Chapter 4

Over dinner that night, Juana was moody. As much as she loved and enjoyed celebrating birthdays, she was afraid. It was a regular thing for her to see something mysterious on tthe right preceding her birthday. It's been happening since she was six. Doctor Alan, their family doctor who specialized in mental health had advised her parents countless times to remove the part of Juan's memory-the part that remembered traumatic experiences because when Juana was six, seven, eight, nine, she repeatedly screamed out of her sleep and fell sick afterwards for at least three days. The screams stopped when she turned ten and was replaced by mood swings.

When her mother was lulling her to sleep that night, she read the expression on her face and interpreted it right-Fear

"What are you scared of?" She asked softly

"What I'll see on the night before my birthday" she answered with a small voice.

"Don't worry, it won't be bad this time, I'll pray for you" and then her mother prayed until she fell asleep.

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Tick! The clock ticked! The table clock on Juana's chest drawer, and immediately her alarm watch rang too.Juana thought it was her birthday already, but it was still so dark and she had barely kept her eyes awake. She stopped the alarm, it was just 10pm, tomorrow was her birthday.

"Oh no" she mumbled under her breath. "I thought I overcame this night without any dream already" she stretched her arms and got up to brush her teeth. Ever since her mom travelled, she hasn't had much time to talk to Juana on phone and so they rarely chatted. Juana became dull after her departure and lost some part of her appetite. She hasn't taken dinner that night and her mouth needed real washing that evening.

After cleaning her teeth, Juana sat at her desk and opened her big diary-it was a present from her granny for her eleventh birthday. It was a very big fine book. She began to write: "Hi dear diary, tomorrow is my birthday..." She had so much to tell her diary but the words weren't coming. She thought deeply for a while, sat up and began to write again: " Hi dear diary, tomorrow is my birthday but tonight is my meeting with my demons. I am scared, mom says I should pray, Aunt Ann said the same thing but I don't believe in it anymore. I don't even know how to pray; I'm mad at God. Aunt Ann says it's wrong to blame God but I can't help it although I do not say it out loud. I want to stop blaming God. I think these demons are to blame afterall. Dear diary, I ain't sleeping tonight not because I don't feel sleepy, but because I want to break record, I want to be able to say I didn't have any nightmare on the night preceding my birthday for the first time in seven years. I want to text Ivy and Alicia for the fourth time, inviting them to my birthday party because I'm sure Daddy and Mommy will hold a small party for me here as usual. I hope they'll honour my invitation this time; we haven't spoken in months!

I hope mom arrives early, and I hope my period doesn't come today, and I hope my friends will come back to me. I hope they'll understand that I am not proud or fetish or a traitor or anything like that. I'm just a stupid helpless girl that need friends all the time, Dad has been cooking for me since mom left, he doesn't let me do laundry either, but he lets me garden and wipe dust off the shelves and other furniture. I miss mom although I know she'll be back today, I still can't help feeling some way about her coming. I'm mentally exhausted, dear diary. I miss Campbell, I miss Ivy and Alicia, i muss my former school. I miss Lisa. Yes, Lisa was a big bully but I still miss her. I killed her, and I feel so bad about it. I wish I could have stopped the accident, I wished she had believed my dream and I wish I hadn't had any dream in the first place. I hate using inhalers but I'm getting used to it. I hate not having anyone to text, apart from mom and dad and granny. Diary, please keep me awake till morning, I really feel very sleepy..."

She closed the diary and went to her window. She stared at her friends' house, just 5 minutes walk from her house. She was tempted to sneak out of the house and visit her friends, maybe cry and beg them to be friends once again but she resisted the temptation. Still staring outside her room, she dialled Ivy's number. It rang and she picked at the second ring.

"Hello"

"Hello who?"

"Ivy, it's me Juan" the line went dead as soon as she said this. Juana angrily dropped her phone on the rug.

"Damn it!" Her stomach was rumbling and her head was aching. So she went to the kitchen to warm her dinner which she had ignored hours ago. After eating, she felt better and went back to her desk.

She stayed up till 12am writing and drawing incoherent images. She drew herself, her parents and her granny and her invisible uncle. Granny once told her about her only son that disappeared from home at fifteen and reappeared at twenty just to commit suicide. When Juana asked her why he disappeared and why he committed suicide, she said "Something was eating him up so bad and I had no idea what" she always told Juana this story with tears in her eyes, and as she always said, the only reason she told Juana about it was for her to learn not to take that route. "I wish he hadn't had to die, at least not that way, not when he was barely twenty. I wish he had asked me to help him. I tried to know what was wrong but he never spoke up"

"Did you know later? Did you get to know why he killed himself?"

"Yes, it turned out that he was being constantly abused by his female teacher at school. I know that teacher and I trusted and loved her. I have no idea how she hid her real self so well. I didn't know anything and Cornell never told me. I did find lots of pornographic contents on his computer after his death. He was addicted to her, and that's why he couldn't tell me the truth"

Juana wrote a letter to Cornell, telling him many things about herself and how she wished he hadn't died so early, long before she was born. She had stolen a picture of him at granny's on one of her visits there, and she stared at the picture that night.

"Don't hide things from your parents. Call me if you can't tell them, you know i'm always available, sweetheart" she said this to Juana all the time.

After writing a long letter to Cornell for the umpteenth time, Juana picked up her phone and dialled her granny's number. Juana knew she'd be asleep, it was 12:43am, so she left a voicemail:'Hi granny, it's me, Juan. Please call me when you get this"

She wasn't expecting any reply anytime soon but was surprised when her phone started to ring ten minutes later. But it was an unknown number.

"Hello" she said but got no reply.

"Hello? Anyone there?" She tried again.

"Juana" the voice at the end replied. The voice was hoarse and sounded like a thousand elephants trumpeting.

"Who is this?" Juana tried to sound calm although she was getting scared. She felt like if she hanged up, the voice would still linger in her eardrums so she didn't.

"I err..i tried, but I didn't make it. I just died" Now the words were clearer but the voice sounded distant. Immediately Juana heard those words, she smashed her phone on the table and blocked her ears. She stifled a scream so as not to arouse attention from her sleeping dad. She had never experienced something like this and she began to wonder if she had been imagining it. The room was quiet and everything was still but a hundred footballers were playing in her head.

The nightmare had come again, but in a different way, and it was her birthday.

"Jesus Christ" She muttered as tears rolled down her eyes. She cried far into the night until sleep overcame her.

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5.00am

Juana was up again, she was suddenly awakened by a strong pain in her lower abdomen. She grabbed that part tightly and squinted her eyes. She had drooled on her desk and some were sticking to her elbow and down her chin.

"Ouch" The pain was all over that area. She got up and turned on the lights, managed to stagger to the calendar hanging beside the photos on the wall. 23 August was circled red.

Oh! Not now please! She begged

She immediately felt nausea after swallowing a tiny white pill, the one her mom had given her to relieve cramps. She staggered to her bathroom to clean up. Except for the awful cramps, Juana couldn't think of anything. The lights kind of gave her company and made her feel safe.

"Why do you have to come on my birthday? Are you nuts?" Surprisingly, her head wasn't aching and she didn't feel weak anymore. The only thing she felt was the cramps and it was killing. When she turned on her laptop, she saw a mail from her mom. It was sent last night, 11:52pm but she didn't read it yet. She let herself feel better before climbing into bed. Then the thoughts began to unfold, but for one reason or the other, the ghostly call was left out. She remembered the last night her mom was around, before traveling. Baron was awake all night, writing farm records, jotting expenditures, sales and management records of his ranch. He was calling people and receiving calls, sending and receiving e-mails. The three of them were together in the living room for a long time before Juana and her mother left him there, and Juana had slept in her parents' room and in her mother's arms that night. It felt like she was a rainbow about to clear away from the dark sky. Or a thick drop of oil fast melting away with the merciless scorching heat of the morning sun. Juana was talking with her mom. And it was 10:30 when they stopped talking. Juana had asked a question:'Why am I your only child, mom?' But she had got no answer, and it was until she looked at her mother's face that she noticed she was fast asleep. She jumped up from the bed carefully and went to check Baron in the living room where he was lying. His books were sprawled over his body and he was fast asleep too. He had worked himself too hard. She went to her dad's sleeping body and poured some drops of coffee in his ears. It made him jerk awake, looking confused. Juana laughed so hard that she had to hold one side of her tummy because it was hitting. It was a funny sight. It took Baron some seconds to understand where he was, and when he did, he pulled his daughter close and kissed her.

"You should be in bed now, sweetie. You have to be up early tomorrow for school"

"Aren't you gon' sleep too?" She asked him

"I'll join y'all soon. Hurry, go first" he said and Juana went back to her parents' room.

"I'm gonna miss mom so much" she whispered to herself

"You're not gonna miss me too much. You have your dad, you know right?" Her mom said. She had woken up when Juana entered the room.

Now that was two weeks ago. Today is her arrival.

Juana went back to her laptop to read her mom's mail.

"Happy birthday to the most precious person in the whole wide world, i love you darling daughter and i'll always do. Going to the airport in an hour's time. What do I get for you?" The mail had been sent hours ago. She didn't reply but moved on to the next messages. She got a happy birthday message from Colin. Colin was one of the young cowboys on her father's ranch. The next messages were from her Aunt Ann, granny and her online friends. She got none from Ivy and Alicia. She expected her dad to come to her room as he usually did, but he didn't come. Normally he would be the one to wake her up with gifts and songs and hugs. Sometimes her mom brought breakfast for her on bed. But this time, her father didn't come. It was unusual. Very unusual.