August 1998

It was their last day on the road, of a trip that was being as long as expected. Five days had already passed since they saw San Diego’s sea views for the last time; since they could smell its street tacos or feel the warmth of the sunbeams that had found their way amongst the jungle of big buildings. San Diego was their home, the place where they and many generations before had lived and built their future. That city had seen them growing up. But time passes and therefore, things change and unexpected decisions are made. While driving, John couldn’t avoid thinking about his past.

Angela and he had been together since forever. They were the typical couple who met when they were kids in the neighbourhood and over time, ended up together at an early age. If you had asked them, they would have told you they didn’t have any single memory without each other. They used to have lots of friends, but gradually, they lost all of them. But it wasn’t a surprise. While most of their friends were playing and having fun —as most of the kids do—, John and Angela were together doing their own plans. Well, those plans were pretty simple. Basically, they used to go somewhere private to «practise» with their tongues, or just staring at nowhere, with their sight lost in the infinite horizon, without saying a single word. Any other person would have said those meetings between them were monotonous, but John and Angela loved them.  It was just the two of them against the world, it always had been like that and would always be. Of course they had their ups and downs, but they still moved forward; together.

While thinking about those memories, John couldn’t stop contemplating from time to time Angela, who was looking at Minnesota’s mountainous landscape and its forests. She had been doing that most of the time, basically because moving to a new city wasn’t exactly what she wanted. The beautiful long brown hair woman was asking herself if they would have been able to do something to change their fate. Probably not.

First of all, the windows company John was working for, was about to close. That basically meant his days as a salesman were going to abruptly conclude at any moment.

Second, and the most important reason, their son Kenneth was being bullied at school. He had a genetic disorder called achondroplasia, or as everyone calls it, dwarfism. His short stature and disproportionate limbs made him the centre of all the teasing and insults —and once even physical harm. Because of this, their poor child had already tried to commit suicide a couple of occasions, what of course didn’t help him nor his parent’s mental health. The first time he ingested a cocktail of all the pills he found in the house. He was only six. Thank God, the severe pain in his stomach made him confess to his mother what he did, making it possible to take him to the hospital and retrieve all the pills. After that, they thought he wasn’t going to try anything else once he knew how painful committing suicide could be. They were wrong.