* Note: A ballad is usually a song that tells a story. This piece of fiction was written to celebrate Stephanie Kuehnert’s novel release, Ballads of Suburbia. The idea was to use a quote from a song as a theme for a character’s narrative. I wrote a ballad for Kara Martinez from my novel Invisible Touch…

Kara Martinez: An Invisible Touch Ballad

© Kelly Parra

“And life’s like an hourglass, glued to the table
No one can find the rewind button, girl.
So cradle your head in your hands
And breathe… just breathe…”
~ Anna Nalick

There are times I sit in my room in the dark, thinking of the past. I can’t sleep. I’m twisting my Rubik’s Cube, trying to dissect the events that led up to the night that changed my life forever. Wondering what I could have done differently. If there could have been a way to change it all, to rewind that night like it had never happened.

And then the tears come, because wishing for the things that can’t come true is like experiencing heartbreak all over again. Especially when I can’t bring my father back.

My dad…was the light of our family, our glue holding the four of us together. When we lost him, the family bond crumbled to dust and my mom, brother, and me scattered into our own world of sorrow, pain, and regret.

It was like Mom was sent adrift, flowing out of control, and she grabbed onto me to save her life. Put all her attention and pain into her strength to hold onto to me so tight. She’d lost my dad to death, my brother Jason behind a brick wall, and I was the only one left, screaming for help.

Because after the accident that took my father’s life and saved mine, I changed in a way I didn’t understand. I changed in a way no young girl could comprehend. I saw things that weren’t there, pieces to a puzzle that didn’t make sense.

There’d been doctors, a place with silent walls and walking dead with beating hearts, and I couldn’t breathe there. So I played make-believe, answered what everyone wanted to hear, and lied that it had all been a dream. I was released, but watched so carefully as if I moved too suddenly or breathed too hard, I would break.

And now I live silently, speaking anonymously though a Secret Fates blog–my hidden confessional where I whisper all my pain, all my puzzles, to a cyber world who can’t see the real me.

Then everything changes again when I meet him.

Anthony is full of mystery and something so unique that stops time when I’m with him. He’s strong and loyal with his secret pain, and part of a puzzle, like spokes on a wheel. He’s the center of what could be the most dangerous sign I’ve ever faced.

When everything has been silent, suddenly it all comes alive. Feelings shattered through glass.

Fast. Dangerous. Alive.

Mom’s grip tightens. Jason’s walls thicken. Anthony breaks my silence. I finally breathe.

And the dangerous sign that I keep seeing, the loaded gun, fires two shots into the night.