Page 113 of Verses

“You didn’t want to go?”

“Oh…it was more than that. Kyle and I had been out partying hard on a Saturday night and I came home, crawling into bed. It wasn’t until the next morning that mom and Phil were banging on my bedroom door, telling me to get up. I blew them off at firstbut before long, they broke into my room and poured cold water on my face.”

Wolf didn’t say a word but his expression spoke for him.

Yeah…looking back, I thought that was pretty harsh too.

But maybe I’d been a worse kid than I remembered.

“When I joined them in the living room,thenI saw that half the house was packed up in boxes. I hadn’t noticed it the night before in the dark, using my cell phone to light a path. I’d expected the usual yelling and lectures I’d been getting and then I planned to ask what was up with the boxes. Instead, they told me about Phil accepting the promotion and said they were moving to La Junta…and I wasnotinvited.”

“Soyoudidn’t decide you didn’t want to go? They didn’t give you the choice?”

“No. And I’ll never forget what Phil said.You think you know everything and we’re just stupid adults. Well, we’re giving you your freedom today. If you want to keep any of your stuff, you have till Friday to get it out.My mom just stood behind him, but I couldn’t read her expression. At the time, I convinced myself it was all his idea. I was all pissed off and stormed out of the house, going straight to Kyle’s.”

I took a minute to steady my voice. I wouldn’t have guessed till now that I’d locked these memories away tightly—and letting them out to breathe refreshed the pain attached to them.

Looking out the side window, I continued. “Kyle wasn’t there—but his mom was, and I’d been crying, so she invited me in and we sat at the kitchen table and talked. Right then and there, she opened her home to me, but I told her I wanted to talk to my mom alone first. Looking back, I wonder why I wanted to be with a family who didn’t want me—but they were all I’d ever known.”

“Makes sense.”

After taking a few slow breaths, I continued. “Monday morning, I went to the house. I knew Phil had to be to workby seven—and I didn’t care if I missed some classes. Obviously. Mom was packing shit in the living room and ignored me until I demanded she talk to me. And when I asked her why they didn’t want me coming with them, she said she didn’t know what to do with me—that I was disobedient and impossible to raise and she’d had enough. She’d hoped Phil would have a good influence on me, but maybe it was too late for me. She even said they had an obligation to protect my little brother and sister from me—like I would ever hurt them. I’d only ever protected them.”

I was surprised I wasn’t crying—but maybe that meant I was over the pain more than I’d thought. Still, those horrible moments continued revolving in my head, the realization that my mother didn’t want me. But it really hadn’t been the first time she’d chosen the man in her life over me. I just hadn’t been able to identify that pattern till I was older.

Shifting in my seat, I repeated the lie I’d been telling myself all these years. “But at least I didn’t have to miss my junior prom or start over with other friends.”

“You went to prom?”

I laughed. “No. Kyle and I thought it was stupid.”

Grinning, Wolf said, “I bet you would have looked cute as hell in one of those formal dresses.”

“I guess we’ll never know.”

“So you moved in with Kyle’s family.”

“Yeah—but his mom kind of became the mother I needed. After my mom had practically slapped me in the face, I wandered around town and found Kyle at the park. He was drinking a Dr. Pepper and smoking a joint, business as usual. When I told him what had happened, I think he was as shocked as I was—and maybe he was thinking the same shit could happen to him. I don’t know. But when I told him what his mom had said, we decided to go to his house to talk to her. She workednights as a CNA at the nursing home, but she was usually up until nine or ten in the morning.”

I closed my eyes, looking back upon that fateful moment. I hadn’t really had much of an opinion of Kyle’s mother until then, because most adults had seemed like the enemy.

She wasnotan enemy—not by a long shot.

I said, “When we got to his house, his mom made us breakfast. Liam and their little sister were already at school, so it was as private a conversation as you could get. She said again that I could move in with them—but she had conditions.”

“Not surprising.”

“Agreed. She said she knew Kyle and I were having sex, but she still gave me my own bedroom in the basement and asked us to be discreet. I was pretty sure she’d been the one who’d been buying him condoms—but she was going to take me to Planned Parenthood in Silver City so I could get on birth control—and she said she wouldn’tmakeme get a job, but she encouraged it. And I had to stop skipping school.”

“She didn’t tell Kyle to get his shit together?”

“She didn’t have to. We both kind of understood that if we didn’t toe the line, we’dbothbe out on the street—but she never said that. But we did—we got our shit together. We still partied, but we did it on the weekend. We started going to school regularly and I even got decent grades by the end of that school year.”

“Kyle too?”

“I don’t know what his grades were, but he was attending classes. And I think I made the effort because I knew she cared. I, um…I would never say this to my mom, but I adore Kyle’s mother. She was more of a parent to me than anyone else in my life. My mom had a hard life and blamed a lot of her failings on that—but Kyle’s mom had too.”

Wolf nodded but kept his eyes on the road.

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