Distract my hunger

by X. Williamson

  Parties extended themselves up until 8 in the morning, curfews were nearly non-existent and an inherent sensuality was present in every aspect of the Buenos Aires’ culture. Let me tell you a secret: women dress up for almost everything! And believe me when I tell you they know how to do it! Fashion statements are expressed on a daily basis in B.A. Make-up and fab-hair was a complete must.

  Another interesting thing was how people interacted with each other; they tended to do so in a very visceral manner, everything spices emotions from everyone. Everyday life with Argentineans was totally hot! Just imagine, something I had no interest in being a part of became any teenager’s dream: “party all night, meet interesting people, and do as you will, all with very few boundaries”. Of course we had limits, but, just as I learnt . . . rules were only made to be bent.

  By the time my foster parents’ time in South America was finished I was so in love with this country and its surroundings that I decided to stay and finish school here, but here I’m getting ahead of my story.

  * * *

  My first year in this new country was quite difficult for me; it was a different country, continent and climate and I’m not even talking about the adjustments I had to do in order to fit into my new high school! Still, I managed and by the end of the year I was a completely normal student of “Los Plátanos” one of the most exclusive and posh schools in B.A.

  My new school was just in the outskirts of the city but still in the district called “Gran Buenos Aires”. It was an impressive building, four stories high with dark brick walls. The builders probably copied a very English style of construction with pointy tower-like constructions at the top. It looked very sophisticated at plain sight, it was completely gorgeous.

  The windows were all white rimmed and looked constantly newly painted. Every classroom had high ceilings with carefully sculpted decorations adding a very posh feeling to the place. Vast corridors with impeccably polished floors run through the building like veins, they were lined with deep blue-coloured lockers and coat closets everywhere. I must admit that even though I was not fond of the idea of coming to B.A at the beginning my first impression of the school building was quite positive.

  Since I was used to move around quite a bit, I was not as scared of my new classmates as another kid would be. Thank God on my decent social skills! This is one of the few things I attribute Greta and Thomas for, and I’m really glad I could learn these from them. They made the very difficult process of adapting something slightly less painful.

  The pathway that went from the front iron gates towards the main building was lined with different kinds of very tall, old trees. Cypresses and planes grew at each side of the main pathway making it one of the prettiest entrances I’ve ever seen. During springtime, a quite windy season in this part of the world, their branches rocked back and forth as in a constant lullaby. While in autumn the planes leaves changed in colour and repainted the whole scenery. They added a very dream like quality to the place.

  Deep green sports fields extended themselves behind and around the building. The vast green grass was always perfect looking and impeccably kept. Even after a hockey or rugby match! Student life was quite sports inclined being those two I just mentioned the schools favourites.

  Just as you might imagine, most students there looked just as if they had escaped from “Vogue” magazine; they were fashionable, sleek, slender and extremely sexy. Everyone dressed completely à la mode, making sure that their school uniform looked completely tailor-made. Either the school-shop made blazers as good as Armani’s or I believe they got them from an impeccable designer elsewhere.

  Sculpted bodies and perfect hair were almost mandatory. Can you just imagine the amount of free time everyone spent at the gym, spa and hairdresser?! When I just got there I felt completely underdressed and dishevelled. We all wore the same uniform but I was not even halfway polished. Thank God I made new friends very quick despite that. I might have started off with a somewhat unkempt aura but in matter of a few weeks I was already trained to fix my make-up and polish my nails during break-time. My almost barbaric sense of fashion became much more refined day after day.

  I learnt the tricks of how to keep my skin perfect and make my hair look glossier amongst tons of other beauty secrets for my daily regime. Olive oil became something I used not only for my salad, and sugar became used for other things than desserts. Cardio became as important as brushing my teeth and a good manicure was as mandatory as combing my hair. Those habits once acquired tend to stick; I must admit that all this personal care was sometimes exhausting but my looks improved 100% and this fashion mania somewhat managed to continue in my routine for the following years.

  Perhaps the first two years there, I was just a regular student, with nothing different from the rest (if you are wondering: no, I was not exactly like I’m now, I was not an adult vampire—and had no idea I was someday to become one). But sometime maybe while I was there or maybe later things started to change ever so slightly, building up slowly like a boiling cauldron. Then finally the unstoppable chain of events that continued until I became what I am now where triggered sometime during the summer of my 17th birthday.

  My foster-parents were going to leave for Austria after that summer, so they were travelling constantly with their preparations for their move. As I mentioned before, I had convinced them to let me stay my senior year so I could finish high school with my friends. They didn’t care much about what I did, so besides the mandatory complaints they were supposed to have, they didn’t make much of a fuss. I believe they were even glad that I wanted to stay, deep down, they wanted to be alone again.

  Thomas decided to spend the last summer “as a family”, I’m sure he believed that it would make us look like a family, just like his social environment expected it to be. Of course neither he nor Greta planned on staying much with me. My freedom was in absolutely no peril.

  That summer as well as the previous ones we went on vacation to “Punta del Este” in Uruguay, a neighbouring country, just like most of my classmates. My foster family rented a fabulous house just in front of the beach. It had beautiful reddish-brown brick walls and high red-tiled ceilings. The windows were enormous, it seamed the sun filtered every ray of summer through those glass-panes and warmed every corner of the place.

  The garden was an extensive masterpiece with its golf-court like lawns and man-made perfect smooth hills extended all around the astonishing estate. At the back more artificial hills surrounded a beauty of a pool. Blue lilies edged the kidney shaped pool and seemed to mimic the movement of the water produced by the artificial waterfall that crowned it.

  The house itself had five big bedrooms disposed within the two floor estate, a little bit too much for our small three member family and our maid.

  The dance clubs where fantastic, dancing echoed to the intense techno waves imposed by the appointed DJ until morning was set and summer heat exploded with its gold shimmer within the dance floor. My friends and I were admitted to any place we wanted, teens have no problem getting into dance clubs in some countries; it was just plain wild heaven.

  By mid January when my creamy complexion acquired a subtle tan, the “changes” began.

  I started to experience awful headaches, well, perhaps something more like migraines that would cripple me at the single sight of light to be more precise. Not just plain daylight, but any type of light. Light bulbs became the enemy; surfing the net became unthinkable and even grabbing a midnight snack from the fridge became an ordeal.

  I then started to become more irritable, perhaps even a little violent, which I obviously attributed to my headaches, I just figured that feeling crippled by something as stupid as a headache could make anyone go berserk. My solution to this was to wear my sunglasses 24/7, this helped but it also cost me my “parents” believing I was into drugs. Add to these new everyday accessories my new violent behaviour and voila! Let’s say they got convinced.

  Any parent figure tends to associat
e the continuous use of sunglasses with drug abuse; and believe me, once that THAT gets into their heads it is IMPOSSIBLE to convince them otherwise. I blame it on the media. Every messed-up celebrity that decides to fall into chemical claws appears constantly with . . . guess what? Sunglasses! Just my freaking luck . . . Anyway, that’s just a side story from the important one, so let me get back on track.

  The next thing I started to experience (or perhaps it was the first I just don’t remember) was the hunger . . . This was extremely odd because I craved for something and I just didn’t know what it was! At the beginning I was so confused: I could have craved for food, sex, love, loneliness, companionship, or anything else; I wanted something so bad I felt like an addict but I didn’t know my drug. Then, the dreams began . . .

  Someone was calling for me, or something, or maybe it was just a trapped part of my self; and it was enticing and so scary at the same time. Just like doing your heart’s desire when you know it is completely wrong. I dreamt of shadows and twililight, the colours blinding my senses and holding my heartbeat to a cloud of ruby. And that is the colour that started to be predominant in my dreams, deep, luscious, beautiful red.

  My dreams became scarlet; deep burgundy even at times. Red roses covered my eyelids, and crimson lilies appeared in every corner of my mind’s eye.

  I remember quite vividly one of the first dreams that called my attention:

  I was alone and everything smelled like mid-summer afternoon. My footsteps were soft but steady, and I was walking; walking up the cobble-stones of a garden. It was a gorgeous yet half neglected English-style garden with wisteria and jasmine ornamenting two tall art deco columns by the main door. I was walking towards the main door and looked down. My pathway was adorned with cherry-coloured apple blossoms. I looked up and all flowers were turning red, even the jasmine blooms were a deep crimson now. I got to the immense mahogany double door and it opened just as I touched it, I crept into the house and right in front of me was a long wooden table with a large vase full of flowers. I couldn’t quite tell what kind they were so I walked towards them; they were huge, perfect, blood-red irises. As beautiful as nothing I’d ever seen before. I stretched my hand and touched one petal; it became soft and liquid under my touch and stained my fingers. The petals melted and became warm and thick as they transformed into a paint-like substance that made my fingertips look very red. It looked so real and thick, like something that throbbed in my mind’s eye. I let my fingers slide on each other and realized it looked . . . Just like blood.

  That’s when I woke up panting, I will never forget that dream, and I’m still looking for that house.

  Other things also started changing in me, many of my senses started to be hipper sensitive perhaps because of my headaches and my lack of sleep (real, normal sleep I mean, not the dream infested, super active sleep I got), my hearing was enhanced, as well as my touch and my sense of smell to levels I thought were sometimes utterly unbearable. Just imagine the torture of public transport in summer!

  For moments I thought I was going insane! I couldn’t understand what was going on, and every time I thought that this was it and that nothing else was going to add to my weird symptoms, a new one appeared. Every time I started accepting things, saying “Ok girl, shit happens and nothing can get any worse”, something else started to change. Just as if plain adolescence wasn’t difficult enough!

  You think that going through teenage crushes, broken friendships, body changes and awful teachers is bad? Well imagine adding to all that my problems! If you picture that, you would still have no idea . . .

  Then things . . . just got worse. The pain appeared.

  A deep, revolting and excruciating pain started to develop within my abdomen. It was much sharper than a stomach-ache, and so much more unexpected than any pain that I had ever felt before in my short life. When the pain came, I imagined 20 knives stabbing my bowels and huge torches burning me within. I was rendered helpless at its merciless grasp. Out of breath and motionless I could not speak, I could not shout and after a while I couldn’t even hear.

  As you can probably imagine, I was taken to the finest doctors, but nobody could guess what ailed me. They said it was probably something psychosomatic buy they always had to run more tests. They x-rayed, CAT-scanned and examined me. They poked me with needles and filled me with fluids; they even tore pieces out of me to always run more tests. After a while I felt worse than a lab-rat and they could only conclude that I had some acute photo sensibility and a mild anaemia. Not exactly something that would match the horrible state I was actually in. Imagine living your worst nightmare and having that as the amazing diagnostic of highly renowned specialists. When they told me I only wanted to cry.

  Now, can you guess what I was prescribed besides avoiding extreme sun exposure? My sole prescription was an addition of “liver” in my diet, and to eat it as raw as possible. Yes, liver. Animal liver, sticky, stinky, foul looking liver. Not exactly what you would say delicious in my language (for the record, before this moment I was a just-about-to-become-a-vegetarian-and-very-proud-of-it) so you can imagine just how “thrilled” I was. Yummy liver-shake was the new breakfast for me.

  For a while, some of my symptoms seemed to decrease, though they never disappeared completely. They were shushed just to return as acute as ever after some days.

  My friends where scared to death with my condition, though they never really had the whole picture (I never told anyone about the dreams, the last thing I needed was to have them believe I was also bonkers).

  Alexia, my best friend was so upset that her huge, black-rimmed, hazel, almond-shaped eyes started to fog under a brim of tears every time she saw me.

  “Don’t worry cutie, you know you’ll keep my wardrobe if I die” I replied jokefully every time this happened, and it worked for she smiled and hugged me right after; never forgetting to tell me that she only needed to have her best friend healthy to be happy.

  Alexia was a bit of a drama queen on a daily basis, so having her “girl” sick and missing all the summer fun was a huge drama on its own. If to that we add the fact that everyone thought I had some kind of not-yet-discovered cancer or worse, my situation was a disastrous for her.

  Even in the moments her eyes were all dramatic and filled with tears, she looked gorgeous. She was one of those girls that never left her home without the mild enhancements of makeup; and being as fond of drama as she was she always made sure to keep some tissues handy and wear waterproof mascara. Her tiny slim body always reminded me of a cheerful pixie: always energetic and completely fragile looking.

  I can’t say that I’m very tall, but when I stood beside Alexia, her wispy shortish-brown hair barely got to my chin. Her hair was one of her cutest aspects; she had the silkiest brunette hair. It was cut in soft layers around her oval face, and since her hair was so weightless and mildly wavy it was always looking like a halo around her.

  A tinny nose crowned her pixie looks. She had a small, slightly upturned nose that was to die for! Once, she told me that they used to make fun of her as a kid for it, but as soon as she grew up it made her look sweet and sexy.

  Before that summer I was quite lucky with boys; I was invited to parties and I knew of one or two guys who had a crush on me. That was really good talk with Alexia on Friday nights! Sometimes she tried to convince me to go out with a couple of them, but underneath all the chatter and parties, I was not interested.

  There had been only one guy I liked, but he was not exactly that approachable.

  I saw him for the first time on my first week at school; my heart seemed to start doing somersaults on the very spot. Though I got to know him sometime after I first saw him, he never seemed available for dating. He never seemed to have a crush on me unlike the others I talked about with Alexia. Never, until some day I got lucky.

  My luck was such, that some months before this whole nightmare began I started dating this amazing guy.

  He was about a year or so older than me, and ad
ding that to the fact that he seemed so uninterested the whole thing seemed even less probable to begin with. I completely swooned over him anyway, and against all odds . . . it happened!

  When this crazy and bothersome “sickness” episode of my life happened I had already gone out with him for nearly two months. Things were going nice, slow and steady though no strange “boyfriend/girlfriend” titles were attached. Then, my “illness” just seemed to make things go faster.

  As I told you before we had friends in common, we went to the same parties and even went on vacation to the same place (yes, sweet summers in Punta del Este were shared every year). If I hadn’t liked him from the moment I first set my eyes on him this would have been a drag, he was everywhere!

  He belonged to the “in” crowd; he had the looks and a dazzling smile. His smile was the kind that just makes any girl melt and any guy want to be his pal. Perfect layers of white teeth sparkled as soon as he grinned. You felt you could trust that smile and just died to share it. He was one of those people that seemed to bring sunlight in the room as soon as they walk in. He was perfect but never cocky about it.

  I believe most if not all of my girlfriends had a secret crush on him even though he was not the most sociable of the pack. He was somewhat of a loner; we all believed he was just shy. It was a very attractive combination, gorgeous yet mysterious, completely addictive to be around!

  Our first date was on Halloween before that fatidic summer. Maria, one of our classmates was throwing a massive Halloween bash that year and we were all thrilled to go. By Thursday before the party night I still didn’t have my costume, and worst of all, I couldn’t even decide what I wanted to go dressed up as.

  I was generally very good in choosing my costumes; I loved any opportunity I had to be creative to the extreme with my apparel. Unfortunately that year, I was completely uninspired. I spent the entire week trying to decide what to go dressed as, but nothing really convinced me. It was then he, my loner-boy, who solved the puzzle for me.