by Lily Foster
How can you hate and love and miss someone, all at the same time? I want to scream at my mother and father, and at the same time I want to press my face into the fabric of that ratty old couch where they’d sit watching Wheel of Fortune every night just for the scent, for the memory of them.
I have no parents. No grandparents still walking this earth. No aunts or uncles I’d refer to as family. But I do have Sienna. And I have Garth. I feel so alone yet so grateful for them.
“I can’t leave. You’ll need help with the baby.”
“Skylar, now more than ever I’m convinced that you need to do this. You don’t need to take care of me.” She looks over her shoulder and smiles softly at her man. “And Garth’s mother is here to help us with the baby.”
“Yeah, she can’t wait to be a granny.” He moves in closer, puts his hand on my shoulder. “And you need to get away from here.”
“Away from him, you mean?”
“I love that kid like a brother but he’s still acting like he’s seventeen and he’s got all the time in the world to figure it out.” When I crack a smile, he frowns. “I know what you think of me. I know you think I’m nothing but a fuck up—”
“No, Garth!”
He silences me with one hand. “I know you think I’m a dreamer. Is that better?” He doesn’t wait for me to answer. “But we’ve got this. Me and Sienna? We’ll be the best parents any kid could ask for. I can take care of this family.”
I feel like crap on a cracker. I know in that moment that the advice I dish out on a regular basis and my well-intentioned offers to “help” have probably come off as condescending. Like I’m superior. Like I’ve got it all figured out. Yeah, right.
“I love you, Garth. You are my brother, and I know you’ll take good care of Sienna.”
“Then trust in this.” He tussles my hair as my sister wipes at her eyes. “Go and do all those great things you’ve always dreamed about.”
Chapter Three
Skylar
Six weeks later, legally bankrupt and basically homeless, I’m standing on the steps in front of Tyler’s place. His mother and father still pay the bills but spend most weekends out at his grandparents’ old fishing cabin just over the state line.
I knock a second time, thinking back to how convenient it was, the way Tyler’s parents were always taking off for the weekends. We shared a lot of memorable nights here. He threw the biggest parties, some of them lasting from Friday night well into Sunday afternoon, and we had some great times here alone, too. Cooking together, watching movies on the couch side by side, not watching movies. We played house, played at being adults.
He puts on a face like he’s annoyed when he sees it’s me at the door, but I know him, know there’s way more hurt than anything else involved when it comes to me.
I felt like an assassin a few weeks ago when Tyler doubled over like I’d landed a shot to his gut, like I’d physically knocked the wind out of him. He never saw it coming, and how could he? I was a different person the day after the crash. I saw my mother, my father, my town, Tyler—I saw everyone and everything through a new and decidedly more jaded lens.
I don’t even know who you are, he said. And I felt the same. Fact is, I’m still struggling to get used to this new version of myself. I’m still on the fence as to whether or not I even like her.
He promised me he’d change, begged me not to do this to him, begged for another chance. He cried but I didn’t. I was stone-faced and distant, treating the break-up as just another box I had to check off on my very long to-do list.
Standing across from him now, I feel the weight of what I’ve done to Tyler. I’ve never had the power to hurt another person the way I’ve hurt him, and there’s no pleasure in having the upper hand.
I’m leaving tomorrow. I’m driving my late-model Sentra up to Pittsburgh and starting a new chapter. So today is for making amends, for closure.
They say it’s easier to leave than to be left behind, and I believe that. But when Lila Watkins comes sauntering out of Tyler’s bedroom, making her way to the kitchen so she’s sure to be seen, I’m the one who feels like I’ve been sucker punched. I hand over the cardboard box with what I’m sure is a lifeless expression because I feel dead.
For a fleeting moment I imagine them tangled up in his sheets. Does he make her laugh, blow raspberries on her naked skin and tickle her even though she begs him not to? Does he study her and smile as he runs one hand through her long hair? Does he tell Lila how beautiful she is?
He looks over his shoulder to see what’s got my attention and then turns back to me. Taking the box from my hands, he says, “You didn’t have to give this stuff back.” When Tyler adds, “It’s just crap,” I don’t know if he’s referring to his tattered blue flannel that I used to wrap myself up in, or if he’s referring to us, to me.
I want to tell him. I want to tell him that what we had was special. That I’ll always have nothing but love for him, always want good things for him. But she’s here. She’s wearing one of his shirts with nothing on underneath, acting like she belongs. And his eyes, eyes that were always soft and smiling, are hard now and taking me in like I’m nothing more than an unwelcome guest. He shifts on his feet, impatient.
I turn to go. “Take care of yourself, Tyler.”
He clears his throat, and when I look back he’s running his thumb back and forth over his chin as if he’s trying to decide something. A moment later he gives me a sad, lopsided smile that I return. He doesn’t need to say it and neither do I.
He calls after me, “Good luck, Sky.”
I turn back to thank him but he’s already shut the door.
Chapter Four
Skylar
Less than an hour.
That’s all it will take whenever you want to drive back home, take a break, go and see Sienna.
This is what I tell myself whenever I feel lonely, which is basically all the time.
My scholarship covers everything—tuition, room and board. There’s no way I would have been able to come here otherwise. I can’t apply for a school loan, and any landlord with half a brain wouldn’t rent to me after getting a look at my credit score. Nope, I’m a cash and carry girl now. I have a bank account, but I’m not allowed things like overdraft privileges and such. I won’t be in the clear until my credit record is expunged, and I’m told that could take a while.
It’s fine, I tell myself. It could have been worse. Walking into the police station and filing a report was humiliating, but we got through it. Wes took the report, a guy only a few years older than me, and he damn near choked on his coffee when Sienna named our father as the perpetrator. My father, a perp. The thought of it, picturing him in his button-down shirts and pleated slacks, as he still called them—he couldn’t look more straight-laced, upstanding and ordinary if he tried.
Wes was good about it. After that momentary lapse in professional conduct, he took our information with a straight face, nodding impassively and acting as if people came into the station every day claiming their father had put them into debt for close to a hundred thousand dollars.
That was the worst of it. Dealing with the FTC was a piece of cake in comparison. Those government agencies do, in fact, deal with this sort of bullshit on a daily basis. So the woman who was handling our case may have been shaking her head in sympathy and clucking her tongue in disapproval on the other end of the phone line, but at least we didn’t have to witness it like we did walking out of the precinct.
By the time we left, it was obvious that every single officer knew our tale of woe. And the clerical worker, an old friend of my mother’s who sat her ass on our couch for book club or Ladies’ Auxiliary meetings more times than I can count, gave us nothing more than a weak smile as we passed her desk on the way out. She couldn’t even look us in the eye.
But being the town pariah, charity case du jour, the object of scrutiny and sympathy—none of it matters to me. It’s still home and I miss it.
I want to run home all the
time. I don’t like living in the dorms. My roommate is fine. It’s not her. She minds her own business and keeps to herself. She’s what I would have called a loner back in high school before I up and joined in their ranks.
That’s what has me so rattled. I used to be in the center of it all. I had friends, I had Tyler. And I didn’t have to make friends. Nothing took effort. When you grow up in a small town like mine, everyone just knows you. You don’t have to present this package to the world, let them open you up and then decide if you’re worth keeping. You’re just surrounded by the people who have known you, accepted you and loved you since day one. At least I felt that way.
This is like walking through a movie set every day. Life is going on all around me but I’m nothing more than a prop in the background, set dressing, silent and inanimate. Spirited conversations, the complex nonverbal language of relationships—even the most basic exchanges, like the man in line ordering his coffee as I sip my tea off to the side—I take it all in. I watch their body language, listen to their words, create imaginary backstories for each and every character.
I feel invisible.
I sit in these arena-style classrooms with upwards of three hundred students packed inside, but cannot seem to find one person to so much as make eye contact with. The five or ten minutes before classes start are the worst. Clusters of students talk, laugh looking at some nonsense on their friend’s phone, or walk into the room searching for a familiar face, smiling when they catch sight of their person.
I tell myself they’ve all been together since freshman year. I’m new here, a transfer student walking into a social scene that’s already established. I tell myself to just give it some time. But this kind of isolation is unnerving. No, it’s damn near paralyzing for an identical twin who’s never once known the quiet solitude of being alone.
I call Sienna every afternoon. I call at around five, when I know she’s home from work. She puts me on speaker while she makes dinner for Garth, and I find myself asking her to describe each step of the process in detail. We both love to cook, but this intense interest I have in their supper has more to do with the fact that I want to keep her on the line for as long as humanly possible.
I need to hear her voice. She knows this. She knows I’m lonely without me having to say it. So she walks me through each step as she makes some new chicken recipe she saw on Pioneer Woman. She regales me with stories about the most mundane details of our small-town life. She tells me who came in for a cleaning at the dental office that day, tells me who got engaged, who’s getting divorced, and tells me who they ran into when they were out shopping for a new television the day before.
I bite my tongue and refrain from telling her that they can’t afford a new television with a baby on the way, sticking to the pact I made with myself to butt out and stop criticizing their decisions. But damn, old habits die hard.
Sometimes she feels like one half of my body, my brain, and I am the other half of hers. But that’s not how it is. Sienna is separate from me, a married woman soon to have a family of her own. And as much as I tell her in the quiet of my own mind that she needs to grow up, maybe it’s me I’m talking to. I’m the one who needs to grow up, to let go and let her live her own life.
So now when we start heading for choppy waters, like tonight when she starts talking about the big Christening party they’re planning to throw at some cheesy catering hall one town over—totally out of their budget—I change the topic.
I usually ask her about the pregnancy because I want to be there, standing next to her and holding her hand at every check-up, but Garth is there by her side as it should be. But I do love hearing about it afterwards, about the heartbeat that sounds strong and healthy, and about every new weird and fascinating change her body is undergoing.
Tonight I lay back on my bed, resting my hand on my own flat stomach as she describes the fluttery, light feeling of the baby stirring inside of her.
Alone in my room, it’s moments like this when I’m at my weakest. After we hang up I stay there, imagine Tyler’s hand caressing that spot and looking up to my face with wonder in his eyes.
“I love you,” he whispers.
I could have that. I could have the comfort of my old life. We’d live just down the road from Garth and Sienna, be the foursome we’ve been since high school. We’d spend the weekends hanging out together and grilling dinner on Sunday afternoons in our yard or theirs. Raise our children together and be a family.
In those moments I don’t dwell on the money troubles we’d surely have, or the arguments over his gambling. I see things like they used to be. A dreamscape of jumping off the rocks into the river, Tyler holding me close and rubbing my shoulders to ward off the chill after splashing into that water. The air darkens as the scene changes to nights of kissing in his car, of clothes being shed. Heavy breaths between him asking if it feels all right.
I don’t know if I miss him or if I miss the comfort of being in a place where I’m known, where it’s easier.
I’ve never been one of those people who curse small-town life. I’ve never had this pressing urge to bust out of some imaginary cage, but I know people like that. Simon, a boy I used to crush on in high school even when I was dating Tyler, he used to talk about getting out of here like this was ground zero for some deadly, flesh-eating bacterial disease. I could never understand it.
It’s the opposite for me. I’m comforted by the familiar faces I see every time I pop into the grocery store or the diner. I like when people greet me by name and ask after my family. Although people generally avoid that sort of talk now, you know, since the scandal, tragedy, or whatever people refer to the crash as. But things have slowly started to return to some semblance of normalcy. People ask about Sienna, about the baby. They congratulate me on the scholarship and wish me well.
I’m going places, they tell me. But am I? Leaving home, getting that degree I’ve held in such high regard, what will it do for me? I’ve always pictured myself standing tall and accomplished with that diploma in hand, but will it be that way? Will it make me happy or will it make me feel like an alien in my old life?
I imagine myself with one foot firmly planted in my past, and one foot in this new world, the terrain uneven and hard to navigate.
I don’t know where I belong.
Chapter Five
Skylar
“Sienna?”
I stop in my tracks and turn to see who’s calling after me. Yes, it’s my sister’s name, but I’ve always answered to both, same as her.
I can cut my hair in a different style, wear make-up, adopt far-out fashion trends to differentiate myself, but it’s no use. We are identical in looks, mannerisms, the way we walk and the way we laugh.
“Jeez, you’ve got long legs. I’ve been chasing after you for the past couple of minutes.” One of my favorite teachers, Miss Dawson, is flushed and smiling at me. “What are you doing here?”
I have to stop myself from reaching out and hugging her because I think it will come of more like me clutching onto a lifeline. It just feels so good to see a familiar face, especially hers.
“Hi!” I let out on a squeak, my arms stiff at my sides but my smile matching hers.
“Skylar! Damn, I still always get you two confused.”
I shrug, still smiling like a loon. “It’s no biggie. We’re used to it.”
She gives me a quick once over before asking, “So you’re a student here?”
“I just started. Transferred in as a junior in September.”
She nods her head in approval. “That’s fantastic! How’s it going so far?”
People ask all the time. Friends from home, my student advisor, Sienna. I always chirp back, “Great!” or if I’m feeling especially plucky, “I love it!” But I can’t seem to muster up the energy required to lie to this woman.
She was my English Lit teacher way back when, and she also ran a creative writing seminar. Miss Dawson would leave these thought-provoking comments on my papers,
things that made me dig deeper or maybe examine my motives. I always believed she had some internal bullshit detector or something.
“It’s all right.”
She lets out a soft laugh. “I hope they don’t hire you to lead campus tours for incoming freshman.” When I don’t respond she reaches a hand over to cup my cheek, and that alone nearly reduces me to tears. “Everyone goes through it, Skylar. Even the kids who are walking around smiling and laughing like they’ve got it all figured out. It’s an adjustment.”
I nod and clear my throat, embarrassed by the pathetic impression I’m making. “It’s just so different from home. But it’s only been six weeks. I’ll get the hang of it.”
“Are you on your way to class now? I just met up for coffee with a friend, but I’m kind of starving and could use a glass of wine. There’s a cute little brick oven pizza place just a block off campus if you want to grab an early dinner.”
I try my best but can’t contain my enthusiasm when I nod my head to take her up on the offer. Share a meal with another actual human? Engage in conversation? Sign me up.
She fixes me with a knowing look once we’re seated. “So tell me what’s really going on.”
I go to speak just as the server comes over. Miss Dawson smiles at the girl and orders two glasses of Cabernet. When she turns to go, Miss Dawson asks me, “Are you even twenty-one?”
“I will be in,” I pause to do the math, “two weeks and one day.”
Her eyebrows knit and then she smiles. “Halloween. That’s right. I remember your senior year of high school...Your party was the talk of the town.”
I shake my head. “We took advantage every time my parents went away for a night. But they were pretty good about it when they found out.”
Her expression changes at the mention of my parents. Her smile is soft when she says, “They probably knew about the party all along. I mean, hell, I even knew about it.” Tilting her head to the side she says, “I remember being surprised that you were eighteen a year before everyone else.” Laughing, she adds, “Two of the tallest girls in the school.”
