Capture the World

CAPTURE THE WORLD

By R.K. Ryals

Copyright 2016 by R.K. Ryals

This book is a work of fiction.

Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Acknowledgements

This project touched my heart on so many levels. It took me deep into my soul and gave me hope. It was personal and real and beautiful. As always, I have an entire list of people to thank for not only being there for me, but for continuing to take this journey. To my husband, who never tries to fix me. He’s just there. I love you. To my sisters, you teach me new things every day. Without you, I would have no wings. To Audrey Welch, for being a pillar of support. To Christina Silcox, you make every book more and more special. Thank you for texting me as the characters and laughing with me, crying with me, and sharing with me. I love you. To Melissa Ringsted, because you aren’t just an editor, you are a friend. Always and forever. To Melissa Wright, because I’m not sure when this journey became so personal for us, but it’s created a lasting friendship I couldn’t live without. No thanks will ever be enough. To Alivia Anders for the cover of this book. There are no words to describe how beautiful it is. To everyone who supports these books, I love you. To Bree High, Elizabeth Kirke, Ashley Morgan, Alicia Lane Kirke,
Jessica Johnson, Lisa Markson, Nanette Bradford, Katherine Eccleston, Ashley Ubinger, Vicky Walters, Amy McCool, Julia Roop, Pyxi Rose, Alexis O’Shell, Anne Nelson, Jessie de Schepper, Derinda Love, Tina Donnelly, Jessica Leonard, Lynn Shaw, Leah Davis, Tangerine Oliver, Christi Durbin, Amanda Engelkes, Jeanine Walsh Palinkas and so many, many more. All of you inspire me! A special thank you to the Scribes! Thank you for following me, for sharing, and for your encouragement. It means so much. To the readers: I love you. Thank you always for taking these journeys with me.

For my niece, who lives in a world so much more beautiful than ours. And to those who are trying, like me, to capture the world, to hold on to it for a little while before it slips away.

PROLOGUE

A ROOM FULL of people stare at me.

The fear, the vulnerability, and the truth hit me so hard my knees threaten to buckle, but they don’t.

I remain standing and stare back. Because I can.

My gaze strays to the wall, to a line of familiar faces. There isn’t a place on my body that isn’t weeping. Sweat is nervous tears.

“I’ve got a confession to make,” I say, trying inconspicuously to wipe my palms down the sides of my pants. I remember to make eye contact and fight to hold it. “I didn’t want to tell this story. I didn’t want to do any of it because this story, like my mother’s mind, is complicated. There are all of these different parts, and they play into something so much bigger.
Way
bigger than me, and I’m afraid I’m going to tell it wrong, that I’m going to mess it up, and then this—
all of
this—
won’t be important anymore. That it will seem less than what it is.

“So, I’m going to let the story speak for itself. I’m going to let it say things I can’t. It’s a broken story told in broken parts. Because that’s how people are made, right? They’re made in parts, like a puzzle or a Mr. Potato Head.”

The audience chuckles, throwing me off, and I clear my throat. “I’m what my mother and this life made me. Little pieces of broken things all glued together. I am part real world, part my mother’s world, part paper world, and—the part I least expected—his world. It took all of that, all of these parts for me to
capture
the world, to hold onto it, and to keep it with me a while.

“Take a moment and capture it with me.”

ONE

The intro

I AM IN a tunnel, hiding. Or escaping, maybe? I’m not sure which.

The tunnel is dark, and it echoes. Angry words leap at me from all directions.

Where, in all the world, is there a tunnel like this that echoes? What country am I in? What town? The United States? The subway system in New York City?

Ugh!

Why can’t this be easy for me like it is for my mother? Why can’t I escape inside of my head like she does? Forget everything and everyone.

I drop all of the games. This isn’t a tunnel; it’s the upstairs hallway. The angry voices belong to my family.
 

The stairs creak beneath my feet, but no one hears it.

Through the railing, I see them, their features pronounced under the glare of the kitchen lights. Tired. Troubled. Defeated.

“Damn it, Trish! We need to talk about this. Tonight. She isn’t getting any better. If anything …” Uncle Bobby sits at the kitchen table, head falling to his hands. A thick, brown beard laced with grey covers the psoriasis on his face. He scratches at it. “Think about Reagan.”

“I am,” Aunt Trish replies.

Uncle Bobby peers up at her, determined. “The home is nice. She’d be happy, and we wouldn’t have to worry so much about,” he takes an audible, shaky breath, a lungful of burdens, “everything.”

I sit on the stairs and hug my knees, heart bleeding.

“She’s getting worse,” he points out.

He doesn’t have to say it like that, as if there isn’t any hope.

Silent tears drip, drip onto my bare legs; heart blood on flesh. A car passes on the road outside the window, and I lean back, away from the glaring headlights. Thunder rumbles. Forked lightning strikes the earth. No rain. Mother Nature takes steady photographs of the moment, the chasing booms shaking the house.

“It’s the end of the world!” my mother screams from her room.

I hightail it to her door. “Shh,” I soothe, entering slowly. “Mama?” On the bed, she rocks back and forth, eyes wild. “It’s just thunder.”

She looks at me, and her eyes change, softening. “Did I ever tell you about the time I went to Paris?”

She’s never been to Paris.

Climbing onto the bed next to her, I let her pull me into her embrace. She hugs me too hard, but I stay there, sucking in to compensate, and breathe in the scent of her—sweet tea and honey—my gaze on the pictures she’s drawn on the bedroom walls. Pictures of the world.

“Being on top of the Eiffel Tower is like flying,” she whispers against my hair. “I flew with the birds once, over the tourists’ heads. There’s a lot of bread in France, I think. I smelled a lot of bread.”

“It’s the City of Love,” I murmur.

“Of love,” Mom repeats, over and over again.

She’s warm, and I snuggle closer. My body is so cold, from the inside out. I am a block of ice.

Downstairs, Uncle Bobby and Aunt Trish quit fighting and listen.

“You’re crying.” Mom pulls me away and frames my face, her thumbs brushing the wetness there. “You’re crying.”

“No, Mama. I’m okay.” My hands cover hers. “Everything is okay, I promise.”

We’re in France, and we’re flying. It smells like bread and feels like love. In France, I feel warm.

I don’t want them to take that away from me.

I don’t want them to take away what she has become
for
me.

I don’t want them to take away the world.

TWO

My mother’s world

Ancient Greece

MOM FLIES INTO my room, like a bird. With actual wings. Glittery fairy wings. The kind the superstore in town sells right before Halloween. It’s not Halloween, and the wings are all twisted. Most of the glitter is gone. Mom doesn’t care.

“My beautiful jewel!” she sings. “Let’s fly together!” Arms flutter, up and down.

“Where are we going?” I ask.

She stands behind me, hands over my hands, and we fly in tandem. Arms fluttering. Even though I know she’s a bird despite the fairy wings, I am a butterfly. I like those best. Butterflies are magic.

“Greece when it was ancient,” she breathes into my ear. Her breath fans my neck, wind against my butterfly wings. “Gods rule the world. We charge down from Mount Olympus, soaring over an ocean poured from a teal paint can. A beach of frosted white glass glares at us. Poseidon is dancing in the waves, cloaked in a watery tuxedo. Beckoning. Do you see it?”

I see it because she does.

Teal paint everywhere. Glass and paint and gods.

“Over cursed Athens, where Poseidon grows angry because olives were more important to the people than salt water.” Laughing, she dances with me, spouting more facts about the Greek gods. She is a fountain of giggling knowledge, facts, and lessons. Smart but naïve. Frail but strong.

“Come on now!” my Aunt Trish calls from downstairs. “It’s time to go.”

Giggling, Mom mimics her, still dancing. Her laughter is contagious. Our amusement rises to the ceiling, captured there forever.

“You’re going to be late for school, Reagan.” My aunt’s voice is closer, louder, and irritated. When she finds us, she sighs, and the air drinks the exhale. “Take off the wings,” she tells Mom.

Mom frowns, but does as Trish asks, removing the wings and then smiling again as if she was never upset in the first place.

Sun pours into the room, making the pale green walls glow. We are in a forest. In a Greece that is fading.

“Reagan,” Aunt Trish urges.

Grabbing my backpack, I thunder down the stairs toward the door. Toward the world my mother has forgotten.