Page 10 of No Place Like Home

I ran to her first since she got puked on and started to clean her up while Tyler wiped his barf with the back of his hand.Gross.

“Someone push the button for the office!” I yelled.

When the intercom came on, I told them I needed the nurse ASAP.

“Oh, Lord, you weren’t kidding. This is horrible,” Clare whispered.

She was new in town, a widow looking for a friendly place to live, and that was Sunny Pines. A place where terrible things only happened once in a blue moon.

“Yep. I forgot I was hosting Pukefest. Let me take the students next door, and I’ll help you,” I said, trying to regain control of my other kids. I felt like a shepherd trying to herd sheep.

Mrs. Shaw, the first-grade teacher, immediately included my students in her activities. It wasn’t unusual for us teachers to do that. The town had grown in the last five years, but we were still small. Usually, one teacher per grade.

The luxury condos and homes brought some more people, but a lot of them were just seasonal. No need for many teachers if there weren’t enough students.

Most days, my job was calm, with a few giggles here and there. I loved little people; they had such innocence, it was hard to stay mad at them. They saw the world in black and white, and there was no need to explain the grays to them. Simple was easy. Simple was good.

By the time the school day ended, I was exhausted. Calling parents and cleaning my classroom while I helped unwind the other kiddos took a lot from my mental energy. Usually, I stayed for an hour or more, getting things ready for the next day, but I had made a date with Rosie that I wasn’t breaking.

I loved my little sister, and when I’d left for college, it was an adjustment period for the both of us. We had more of a mother-daughter relationship than sisters. Yeah, I knew it was fucked up. While I was away at college, I felt like a mother who had lost her child. Because no matter what anyone said, Rosie had been mine. I did all the things my mother neglected to do—all because she kept trying to put the broken pieces of our family back together.

I loved my mom, I knew I did, but rage would start to consume me every time I thought of her. I didn’t like giving those thoughts much emotion, because what good would it do now that she was dead?

When my mom died, Juliet didn’t hesitate to take us on. At the time, she was still living in a crappy apartment next to ours. She didn’t care about the money it would take to provide for us, and in a short amount of time, she had become our new family. Once the incident happened, we all moved in with her brother. It was easier to move in with him than to be haunted by the memories that came with living in the same building wherethathappened.

I had planned to go to college before my mother died. My plan had been ambitious, but simple: four years of busting my ass so I could get a degree and make a better life for Rosie. When my mom died, I didn’t care about that anymore. That seemed like a luxury. I had a toddler to take care of now that we were alone.

Except we weren’t.

Juliet basically dragged my ass to college. She urged me to live my life. But what life did I even have? I was a nobody with dead parents.

My pain was locked so tight that I thought I was strong. It wasn’t like it wasn’t expected, right?

I shook my head, not wanting to go down that road.

The first week of college had been hell. I was constantly worried, on edge, having panic attacks at night, thinking my sister needed me. When I came back, I saw her smiling and happy, and it had been the rude awakening I needed. Rosie didn’t need me, or at least not a stupid teenager version of me. She needed a dependable adult. Sure, Rosie missed Mom, but she didn’t understand the severity of what had happened to us. She now had a mother figure in Juliet, someone who doted on her the way a mother should. The way our mother should have done. And with Juliet came Jake, and together they treated Rosie like she was one of their own. Like a daughter.

So, I went back to college with a little less baggage and a bigger hole in my chest, but I didn’t let anyone know. Juliet paid for everything, since I had lost the scholarship I had won. As if that wasn’t enough, she even spent her money for me to see a shrink. It was money wasted if you asked me, but she insisted. The incident hadn’t broken me. Deep down, I saw it coming.

I’d lost my mother, and somehow in the whole fucked-up mess, I’d gained a family, which made me feel weird about it, like it was wrong. My mother was gone, but now I had many people worried about my well-being.

It didn’t make sense.

Having people care about you does change you. It makes you feel guilty for being self-destructive. So I kept seeing the shrink Juliet suggested. I guess it helped, or maybe I had been dealing with pain for so long that this was just another thing to add to my little boxes because, let's be honest, those little boxes never go away. You just get better at handling them.

Throwing my bag in the back of my car, I closed my eyes while I waited for Rosie to come out. She was excited that she would see me while she was at school. She was in third grade. I bet we would have had a totally different conversation if I had taught at the high school while she was in school.

“Jessamine,” my sister mocked as she got closer to my car.

I was still Jess, plain and simple. My name did not fit me, and Rosie was old enough to understand that I kind of hated it.

“Rosamie,” I greeted her.

“Where are we going?”

I knew she would hate my answer, but Juliet complained that all Rosie wanted to do was watch TV or use her tablet, and that behavior did not fly with me. She was getting spoiled. When she had been under my care, we didn’t have those luxuries.

“We’re going on a walk.” I grinned, and she groaned.

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