Page 4 of All Jacked Up

Grinning, I replied.

Me: No, you definitely get the full brunt of my bitchiness.

I waited, and when there was no other text after that, I slipped my phone into my book bag and headed for the door of our trailer. The blue paint on it was peeling, and the yellow it had been before that was starting to show. Not bothering with digging out my key since Mom’s thirteen-year-old silver Camaro and Dick’s old blue truck were parked outside, I knew the door was unlocked. However, I opened it slowly and listened. Once, I’d opened it up without checking first and caught Dick’s naked butt as he screwed my momma on the kitchen counter. Worst image ever that I could not bleach from my head.

Mom was standing in the kitchen when I walked in, making a sandwich—most likely for Dick. She glanced up at me. “You’re here early.” Her tone made it clear she wasn’t happy about that.

“It’s Wednesday. I’m always home at three fifteen on Wednesday,” I told her.

We were the second stop on the bus route.

She scowled. “Whatever. Since you’re here, get the laundry done, would ya? It’s piled up and smelling sour.”

“Okay,” I replied, then waited to see if she said anything else. Perhaps remembered that she’d given birth on this day seventeen years ago.

“What?” she snapped. “Why are you just standing there?”

I thought about letting it go, but this was the last birthday I’d spend under her roof. I decided to point out that she’d forgotten it—again.

“It’s my birthday.”

She frowned. “So? What are you wanting from me? A cake?”

Laughter from the living room area came out in Dick’s annoying bellow. “Yeah, she wants a cake. One she can eat all by herself in one sitting!”

Momma smirked. “God knows she’d do it too. Eat an apple,” she told me as she walked past me with the sandwich and into the connecting room to hand it to Dick.

It no longer stung. The fat jokes. I was used to them from both my mom and Dick. They were far worse than anything I heard at school.

Turning, I headed toward the short hallway and to the only place in this awful rectangular metal box I found some solace. My bedroom. At least I had that.

“Hey! You’re still doing the laundry! Don’t care what day it is!” Mom’s voice called out.

I’m well aware, Mom.

Noa

Age Eighteen

Ransom: How’s the snow? Ready to move back South yet?

I had been staring out the window of my dorm room, watching the snow fall just before he sent this.

Me: It’s beautiful, and I might never leave.

It was true. I’d worried about moving to Rhode Island, but the full-ride scholarship thousands of miles away from my mother had been hard to resist.

Ransom: I’d ask if you were dropped on your head as a baby, but your brain is the reason I passed British Lit and graduated on schedule.

“Who has you grinning like that?” Jellie Watts—my roommate and, dare I say, friend—asked.

I glanced back at her. “A friend from back home.”

Me: You should have built a statue in my honor.

“What friend? You’ve not mentioned one before.”

Because other than Ransom, there was no one in Madison, Mississippi, I could remotely consider a friend.

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