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I don’t know why I even came home this early.
My bookbag smacks against the wall of my bedroom, right next to the nightstand. Along with my bed, they’re the only furniture in the room. Even with the fan still going, it’s hot as hell in my room.
If Hally hadn’t snapped, I’d be with her. It’s fucked up that I miss her; I know I can’t keep her. Maybe one day if I come back to this town, like years from now, when I have a chance to do something with my life, we can be together again. Maybe then I could come get her and hold onto her.
But she’d still get pissed, and I still won’t know how to say the right things.
* * *
I usedto wonder if it was my fault that I didn’t get along with my mother. I thought maybe it was the same as it was with Hally. That I just didn’t know how to do the right thing. I tried though.
I swear I did. I thought maybe there was a silent truce between us, an unspoken love. My mother went through phases, with the drugs, the boyfriends. Whatever it was, I was quiet and stayed out of it, unless she needed me.
She kicked me out when I stopped her fuck-of-the-week boy toy from beating the shit out of her. He wasn’t the first to smack her around. Just like Dad used to.
She didn’t even give me clothes, nothing. Just kicked me out and then let him beat the shit out of me on the street. It was only days after what happened to Hally. It was my fault for reacting, I think. But I couldn’t let him pull her hair and smack her around.
For months I tried to go back home; I didn’t have a place to stay and just moved from one friend’s house to the next, looking for a place to crash. I thought when he left, things would go back to what they were for me and my mom.
But I was eighteen, almost out of high school and therefore, not her problem anymore. Or so she told me.
Hally
Ten years ago
January 3
“Why aren’t you eating?”Mom asks me again as I push the mashed potatoes around on my plate. My silverware clinks on the ceramic plate as I set it down.
“I’m just not hungry,” I lie.
I can’t stop thinking about the fight I got into with Nathan and whether or not he’ll still love me tomorrow.
It wasn’t supposed to turn into what it did. I wish Nathan would just care. I don’t even know what we were fighting over. It doesn’t matter. I hate talking to a wall. I hate it when he doesn’t listen and the problem isn’t fixed.
I can’t just go on pretending like everything’s okay.
My throat starts to close and I try to swallow, but I can’t. I’m quick to reach for my glass of water and take a large gulp. I ignore my mother’s eyes on me, assessing, worrying.
Maybe I should tell her. Maybe she would know what to do.
“Is something wrong?” my mom asks and my dad elbows her. The table is square, but my father sits at the spot that faces the front window in the dining room, so I still think of it as the head.
I eye the two of them as they share a glance.
“You can talk to me about anything, you know that,” my mom says.
My dad keeps his eyes on the plate in front of him as he cuts up his pork chop and takes a bite. I’ve always appreciated how Dad lets me have time to myself. Mom’s the opposite.
“I know,” I tell my mom and scoop up a bit of the potatoes, but I just end up putting the fork down.
If Nathan didn’t live where he does, I could just walk to his house. I don’t have a car though, and he’d be pissed if I walked there to see him. And it’s freezing outside. I did once, and it’s the only fight we’ve gotten into where I was scared to talk back to him. He never yelled at me like that before.
It’s because he loved me enough to want me safe. And that only makes me want to go to him even more.
I love him, more than anything and I wish we didn’t fight. I don’t know why we push each other like we do. We need it to stop, but I don’t know how.
Tears prick my eyes and I push my chair back from the table. “May I please be excused?” I ask, knowing I’m upsetting my mom by not talking to her.
