kept her breath in and her eyes were still open. She didn't move, she didn't come to the surface to breathe in again, she was just lying there in the water and she wasn't even able to think. After a moment, she saw Sebastian looking at her. He was apparently worried about her, was talking to her, but she didn't understand what he said. Mia didn't react. She didn’t feel any happiness or joy seeing him. She was rather astonished about what she saw. Then Sebastian changed into Julian. He was nervous and worried even more than Sebastian before. Mia tried to smile at him, but she didn’t want to move. It felt so cosy here now. She could stay here forever.
Her pain went away and her body started to become solid like a stone. In addition, her body became heavier and heavier. Mia wasn't able to move her hand and wave at Julian who was still looking at her. Then Julian disappeared into black. Water wasn't noticeable anymore. Mia was in a black vacuum and there was nothing around her. Only the black colour...
Suddenly a bright point started to shine in front of her. Mia tried to smile, but she could not. Her body became a part of this black mass and it didn't react the way Mia intended. This fact didn't scare her at all. Everything was still so whatever-like.
Then she saw her own face looking at her. It was a bright, thin face, calm and friendly. Mia’s last thought was that she was dreaming. In addition, she wanted to stop dreaming. She wanted to stop running away. Her face was smiling gracious at her. In the background, she could hear a song:
I wouldn't know just how capable I am to pull through
So I want to say thank you
'Cause it makes me that much stronger
Makes me work a little bit harder
It makes me that much wiser
So thanks for making me a fighter
Made me learn a little bit faster
Made my skin a little bit thicker
Makes me that much smarter
So thanks for making me a fighter
Somehow she got a breath.
Mia sat in the bathtub, she was trembling and coughing heavily. She felt she got cold and her lungs demanded more fresh air, more oxygen. Slowly she stood up and went out of the bathtub. She noticed that she was still wearing her underwear and a cotton shirt. She was still catching for breath and her first thought was that she was a very stupid person. Did she mean to kill herself or did she not? What was she doing? She was shocked and now she felt the cold and needed to warm up. Her whole body was trembling and her arms were white-grey. She took a towel and covered herself with it. She sat down at the bath and let warm water coming out. Then she put her hands under the warm stream, which brought life back into her veins. However, she didn't let herself go once again into the water. She was scared by her own action.
When her hands were quite warm, she took the towel off and dressed. While she was naked, she looked at her stomach and it was blue. The rest of her body was still ashen-coloured. Just this one slap of Jonas stayed as a souvenir on her skin.
Earlier she had some nice, suitable sweaters. Since she met Jonas, she bought three long pullovers that covered everything what should stay hidden. She looked now rather like a wannabe-rapper from California than old Mia. She wondered how she would hide Jonas’s traces when summer comes. Assuming she will survive until then.
After Mia left the bathroom, she made herself a warm cacao and went to her own room. She laid down in her clothes and slippers on the bed. Mia thought everything through once again and even more extensively. She realized that these two boys were very important to her and she had to fight for her hopes, for her dreams, for her future. With or without them, but she had to fight. Every meeting with Jonas should make her stronger, thicker and wiser. Was this the lesson she had to learn today?
The morning could come. She was prepared.