I was speechless thinking that I could have told her my fears, worries about Mom, but I thought that it was some dirty secret that mom wanted to keep and I should respect her wishes. The times I would ask Mom and she would tell me that she was okay. She had an accident, she’d tell me, but I knew something was wrong and did nothing. Out of shame or fear?
Teresa and Ava had gone home, orders from Aunt Rose. It was just her and I, whilst we were waiting for Uncle Graham, or rather Uncle G, that’s what he liked being called because he’s an aspiring rapper and Mom and Aunt Rose’s younger brother. Mom had a kid, so Aunt Rose took on the role as looking out for Uncle G’s when Grandpa died. She’s younger than mom by a minute and only a decade older than Uncle G but that doesn’t stop her treating him like a little kid. One that spends more time being a bad boy trying to get his label deal and constantly produces new songs.
Either way, they were my family and I didn’t know if they were going to be my last remaining family and the idea of it scared me.
“I shouldn’t have snuck out,” I jumped out of my seat like I was on fire as I thought about the last few hours. I was going to the party of a lifetime, Rex Brentwood’s party, and not once did I bother to check what was going on with Mom. Not once did I look back, no all I did was think about me.
“Hey, you didn’t know what was going on….none of us really did.”
I nodded my head, feeling confused about Aunt Rose’s statement. One minute she knew and the next she didn’t.
Mom why do you have so much make-up on at this time of day?
There was no denying that I suspected that something was wrong, but I couldn’t do anything about it. I had my own nightmare when it came to Stuart and I tried to keep it out of my mind but no matter how much I tried, I was reminded of it as if it was only yesterday.
“I should have cut down my travels and not decided to take so much time from work. Then when I did, I had to make sure I was one of the top reporters. I’m competing against the new faces, who want to be top reporters. I had to get my break, but then I should have come around more. After all, she’s my twin.…” Aunt Rose was muttering to herself nervously, but her words were stopped by the doctor entering the waiting room. I could tell by the look on her face that she didn’t have good news. It felt like last year all over again, taking Gran to the hospital and when the doctor came to speak to us. He had the same look on his face that Mom’s doctor had right now, and I knew that it wasn’t going to be good news.
“I’m sorry we did the best that we could, but with her injuries from the fall down the stairs. There’s no easy way to say this, but we couldn’t save her. I’m sorry but she’s gone.”
The words echoed in my head, over and over again. I didn’t want to believe it. The screams that flooded the room from Aunt Rose’s mouth made me realize otherwise. The doctor that had been in front of me talking had now left the room. I was alone with the echoes of Aunt Rose’s screams and the reassurance from Uncle Graham who had suddenly appeared. The only thing that I wanted to do was take it all back.
Tell Mom that it didn’t matter about next year, I’d go to a local university and not leave home. I knew that she was feeling lonely after Gran died, and that made her run into the arms of Stuart.
The man was wrong for her and he’d killed her. Rage washed over me thinking about him, not feeling the pain that I felt right now.
“Where is he?”
I cried out as I faced Aunt Rose.
She stopped crying, sobbing and she didn’t ask me who I was talking to as she blurted out, “He’s gone.”
I slumped down in the chair, thinking why I’d never asked about him before. We drove to the hospital because a neighbor heard a noise from the house and had then called the police and ambulance. Mrs. Wilcott, the one that I often complained about being nosey and often asked if everything was ok in our house. The woman I’d thought of with so much malice was the woman I thought had saved my mom’s life. For once I’d been happy that she was so nosey. But she hadn’t saved Mom, just like I hadn’t. I’d failed Mom, we all did, and now she was dead. I was alone without her and a wave of fear pierced with an icy pain into my mind. I was an orphan. Knowing that my own selfishness had led me to this fate filled me with deep despair that dropped me to my knees as a wail tore from my chest. I’d failed my mom.
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Like a zombie, I eventually left the hospital. I got into the rental car that Aunt Rose had rented, and she drove while Graham sat in silence in his own seat. The last conversation we had before leaving the hospital was about where to go. I wasn’t going back to that house.
Not tonight.
They couldn’t drag me there, even if they insisted. Both Ava and Teresa, who I’d been sending hourly updates to, offered me a place at their homes. But I didn’t want to, I wanted to be with Aunt Rose and Graham. For now, anyway.
Besides school starts soon and I knew one thing for sure; I wasn’t going. I couldn’t handle the thought of facing the other students. I knew for sure, there would be the sympathy looks, the same one that I got in the hallways of the hospital when Gran died.
Same thing, different year.
I looked out of the window, I should have been curious about where we were going, but tiredness was taking over my mind. That night, the one that changed everything, became flashes in my mind until my eyes closed, and I started to sleep. I was sitting in my room debating whether to call Teresa or Ava, or do the usual and FaceTime them both. We usually talked every night anyway, but this was the beginning of our summer vacation. We should be out having fun, not sitting on FaceTime, I’d thought.
I knew all we’d talk about was my crush on Abe. I’d wanted him to ask me out every time I tutored him, I’d often held my breath and waited, but so far, he’d just thanked me for the lesson and gone back to his house. I was about to go to the window and see if he was home. It was as if we were so close with his house being next door. But then it was kind of crazy at the same time it felt so damn far. I probably even had a silly smile on my face, but it soon disappeared. I was brought back to earth, and not in a good way, by Stuart at my door.
He was my stepfather, my mom said she loved him, but I couldn’t stand him. I hated the way he looked at me with a sleezy grin and the way he spoke to me, as if he knew something about me that I didn’t. He’d never tried anything with me, or even suggested that he would do something, but there was something in the way his eyes gazed at me. The way that his eyes traced my body made me feel as if he was undressing me with his eyes. It made my skin crawl.
And there were changes in my mom since they got married. When they were dating he was the best man in the world, I hated the way that she described him like that. She never talked about my dad. But I had some schoolgirl’s fantasy that he was some kind of hero and Mom and him had some kind of fight and that was why he stayed away.
I didn’t want to think of him as a jerk. Half-me, half-jerk. No, I wanted to think of him as someone who Mom probably had a one-night stand with, and she didn’t know how to contact him or something like that.
Not some kind of jerk that left her, the moment she told him that she was pregnant with me.
When Stuart and her dated, she was happy but the moment she walked down that aisle? I wasn’t blind. I knew that things changed.