Bella Fortuna (46 page)

S
ince I was a baby, the sound of the ocean’s waves crashing against the shoreline has lulled me to sleep. We live in the idyllic seaside town of Carlsbad, California. I love the beach and never thought I could see myself moving away. But that was before, when my younger sister Erica was still alive.

Erica and I had spent most of our childhood playing on the beach. But since her death, I’ve avoided it as much as possible. My father insists on still having the occasional picnic here, which I don’t understand because we’re not that happy family unit anymore. We’re fractured now.

Whenever we have one of these picnics, my father refuses to let me stay home. So we go through the motions. I can tell my mother and brother aren’t into it either. We play along for my father’s sake. Maybe continuing this one family tradition is his only hope of holding on to some sense of normalcy. But we all know our family will never be normal again.

So here I am, alone on the beach. I need to walk the shoreline one last time. For I have no idea if I’ll ever come back. Hell, I can’t even stand to be in my home state. Everything reminds me of my sister. And when the memories return, my panic attacks take over, leaving me gasping for air and desperate to escape.

Erica died when I was twenty-one, the summer before my senior year of college. I’d been too distraught to go back to school until three years after her death. Though I’d started to pick up the pieces of my life when I finally felt ready to return to college, I’m far from healed. It’s a tough pill for me to swallow since I’m now twenty-five years old and had always envisioned myself having my act together by this age. And just in case I’ve deluded myself into thinking that I am fine, the panic attacks are a reminder that I still haven’t come to terms with losing my sister. As I stare out at the waves, her voice calls out to me. I want to push the memory out of my mind as I’ve become accustomed to doing, but for some reason today, I don’t.

“Pia! Pia! Wait up for me!” Erica struggled to keep up with me as I ran along the shore, trying not to lose sight of the seal we’d spotted swimming in the ocean. I ignored Erica, too intent on chasing the seal.

“Look! Look!” I was startled to hear Erica’s voice just a few feet behind me. Her little legs had managed to catch up to me. I looked to where she was pointing. Another seal was swimming from the west, coming to meet the first one we’d seen. The first seal screeched an ear-piercing greeting to its mate, which soon returned the call. Then they began diving in and out of the water several times before they swam farther out into the ocean. We watched them until their glistening bodies melted into the waves.

“I wish I were a seal,” Erica said in a tiny voice. I turned to look at her.

“Why would you want to be a seal? You hate getting wet!” I laughed and patted Erica’s arm playfully.

“Well, if I were a seal and that’s all I was used to, then I wouldn’t mind getting wet.” Though she was eight years old, she often managed to surprise my family with her perceptive comments.

“Has anyone ever told you how smart you are?”

“Yeah.” Erica said this in a very matter-of-fact way and shrugged her shoulders like it was no big deal. Only children can get away with such conceit.

“So, you still haven’t told me why you want to be a seal.”

“I wish I could swim as far out as they do and see the bottom of the ocean. It’s a whole other world. I want to know what they see.”

“You can take scuba lessons when you’re older.”

“What’s scuba?”

“You wear a special costume and a mask with a breathing tank attached that allows you to breathe under water. Kyle has a book on scuba diving. I’ll show you the pictures in it later.”

“Let’s go home now. I want to see what a scuba looks like.” Erica placed her hand in mine and began leading me back toward our house. I looked out toward the horizon, hoping to see the seals again, but there was no sign of them.

We saw the seals three more times over the next five years, but afterward, we never saw them again. Other residents had told us they’d seen a seal here and there, but Erica and I kept missing them. I remember how magical it felt that first day we saw that seal flipping in the ocean, the sunlight reflecting off its slick, gleaming skin.

Tears are rolling down my cheeks as I stare out into the ocean that my sister had loved so much and that in the end had taken her life. Erica had been swimming when she drowned. It had been a tremendous shock. Of all the ways she could’ve died, drowning would not have even made the list. I’m still baffled. She’d been a strong swimmer and had even been on the diving team in high school. A few people on the beach had seen Erica waving her arms in distress. A surf instructor who had been giving lessons swam out and brought her lifeless body back to shore. A doctor jogging on the beach had tried to resuscitate her with CPR, but it was too late. The sole explanation my family and I could think of was that she had swum out too far and had lost her energy.

It was so unfair. Erica had been two years younger than me. We were really tight, even though we couldn’t have been more opposite. Unlike me, she had been outgoing and popular. Her extracurricular activities had included the photography and art club, diving team, student council, and yearbook committee. Painting was her passion. She loved to paint landscapes, especially the ocean.

We were so close that I’d chosen to stay in California and commute to college rather than go away and be apart from Erica. We’d even attended the same school, University of California, San Diego. We had made a pact that she would transfer and go to art school in New York after I graduated from UCSD. We were going to get our own apartment and take the Big Apple by storm. We couldn’t wait. Now I was headed to New York—alone.

I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was a kid and had fantasized of going to New York City to work on a magazine. But I’d never intended on making it permanent. Erica and I had loved California too much to permanently relocate. We’d just wanted to get some solid experience before we returned home and started our own magazine. Erica was going to handle the more artistic elements— planning the layout, taking the photographs—while I worked primarily on the editorial side.

Part of me feels good that I’ve decided to carry through on the plans that Erica and I had. But it’s taken me three years to realize that if an afterlife does exist and Erica can see me, she’d be upset that I didn’t follow through on our dream. But then there’s a part of me that just can’t help but be incredibly sad that she’s not here to share this experience with me. I’m scared. When Erica was alive, by my side, I’d felt invincible. We’d often completed each other’s thoughts, and whenever we collaborated on a project, the synergy couldn’t be beat.

In the fall, when I had applied to several magazines for internships, I had begged God to let me land one of them. I could only think about finally escaping California and all of the memories. But now that I’m really headed to New York, the anxiety of failing has set in. I know I’ve placed this enormous amount of pressure on myself. But how can I not? I have to succeed in New York—for if I fail at this internship and never go through with starting my own magazine, I’ll have let Erica down.

In April, I had two Skype interviews with magazines in New York. I found out a month later that I’d gotten the internship at
Profile
magazine.

Profile
features interviews with everyone from celebrities to high-powered CEOs and politicians to fascinating everyday people. Unlike the trashy rag mags,
Profile
is
the
magazine Hollywood stars long to be in. Receiving an interview with
Profile
means you have arrived.

I’m happy to have landed such a prestigious internship, and I hope it’ll distract me from the pain of losing my sister. My father has tried to convince me to stay. I feel guilty that I’m leaving my parents, especially my mother, who’s retreated into her own world since Erica died and barely speaks to any of us. I wonder if she’ll even notice that I’m gone. My brother Kyle lives near my parents and will be around to keep an eye on both of them. Though Kyle wasn’t an Italian name that honored my parents’ heritage, my father had always loved it and decided it would be fitting for his first-born. Kyle is thirty years old and works as a civil engineer. I know I can rely on my brother to take care of my parents until I come back—that is, if I ever return. I can’t think about the far distant future right now. I want to focus solely on the present and my burgeoning career as a writer.

With this last thought, I say good-bye to the beach that I’ve seen almost every day of my life, ready to begin a new chapter in New York City.