by D'Ann Burrow
But then I remembered what happened when she got in artist-mode.
When I was ten, she once went an entire day without remembering to feed us. Scarlett stood on a chair, happily pulling a box of cereal down in the pantry, oblivious to the fact that most parents occasionally fixed meals.
Life with Loretta was weird.
I retrieved my bag from the ground, hoisting it onto my shoulder. I refused to run. And I wasn’t going to yell to get the secretary’s attention. Surely the headmaster was still inside.
Principal—I wasn’t at private school. Mr. Conyers was the principal.
Whoever he was, I hadn’t seen him walk out of the building. And there was still a Toyota Camry parked in the spot labeled principal in the staff parking lot. He was in the building somewhere. He’d introduced himself to me this morning. He didn’t seem as bad as Scarlett always made him sound like he was.
God. The reality of my situation hit me. I was seventeen years old, and I was about to run to the principal because I didn’t have a ride home from school. I owned a car. It was happily sitting in my driveway, twenty hours away from here.
Get. Me. Out. Of. Here.
I made it all the way to the double glass doors thinking that begging him for help was the worst that I could be facing. Nope. One tug at the door and I discovered the gravity of the situation.
The doors were locked. Why were the doors locked? Was someone going to break into the school or something?
Of course, this school didn’t have a fence or a guy at the gate buzzing people in. Once you were inside Holy Cross’s walls, they knew you were supposed to be there. Apparently that wasn’t how it worked around here.
The lights were off. No one was walking in the foyer, and I didn’t have a way in.
I’d just gritted my teeth together and balled my hands into a fist when I heard the horn.
Not just any horn. The horn that played the first strains of “When the Saints Go Marching In.”
Aunt Loretta had arrived.
“I got here as fast as I could.” She cringed, reaching to the seat next to her and tossing a pile of stuff onto the floor. I’d just arrived 24 hours ago, and I sat in that seat, how did so much stuff just appear in the car? “I had my phone plugged in. Dang battery just doesn’t last anymore. I didn’t see her message.”
“She sent you a message?” Convenient that sending me one seemed to have slipped her mind.
“Didn’t you get it?” She frowned again. “Reception’s not always good around here. Too many trees.”
The car rolled forward as I opened the passenger door, and Loretta quickly threw it into park.
“The cheerleading coach sent her to Tyler for some supplies. They’re getting ready for homecoming. She got stuck in traffic.”
“homecoming’s in three weeks.” I’d read the schedule on my health teacher’s wall. Health. I couldn’t believe I was taking health. Ellie was going to have a heart attack when I told her about my day.
“Gotta start early.”
Sure. Really early. And I’ll bet making the decorations went even better when they had some caffeine from Starbucks flowing through their systems.
“You understand. I told her it was fine and I’d come get you. Maybe next time you can go too.”
There wasn’t going to be a next time. “I’m only going to be here a week.”
“Oh. Right.” She agreed too quickly. Her voice was too high. And she’d stopped looking at me. She reminded me of the kid we caught stealing cell phones out of people’s bags this summer. He knew the pink, glittery bag wasn’t his, even if he wanted to pretend like he had one just like it. He looked guilty.
So did Loretta.
Something was up.
We whipped through town, and I tried not to think about it. She just knew that Scarlett was lying. Yeah. That made sense. Otherwise, her perfect daughter left her niece stranded at an unfamiliar school in an unfamiliar town. The stuff a Hallmark Channel movie was made of.
Of course, if it were a movie, then a hot guy would have pulled up to rescue me. That was going to happen.
Well, there was the truck guy.
Then I thought about the wadded up fast food wrappers on his dashboard. There wasn’t even an In-n-Out in town. I didn’t want to think about what might be growing inside the cab of his truck.
This time, we drove home via Main Street. Loretta muttered something about the traffic being better this time of day if we went this way, and I counted exactly twenty other cars on the road. If she thought this was traffic, she’d never be able to drive in San Diego.
Come to think of it, she’d never been to San Diego.
I’d always thought that was because she and Dad didn’t get along, but now looking at her world—I had to wonder.
So this was Main Street. A self-service gas station with dirty windows stood on the corner. A sign in front of it announced it sold bait and handmade tacos, fresh every day. If people didn’t buy the tacos, did they turn them into bait?
An empty parking lot separated the gas station from what was once some kind of repair station. The windows of the garage doors were cracked, and the faded paint was too sunbaked to even read what the building used to be. Next to that building, we passed a pawn shop. I didn’t miss the selection of shotguns behind the iron bars in the windows.
We went through the four-way stop, and I glanced down at Church Street. First Methodist, First Baptist, and United Pentecostal sat happily side by side. One stop shopping for the Christian set. Funny, I’d always gone to Catholic school. Well, I’d gone there since we moved to Carlsbad. But we’d never been quite the churchgoing kind. In this town, that seemed out of the ordinary.
I looked at Loretta. Tie-dyed t-shirt over shorts that must have come from the juniors department. She was an artist who believed in the use of incense to get the spirits to guide her. She probably wasn’t too much of the church type either.
At least we had one thing in common.
She didn’t try to talk on the way home. That was just as weird as her guilty answer at the school. Normally, she talked the entire drive, generally about nothing in particular—the clouds overhead, something the chickens did, a custom order that she’d taken, maybe an upcoming art fair.
She always talked when she drove. It was like driving made her nervous. But right now she was quiet.
And that made me nervous.
I was shocked when it didn’t take us five minutes to get home. Scarlett definitely took the long way this morning. Or maybe driving past the elementary school at drop-off time really did add that much time to the drive. It didn’t matter. Next time she conveniently forgot that she had a passenger, I’d be able to walk home from here.
Scarlett and a group of cheerleaders were happily sipping whipped cream-topped drinks on the porch when we got home. Stuck in traffic. Sure.
“The traffic cleared just after I got off the phone with you, Mama.” Scarlett cooed, reading my mind.
Aunt Loretta bought it. “Oh, I know how that can be.”
She eased past, barely even looking at the group on the porch. But they looked at me. Six pairs of perfectly made up eyes followed my every movement, waiting for me to challenge Scarlett. It wasn’t worth it.
Loretta walked into the house and paused, her movements getting all the more mouse-like and edgy. “Maybe you should go up to your room.”
She said it like it wasn’t a suggestion. I climbed the stairs, glancing back over my shoulder at her. She was wringing her hands, watching my every step.
And that’s when my radar went off. Just like I could feel it when someone lost a kid on the beach or when a pre-teen took a dare a little too far or when jellyfish were lurking just close enough to be dangerous.
My nerves went on alert.
At the top of the stairs, there were boxes. Lots of them. Not just one or two. Not just enough to send me clothes for next week. My computer was sitting on my desk.
My desk from California.
; I tore into the first box, only to find a selection of stuffed animals that used to live in the very back of my closet. Friends from forever ago. Smiling faces I hadn’t been able to part with but didn’t really want in my room anymore.
I opened more boxes. Sweaters, sweatshirts, trophies from one-act play competitions and playbills from shows I’d been in and shows I’d seen in New York.
“This is all my stuff.” All of it. Every single thing I owned. All my pens, pencils and stuff from my desk. Even my underwear. Loretta had moved from the living room and was standing silently in the hallway. I think she was worried I might be a danger to myself. “This is everything.”
Loretta stood frozen, as helpful as a painting on the wall.
And then I understood.
Why she’d been so nervous this afternoon.
Why she’d been watching me like a hawk since I got here.
Why she’d insisted I register for school.
School. Crap. She’d had my transcript. How could I be so dumb? I hadn’t even thought about it.
I turned to her, refusing to let her see me cry. “How long have you known?”
Her face crumbled like broken porcelain. “Your daddy tried, Kennedy. You have to believe that he did.”
My father couldn’t do it. He couldn’t give up his job for me.
“He wanted to be the kind of dad you needed. But he just didn’t have it in him. I’m sorry, baby.”
Her arms stuck out from her sides like a scarecrow. She wanted to reach out. But I’d never been a hugger. And I definitely wasn’t right now. I wanted to vomit. My heart churned in my chest.
I needed to unpack.
I needed to do my homework.
I needed to scream.
I needed to see the beach.
I needed to be alone.
I stood up, using the boxes for leverage. I walked across the room and shut the door.
The door creaked open with a low moan, almost matching my current emotional state. Since I didn’t hear a flock of giggling cheerleaders, and I caught a faint whiff of turpentine, I didn’t even look up to see who finally dared to cross the threshold. At least Scarlett wasn’t here to lie about forgetting to take me home.
“You okay?”
Aunt Loretta’s question fell into the room with a thud. I slowly raised my head from my chest, surprised to see only darkness outside my window.
“You didn’t come down for dinner when I called.”
“I didn’t hear you.” I wasn’t lying. I really hadn’t heard her. Once I saw all the boxes, everything else just kind of disappeared.
“Did you try to call your dad?” She cast a meaningful look at my cell phone lying against the wall. I threw it after the first hour went by without a reply from him.
“Yep.” I tried not to be mad at her. She was as innocent in this as I was. At least I hoped she was. She couldn’t have known this was a for-good thing. But then again, she’s the one who brought up the topic of going to school on the drive home from the airport.
“Did he answer?”
“Does he ever?”
“I don’t know. I don’t talk with him that often.”
“But you do talk with him.” I decided I was angry with her after all.
“Sometimes.” As she spoke, Aunt Loretta took a few hesitant shuffles into the room. I’d never seen her like this—not the overly-excited, bubbly artist who drove me to her house less than 48 hours ago. Between the kind of wary stare and the way she was clutching her hands together in front of her, she didn’t seem quite sure what to do with me. “Do you want me to bring you a plate up?”
“I’m not hungry.”
She let out a long breath, letting it whistle between her teeth. Two more steps into the room and she settled cross-legged onto the floor a few feet away from me. “I can see why.”
Maggie would have argued with me, asked what I did want for dinner or suggested that I call Ellie and see if she wanted to meet me for sushi. Maggie hated it when I didn’t eat. Loretta just let it slide right off.
My aunt was looking around the room like a rabbit trying to figure out how to run away from a hungry dog. I must have been a different flavor of difficult teenager than Scarlett.
The voices that had echoed through the house were gone now, replaced by a faint buzz of bass coming out of Scarlett’s room. I guess the rest of the cheerleaders had left, but I hadn’t heard that either. Funny, I would’ve thought the sound of half-dozen car doors slamming shut would’ve made it through the old glass windows. Unless Loretta told them to be quiet…since I was upstairs having a nervous breakdown.
“Do you need any help?” She placed a hand on a still-sealed box next to her. After opening a dozen of the others, I didn’t need to see any more. I knew it just contained another section of my life. The movers were good—so far, I hadn’t found a single thing that was broken.
My life was another story.
Her fingernail skimmed the ugly, greenish-tape. “I could put a few of your things away. I know this has to be a little overwhelming.”
That may have been the understatement of the century.
I heard the first hint of plastic peeling away from paper. “I don’t need any help.”
Her tongue clicked in a spot-on impression of my grandma. I seldom saw any hint that she and my mom had been sisters, but for a minute… She pushed the box away, shifting forward out of her somewhat relaxed pose and gave me a sharp stare. “I’ll let you have a pity party tonight, but tomorrow it’s over.”
“Because it’s that easy.”
“No.” Her voice was markedly cool. “It’s not easy at all, but it’s life. And you’re going to have to figure out how to live with it.”
“I’m not leaving, am I?”
She took a breath. In. Out. And another. In. Out was slower coming this time. And another, even more slowly this time. I recognized those breathing patterns. They were exactly the same as when Mom tried to teach me how to calm down, how to focus, how to not think about what I could do. I thought she wasn’t going to answer me, but her lips finally cracked open.
“I’m not sure.” Her voice was laced with too much caution. “Your dad’s assistant wasn’t too specific.”
“So you haven’t even talked with my father?” Figured. He preferred to let others do his dirty work. First Mom and now Sonya.
She inclined her head to the side and raised one shoulder in almost-defeat. “I did talk with him. Maybe for five minutes.”
“What did he say?”
Both shoulders fell as defeat washed over her like a wave collapsing a sand castle. “I tried to get him to change his mind.”
I didn’t even bother trying to stifle my laugh. “Yeah. I can imagine that went over really well.”
A hint of a smile played at the corners of her lips. “Not too well, no.”
My eyes started to burn, and the edges of my vision blurred. Loretta politely pretended not to see the tears. This was really happening. I was here. My stuff was here.
I wasn’t leaving.
13
Rule #134 – Fruity drinks are evil
August 31
Aunt Loretta’s living room
10:15 AM
* * *
Aunt Loretta rushed around the house, and I understood the phrase what running around like a chicken with its head cut off meant. I’d just never seen anyone actually doing it before. Loretta darted from one room to the next, making a surprisingly few number of stops in her studio as she packed the car for a last-minute trip to an art show. For someone who did this for a living, she didn’t seem to have any strategy for packing—first a few prints then some sketches. She tossed a handful of watercolors in the car. Right now, she hefted the largest piece of pottery I’d ever seen through the entry hallway.
“And Scar-lett!” Her voice rose, drawing out the last syllable into almost a word of its own. “Scarlett!”
If Scarlett didn’t make an appearance within ten seconds, I was sure I’d le
arn her middle name. Annoyed clomps on the stairs at the count of eight told me I wasn’t going to witness that occurrence.
“What?” The blurry expression on her face combined with her tangled hair suggested she’d slept through all the banging, slammed doors, and not-quite-silent-enough cursing. After a few weeks of living here, I’d learned Scarlett was a master at sleeping, but this took it to a new level.
Loretta juggled the piece of pottery, and I tried not to wonder why she was taking it. I mean, it had to be the ugliest thing I’d ever seen. No, I wasn’t an art expert, but the splashes of red mixed with splotches of orange topped with dots of yellow looked more like an episode of Condiments Gone Wild than art.
She gave an impatient shake of her head, and the bells on her earrings jingled to a point where it was hard to take her seriously. “I’m leaving. I got a call this morning, and they had a cancellation at Grapefest. You know how long I’ve wanted to get in there. They want me there by twelve.”
Without missing a beat, Scarlett interrupted. “You’re not going to make it.”
“I’m aware of that. I told them it would likely be closer to two, and they agreed. So, the two of you are on your own. I have a chicken in the slow cooker for dinner. What were your plans for tonight?”
“Why do you think I have plans?”
“You always have plans.”
Scarlett gave a non-committal nod. “A few of us might be going to the movies.”
“Take your cousin.”
“But—”
“I said, take Kennedy with you.”
“Mom.” More of a whine than a refusal, Scarlett’s stance on taking me to meet up with her friends was clear. Part of me wondered if my relatives remembered I was in the room.
“Take her with you.” Her eyes glared with an intensity that showed this last instruction wasn’t debatable.
“It’s bad enough that she goes to school with me now. I have to have her follow me around on weekends too?”
“Maybe she wouldn’t have to follow you if she got to know some of your friends.”
