Hunger of the Pine Read online

  This edition first published in the UK and USA in 2020 by

  Watkins, an imprint of Watkins Media Limited

  Unit 11, Shepperton House

  89–93 Shepperton Road

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  Design and typography copyright © Watkins Media Limited 2020

  Text copyright © Teal Swan 2020

  Teal Swan has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without prior permission in writing from the Publishers.

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  Designed and typeset by JCS Publishing Services Ltd

  Printed and bound in the UK by TJ International

  A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN: 978-1-78678-414-8

  www.watkinspublishing.com

  HUNGER OF THE PINE

  We are initiated.

  We are apprenticed by pain.

  Our beauty … Our purpose … Our growth

  Is forged in the fire of our difficulties.

  Like a blacksmith, our suffering relieves us of our rough and tattered edges

  Painfully at first

  Until we are broken open.

  And our soul pours like water through our every thought and word and action.

  It extinguishes the fire of our pain.

  It weathers our curses to such a degree that they become blessings.

  And then, we are free.

  CONTENTS

  PART ONE MONODY

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  PART TWO FUGUE CONCERTO

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  PART THREE SONATA APPASSIONATA

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  PART FOUR CODA

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  PART ONE

  MONODY

  CHAPTER 1

  The muffled tapping of the soles of her favorite high-top sneakers sounded against the floor of the endless hallway. From high above her, the windows, which were no larger than jail cell windows, cast an array of silken light shards on the floor below her. The hallways of the school were empty. She was late again. She could smell the all-too-familiar smell of cafeteria lunch being prepared. Like a tedious symphony, her breath and heartbeat played their anxious notes and she tried to time her footsteps to them. She hated being late. She hated the heavy feeling of people’s stares. She hated the texture of shame.

  When she reached the classroom, she extended her hand and felt the chill of the metal handle against her fingertips. A paralysis came over her. She couldn’t afford another tardy, but she couldn’t force herself to go in. She couldn’t face them all. It was better to actually be alone than to feel, like the proverbial exile, alone in a crowded room; the feeling of being the outcast. But that she was. “Tomorrow,” she thought as she pulled her hand back from the door and, with a pivot, ran down the hallway to the nearest bathroom.

  She leaned against the pink tile wall to catch her breath. She could feel the heavy husk of childhood at times like this. She could feel the prison of it, the burden of not being able to choose what to do with the hours in the day. She couldn’t hide in the bathroom forever. She knew that, but right now she almost wished she could. The row of mirrors on the opposite wall reflected the emptiness she felt inside. She shifted toward them until she was standing before her own image looking back at her. The honesty of the image of herself made her uncomfortable. But she did not look away.

  Aria Abbott was 17 years old to the day. There was a warmth to the paleness of her skin. It honored the sharp angles and curves of her face. Her cheekbones sat high below a pair of rather feline eyes. Almond-shaped and olive green, they stared back at her, unmoving. There was a depth to her eyes, an ancient knowing that both beckoned and warned. The reflective surface of them felt like a membrane preventing her from falling into a foreign world. Like two albatross wings, her eyebrows reached toward her hairline. Her hair fell in disorderly waves and cascades to greet her shoulders, picking up light along the way. The color of it reminded her of the chestnut seeds she used to collect as a child. Her nose was aquiline, only a small shadowed indentation between it and a pair of sultry button-shaped lips the color of pink champagne.

  Aria reached up to touch her chin and neck, and her fingers slid across the softness of her skin. Like most teenage girls, Aria was never satisfied with her reflection in the mirror. Fine-boned, she stood just over 5ft 4in tall. Her youth had only just begun to peel back, exposing the hint of curves. Curves that belonged to the woman, which had been dormant throughout her childhood. As she stared at her own reflection, Aria could feel the fierce intent of puberty pulling her immaturity away. She wouldn’t miss it. Aria had grown lonely in the prepubescent world of playthings and penny candy. Her childhood had been frosted with despair. It had felt more like a prison than a privilege; a prison sentence that was not yet fully served.

  She had been sitting in the bathroom, listening to the relentless flow of the water in the pipes behind the wall, bored for what felt like ages, when the bell finally rang. Aria sprang to her feet, knowing that the bathroom would soon be inundated with other girls. Gathering up her backpack, she pushed past the heavy doors and out into the hallway. A rush of noise assaulted her, the deafening chaos of hundreds of students making their way to their next class. She joined them reluctantly. A wave of insignificance consumed her as she was swept up in the flux of students. Walking in the two-way traffic of the school hallways between classes always made her feel like a tiny blood cell in a crowded artery.

  Aria reached her class and sat in her desk in the fourth row, watching the other students settle into their places. She had perfected the art of acting aloof and collected when the truth was that inside, the buzz of anxiety ricocheted incessantly inside her chest and made her breath shallow. This class was like all the others. She would listen to the squeak of the marker against the whiteboard. She would watch the contained gestures of her teachers. She would learn and regurgitate the material taught to her, not because she was interested in it, but because she was afraid. She was afraid of the consequences of not doing so. Aria could not conform and she did not fit in, but she went to great lengths to avoid drawing negative attention to herself.

  For Aria, school was yet another part of the prison sentence of childhood. Unlike so many of her fellow students, she had no plans to go to college. She swore to herself that after her time was up she would not sit in another classroom for as long as she lived.

  Aria had no friends to speak of. Loneliness graced the corridors of her life. So when the final school bell rang, she put one of her headphone earbuds in her right ear, chose a song to play and pulled her hoodie over the top of her head so that it hid her pr
ofile. Ignoring any others, she made her way to the city bus stop, where she waited with a loose collection of vagrants, students and businessmen. The bus swayed this way and that, starting and stopping to let people on and off. She glanced at their faces, trying to feel the people beneath them, but averted her eyes if they tried to make eye contact. The very connection that she wanted so desperately to make frightened her.

  The bus pulled up to a stop in a suburban neighborhood on the south end of the city. Aria inched her way sideways past the other passengers’ knees and briefcases. The air outside was unfriendly, a frigid grayness known only to cities. She walked the six blocks to her house with her face turned toward the cement sidewalk, careful not to step on the cracks. Aria didn’t like to think of herself as superstitious, but when all was said and done, she was. She made the turn toward her house reluctantly. Went up the stairs and stood before the pastel plaque on the door that read “Bless O Lord, this thy house, and all who enter in.” Turning off her music, she opened the door. The air inside carried the fake scent of cheap cinnamon potpourri.

  Inside, the sound of clanking in the kitchen was suppressed by a voice that called to her, “Aria, is that you?”

  “Yeah.”

  Her mother stepped around the corner, wearing a patchwork apron. The bangs of her bobbed, sandy hair were perfectly curled. She was wearing a scowl on her face. “I got a call today from your school,” she said in an exasperated tone. “You can’t keep doing this.”

  She paused and then continued, “I called your new case worker. She said we should take you to see one of the counselors. Is that what you want?”

  Aria stared at the carpet and said nothing. Irritated by the silence, her mother went on. “Your father and I have told you again and again that you have to set a good example for the littler ones.”

  Aria looked up from the carpet. She wanted to yell. She wanted to scream but nothing came out. Despite the fury that burned its way through her veins, all she could say was, “Sorry.”

  Her mother fidgeted, a pair of plastic tongs still in her hands. “Don’t do it again,” she said. “If you keep sloughing school you’re not gonna graduate.” Aria granted her nothing but more silence. So her mother ended the one-sided conversation with, “Your father will decide what to do about this later. Do your homework before you watch TV.”

  Aria sprang out from beneath the tension like a racehorse out of the gate. She ran upstairs and closed the door to her room. She could still hear the sound of her younger siblings in the background. She reached below her bed and felt around until her fingers found the texture of her journal. Pulling it up onto her bed, she grabbed a pen from her backpack and began to write her frustrations down between the lines on the paper. She is not my mother. He is not my father. Who the hell does she think she is? I hate her. She underlined the word hate with three straight lines for emphasis.

  The woman who was downstairs cooking was not her mother. The man who would be coming home soon was not her father. The children whose noises she could hear beyond the door were not her siblings. The omnipresent dust of the past covered Aria’s world with grief. There is something about the shock and groundlessness that comes with grief that makes the world around you stand still. Aria’s world had been standing still for quite some time now.

  Aria didn’t know where her real mother was. She had been taken by the state at seven years old. From what Aria had been able to piece together, her mother had dropped out of high school when she was 16 years old after finding out that she was pregnant. Her name was Lucy. She was named after the Beatles song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” She used to play that song for Aria on repeat when Aria was young. The lyrics were etched into Aria’s memory for all time. Her mother loved music. She had always wanted to play the guitar but because Aria came along, she hadn’t had the time or resources to learn. When Aria was born, Lucy stared down at her perfect little face and felt that this baby was her great creation, this baby was her song … her aria. And so Lucy named her as such.

  After Aria was born, Lucy had struggled to afford day care. She worked at a fast-food restaurant to afford a low-income apartment. Aria could only just remember the contours of her face. Most of all, she remembered the look of desperation and she remembered the bruises. When Aria was four, her mother had met a man named Travis. He was in his 20s when he got a job washing dishes at the fast-food joint that Lucy worked in. Travis became enamored with Lucy. They began flirting at work and he eventually asked her out on a date. Desperate for love and support, she was relieved to find someone to share her burdens. Travis moved in shortly after they met. Aria could still remember the sound of his blue Camaro.

  Two weeks after he moved in with them, Lucy walked to work on a bitter cold morning only to find a note on the door of the building that said “Closed out of business.” The owner of the chain had known the business was going under for quite some time, but could only bring himself to tell the managers. And the managers did not bother to tell the staff. With no warning, just like that, Lucy was out of a job.

  For the next two weeks, she tried desperately to find work, but each time she went in for an interview they would tell her something to the tune of, “We’ll call you back within two weeks to tell you if you have the job.” Despite her embarrassment, sheer desperation drove Lucy to apply for food stamps. But when she walked up to the desk with her paperwork filled out, the woman behind the social services desk informed her that it would take up to 30 days to receive her benefits in the mail. She went to a local food bank but the doors were closed for the night. That evening, Lucy stole a can of soup and an apple from a local supermarket because she didn’t know what else to do.

  Aria recalled the arguments that began between Travis and Lucy. She remembered the numb paralysis that would devour her when she heard their voices gashing through the air in the apartment. Sometimes she could hear her mother being hit or held against a wall. She would hide in her mother’s closet and close her eyes and ears until Travis slammed the door and she could hear the sound of her mother weeping. It became a common scene. Aria would venture out to find Lucy bruised or bleeding, staring out the window as Travis drove away, muttering “please don’t leave, please don’t leave, please don’t leave” between panicked tears.

  When the rent came due later that same month and neither Lucy nor Travis could pay it, an eviction notice came in the mail. At that time, Aria did not understand what was going on when she watched her mother crawl underneath the secondhand linoleum table in the kitchen and cry. All she knew was that they were in trouble. They were facing homelessness. Lucy had to pull Aria out of daycare. The television became her babysitter at that point.

  But then one day Travis burst through the door of their apartment with a smile on his face. He walked straight up to Lucy and slapped what he was holding in his hand on the table. It was three $50 bills. “Where did you get it?” Lucy gasped, exhaling in relief but also suspicion. Travis pulled her into the bedroom to explain. He had an acquaintance that made his money selling crystal meth and prescription pain pills. When Travis had lost his job, he couldn’t believe his luck when he was offered some money in exchange for doing a hand-off to a local nightclub. It was Lucy’s poverty that forced her to consent.

  Travis soon stopped looking for other jobs. What was the point? He could make enough money to afford the apartment and his car, and best of all he didn’t have to answer to anyone. After realizing how much money he could make as a supplier instead of a runner, he began to cook meth himself in the utility closet of their apartment. Lucy was so naive that she didn’t know how toxic the process of cooking meth really was. So when Aria developed a cough and dizzy spells, Lucy didn’t know it was because of exposure; all she could think was she couldn’t afford to take her to the doctor. When Aria’s symptoms worsened and lethargy began to set in, Lucy was so desperate that she asked Travis for some money. He smiled and said, “Yeah, I’ll give you the money but you got to deliver something for me.” She no
dded in acceptance and later that night Lucy ran drugs for Travis for the very first time.

  For a few months, Aria’s life began to settle. She started kindergarten at a nearby public school and Lucy didn’t seem afraid about money anymore. She even took Aria to get an icecream cone after school every Friday. It was a luxury they could never have afforded before. But then Lucy came home one day in January to find all of Travis’s things gone.

  His absence sent her deep into the torment of a depression. She could not function on her own. For a couple of weeks, she would walk Aria to the school bus and then go back to bed and stay there. Aria would make her way back from the bus stop in the afternoon, drag a chair to the counter and climb up on it to find whatever food was left in the cupboards. She tried to cheer her mother up with little pictures she scribbled with marker on the backs of food wrappers. She would watch hour upon hour of shows on Nickelodeon. She wanted to play outside but Lucy always said no. Lucy had withdrawn from Aria’s life. She couldn’t face her own life any more than she could face her daughter.

  One day when Aria returned from school, she tried to open the door to the apartment only to find it locked. She sat down on the steps and tried to distract herself from worry by finishing her homework in the stairway. Having nothing solid to write on, she wrote the answers to her worksheet against the cement of the stairs. The imperfections in the cement made the pencil lines look scribbled. After hours of sitting there, just as it was getting too dark to see her paper, Aria heard the sound of footsteps and laughter coming her way. It was her mother’s laugh. With excitement but also fear, she froze to wait for her mother to turn the corner. Lucy tripped up the stairs with Travis in tow. They were both drunk. When Lucy spotted Aria, she smiled and reached down to grab her chin and plant a kiss on her face. She missed and fell forward, catching herself with her hands, and began hysterically laughing. Aria wanted to get out of there as fast as she could but her legs wouldn’t move. She was confused. She was afraid of Travis and didn’t understand what he was doing back there, much less with her mother.