by Sean Boling
Chapter Sixteen: Mia
The road to their father’s condominium was for the most part a long stretch of highway that lent itself to silence. It connected their small farm town to the bloated one where he lived, and what lay between them was the kind of stark valley floor that made Mia wonder if the westward migration would have happened if the pioneers had the luxury of being able to see what their wish really looked like.
Zoey was usually the one to interrupt the stillness on occasion, from her position in the back seat.
“Why can’t we fly on Daddy’s airline to meet him?”
“We visit Dad when he has time off, so he’s not flying, anyway,” Mia answered from the front.
“It wouldn’t have to be him flying the plane,” Zoey countered.
“It’s a small airline, honey, and there’s never enough seats for passengers flying on a pass,” their Mom jumped in to help.
“We could pay.”
“Short plane trips between places no one wants to go to are expensive,” Candice added.
“Daddy and Yael always take us someplace nice, where people like to go,” Zoey pressed on. “We could fly there and meet them.”
“Mom doesn’t want to see Yael,” Mia cut back in. “That’s why we go to Dad’s condo and then meet up with her later.”
“Mia…” Candice sang.
“You wouldn’t have to see her,” Zoey said. “You could put us on the plane and we could fly by ourselves.”
“I don’t want to have to take care of you,” Mia scoffed.
“You wouldn’t have to. It would be a short flight.”
“We’re back to how much it costs again, honey,” Candice reminded her.
“But you said it’s not as much when you fly to popular places.”
“She doesn’t want Yael to pay for any more than she already does,” Mia said.
“Would you stop bringing her up?” Candice murmured.
Mia could tell by the surroundings that they were getting closer to their exit. The compact skyline was not yet visible through the late winter fog, but the familiar indicators were building: the motor pool full of school buses locked away for the weekend, the public storage units, the scrap yard. Mia knew her Mom wouldn’t fight back on any issue brought up at this point, because she wouldn’t want to arrive at the condo flustered.
So Mia seized her chance.
“What have you got against honesty?” she asked.
“Where did that come from?”
“I know what you’ve been doing.”
Her Mom looked genuinely confused.
“Maybe you could fill me in on what it is you think I’ve been doing.”
“I know you’ve been calling around. Talking to parents about what happened.”
“I haven’t been calling to tell them what happened. I’ve been getting a sense of how satisfied people are with the school.”
“And then you just happen to mention Artie.”
“Is Artie in trouble again?” Zoey chimed in.
“No,” Mia snapped.
“Sor-ry,” Zoey elongated the word.
“I haven’t called that many people,” Candice defended herself. “Just a few that I know.”
“You don’t have to call that many people,” Mia said. “All it takes is a few to get things started.”
The cluster of midsized office buildings that composed the downtown area emerged from the haze, and as Mia suspected it would, their drive fell silent again.
A few turns after exiting the highway, they pulled in front of the slab of condos. Candice kept the motor idling while Zoey jumped out.
“Open the back, Mom!” she ordered before shutting the door.
Mia was about to open her door, but turned to deliver one more jab.
“I should have lied about what happened on the bus. I should have made up something that sounded harmless.”
“It wouldn’t have worked. Everyone’s story would be different.”
“They already are.”
“They’re close enough, apparently.”
“Like you would know.”
Candice sighed.
“It’s best to tell the truth,” she said.
Mia wanted to give her a long look, but couldn’t bear to turn in her direction.
“I can’t believe you just said that,” she sneered, then climbed out of the passenger seat and slammed the door without saying goodbye.
“I got your suitcase for you, Mia!” Zoey waved her arms over both pieces of luggage as though they were prizes up for grabs on a gameshow.
Their Mom sped off.
“Hey,” Zoey said. “She didn’t say goodbye.”
“She got a phone call,” Mia pretended. “A work emergency. She said she’s sorry.”
Mia’s plan had backfired. She was the one left trying to compose herself as she heard her Dad amble down the entryway.
“Hey there, bugs!” he greeted them.
“Daddy!” Zoey sprinted over to him and he knelt down to catch her.
“Where’s Mom?” he asked Mia over Zoey’s shoulder.
“She had a work emergency,” Zoey answered instead, directly into his ear.
Mia nodded in confirmation.
“Okay,” he said, still looking at Mia and not buying it for a second.
Zoey bounced from his arms.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
Their Dad stood up and playfully gripped his back in mock pain, though Mia suspected there was some truth to it.
“Maybe we’re just staying around here,” he fudged.
“Can we go to Applebee’s?” Zoey pleaded.
“Why do I take you all over the place when all you want is Applebee’s?”
“We don’t have one in our town.”
“Okay,” he relented. “It’s just the three of us tonight, anyway.”
“Has Yael ever been to your place?” Zoey asked.
“Once.”
“Where is she now?”
“Santa Barbara. We spent a few days there and she wanted to squeeze in one more. Tomorrow she’s going to meet us at…”
He held for some anticipation to build.
“Where? Where?” Zoey hopped up and down.
“The snow!” he announced.
Zoey squealed with delight.
“I thought there wasn’t any,” Mia said.
“I called our favorite lodge with the sledding area. They’ve got just enough, and spring weather to go with it.”
“Whoo!” Zoey cheered the news.
“Let’s go, bugs!”
Zoey and her father jogged into the complex. Mia smiled, then realized the suitcases were still behind her on the curb. She picked up the baggage and walked where they had been.
Mia stuck with standard replies when her Dad asked about school, and realized she didn’t have to worry about Zoey revealing anything she had overhead, either. Her sister had a limitless number of her own stories and arbitrary particulars she wanted to share.
Sleeping in the same room with her wasn’t even a problem, as it often could be. Zoey’s incessant talking throughout the evening, the gestures that accompanied it, and her frequent reenactments finally exhausted her so much that she fell asleep without the sound of her own voice that she usually needed in the way other people need the TV or radio on when they go to bed.
Mia lay awake on the futon on the floor of her father’s guest room, to one side of the desk and office chair that were the only pieces of furniture, while Zoey slept on the other side. She surveyed the blank walls, listening to her sister breathe, thinking perhaps it was also the lack of stimuli that made Zoey drowsy.
By the time they reached the lodge the following day, Mia reckoned she was completely in the clear where recent events were concerned, as her Dad was too busy trying to placate everyone to go in-depth regarding anything.
Yael didn’t even pretend she was happy to be there. She sulked in the lounge, drinking and watching cable news on the
televisions that hovered over the bar and the deserted seating area, where she sat at a table with a basket of curly fries. Mia caught a glimpse of her while taking a bathroom break. She proceeded back outside before Yael noticed her, and reached the top of the hill that descended from the parking lot in time to see Zoey take a run on her inner tube.
To a certain degree Mia couldn’t blame Yael. The snow was sparse and sprinkled with dirt. As Zoey planed out at the bottom of the hill, her tube came to an abrupt stop where the snow ended, a good fifty feet from the edge of the clearing. The woods looked neither wintery nor summery, caught in between, like their Dad.
“Yael got a call from her ex-husband yesterday,” he confided in Mia as they stood atop the hill and watched Zoey trudge upward with her arm through the inner tube.
“Some bad news?” Mia was sincerely curious.
“His new wife is pregnant.”
“Oh.”
“And he always told Yael that he didn’t want a family.”
“That’s too bad.”
“I told her to stay in Santa Barbara, but she thought spending time with you and Zoey would make her feel better.”
Mia laughed through her nose a little.
“What?” her Dad asked.
“So she could be reminded what a pain in the butt kids are?” she explained.
Dad joined her in a light chuckle.
“If that really was the idea,” he said. “Then you should be flattered by her behavior. She must think you’re pretty great and that she’s missing out on something.”
They watched Zoey work her way up. She passed the halfway point and gave them a wave. They returned it.
“Does she want to have a family with you?” Mia asked.
Her Dad looked out toward the woods.
“She’s never said anything,” he realized.
“What if she says something now?”
He continued to rely on the horizon for an answer.
“I don’t know,” he decided. “I think I could talk her out of it pretty easily.”
Zoey reached the top and reported it.
“This is awesome!” she announced as a follow-up. “You wanna go down together this time, Mia?”
For the first time that she could remember, Mia wished she could switch places with her little sister. She had never felt that way when Zoey was a baby being doted on, or when Zoey was a toddler who almost always got her way because Mia was older and was told she needed to start learning she couldn’t always get what she wanted. But at this moment, in this parched winter forest, she was jealous that Zoey still found the conditions ideal.
“I would love to,” she accepted the invitation. “I’ll get in first, then you sit in my lap.”
“Okay!” Zoey surrendered the tube and stood to the side.
“Here,” their Dad offered. “Let me hold it steady for you.”
Mia crawled into position and Zoey giggled in after her.
Their Dad got behind them.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Ready!” they said in unison.
“One…two…”
He grunted out the word “three” and shoved them over the side.
They bounced as much as they slid, the bumps and grooves of the hill hardly concealed by the threadbare blanket of snow. Mia screamed as much as Zoey did, and hoped for a childish moment. She hoped being in a ring together and sharing their voices would produce the magic necessary for her wish to come true, for the transformation to take place. They would reach the bottom and discover they had switched places.
Of course that didn’t happen, but she lay there in the field on the edge of the snow with her head draped backward over the tube, looking at the trees and the sky upside down, feeling Zoey’s laughter on top of her, and felt closer to her sister than she had in a long time. She could have stayed like that for hours, but in seconds Zoey popped up and was asking to do it again.
Mia detached herself from the ring much more slowly and took her place on the other side of it for the long walk up the hill.
She squinted up at the top and saw the distant silhouette of her Dad. He held still.
Mia waved.
He responded with a quick round of applause, then he headed back to the lounge for another round of negotiations.
