It Started with Goodbye

by Christina June

  “Yes, I’m aware of that, thank you, dear.” Sarcasm on an old person was funny. “Why did she feel the need to invite me?”

  I assumed Blanche already knew about my scandalous behavior, so I wondered why she was beating a dead horse. “Because she’s thinks I need a babysitter, and you drew the short straw.” It came out with more bite than I intended.

  Luckily, she laughed again. “I wouldn’t call it the short straw. I wouldn’t have come if I didn’t think it was worth my time.”

  Huh. So she thought this was a good way to spend her summer. Keeping watch over me. Curiouser and curiouser, this woman.

  “I’m sure Belén told you all the gory details, so why do we need to rehash this?” I turned and started for the door, cheeks growing warmer, ashamed that another adult in my life was going to judge me, yet again, for something I didn’t do. I’d had about enough of that lately.

  Blanche reached out and put a cool hand on my wrist. Her flowery perfume tickled my nose. “I want to hear the story from you. I know my daughter can give a . . . biased, shall we say, account of things. What really happened?”

  I paused for a minute, considering. I wasn’t exactly in the mood to talk about my arrest for the millionth time, but something in the way she’d said “biased” made me doubt that Blanche was going to jump on the “Tatum is a juvenile delinquent” bandwagon.

  My hesitation must have made her reconsider. She gripped my wrist a little more firmly, as if trying to send a signal. “Maybe now isn’t the best time. When you’re ready. And if you don’t ever want to talk, that’s okay too. But I’m a good listener.”

  She raised her eyebrows meaningfully and let go. Baffled that a relative of Belén’s was actually going to let me make my own choice about something, I nodded and went to my room.

  Abby emailed, asking again if she could give me credit for designing the logo on her website, which meant I needed to come up with a business name. Unlucky for me, being confined to the walls of our house the majority of my day gave me a lot of time to think about that. And lots of time to think meant I was lying faceup on my bed, staring at the ceiling, willing the design muse to take me. Everything I came up with felt too silly or immature, or just altogether not right. Anything that was a play on design or computers or pixels felt just plain oblivious. I wanted something special. Desperate, I started looking around my room for inspiration.

  Piles of jewelry and cosmetics sat on my dresser in a haphazard fashion. Belén was forever nagging me to clean it up.

  “How can you find anything in this mess?” she’d say. I ignored her tone. There was an art to my piles.

  “I know exactly where everything is,” I’d retort, and she’d let it go. Until the next time she came into my room, anyway.

  The silver chains dangling small charms and the plain hoop earrings didn’t inspire me. My twelve beige eyeshadows, neutral powders, and blushes didn’t help any, either. The posters on the wall were mostly black-and-white photography, except for the print of Rene Magritte’s The Blank Signature. My dad took me to the National Gallery when I was twelve, a special father-daughter date, and I fell in love with surrealism. He bought me the print and had it framed; it’d hung there ever since. I turned my eyes to my desk, which held my laptop and an empty tea mug, bearing the emblem of my dad’s alma mater, Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. The tag from a peppermint tea bag hung down the side, fluttering from the ceiling fan whirring above me. Thinking about my dad left a sinking sadness in the hollow of my throat, and I looked away.

  My closet doors had been flung open that morning as I attempted to find the perfect outfit for staying inside and not soaking up the sunshine after school like the rest of my classmates. I glanced over my T-shirts and shorts, peppered with the occasional sundress or skirt, which hung neatly on their sturdy white plastic hangers, little soldiers ready to battle high school. No wire hangers allowed in Belén’s house, thank you very much. And yet, still nothing jumped out.

  I craned my neck to check out my nightstand, situated on the left side of my twin bed. My lamp was shaped like the Eiffel tower, and a stack of paperbacks sat next to it. And then, glinting in the afternoon light streaming through the window, were my keys. Correction: key. My sad and lonely house key, missing her car key sister, was attached to the only keychain I owned.

  It wasn’t really remarkable. If you were looking at keychains in a store, it wouldn’t be the first one you picked up. Just a slim rectangle of silver metal with a plain silver ring punched through a hole at the end. It had the lyric “You’ll never walk alone” stamped on it in flowery script, flanked by the outline of an angel wing on each side. My dad says that was the song played at my mother’s funeral; I don’t remember much about it, other than lots of crying. When I was seven, she’d wrapped her car around a tree after having one too many drinks at a charity event, losing the life she’d left us for three years prior.

  Dad gave me the keychain, complete with brand-new gold house key, when I was eleven, and he and Belén had deemed me responsible enough to let myself into the house after school. I knew I was moving up in the food chain only because no one was free to pick me up from school once Tilly started pointe classes, but I was happy for the extra independence just the same. My dad looked so pleased with himself when he presented it to me, saying he hoped it would remind me that even when I was home by myself, someone was always watching over me. That little strip of metal quickly became my worry stone, my rabbit’s foot, my Xanax.

  When I was sad or frustrated or feeling overwhelmed, I held it, rubbed my thumb over it, looked at it, and I was able to pull myself together, at least for a hot minute. The keychain didn’t remind me of my mom so much—I mean, I barely remembered her—but the inscribed lyric made me hopeful. It made me feel that, despite all the doors that had closed on me along the way, a window could open at any time. I was still waiting for that window to show up. More than anything else, the keychain actually reminded me of my dad—my covert champion when no one else was. Would he still be that for me when he came home? I wasn’t sure, and I didn’t really want to imagine what it might be like if he wasn’t.

  I shoved those thoughts away and began contemplating the angel wings as a starting place for a logo. I pulled out my sketchbook—the one from that horrible day at Mason’s, ironically—and messed around with different combinations of my name. The notebook kept reminding me of that fateful afternoon, though, which made me sad, until the lightbulb of inspiration went off.

  At Mason’s, when I’d handed the girl behind the counter my debit card to pay for the notebook and pencils, she’d looked at it, laughed, and said “TLC.”

  “Huh?” For a second, I’d thought she was going to break in song. Maybe bust out a little “No Scrubs” or “Waterfalls.”

  “Because T is your first initial, and Elsea is your last name. TLC. Get it?” I smiled politely and told her, yes, I got it.

  For a company name, though, it might be memorable, and it didn’t annoy me, so I doodled it between the wings. TLC Design. I studied my rough sketch and smiled, decided. That would work. Maybe there was a small, serendipitous silver lining to having been at the store that day after all. Perhaps I could make a thimbleful of lemonade with my gigantic pile of lemons.

  I had an urge to pick up my phone and call my best friend to tell her I’d had a moment of brilliance, but that unfortunately wasn’t an option at the moment. I smiled anyway, hoping that I’d get to giggle about this with Ash. And hoping it would happen soon.

  I spent the rest of my evening online, gleefully putting my design and my new TLC Design email address on all kinds of swag, like business cards and pens. I drew the line at rubber bracelets, but bookmarked the link for later, just in case. I was about to enter my payment information for the stuff when I felt someone’s presence behind me. I quickly tried to think of a lie that didn’t sound like I’d just pulled it out of thin air. A school project was always safe. The warmth of whoever it was drew clo
ser to my face, and I turned slowly. Instead of my cyborg stepmonster or ice queen stepsis, it was my new grandmother. Interesting. I watched her out of the corner of my eye, and decided to wait and see if she made the first move.

  “Why do you need pens with the name of a singing group on them?” She cocked her head to the side, still checking out the screen on my laptop.

  I snorted. “You know who TLC is?”

  “I know a lot about music, Tatum. I don’t live under a rock, you know.”

  I instantly looked down, chastised. “I didn’t mean to imply . . . Sorry. I mean, well, most people your, um, age, aren’t familiar with popular music from the last couple of decades. My dad, for example, still thinks Poison is cool because their lead singer has been on, like, twelve reality TV shows. Which in my world means they’ve hit rock bottom. But that’s just me.”

  Blanche patiently waited for me to finish rambling. I shut my mouth, self-conscious, and let her speak. “The pens, Tatum?”

  “Oh, right.” I debated whether or not I should tell her the truth. She was Belén’s mother, after all, but something about her made me think I could trust her. The hip-hop knowledge also didn’t hurt. “I’m starting a freelance business, actually.”

  She smiled slyly. “How enterprising of you.”

  “My fine isn’t going to pay itself.”

  “Fine?” She raised a dark, shapely eyebrow.

  I narrowed my eyes suspiciously. She was a sneaky one. “I’m sure you know about that already.”

  She sat down on my unmade bed. “Yes, we’ve established that. And we also established that I’d prefer to hear about it from you.”

  I looked at the screen again, and then back to Blanche. Her face still held the kindness that had been there when she first arrived, and as I was feeling hopeful, and impulsive, I jumped. “Do you want the short version, or the long version?”

  “Whatever you want to share.” For such a tiny woman, she was a commanding presence. Her voice, though soft, had authority, and I didn’t feel comfortable saying no to her. Her daughter could take a lesson on communication from her mother.

  I sucked in a breath. “Well. My best friend, who may now be my former best friend, decided to date a complete creep who got arrested for grand larceny and decided to take the two of us along for the ride. I named names, I got a five-hundred-dollar fine, a misdemeanor charge, and community service. He’s in jail, and she’s sequestered at boarding school and won’t speak to me.”

  Blanche looked me in the eyes the entire time I spoke, and I never saw any judgment pass through them. That was a small relief. Two more points to Blanche. “So. Yeah. Now I’m on house arrest. Oh, and my dad left the country still mad at me. There’s that too.”

  She was quiet for a beat, and then nodded once. “And you’ve started a business of some sort to pay the fine?”

  “Well, not exclusively, no. That was just good timing, I guess. I make logos, headers, and such for websites, that kind of thing.”

  “You must be very talented if people are willing to pay for your work.”

  I frowned. “Only one person, so far. But hopefully more. And I don’t know about talented. I’m just good with the software, I guess.” The heartbreak of getting rejected from McIntosh still loomed over my head like a storm cloud threatening to break open and douse me. I knew I was a competent artist, but not making it into the most selective of high schools still hurt more than I wanted to admit.

  “Did you make this logo for yourself?” Blanche gestured to the screen and my incomplete order.

  “Yep.” I looked at her and saw something I hadn’t seen from my stepfamily recently, or maybe ever. Interest. “What, um, do you think of it?”

  “It’s simple, but effective. The wings are a nice touch, I think. Makes it seem like you’d care about your clients.” She nodded again, approvingly. Huh. I just thought I was swiping from a keychain. “Do they mean anything?”

  I looked away, not ready to share that much; I’d told her enough for one night.

  She understood immediately, perceptive woman, and rose from the bed. “You’d better complete your order. Maybe you can leave some cards at Matilda’s school later this week.”

  Tilly had an end-of-the-year extravaganza at McIntosh in a couple days. “I’d have to pay extra to get it here in time.” And I didn’t add that I barely had enough in my savings account to cover the swag.

  Blanche held up one finger, as if to tell me to hold on for a second, and disappeared. When she came back moments later, she stepped toward me and slid something onto my desk, next to the laptop. A credit card. I looked up at her astonished, mouth gaping, too confused to speak.

  “Put it back on my dresser when you’re done. You can make it up to me later. And don’t worry. I won’t tell her.” She winked and left.

  It felt a little like I’d found myself a fairy godmother.

  Chapter 4

  The last day of school came and went without fanfare. Most of the buzz about me and Ashlyn had died down to a dull roar by then. It was such a wasted day, due to exams being over; most kids used the last few hours to write clichés in each other’s yearbooks about how that person magically changed their lives that year, or how they hoped to see them at the pool. I might have been guilty of the same meaningless words if I’d had someone to say them to. Like Ashlyn. Instead, I just wished my classmates a nice summer and left it at that. I didn’t really have the energy for anything more creative.

  Driving home, my phone rang. I let it go to voicemail, and at the next red light quickly put on the Bluetooth and checked the caller. Mrs. Schmidt, my favorite babysitting client. I smiled and immediately called her back.

  “Oh, hi, Tatum,” she said brightly in my left ear. “Thanks for calling back so quickly. Did you listen to my message?”

  “Hi, Mrs. Schmidt. Nope, I’m driving. I figured calling back was easier.”

  “Well, I have some bad news and some good news.” I didn’t think anything she had to tell me could make my life worse.

  “All right. Give me the bad news first.”

  “The bad news is that, sadly, we won’t be needing your babysitting services this summer.”

  My jaw dropped open. I had watched the Schmidt girls, Maya and Kate, for the last three years, while Mrs. Schmidt worked from home. She was a freelance editor for a women’s magazine and always had a hard time staying on schedule when the girls were underfoot.

  “Oh. Okay,” I said quietly. Had I done something? Had she heard about my legal mishap?

  “My husband’s grandmother passed away, and we inherited her home on the Eastern Shore. We’re all going to spend the summer there, if you can believe it. We haven’t had a family vacation in years, so this is really a gift.” Phew. I was sad for their loss, but selfishly glad their change in plans had nothing to do with me.

  “That’s amazing. Congratulations.” They were a hardworking family and definitely deserved the break.

  “Thanks, hon. So here’s the good news. We would love to hire you as a pet sitter instead.”

  “No vacation for the critters?”

  “My sister-in-law and her kids are coming too, and her youngest is allergic to pretty much anything that’s not human, so the pets are staying at home.” Maya had picked out a hamster named Princess Sweetheart on her fifth birthday last year, and Kate had the fourth in a long line of beta fish, Mr. Blue. There was also a very overweight gray cat named Gus. Despite his grumpy demeanor, Gus was an excellent sport, having been subjected to countless hours of dress-up and tea parties with the girls. “So, do you think you can handle taking care of our zoo?”

  I laughed. “Sure, I think I can manage.”

  She clapped her hands, the sound smacking in my ear. “Excellent. I think a couple times a week will be fine, and you know where the food is. You can work around your schedule, as I’m sure you have a lot of exciting plans. Start next Monday?”

  Little did she know, and I wasn’t going to tell her any different
ly about my so-called exciting plans. “You can count on me. Have a great time. Give the girls a hug for me.”

  “I will. Thanks, Tatum, you’re a lifesaver.” She disconnected.

  Although pet sitting hadn’t been part of the plan, I thought that maybe it could be for the best. An empty house at my disposal all summer, with no scary Belén checking up on me? That could work out nicely after all.

  My first official summer outing under Belén’s reign was pretty much how I would describe torture. McIntosh, being the school for special snowflakes, held a monumental final performance-slash-exhibition-slash-culminating gala-slash-evening of celebration for its students. Which felt like a huge slap in the face by artistic professionals, showing me the kind of work I’d never be capable of matching, since they’d rejected me two years ago. I’d balked when Belén brought it up at the breakfast table, but she’d put her foot down.

  “Tatum, we’re going to show support for your sister.”

  I really wanted to protest that A), Tilly was my stepsister, emphasis on the step, and B), didn’t forcing me to go kind of cancel out the whole support thing? I always thought support was something you gave freely, without coercion, but maybe that was just me. Then again, I reminded myself I had my own client-finding agenda, and brightened.

  “Is Blanche going?” I asked hopefully. She’d mentioned it at our “secret” meeting the other night. Maybe she and I could walk around the exhibits together.

  “No, she has something else on her social calendar.”

  I glanced over at Blanche, who was busy stirring her honey-flavored Greek yogurt. “I just feel awful, but it couldn’t be rescheduled. My old friend Carolina is leaving town tomorrow and won’t be back until after I’ve gone home. I made plans to have dinner with her the moment I knew I was coming to Virginia. Matilda understands, and she’s already said she would show me the video of tonight’s performance later on.” Blanche smiled warmly at her granddaughter and stirred once more. She took a bite and looked pointedly at my stepmother. “I have already, I might point out, purchased our tickets for Matilda’s culminating performance with her dance company. No shaming from you.” Another score for Blanche.