Waiting on Justin

by Lucy H. Delaney

  An old kelly green ski lift chair, hung like a swing, sat at the top of one hill. Sitting next to Aunt Aerin on that chair lift always meant the same thing: she wanted to talk about something important. She would wander to it and motion for me to come sit with her. That's where she told me she wanted to adopt me. That's where she told me her history. That's where she told me I needed to spend more time focusing on school or I was going to spend less time talking on the phone to the friends I'd made. And that's where she told me I needed to let go of Justin—just a little. It was fall—too early for snow and too late for the sun to zap our strength completely. It was perfect walking weather for the three of us.

  For a while we just sat, rocking lightly and talking about nothing important. Then she patted my hand and said it: “Haylee, I think you think about Justin too much. I'm not saying you need to break up with him—I like him, and I like the fact that your boyfriend is hundreds of miles away learning how to fly fighter planes. It means he's not having sex with you.”

  “Ewwww, Auntie!”

  “Well, dear, I'm just telling it like it is, and you know it. I like him, or what I've heard of him from you. He seems like a nice boy, and you have all the time in your adulthood to be with him, but you'll never get your youth back. He had a chance to be a kid; you should too. Don't let your childhood waste away while you're waiting for him. Explore other avenues while you wait.”

  “He didn't have a chance to be a kid. He was always looking out for me. Neither of us had a childhood.”

  “So take the time to have one now. Be a kid! Stay out late—just not past curfew. Take a joy ride to Seattle—just go the speed limit.” She was so funny, leaning into me, reminding me to follow the rules when she really just wanted me to have fun.

  “Haylee, I want you to enjoy being a kid while you still can. Don't be in such a hurry to grow up. Justin will always be there, unless it's not meant to be for either of you. You'll be grown-up before you know it.”

  I told Justin about it in my next letter, and he agreed with everything.

  I want you to have fun too, Haylee. Just wait for me; that's all I ask. Go out and be the girl you couldn't be because of the way things were when we lived with my dad and your mom. I wish I could erase what they put us through, but I can't. Sometimes I still get so mad at my dad for what he did to us. I don't get why they couldn't be good parents and realize what they were doing. I can't take it back; neither can you. All we can do is be better than them and prove to everyone who thought we were worthless like them that they were wrong.

  And so, with Aunt Aerin and Justin's blessing, I went out and tried to have fun.

  CHAPTER 13

  BACK THEN I associated fun with drinking and getting high. I didn't see how I could have fun without the two. The first time Aunt Aerin caught me it was because I came home too late and too in the bag to be quiet.

  “Where have you been?”

  “Just out with friends, Auntie,” I slurred.

  “You're drunk! Do you want a life like your mother's?”

  “My mom was an alcoholic; I'm not like that. I was having a good time. Lighten up.”

  “I'll lighten up next month. You're grounded.”

  She meant it too. I had never been grounded by Mom; all I had to do was listen to Clayton yell, and they would forget about it the next day. Being grounded meant I had to go straight home after volleyball practice, unless I went to the shop to help her sell things to tourists. No phone either. I couldn't even take Justin's calls.

  That made me mad, so I complained to Thomas and Krista and Michelle that she was keeping me from talking to him. When they all said it was within standard guidelines for a guardian, I said I didn't want her to be my guardian. Thomas offered to enter a motion to the court to have me moved. Krista said she could look for other placements, but since I came from California, I would probably have to move back down there—and there was no guarantee I would be anywhere close to where I came from.

  Michelle made me think it through, reminded me of how long and how hard it was to get to Aunt Aerin in the first place. She asked me if it was really that bad. It wasn't, but it wasn't fair either. All she said was, “Suck it up buttercup!” and told me if my lawyer brought a petition to the court, she would not be in favor of it.

  After I got done being mad, I gave up, but I did that to Aunt Aerin a couple of other times too. I feel bad for it now, but at the time it made me feel like I kind of had some control over my life.

  Getting grounded should have taught me to straighten up, but I learned nothing. Weird thing was it made me miss my mom. I had never really missed her before then, but getting in trouble set me off on a pity party. People felt sorry for me when I lamented over losing my mom too, so I played it up, and it became part of who I was: the sad little orphan girl. All of the acting sad made me believe that life with my mom had been so much better than when she was dead.

  Even though I liked living with Aunt Aerin, I missed the way things used to be. The three biggest things I missed were Justin, Johnny Walker, and the idea of my mom being alive. I was more like her than I allowed myself to believe, and I didn't appreciate Auntie pointing it out by grounding me for doing what had been normal for so long. While we lived with the alcohol and drugs all around us, it didn't seem bad or out of the ordinary to be drinking, but to Aunt Aerin it was the end of the world. She asked Krista if I could get into counseling, which I said I didn't want, and she asked about alcohol treatment, which I said I didn't need. She made it all seem way worse than what I thought it was.

  Our childhoods were more similar than I realized. My mom and Aunt Aerin’s parents were addicts too, but their dad molested them. Aunt Aerin said she and my mom were tied at the hip and would try to hide the alcohol or pour it down the sink. She laughed when she recalled the beatings they would take for their mischief. Only someone who’s been abused could laugh about being hit upside the head because you wouldn't tell your dad where the vodka was. I laughed too because Justin and I had our own stories of sad hilarity with Mom and Clayton. I shared them with her, and she would pat me on the hand and purse her lips together and get a sad faraway look in her eyes.

  “That's why I don't drink, dear. That's why I don't have kids. I was so afraid I would be just like them: my mother, who looked away when Daddy would take me or your mom to the room, and Daddy—sad, sorry soul that he was—who did the most horrible things to us then made us feel bad for it. I blamed it all on the alcohol.” She laughed. “I had myself convinced if they would just quit drinking, everything would be better, like the evil inside them would go away if they quit. I was wrong, of course—that kind of bad is there with or without anything to help it along—but the drink certainly made it worse. Even though your mom and I hated it, once we tried it, we took to it like fish to water. I'm afraid you're doing the same thing.”

  “I'm nothing like my mother.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  “Then why don't you stop? You're not old enough to drink anyway, and I'm not going to get it for you. I don't have it around the house. Quitting should be easy.”

  “I can quit if I want to.”

  “Then do it.”

  “Fine, I will.” My insides flipped upside down thinking about not drinking again. I refused to admit to her or anyone that I liked it too much to quit.

  In my next letter I told Justin I got grounded. I wanted him to feel sorry for me for getting in trouble, but instead he said I should follow her rules and not ask the state for another home.

  I couldn't get permission to drink from him or Aunt Aerin, and I knew the state wasn't OK with it, so I did it behind all their backs. I started to live my own secret life—not the one Justin wanted for us, not the one Aunt Aerin wanted for me, and not the one my mom had, even though my choices looked freakishly similar to hers. I played the game: I went to the counselor and the treatment classes, said what they wanted me to say, even came up with my “out” plans if I was tempted and needed a
way out of a situation, but I didn't mean any of it.

  For the first year I wrote Justin every week or more and told him about everything—except that I was still drinking and getting in trouble because of it. I told him about school, how I didn't love it but was still going. That was the truth: I was trying to stay in school, which meant I couldn't skip. Without parents who drank, I had to be in good with my school friends to find out who would have the next party I could go to. I needed friends to spend the night with who had access to alcohol. The best girl to be with was Gabriela, my volleyball teammate. Her parents had a bar equal to my parents’, only they didn't let their kids drink.

  Gabby and I were partners in crime—she liked to drink too—so we would sneak sips together and giggle about boys and high school drama while we got buzzed. We got along well, but their bar, not her friendship, was the motivation I needed to keep my grades up. If they fell too low, Aunt Aerin wouldn't let me spend the night with anyone, and I’d have to quit the team. I knew I had to stay close to Gabby to stay close to the alcohol I loved so much.

  I told Justin about my new friend, I told him I had good grades, and I told him I stayed at Gabby’s house, but I didn’t think he needed to know that part of the fun we had was sneaking her parent's booze.

  Gabby didn't drink as much as I did. I would wait until she fell asleep and sneak more sips from her parents stash until I was wasted. That worked until her dad busted me one night during the summer between junior and senior years. After that he wouldn't let me spend the night, so volleyball and softball and my grades didn't matter as much anymore.

  I was afraid to tell Justin because he was all I had left of who I was, and I couldn't lose him. I didn't want him to break up with me or get mad, so I kept the drinking a secret. I told him how much I missed him and how I couldn't wait to see him and how I wished he had followed me to Washington instead of enlisting. I tried to make him feel bad for my misery while he was living it up. But he remained as steady and strong as ever, wanting me to hang on and wait, promising he would come for me when the time was right.

  He loved to write about all of his Air Force escapades, and I loved reading about them. But sometimes I felt like the better his life was getting, the worse mine was getting—and I resented him for having so much good to tell me about, even though in reality it wasn't all good.

  During basic training his letters made me feel like I was there with him: I was tired for him, and my muscles ached when he talked about all the squats and drills they had to do. I got angry with him at the drill sergeant who kept him up running in place until three o'clock in the morning. The physical challenges were endless, but he met them—every single one. I loved him for it, for how strong he was despite the difficulty. But I started to doubt his words.

  In my letters I was lying by omission, not volunteering the fact that I was lifting booze from friends' houses or that I feared becoming my mother after all the years I swore I'd never be anything like her.

  His letters always made it seem like his only problems were from other people. So did mine. I imagined that he was dealing with tough stuff too, or maybe he was dating other girls and leaving them out of our letters.

  He would write pages and pages sometimes about the most mind-numbing things. My least favorite diatribes were about how he could assemble and disassemble the parts to his gun, or worse, how to clean them. Only slightly less boring were his descriptions of the planes, which I already knew plenty about from all the years he'd taken me on fantasy field trips (and real ones) to see them.

  He told me he wouldn't be flying a fighter jet after all—he would be a plane refueler—but he didn’t complain. He tried to share every detail of the plane he was learning to fly and the process of hitching and refueling—I think it was partly to have something to say and also to help him remember it better himself.

  I wondered about what he wasn't sharing more than what he was.

  The further down the hole I went, the more I doubted him. I stopped writing every week, and by the start of my senior year he was lucky if I put a letter in the mail once a month. I felt like there was nothing to say anymore. All the words were used up. Love wasn't enough, it never is.

  He pledged his love in every letter, and I bemoaned the distance. He wrote about his career and the missions he was allowed to talk about, and I lied about staying sober and picking out a college. Like Lizzie, he was moving on to a better life, and I wasn’t. We had nothing in common anymore, and I began to doubt if we ever had anything in common in the first place except a house and bad parents. I couldn't even remember what it felt like when he sang to me or held me and kissed me—not that I wanted to.

  That's when I decided that even though Justin would always live in my heart somewhere, I didn't love him—maybe I never had. I only used him as a crutch to get through a miserable childhood. I wanted him to fade into my history like everything else had.

  When Aunt Aerin took me in and time was ticking closer to the day I could be with Justin again, life should have gotten better, but it didn’t. The only thing that helped was the soothing burn of Johnny Walker, who had become my main man. I found a bum in our little town who would buy me a fifth for twenty bucks and a swig—which was more like half the bottle, but in my desperation I took him up on the deal more often that I would like to admit.

  Over time I learned how to hide my depression and drinking from Aunt Aerin so she wouldn’t ask questions or ground me. As long as I kept my grades to passing, talked about college like it was a real possibility, and threw in details about classes or other kids every now and then, she let me go where I wanted and do what I wanted. I wasn't a bad kid—I didn't get in fights or skip school—so she had no reason to suspect that I was doing anything wrong. But she took it hard when I didn't go for volleyball or softball after Gabriela's dad caught me.

  “It's your senior year, sweetie; this is the one to remember.”

  “I already did sports, so it's not like I'm missing out, and it's too hard to study and work at the shop and play.”

  “You don't have to work so much. I can get someone else to come in and help. Don't use work as an excuse to miss out on all the fun.”

  “No, it's OK. I would rather have the money—more for college.”

  Eventually, she let it go. She wasn't a bad guardian; she was just too involved in other things to notice my problems if I played like there weren't any. She had her shop, which she gladly paid me to work in after school. The work kept my pockets padded—the better to pay the bum with—and kept her busy selling, ordering, stocking, and cleaning from morning to night. After work, she didn't like to be holed up at home. She had her walks with Pepper and went out almost every night: to an AA meeting, or church, or dinner, or a date (which never went anywhere because she picked apart every man she ever met). Aside from the dates, she invited me to most things, but I didn't always want to go, and she didn't usually want to spend her evenings at home. We loved each other, but we were different. She stayed busy to avoid her addiction, and I hid mine to make her think everything was OK, just as I did with Justin.

  When I missed my mom, I drank to her memory. That's when I got the sloppiest drunk. I can't explain it, but I missed her most when things were really good between Aunt Aerin and me. Sometimes in the shop, when it was slow and it was just the two of us, Auntie danced to the music like my mom used to. She would twist and twirl and get me into it too, and it was fun, but all of a sudden it would hurt too. She wasn't my mom, and I felt guilty having fun with her when my mom was dead, so I numbed the guilt and loneliness with drinking.

  It was easy to get away with: all I had to do was smuggle the Johnny into my room before Aunt Aerin got home, or hide it in my backpack if she was already home. Then I’d spend the night alone in my room—no longer for safety from yelling parents, but now for the privacy to wallow in my grief over losing my mom. I would drink until I was too wasted to stay awake or until I had no more holes inside that the alcohol hadn't filled for the nigh
t. I knew then—when I bought off the bum and ditched friends, parties, sports, and being a teenager to get my fix—that I had successfully become the woman I missed and hated the most in the world. I realized that my mother wasn't dead; she was me. I was her.

  On my especially stupid, drunken nights, I wrote Justin. The letters usually came out in one of a few ways.

  Sometimes I would profess my love for him and confess I had screwed up again and was drinking—drunk, actually—at that present moment. I would say I wanted nothing more than for him to be there with me, and if he were only there, if he would just come for me, I wouldn't have to drink every night to drown my grief about my dead mother and sad orphan life. Those letters never made it to the mailbox; I’d always tear them up the next morning.

  In other versions I bemoaned my horrible life: how my aunt didn't understand me, how my mom and his dad had ruined my life, how other kids got happy lives and how I hated being away from him and missed him so much. Some of those made it to him; most didn't.

  The other variety consisted of handwriting that was so ridiculously messy even I couldn't read it. Nope, they didn't make it to the mailbox either.

  It was silly the way I treated our relationship back then. I wanted Justin, but only right then and on my terms. I had a hard time imagining my future with or without him. For so long he was part of me but the time and distance changed us whether we wanted it to or not.

  He wrote about life in the Air Force and having to decide if he would reenlist or call it good once we were able to be back together. He wanted to know what I wanted. I dodged the question. I couldn't get past our past; I only saw what we had, and I wanted that back. He would assure me in every way he could that we still had it, and then he would use the word I hated: Wait. Just wait, Haylee; I'm coming for you.