Avonna Parilla.
Marcella clears her throat. “Rosa made me promise to ask. You’re going to see her in Barcelona, right?”
“She’d kill me if I didn’t, “I laugh.”
She smiles. “Good. She misses you.”
I miss her, too. Like the rest of the Delgado family, Rosa never made me feel like healing had a deadline. We are the same age but so different, and she let me be me until I wanted to be more. She’s been away studying in Spain and visiting her is one of my first stops on the big European adventure.
When I get home, I don’t sleep. I unpack and repack about a dozen times. Steam the dress I’ll wear on the plane. Check the contents of my backpack. Lay my new passport down on the bed and look at it like it might start speaking.
In a way, it does.
It says:You were never imaginary. You just had to write yourself in.
Now, officially, Iamreal.
Marcella helped me legally secure my chosen name.
The legal battle took two years. When I left, I didn’t exist My birth, like so many girls in the sect, was considered a “spiritual event,” not a civic one.
Through a private investigator, Marcella and I gathered everything we could. It took years. My situation was impossible. There were no records. All I knew was the name I discarded—Aurora. I didn’t know my last name. Until I was on the outside, I didn’t even know there was such a thing.
I have no birth certificate. No hospital record of birth. No Social Security number. No trace in any state system. There are no records of Master Prophet in Idaho, or the church I grew up in.
I had to obtain a Letter of No Record. Submit Affidavits. A school intake form from the safe house. Scraps of whatever proof I had of my existence. For so long, I wasn’t sure we’d succeed.
Now my name is printed in blue ink. A photo. A seal. Proof I belong somewhere.
I won’t shrink myself to fit what someone else wants ever again.
With a nice little nest egg saved up, I’m ready to spread my wings. I’m traveling to Europe alone, me and my guitar. My plan is to learn about new cultures, relax and enjoy my life.
Maybe find romance.
I’ve continued to explore my sexuality. One blaring realization has been therapy sex was about me, but most menaren’t. So far, the men I’ve been with don’t ignite me and I won’t shrink myself to fit what someone else wants. Or allow myself to be talked over. Treated like a mirror for someone else’s insecurities.
I have no reason to settle. Until I meet the right men who I can spend my life with, I’m going on an extended date with myself. One where I’ll stare at scenery out of train windows, wander cobblestone streets, taste red wine on my lips at midnight while a city unfolds itself around me.
Tomorrow, I fly to Barcelona. Then Dublin, Paris, London, and wherever else calls.
I don’t know who I’ll meet or what I’ll feel.
Doesn’t matter.
I’m not going to Europe to find myself.
I’m going because I already did.
twenty-seven
Linus
One Month Later
Myofficeisbarelybigger than a shoebox.
It’s on the second floor above a Chinese takeaway in Temple Bar.
