My phone starts vibrating. I hate the flash of hope that bubbles in my chest.
The caller ID is my uncle.
“Hey, Uncle Ed,” I greet after accepting the call. “What’s up?”
“Hey, son.” His voice is warm.
When he calls me son, my chest aches. It’s something he’s always done, almost like he accepted me from birth as I grew up alongside Lucas, his biological son. Lucas and I are cousins, but my aunt and uncle have given me everything they’ve given him.
“Did you eat yet?”
“No.” I scrub my hand through my hair. “Why?
“Come on over. Your aunt is still adjusting to cooking for two instead of three or four now that the kids are off at college.” He chuckles on the line. “I want to hear how the first week of your senior year has been.”
“Yeah,” I answer hoarsely, hoping he doesn’t hear it. I clear my throat. “That sounds cool. I’ll be over in fifteen.”
It’s pathetic how fast I jump at any chance to leave my empty house for a little while longer.
“Excellent. See you in a bit.”
When Lucas and I were kids, I spent a lot of time with his family instead of mine. My parents traveled even more often back then, and it was before they hired au pairs to raise me for them. I called Aunt Lottie my mom back then.
Secretly, I still wish she and Uncle Edward were my actual parents. But only the stars I sit under late at night hear it.
I hang up and grab my evergreen and white soccer zip up jacket from the closet in the hall before ducking into the garage, heading for Red.
Getting in, I search the cup holder and between the seats. I locate the key fob on the floor, sticking out from beneath the driver’s seat.
“Christ, you’re short,” I mumble, adjusting the seat with a grunt until it’s back where I’m comfortable.
I grip the wheel in one hand and start the engine. With a quick tap on the screen, one of the garage doors opens. I gun it, taking the curved roads and inclines at a quick clip. I know this route by heart.
It’s one of the first I learned when I got my license.
One I’ve driven so often it’s ingrained in my blood.
Six
Blair
An owl hoots in the tree line at the edge of the trailer park as I trudge up to the one I share with Mom.
The streetlamp casts our faded blue trailer in flickering light and a stray cat yowls. The whole place is mostly quiet, too early for the graveyard shift residents to trickle home on weary legs bearing the weight of the world, and the elderly residents are asleep in front of their televisions. In the distance, I can hear a TV and someone having a too-loud conversation. Sound travels easily in the gravel lot between the tin-roofed homes.
I unlock the creaky front door. It reverberates as it slams shut. A sigh escapes me as I collapse back against the door, taking in our tiny single wide with a disinterested sweep.
It’s strikingly different from Devlin’s modern palace-sized place in the mountains.
There’s a kitchenette with bland pink formica counters, the living room the length of our couch, which is the uncool kind of vintage in an ugly tan plaid, and a dim wood-paneled hall that leads to the bedrooms and the bathroom.
It isn’t much, but it’s home. Mom’s tried to make it as cozy as possible. Over the years, she’d shoot me a cheerful look as she hung pastel curtains from the dollar store or draped a new crocheted blanket over the threadbare sofa, and say it was home as long as we were together.
We didn’t always live here. Before Dad ran off, we used to have a house in Gemma’s neighborhood on the other side of Ridgeview’s east valley. We were a happy family when I was a little girl.
The rattle of change scrounged from between the sofa cushions echoes in my head, the memory of the last time I saw Dad floating to the surface. He didn’t see me watching from the stairs after I snuck down for a cookie from the jar Mom kept on the counter. Dad muttered need more to himself while he dug through Mom’s purse, taking dollar bills and stuffing them in his pockets. A packed duffle bag sat on the kitchen table. When I asked what he was doing, Dad had whirled to face me with a grimace.
“Blair Bear. You’re not supposed to be out of bed.” He patted my head. “Mommy will take care of you. Be good for her, okay?”
With that cryptic message, he was gone from our lives. After that, all I remember is Mom crying over the mail. It wasn’t until I was a little older I understood her constant phone calls were with debt collectors demanding payment.
Peeling away from the door with a grumble, I pad into the kitchenette to the left, kneeling by the cabinet beneath the sink. I pull out the first aid kit and slump onto the sofa.
There’s a tear in my jeans where I scraped my knee after tripping in my rushed hike down the mountain from Devlin’s house. It stings when I rub an alcohol wipe over the abrasion and I hiss through my teeth. I plaster it with an off-brand Band-Aid.
Digging the pen from my zipper pouch, I stick my tongue between my teeth in concentration as I draw a frown on the bandage. It’s a personal reminder to be stronger than my mistakes.
Tonight I did nothing but mess up left and right.
My perfect plan imploded.
Uneasiness stirs in my chest as my eyes skip to the window. Devlin might change his mind, pulling the rug from under me like a sick joke. Outside the window I only find darkness instead of the flashing red and blue lights of the squad car I’m anticipating, putting me on blast to the entire trailer park of misfits as it rolls up to haul me off.
I peer out the window for a few minutes before muttering, “He better not have been joking.”
With a frustrated cry, I rip the notice letter from my back pocket and smack it down on the squat coffee table I helped Mom trash pick and repaint. The notice of collections sits bent and crumpled on the table, a glaring point of why I had no choice in accepting Devlin’s twisted offer.
I scrub my hands over my face and get up to put away the first aid kit. Scooping up the notice, I slip it into the stack that lives next to our toaster. The pile never shrinks, only seems to grow and grow and grow. I rifle through opened and unopened bills, other collection notices and debts past due—everything Dad shackled to us before he high-tailed it.
A sick dread upsets my stomach when I look at this pile of despair. I rub my belly to abate the feeling of my insides turning into solidified bricks.
“Fuck you, Dad,” I growl to the bills.
My temple throbs and I swallow. I need to take my mind off everything that went wrong tonight.
Spinning on my heel, I retreat to my room. It’s a tiny square with a futon bed, library printouts of my favorite art pieces tacked to the wall alongside photos where I’m posed with Gemma and Mom, and stacks of paperbacks under the window.
They’re my collection from the twenty-five cent bin at the thrift store. Most of them are beat up, with cracked spines and yellowed pages, but I love digging through the bin once a month to find a new treasure to add to my collection.
Wriggling out of my dirty clothes, I toss them in the corner to be dealt with later. I pull my hair up into a twisted bun and put on my old track pants and SLHS girls track team t-shirt to relax in. My hand smooths over the green shirt and a wistful smile tugs at my lips. I don’t need the track team to run regularly, but I do miss the way it occupied my time. It was something I had for myself, and those are far and few between.