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How dare she do this to me? How dare she unload all of her bullshit, her guilt on me just moments after I watched my father tear out his own throat? How dare she tell me this moments before we’re about to fucking die? We are about to die. The sickness takes out whole families. It leaves no survivors, and it’s only a matter of time before my mom and I are scratching at our own throats.
“Sabine, listen to me.” I look away from the door back to her. She’s watching me with a fierceness that I can’t quite fathom. “Listen. If something happens to me, if I… if I don’t make it out of this, you have to go to him. You have to go to him and he’ll take care of you. He told me he would, he promised.”
And this it suddenly hits me. She didn’t tell me this to absolve her guilt. No, she’s telling me this so that I have somewhere to go if I live and she doesn’t. She’s trying to make sure I’m going to be okay.
“He’s in my phone. You know my code. He’s in my phone as Coach Lachlan.” I blink. Coach Lachlan? As if the Coach of the Palm de Rosa Wildcat football team? As in herboss? “Call him, Sabby. Promise me you will.”
I nod. “I promise, mom.”
She gives me a tremulous smile and tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. “Good girl.” Her arms wind around me, tugging me into her body, rocking gently back and forth. I relax into her. I don’t want to be mad at her, not at what could be our last moments together.
“You’re gonna be okay,” she murmurs against my head. “You’re gonna be okay, Sabby. I promise. I won’t let it get you.”
It’s not long before the noises in the livingroom stop. An eerie silence.
My mom pulls back and cups my face. “Stay here, honey. I’ll check it out.”
I shake my head, clutching at her. “No, don’t leave me.” She takes my wrists in a gentle grip and carefully extracts herself from me. “Mom, please.”
She gives me a tremulous smile and stands. “You’ll be okay, Sabine.” She slips to the door and places her hand on the doorknob. “I promise.”
“You okay, Sabby?” My mom’s voice cuts through my memories as I stare out the car window, taking in the houses that we pass by. It’s startling the difference between our neighborhood, the one we’re leaving behind and this, only twenty minutes across town.
Enormous houses behind locked gates. Fancy cars that cost more than my parents made in a year combined. Perfectly clean and manicured lawns and roads. I haven’t seen a piece of trash on the sidewalk or in the gutter for the last five minutes.
My mom reaches over and squeezes my knee. “I know it’s been tough-” she cuts off as I snort.
Tough. Yeah, sure, that’s a word for it. The last two months since I lost my father have been tough. Two months in which neither my mom nor I wanted to go back to our apartment once they gave the all clear. Two months of being in a refuge camp outside the Quarantine zone. Two months in which I was expected to just get over the loss of my father and accept another man into the space he’d vacated.
“You’ll like him, I promise,” she’s said this to me more times than I can count. Every time she left our tent to go on a date with him, to spend time with him, she asked me to come along. I, of course, refused.
She’s been with him for nearly a year, but this is all new to me. And I’m bitter as hell about their relationship. If you can even call it that. The one and only time I’ve met the man my mother would have left my father for was when they got married at the Palm de Rosa courthouse.
I’d spent all of twenty minutes in the man’s presence and now I’m moving into his house.
Thank god it’s only for a few months. “I don’t know why I couldn’t just stay with Callie until August.”
My mom’s full lips tighten, and I know she’s refraining from saying something we’ll regret later. So I sigh and shift in my seat. “Sorry. I’ll be on my best behavior. You know that.”
She glances at me, and the tight line of her mouth softens into a smile. “I know, honey. I just want you to be happy here.”
I nod. “I know.” And Idoknow. If I’m honest, I want her to be happy too. The last few months, hell, almost the entire year, have been tough. On both of us. Sure, she was going to leave my dad, but things between them hadn’t turned hateful or mean. She still cared about him.
I’m not foolish enough to think that people stay together forever, even my parents. I just wish she’d told my dad she was having doubts before she cheated on him. Maybe she did. I don’t know.
“Did you do your affirmations this morning?”
I don’t look at her. “Its still morning.” Too early, in my opinion, but my mom was anxious to get out of the camp and into Coach Lachlan’s giant ass house.
I can feel her disapproval so I sigh, flip the visor down on the car and look into the mirror, meet my gaze. “I am full of positive, loving energy. I find gratitude and joy every day. I give myself permission to heal. I free myself from destructive fears and doubts. I release all that is not in alignment with me. I am a beautiful, unique soul and I acknowledge that my existence and contribution on this planet is needed.”
The words fall off my tongue. They aren’t new. My mom gave me this list of affirmations long before the Quarantine. Long before my father-
It’s only recently that she’s been obsessed with me repeating them every morning. She’s also gotten big into making me meditate regularly. She’s worried about my mental health. And she’s doing everything in her power to make sure I am healthy, without forcing me to go to a therapist.
I know it comes from a place of love, which is why I tolerate it. It’s only for a few more months, anyway. I can handle it for a few months.
Just like I can handle living with Coach Lachlan and his football star son, Finn, for a few months. Finn had been noticeably absent at the ceremony. I wish I could have been too.
