Chapter 1
“Cariño, it is just a nightmare, calm down.”
Miraya, a woman in her mid-thirties sat on her daughter’s bed trying to console the poor girl who had just awakened after a terrifying nightmare. Frightened, she took heavy breaths and refused to be comforted by a motherly touch, which had done nothing but bring her to dismay.
It wasn’t the first time.
Her daughter, Alexandra, was a teenage girl of seventeen years old who had nightmares every night and she always woke up terrified, but that particular morning, she woke up with a loud scream that echoed around their entire house.
She woke up scared stiff, and she sat on her bed with a pale face. Her sheets scattered and the blanket crumpled to her chest while her heart kept beating erratically.
Her light-green eyes were wild with terror, her long blonde hair was scattered around her face, with a few stray strands that fell to her sheets.
As soon as Miraya entered her daughter’s room, she became agitated, and her attempt to calm her down failed.
“Joder! Siempre me dices eso,” Alexandra blurted out. ‘Fuck! You always tell me that’
Her mother had been telling her the exact same thing for a long time, and instead of the words helping her calm down, it was only annoying her.
“No uses esa palabra conmigo!” Miraya retorted. ‘Don’t use that word with me!’
Her face flushing as a response to her daughter’s choice of words. The woman had a strict warning about swearing in her house, and Alexandra had no reason to be exempted from it.
“I’m sorry,” Alexandra muttered an apology under her breath. Even though she had been experiencing nightmares for years, she had never grown accustomed to them, and they usually left her mind in a frenzied daze.
“Puedes recordar lo que pasó en tu sueño?”
‘Can you remember what happened in your dream?’
Miraya asked her, curious to know what her daughter had dreamt of that left her in such a stun, but as always, Alexandra could never remember all the details from the dream after she awoke, but every single detail always came back to her the day after.
“I have forgotten ma. Only a few details.” She uttered stammering.
“Look,” Miraya let out a sigh, understanding that her daughter didn’t want to recall anything.
“When your father comes back, we’ll talk to him about it, okay?”
Before Miraya even uttered those words, Alexandra already knew what she was going to say. It was an ability of hers, foreshadowing what a person was most likely to say, but it was probably just all in her head
All Alexandra did was shut her eyes and nod her head in response, because she knew her father wasn’t going to do anything about her dreams. He would always listen to every detail and pat her back afterwards, but would tell her to never speak of them again because they were meaningless.
But in contrast to what her father presumed, she believed her dreams meant something because they were vivid and she could remember every detail but she didn’t know what they meant to her.
“Venga! Prepárate. Recuerda, es tu primer día de bachillerato.” Miraya remarked in an intent to lighten up her daughter’s mood. ‘C’mon! Get prepared. Remember, it’s your first day of high school.’
It was indeed Alexandra’s first day of high school in a new school but not her first time. It was, in fact, her fourth year. She had been changing schools since she was a little girl courtesy of her father who always insisted on them moving from one place to another because of his job.
Her mother, Miraya, never knew what her husband, Farruko, did for a living, but as long as they ended up with food on their table, a roof over their heads, and a good education for their daughter, she couldn’t care less. They never settled down in any place or state, they always had to move, and because of this, Alexandra never had a steady education but she always hoped that she would, one day.
Her family had just moved to New York, and they’d lived there for only two weeks, yet to her, it felt like she had lived there for months. It felt like any other place she had been to and therefore, didn’t expect much difference.
“Venga! No quieras llegar tarde a tu primer día.” Miraya uttered while walking out of Alexandra’s room. ‘C’mon! You do not want to be late on your first day.’
She didn’t want her daughter to be late on her first day, besides the food she prepared had probably lost its warmth already.
"Okay... I get it, Mom. Speak in English, I told you it will help me learn quicker.” Alexandra said raising her pale voice so that her mother could hear her, since Miraya had already exited her room.
“Okay,” Miraya shouted from the living room, assuring Alexandra that she had heard her.
Alexandra spared a quick glance to the frame resting upon her nightstand. It contained a picture of her and her parents. They had happy grins plastered across her faces, and it brought her back to the time where they were truly happy, with no problems surrounding them. The photo was taken in front of her old house back in her home country.
The first time Alexandra left Colombia, where she was born, was when her father decided that they migrate to the United States because he had gotten a job offer that was too good to resist, after he had been searching for a good job that was capable of taking great care of his family. Since then, it had been three years already and she was still in the United States, even though her father had promised to take her back to Colombia a year later before they arrived.
She missed Colombia, she missed everything back in her home country, but she also knew how much her father’s job meant to him and she never wanted to take that away from him. So she complied to her father’s decision, but believed that she’ll be going back soon. Little did she know that it was just the beginning of her stay.
