1
Cracks stretch out over the sidewalk, splitting the concrete and making the walkway in front of me resemble branches on a tree. The lip of one of the rifts rises above all the others and I almost trip on the uneven ground. I have walked this path a thousand times. I’ve lived on this street, in this town, most of my life. I have stepped over that specific crack a dozen times in one day, but today it about takes me out.
“Esther, are you tired?” Cytha yells at me from her upstairs bedroom window. My best friend has lived next door to me as long as I’ve been here.
Before I can answer, her head disappears into the house.
I adjust the box in my hand—thankful it’s taped shut. I might have scattered its contents all over Lincoln Avenue otherwise. I wait for Cytha, knowing she’ll be out her front door any—
“Did you have that dream again?”
“Hey, Cyth.” I set the box containing my art supplies and Aunt Lisa’s prayer journal on the ground. “What did you say?”
“I asked if you were tired.” She sets a hand on her hip, staring at me as if her attitude will summon an answer.
“Yeah, I’m tired.”
“You had that dream again, didn’t you?”
I bite my tongue. I want to ask—what dream—just to avoid the conversation. But Cytha is my best friend. She knows me better than anyone, better than any of the other kids at school, even better than Aunt Lisa did, and that woman—God rest her soul—spent the last eleven years raising me. I should be more upset, she’s only been gone a month, but Lisa was old. Not that you can’t be sad when someone old dies. Cytha cried for weeks after her grandma died. She thinks I’m heartless for only shedding a few tears. I know I’ll miss her. I know I loved her. I also know she lived a long time. She was happy. She reminded me on a regular basis that she was ready to meet the good Lord. Every prayer she muttered reminded Him so.
When my parents died, JoJo too, I couldn’t breathe. For weeks I’d hyperventilate at the smallest of things—if Lisa didn’t cut my sandwich the way Momma had, if Smitty called me Essie, like JoJo used to—all the air would just gust from my lungs and I couldn’t seem to take anymore in. Once I got breathing down, then I started crying. I cried every day for a year of my life, 365 days. I started the first grade crying and I ended it crying. Cytha was the only kid in elementary school who wasn’t afraid of me. The point is, they were young—my mom, my dad, and my brother. They hadn’t yet lived and they left me behind—I’d always been bitter about that. Lisa was eighty-nine years old—and ready.
“Essie, did you?”
It takes me a minute to remember what she’s asked. “Um, no, I didn’t.” I’m not sure why I lie. What would it matter if I told her the truth?
“That dream means something.”
“No, it doesn’t.” I nibble on my inner cheek and pick up the box. It rests on my hip, pinching into my skin and making me wonder if I really need to take these things with me.
“How can you say that? You’ve had that dream every night since Lisa died.”
“Get the trunk for me, will ya?” I nod to the back of my car, Lisa’s old Chevy.
Cytha’s pretty fingers are long and slender; she pops open the trunk and holds to the red metal with her hand. “I looked it up.” She bites her full lip, blinking in the sunshine. “Earthquakes mean your emotional state isn’t right.”
I shove the box into the only open space. “My emotional state is fine.”
“You’ve barely shed a tear, Es, that’s not normal.”
Maybe it wasn’t normal. But my emotional state didn’t need tending to. I’d cried enough in my life. I cried until Lisa prayed my tears away. “That isn’t it.”
“That’s what the website—”
Hands on my hips, I glare at her. “I don’t care what the internet said. Geez, Cyth, can you drop it? I’m leaving today.”
She slams the trunk closed. “Another reason your emotional state is a mess.” She scratches her head and combs her fingers through her long dark hair. “I still don’t understand why you can’t just live with me. You’ll be eighteen soon, anyway.”
“I won’t be eighteen for another year. And if it were up to me or even Smitty, I would live with you.”
“But—”
“Cyth, we’ve been through this. Smitty never had custody of me, only Lisa. My Uncle Rodrick is my guardian now, and he wants me to live with him.” I storm inside for my last bag, legs shaking. It’s not as if I want to leave. Reno is the only home I can really remember.
“Yeah, but why?” Cytha says, following after me. “You hardly know him.”
Does she want me to cry? Is she so obsessed with me not crying that she’s trying to force a tear out of me? “He’s my family. He’s trying to help.”
“Taking you ten hours from everyone you know and love doesn’t seem all that helpful.” Cytha stands in the doorway of my cleared out bedroom, arms crossed and a scowl on her face.
“Take this downstairs. I have to say goodbye to Smitty.” I hold out my last bag to her.
She snatches it up with a growly sigh. “You think I want to watch? No thanks, sister.”
Smitty and I never really had a relationship—it was never good or bad between us. We were just people who happened to live in the same house. The most emotion we ever conjured around one another could be, at best, called awkward. It’s sure to be an uneasy goodbye, and I don’t blame Cytha for not wanting to witnesses it. I don’t think Smitty would care if I didn’t bother saying a goodbye, but he did give me a place to sleep and food to eat for eleven years, I can’t ignore that.
“Hey, Smitt,” I say, once in the kitchen.
He stands at the counter in his sweats that are two inches too short, and his Forty-Niners T-shirt. He doesn’t have any hair left on top of his head, but his old man hair, growing on the sides, has gotten long and unruly without Lisa here to cut it. I should have offered. But Smitty and I have said about ten words to each other since my aunt died more than a month ago. He doesn’t look up from his pot of boiling water. It doesn’t surprise me. Smitty doesn’t do eye contact.
“I just wanted to say thanks, and goodbye. If you need something, you can call me.” I set a scrap of paper, yanked from my trigonometry notebook, onto the kitchen counter, my cell number scrawled across the paper.
His eyes blink and skip down to the linoleum by my feet. Smitty nods, his left hand patting his leg, while his right stirs the bubbling water.
I pinch my lips together. I think about trying to hug him or saying something more—but he’d hate that. It would only make us both uncomfortable. “Okay, well, see ya.” I glance around the house that never really felt like home, but suddenly does, now that I’m going. It’s as if no trace of me exists here anymore. There aren’t any pictures of me. My things are all packed. Aunt Lisa died, and with her went my childhood—at least from ages six to seventeen. Zero to five was lost long before that.
“How’d it go?” Cytha asks outside, one of her penciled eyebrows quirking upward.