Now, for ten long years Leilani has been on her own. She feels completely alone in this world that isn't hers anymore, alone in a world that changed into something it should never have been. But these thoughts drive her crazy, they make her feel guilty - because all around her she sees happiness and there's so much love, only not for her. Never for her, she knows. The first few months were the hardest because everyone thought she was crazy. No matter who she told the story to, they all looked at her the same way, with a mixture of sadness and pity in their eyes. They'd tell her how she was so young still, that help could be sought. And she tried - god, how she tried. She changed jobs, she changed boyfriends, she moved to a different place - everything still felt off. She saw therapists, who thought her no less crazy than any other person she'd talked to about what's inside her. They'd prescribed her pills, and more pills, and they'd analyze her endlessly. A few of them even suggested that she would benefit from being committed to the psych ward for a while. That's when she stopped going to the therapists, and learned how to keep her mouth shut. But Leilani cries all the time, not a day goes by where she doesn't find herself openly weeping. Often at home, but sometimes at work. Neither her bosses nor her parents know what to do with her, or how to help her. They try, her mother and father do. They come around to hers often, and talk to her. They ask her if she's planning on killing herself, and she doesn't know how to tell them that she had been preparing to die on that day ever since she was a child. They always ask her why she doesn't just live, but her reply is blank silence. One day, some months after all this had started, her parents take her to a place they have up north, somewhere she hasn't been for a long, long time. It's a small house on a very small village, the house her father had grown in, and her grandparents before him. As far as she can recall, she had only been there two or three times before, and the last time was when her grandpa died. She had never felt the urge to return, but for some reason she can't explain, she feels like this could be a good thing.
On their way there they stop on a local general store, and they get her some supplies to see her through the next few weeks. The short drive from there to the house is a peaceful one, and Leilani starts looking forward to her time here. Maybe distance is what she needed, maybe being here, so far removed from everything she knows, will give her fresh perspective. Maybe. When they arrive, she suddenly remembers everything about that house, she knows where the fireplace is, she can remember being a child and being completely transfixed about the logs spitting and hissing in the fire. Her grandmother would always have a pot hanging over the fire then, ready to serve them tea piping hot. She remembers her grandmother, heartbroken as she held on to her husband's hand. She hid behind her parents, and peeked from behind - she whished she could go and comfort her grandmother, but she couldn't. She always felt bad for that, and she never even got to apologise to her. She too left not long after. They get out of the car, and after her dad opens the door to the house - it's dusty, and motes hang in the air - they throw the windows open to let some light and fresh hair in. Her father clutches the keys, then hands them to her. It's hers now, he says, and she can feel he's emotional. This place means a lot to him, she knows that. It's always been his desire to one day retire and spend the rest of his days here with his family. Her parents shoo her off the kitchen, and tell her to go pick a room. She can have any room of her choosing, her dad says. She leaves the kitchen, and there's a small hallway that leads to a couple of different bedrooms - one was her dad's when he was a kid, and the other was her grandparent's. She goes to the toilet first, and as she sits down to have a wee, she feels the bitter cold of the toilet seat seeping into her. It takes her mind to that day again, that day she expected to feel such cold that the sky wept snowflakes. She needs to cry, but not now. Her parents can't see her cry. She doesn't want them to.
After she settles in, and after the assures her parents that she'll be fine alone for a while here, they make their way back home, and they leave her money for any emergency that might come her way, and on the garage - tiny though it was - there were a couple of bikes she could use to get around. She waves her parents goodbye, looking at their car as it moves out from her view. She goes back inside, and now takes a proper good look at the house. There's a lot of cleaning to be done, but she has plenty of time. 'Better get to it, then.', she thinks, and starts cleaning the house. There was a lot of dust, and she came across more spiders than she really felt comfortable with seeing, but they were all swept, or gently guided, away. It takes her a good few hours to have the house somewhat resembling clean and lived in, but it's a work in progress. She feels tired, and achy. She puts the kettle on, and fetches some cookies to eat with her tea. There's not much to do here, she knows, they don't have a TV, and though she brought her laptop with her, she doesn't get good enough reception here. That's ok - there's always the living room. She purposefully left it for last, she knew she wanted to save it for after everything. Her dad always told her how much he loved that living room when he was a kid - his own parents had filled it with books, and there was a radio there that was always playing music, or the news when they needed to know what was going on in the world. Leilani gets her tea and biscuits, puts them on a tray, and goes in the living room. Row upon row of books line the walls, and there at the center of everything, she sees the radio. She puts the tray down on top of a table, and walks to the radio. She looks at it - it's an old, ancient thing, shortwave only, and wonders if it even works. She twists a knob, and turns it on - immediately the sound of static seems to fill the air. She fiddles with the knob until she finds a station, and soon enough she's listening to music, the kind of old 60's music that makes perfect sense to be played on a radio. She goes to sit down on the sofa and drink her tea, but a few sips in and she's already falling asleep. There's a woolen blanket on the sofa, and she lies down to get some sleep. She is tired, and sleeping will do her good.
Leilani wakes up around two a.m., her body aching from sleeping on the sofa. But she's not sleepy, not enough to go to bed straight away. The tea has long gone cold, and she doesn't feel like making a new one right now. But she nibbles on the biscuits as she searches for a station that's playing something - anything - at this time of the night. She picks up a few different stations, but other than late night radio shows, there was nothing particularly interesting going on. Sometimes people would call in, and they'd complain about something, or they just need to talk or have some form of interaction with another human being. She listened to their tales, their sad stories, and this becomes a ritual for her at night. During the day she goes for bike rides around the area, to try and get to know the lay of the land, and on the afternoons she sits and reads. Sometimes she writes on her journal. Then, especially in the wee hours of the morning, she's constantly searching for these quaint radio shows, these transmissions that captivate her so. It is very early one morning when she hears a voice she's never heard before, and it seems to be talking directly to her. The voice is calm and collected, and puts out questions into the ether, the kind of questions she's been asking herself for a long time. 'Do you feel like you don't belong in this world?', the voice asks. 'Like something's off, only you can't quite explain what, but you know deep in your soul that the world we live in is not as it should be?'. She hangs on to every word. 'Yes, god damn it, yes.', she says to no one but to herself. She sits by the radio that night, listen to this stranger's story, and decides that she must find out who he is.
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