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Out of instinct I tap the text bubble icon, searching for a blue dot indicator that I’ve missed a message. Maybe I’m not remembering correctly but Liam said he’d let me know he gothome okay. He’s a grown man. I’m sure he can take care of himself, but I still feel responsible…or maybe I just care whether he got home safely. Last time I worried about someone getting home safely at night, they proved my concerns to be justified. I know I can’t control every part of life, but I have a bad habit of taking too much of the blame for things that are out of my control. I didn’t pour alcohol down the other driver’s throat or tell them to drive twice the speed limit down a one-way without headlights in the middle of the night. But it still happened, and Kyle was just going home from my apartment on a school night. Everythingwasn’tokay, but maybe if he told meitwasthat night, it would have been. That childish irrational thinking won’t help me much in my career, but as a human, we all overthink things sometimes.
I type out a quick message to Liam, doing what I promised myself I wouldn’t do.
Me: Good morning! I’m just making sure you got home okay last night. Thanks again for helping me. It means a lot to know you care.
I stare at my sent message, waiting for the little “read” receipt to appear beneath the sent words. I wait several minutes until my eyes blur from staring at the same spot on my screen for too long.
He’s fine. He’s probably on his way to work or already there.
I leave my phone on my bed and head for the bathroom to shower and get ready for class.Placing an object out of reach can defy the need for control.That fact might be in the cognitive behavior section of my final today.
Without my phone, I’m forced to think of everything that has impacted my life this past week. Maybe phones are a gooddistraction for certain people—people who want to forget about the world around them.
“Haley!” Willa shouts, knocking on the door.
“Yeah?” I rub my eyes to wipe the soap away and poke my head out between the wall and shower curtain, finding the bathroom full of steam. I must have forgotten to turn on the vent again.
Willa opens the door a crack and I hear the vent rumble above my head. “It’s like a sauna in here.”
“Sorry, just trying to wake up.”
Willa clears her throat and pauses a moment. “Speaking of waking up… I received a call from an unknown number this morning.”
My soaking wet hair dribbles onto the floor tiles surrounding the bathmat. “Who was it?”
Willa’s gaze drops to her bare feet then glances back up at me. “It was your parents, actually.”
“Oh…really?” I ask, sounding dumbfounded.I am. A knot forms in the pit of my stomach and I close my eyes for a moment, pulling my head back into the shower and sliding the curtain back toward the wall. “I don’t know why they would?—”
“They’ve been trying to reach you…” Willa’s voice trails off, leaving her statement dangling like a loose thread.
Questions spiral through my mind, wondering why they would reach out to Willa. “How did they even get your number?” I ask out loud but more for my confusion than hers.
Willa pauses for a moment before responding. Maybe she’s trying to figure out the same thing. “I have no clue. When I answered, your dad told me who he was. I figured you had given them my number in case of emergency.”
“Maybe,” I utter, although I don’t recall doing so. They’ve met Willa several times as we’ve been roommates since our firstyear of college. I’m sure the numbers could have been exchanged at any point, but they haven’t used her number until now.
“Yeah, maybe…” Willa mirrors my response, but punctuates her words with a question. As I think through the possible reasons, adding silence to the foggy room, she interrupts the pause. “They called because they said they haven’t been able to reach you. They thought your phone had been shut off and wanted to know if you were okay.”
I toss my head back, getting a face full of cold water from the shower head.Shit. I reach for the faucet nozzle, silently pleading for more hot water even though I know I’ve already been in here long enough to use it all up. “That’s so weird. What did you tell them?” The water runs dry from the showerhead while I wait for her answer. I shiver against the chill, left watching droplets dribble down the shower tiles one drop at a time.
“What should I have told them?” she asks, hesitation bearing weight on her question.
That this was their decision, not mine.“Nothing. They have no reason to be calling you.”
“Hales…seriously?” Willa’s voice echoes with disbelief as her feet clap against the bathroom floor.
“Could I have my towel?” I ask, sounding meager in avoidance of her question.
The flimsy towel rack thuds against the back of the bathroom door just before she shoves her arm into the shower, holding my purple towel. I wrap myself up, which does little to eliminate the icy sensation running through my nerves. “If you think they had no reason for calling me, why did they say they’ve been trying to reach you for almost two years? Two years, Haley. Any time you mention them, you talk as if you spoke to them yesterday. I’ve heard you on the phone with them…”
Willa’s words slice through the steam-filled-air and pin me to the clammy shower wall.
When I gain the courage to step out of the shower, I avoid Willa’s unblinking eyes, but I don’t have many places to look since the mirror is covered with fog. “It’s a long story,” I say, wishing that would be enough to satiate her desire for an actual answer.
I’m not sure she will understand the decisions I’ve made when it comes to my parents. We all have our personal burdens to bear but mine—my parents are the reason I want to help people who suffer with mental illnesses.
“Why, Hales?”
