Secret Lucidity(23)

I sit back and watch the guys hike the ball and barrel into each other like animals. The sun blazes brightly above, and sweat begins to bead and trickle down my spine while the team runs play after play.

I used to sit out here before Kroy and I started dating, and I would daydream about what it would be like to be his girlfriend. It’s a little strange to now sit here as the ex-girlfriend, and I shift and fidget, trying to avoid being dragged deeper into sadness. So much has changed so quickly, it’s hard for me to figure out where I fit in anymore—if I fit in at all.

“Hey, babe,” Kroy says as he jogs over to me. “You good?”

I nod, not bothering to mention the monumentally embarrassing breakdown I had earlier.

“I’m gonna hit the showers. Give me fifteen minutes, and I’ll be ready to go.”

I walk around the school to the parking lot and wait for him next to his car. When he finally emerges, I couldn’t be more ready to go home and wish this day away into extinction.

“I knew you’d survive,” Kroy says out of nowhere as he drives to my house.

“What?”

“Today,” he states. “Was it as bad as what you were anticipating?”

“Ehh.” I brush off his question with a shrug. Even if I told him, I doubt he’d truly understand. “How was practice?” I ask to avoid talking about myself.

It works, and I spend the remainder of the drive listening to him talk about football, but he goes silent when he pulls up to my house. My mother’s car is parked haphazardly, two wheels on the driveway and two wheels in the grass with the driver’s side door still open.

Both of us step out of the car, not knowing what to say as we walk up the driveway. When I see the car is empty, I close the door.

“You want me to come in with you?”

“No,” I tell him. “I’ll be fine.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.”

“Call me later, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Mom,” I call out when I step inside the silent house, but I get no response. I walk to the kitchen and then the living room before heading upstairs. Quickly, I toss my bag onto my bed and then go to her room. I don’t bother knocking, I just barge in to find her lying in bed and still dressed in the same clothes she left the house in last night. “Mom!” I call loudly, rousing her awake.

“What is it?” she mumbles with her face buried in her pillow.

Reaching down, I shake her, forcing her to acknowledge I’m here. “Wake up!”

She rolls over and props herself up on her elbows, looking like an absolute mess. “What’s the emergency?”

“Where have you been?”

“When?”

“Last night. This morning. God, Mom, I woke and freaked when you weren’t here.”

She sits up and scoots herself back against the headboard. “I told you I was going out.” Her voice is dismissive and laced with booze.

“To dinner. You said you were grabbing dinner, not that you’d be out all night. And I can’t believe you drove home drunk. How could you do that?”

“Don’t you dare talk to me with such disrespect. I’m your mother.”

“Are you?” I’m fuming. The agitation roiling through me is unreal, and I can’t think of a single other time I had ever been so angry with her.

She glares at me. “Excuse me, young lady? I suggest you change your tone.”

“You have no right to demand respect from me when I’ve done nothing but cater to your every need for months.”

“You don’t have a clue, do you? You’re just a child; you couldn’t possibly understand.”

Her accusations fan the flame.

“I lost everything!” she screams.

And for the second time today, I lose all control. “And what about me, Mother? Huh?”

“He was my husband. I had twenty-three years with him, you couldn’t possibly understand how it feels to lose a husband. I can barely breathe without him, and here you are,” she accuses, throwing her arm in my direction, “off at school, playing with your friends all day while I’m drowning in pain.”

“You don’t think that I feel pain? That I don’t hurt? That I don’t wish that it had been me that died that day?”

“Get out of my room.”

I stare into her eyes and wonder if the alcohol would force her to speak the truth. Do I even want the truth? Or do I already know it deep down?

“Is that what you wish?” I ask, willing myself not to cower away from her response. “Do you wish that it had been me that died that day and not Dad?”

She delivers no reaction. She’s nothing more than carved marble, sitting here looking like a total train wreck.

“Forget it,” I fume under my breath before storming out and slamming the door behind me.

How dare she dismiss everything I’ve been through. Mourning my father, taking care of all the responsibilities of this house, being forced to watch over her and worry about her every damn day while she drinks herself into a hole. I might as well have lost her too. There’s no more safety for me. I have no parent to grasp on to for help or guidance. No parent to comfort me or protect me. The world has thrown me the worst curveball ever, annihilating the life I once knew and forcing me to go at it alone.