AllFreeNovel
Share Us
My face burned, and I stubbed my scuffed shoe in the grass. “It’s not that they don’t believe in parties. My family, uh, we don’t celebrate birthdays,” I said. It wasn’t really a lie. We didn’t. But neither did my mom so much as tell me happy thirteenth birthday.
“Well, I’m making a new rule.”
“Oh yeah? What’s that?” I asked, not making eye contact and twirling the ball as I tossed it up in the air. I cast an occasional glance her way as I did.
“I’m having a birthday party for you this year,” she said with a decisive nod.
“You can’t,” I said with a smirk.
“Why not?”
“Because it’s already passed,” I said with a shrug.
“Then next year,” she insisted.
“Sure.” I grinned and tossed the ball to her. That time, she surprised the hell outta me, because she caught it like a pro. Her eyes popped wide, and I knew it had surprised her too.
“When is it?” she asked.
A sigh left my lips as I rolled my eyes. “Anyone ever tell you you’re like a little bulldog?”
Her fists hit her hips, and her bony elbows stuck out on either side.
“That’s not nice. When is your birthday?”
“It’s November seventeenth,” I finally admitted.
“That was last week!” she shouted, appalled.
I shrugged. The next day, her mom made me a birthday cake, complete with candles and a gift. It was a new football with my own air pump for it.
“Happy birthday to you,” Lila, her parents, and my friends finished singing to me, and I blew out the candles.
I hadn’t bothered telling my mom they were throwing me a party, because she always talked shit about them when she knew I’d been hanging out there. I’d taken to sneaking out to go over when she was home. Most of the time I didn’t need to, because she was never there.
“You’re so lucky the Kellermans spoil you,” Teddy said as he walked home with me. He was going to spend the night, because he had stolen a bottle of booze from his parents. He said it was for us to celebrate me turning fourteen. He wouldn’t be fourteen until May.
Watching the ground as we crossed the field, I shrugged. “They’re nice people,” I said.
“They’re loaded,” he said with a snicker.
“It’s not about that,” I argued.
“Whatever.” He was done with the conversation.
We entered my quiet, empty house. Teddy thought it was cool that I got to have the house to myself so much. In all honesty, it sucked.
Again, there had been no birthday wishes from my mom before she left. I got a “do the dishes and make sure the house is clean. I don’t want to come home to a shithole” as she lit a cigarette and looked down her nose at me. Same old, same old.
The only thing different about that year was that my dad gave me a gift before he left to go out of town that morning. It was a yellow pocketknife, and I almost cried. It was the first gift I could remember getting from him. “You’re fourteen now. That makes you a man. Every man needs a knife.”
I had no idea why he thought fourteen made me a man, but I wasn’t gonna argue.
“Thanks, Dad,” I said as I held it reverently in my palm. He ruffled my hair and left.
That night, Teddy and I drank vodka until we puked.
My dad never came home again.
