Chasing Spring(2)

I threw up my hands. “So that’s it? Chase has an alcoholic dad so he gets to move in with us? I don’t get a say?” I hated that I sounded like a whiny brat.

My dad dragged his teeth across his bottom lip before answering. “This is bigger than you, Lilah.”

I rolled my eyes. Right. Because I couldn’t possibly understand the gravity of the situation. I understood just fine; Chase needed to get out of his house, but that didn’t mean he needed to move into ours. Clearly my dad hadn’t thought this through.

“Where’s he going to stay? It’s not like we have an extra room,” I pointed out.

He kept his eyes on the road.

“In the bedroom across the hall from you.” He answered quickly as if he knew his words would hurt me; he was trying to counteract their effect.

I narrowed my eyes. “That’s not a bedroom. That was mom’s space.”

He sighed. “For all her faults, your mother would have offered that room in a heartbeat.”

I shot him a narrowed glance and he countered with a warm smile. “I know you’ll come around, Lil. It’ll be fine. The kid needs a stable home. I hope you’ll welcome him with open arms.”

Over my dead body. We might've been friends once, but I’d avoided Chase for the last year and a half. That wasn’t about to change just because he was moving in across the hall. If I was forced to be his roommate, I’d be a silent one.

“When is he coming?” I asked, eyeing the chipping blue paint on my nails.

“Tomorrow.”

Tomorrow?

I had less than twenty-four hours to Chase-proof my life.

My dad rested a hand on my shoulder. The comforting pressure was supposed to tell me everything would be okay, but I swallowed down a lump of emotion and turned away.

“Y’know Lilah, you should look at this like it’s a fresh start. No one wants to dig up the past.”

He was wrong.

I did.





Chapter Two


Lilah





My obsession with secrets had started out innocently enough. The window at my aunt’s apartment faced the parking lot adjacent to a rundown city park. It was rarely used for recreation; the basketball courts weren’t much use without rims, and the tennis court nets looked like the ragged sails on a ghost ship. Instead, during the early hours of the morning, people would park there for two reasons: sex and drugs. More often than not, the hookups outnumbered the drug deals.

I’d watch the drama unfold from the edge of my bed, parting the cheap plastic blinds to get a better view. Their cars would fill with lazy white smoke and their windows would fog over. Their chaotic lives were mesmerizing and I craved the moments in my day when their secrets chased away mine.

I had used some leftover Christmas money on a website that charged ten dollars in exchange for the name and address registered to a Texas license plate. With seemingly innocuous information, my world of secrets started to spread.

I could lose myself in hours of Google searches, Facebook and Instagram accounts, and public records. They made it all too easy. Then again, someone hooking up in a public park probably isn’t too preoccupied with privacy.

Unfortunately, after a few months, that perch on my bed was no longer enough. It was the same couples and the same drug addicts night after night. Their secrets became boring and predictable. That’s when I bought a lock pick kit online. I tracked the package incessantly and on the day it was due to arrive, I hurried home from school to intercept it before my aunt got home from work. It’d taken me two nights to read through the manual and two weeks to master the art.

My dad could cart me back to Blackwater, and he could force me to put up with Chase in the bedroom across the hall, but he couldn’t take away my obsession. I had two days before school started and I intended to make good use of those forty-eight hours.

…

The morning of Chase’s impending arrival, I woke up bright and early and threw on jeans, tattered Converse, and an old Blackwater dance team shirt I hadn’t seen since moving to Austin. The cotton was worn and soft, the same as when I’d left it.

I stuffed my lock pick kit into my purse and checked that I had a few bobby pins for backup. I walked out into the hallway and locked my bedroom door. The room across the hall beckoned, but I ignored it. The door was closed and for all I knew my dad had already cleared her stuff out and prepared it for Chase’s arrival. What did it matter? It wasn’t like it belonged to my mother any more anyway.

I turned and headed for the stairs, catching sight of myself in the mirror hanging on the opposite wall. When I’d been younger, my dad would lift me up so I could see my reflection.

In that moment, I saw myself whether I wanted to or not. My fake black hair made my freckles stand out even more against my fair skin, and I liked the effect. I inspected my blonde roots, which were inching out more and more every day; I’d have to do something about them eventually.

My dad was in his room downstairs, but I discovered a sticky note he’d left for me in the kitchen. He’d created a stack of breakfast foods: a box of oatmeal on bottom with a banana balancing on top. The sticky note was stuck to the top of the banana and he’d added a smiley face for emphasis.

Breakfast :)

I could hear the TV in his room replaying baseball footage from years past. I ignored the oatmeal, grabbed the banana, and headed out the door. It was 9:30 AM on a Saturday and I had nowhere to go. My options were limited considering I had no friends in Blackwater; I hadn’t kept in touch with anyone. The town had one coffee shop and if I remembered correctly, it was usually overrun by a bridge club on Saturday mornings. I resolved to head in that direction anyway.