The Leaving(65)

AVERY



Avery sat at the kitchen island eating chicken enchiladas that Rita had brought—right out of the dish. She couldn’t remember the last time an actual meal had been cooked in this house.

God bless Rita.

Each bite brought Avery closer to tears.

The doorbell rang and it was UPS.

The book from Wisconsin.

So Avery went up to her room and lay down on her bed and started reading. Which was something she generally liked to do.

But this book was painful.

The same way old movies sometimes were, with their incredibly long opening credit sequences and slow starts.

She started to skim.

Then tried to get herself to stop, to focus.

Then started to skim.

Then focused.

Then finally hit the meat of the story and powered through.

And then set the book down and just lay there.

What would her life have been like if she’d been sent away? If she’d been able to just skip all the boredom and awfulness of the last eleven years and then just been returned to her parents as this happy, well-ad justed, fully formed person.

Because, really. What did she have to show for herself? For the last eleven years?

What had she done that was worthwhile?

What had she accomplished that meant anything?

She got up and walked over to her desk, above which a bunch of certificates of merit hung on a corkboard. French competitions. Math competitions. She started to take them down, one by one, and toss them into the trash can. Then, remembering a trophy she’d won by doing basically nothing that one year on soccer, she opened her closet, pulled it out, put it in the trash, too.

Then she just kept going.

Dumb art projects.

T-shirts from charity events she barely remembered.

Shoe boxes full of friendship bracelets.

What friends?

Posters from concerts and plays at school.

Old class photos.

She slowed her movements, started searching until she found her kindergarten class photo.

Went face by face.

Named names.

Sure enough, she had no idea who some of these people even were. How was that possible?

Setting the photo aside, she saw her handmade calendar.

Her countdown to going away.

And she flipped through until she found today’s date and saw there were approximately 898 days left until she would be able to go to college.

How had she ever thought it was a good idea to make this calendar, when the truth was the idea of leaving home was terrifying?

Who would look after her mom?

What would she do without Emma?

What would she do after college?

What if she never found a job? Or a boyfriend? Or husband?

What would happen when her parents died and she had no one?

Something soft and brown caught her eye back there in the closet, and she reached out tentatively—dead mouse?—and then felt fuzz and pulled and it was Woof-Woof.

She hugged his floppy, dusty body tight to her neck and tears came and sobs followed, and when she was done she tossed the calendar into the trash, too, wanting nothing more than to just be able to stay.

Stay forever.

“Rita!” her mother was calling out. “Rita?”

The response came: “Yes, ma’am.”

“We’re running out of tissues in my room.” Her mother’s voice in the hall. “Can you restock them?”





Scarlett


Scarlett’s nap dreams were ripped from the day’s events.

Airboats.

LOUD.

Pink birds and gators.

Lucas with a gun.

And also came from other days and nowhere.

An airport.

A school cafeteria.

Zombies in a nursing home.

Then Scarlett, with a pain in her legs, on a hill, crawling up toward a power plant with four smokestacks.

She woke up and her stomach growled and she got up to go eat. Tammy was vacuuming.

The whole house looked . . . cleaner, yes, but also . . . lighter?

In the fridge, she found leftover pizza and started to eat a piece cold, standing at the kitchen island.

The cat was in a corner, cowering, like maybe it had never seen Tammy vacuum.

Then it hopped up onto an end table that had once been covered with . . .


That was it.

No more UFO Insiders.

No more ET magazines.

Whole piles of back issues . . . gone.

“Mom??”

It just slipped out.


Tammy hadn’t heard.

The vacuum too loud.

Louder: “Mom?”

She turned, used a foot to switch off the machine.

Looked like she might cry.

“You okay?”


Her mother sat on the couch, wiping away tears. Shaking her head. “When you have little kids, people are always saying it goes so fast. Blink and you’ll miss it. And I remember feeling like it wasn’t fast enough.” She reached for a tissue box, pulled one out, dabbed her eyes. “Now I just want it all to slow down. I want to rewind and play the whole thing again but with you in it. I’m not ready to be this old. I’m not ready to have to let you go again so soon.”

“You won’t have to.”

“I will! I can’t keep you here forever.”