Susan Noonan

Mystic Music

It had finally come; the day I had been regretting my entire life. My acceptance letter to our family’s Alma Mater, Hantaazu Akkaddamii. My father had moved us back to our home near Guangdong. It once was a favorite place of mine as a kid to go relax and hide from my destiny-preaching grandfather. We had inherited it after he passed in the spring. Just in time for the fall semester, my father will joke. He had attended but he has no power or motivation for anything. He hardly takes care of this run-down shrine. No one remembers why this shrine was built. When my father was a child, any written documents that remained had been burned. Now it's an underused resting place for hikers. The letter is written to my real name, but I prefer Luke. It is in no way traceable to my family tree. I am named after the great foreigner who saved the world from its original tyrant and I am told I should be glad to be a Tora Hanta. In America, I became Luke Teichman, taking my mother's maiden name. Her last name is all I know about her; I was given to my father a month after I was born. I can only assume this is my grandfather's doing. Now I have a new school to battle over my name. So little purpose in arguing the importance, however.