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“Delayed?” my brother, Grant, asks just as the departure screen at Atlanta International Airport changes.
“Fucking delayed again,” I hiss. “Four hours. This is bull—”
“Theodore Osias Rivera,” my mother gasps.
Shit, I think but instead say, “Sorry, Mami.”
“Don’t youMamime just to get out of a very well-disserved tongue lashing.”
Double shit.
“Grant should get one first for putting me on speaker, and then provoking me when he knows I’m angry.” Then I turn it up. “Four more hours of purgatory, a place between home, where I want to be, and college, where I have to be.” I sniff for good measure, although it’s no shit—I could possibly cry right now.
Grant chuckles. “All I did was—”
I hear asmackand Grant gasp, and I know for a fact she smacked him in the back of the head.
“Be nice to Theo; he’s homesick already, leaving behind more than you could imagine and probably starving to death.”
My mother seems to think that because she caught me in bed with my high school “sweetheart,” Candace, that she and I are once again trying to make things between us work. Nothing could be further from the truth. The girl has issues, and I am not about that life, not anymore.
I walk to the nearest bench, pull out a package of disinfectant wipes, take one out of the package, and wipe it down.
“How does it feel to be Mom’s favorite?” Grant whispers.
Fanning the seat with my ticket, I answer, “We’re all her favorite when we head back to school. You will be next week.”
“Fair enough,” he states.
“I’m gonna hang up and try to get my ticket changed.”
“Looking into that for you now,” he says.
I sit down and run a hand through my hair. “Should have driven home.”
“That thing wouldn’t have made it.” He chuckles.
“That thing,” I huff, “served our family and now me and will for years to come.”
“I seriously have no idea what your emotional attachment to that old Chevy Tahoe is, but maybe you should talk to someone about that.”
The fact he doesn’t get it blows my mind. I was six when my parents bought their first new vehicle. It was a huge deal to a family like ours and so many others in the world. Grant’s less than two years older than me, but older just the same. I have no clue how he missed the pride they felt with that purchase. Hell, it served our family for years before I saved all the money I could, working my ass off summers and anytime I could after school and when I wasn’t at a team practice for whatever sport I was playing, or at the rink, even during the off season, and bought it so it didn’t go to a stranger. That money went for the down payment on the next family vehicle, which means all of us kind of have part of it still. Yeah, okay, I clearly have issues.
“You find anything?” I ask, watching the stressed faces of every other traveler no doubt in the same situation I’m in.
He sighs. “Not yet. I’ll keep trying.”
“Great,” I mumble, watching the departure times continue to change for half the damn flights out of the ATL.
When I see a little brown-haired girl toss herself on the floor, throwing a tantrum, and her parents looking as if they want to pull their hair out, I realize that we may be in the same predicament, but their situation is a hell of a lot different. That’s when my ’tude changes. With an attitude of gratitude, I let Grant know, “I appreciate you doing this, but I’ll take it from here.”
“Make sure you keep us informed, or Mom will be—”
“I know, and I will.”
After scrolling through the airline website, I eventually accept that I’m stuck here another four hours.
I keep a death grip on that attitude for gratitude the whole damn four hours. When it’s announced that the plane heading for Logan International has arrived, I allow myself to release that grip and literally feel the tension roll out of my shoulders. When my boarding group is called, I think I smile for the first time today without having to force it. Even when that same little tantrum thrower, whose name I’ve learned is Chloe, and her parents, who are trying to keep her in line, are going to be in my section, I’m all still good, unlike some of my fellow passengers who seem to be put off by it.
