Page 13 of Don't Let Me Go
“Rink-O-Rama. It’s a skating rink. And on Sundays they do a wholeXanadutribute and play Olivia Newton-John nonstop. It’samazing. You have to join us.”
“Oh,” I say, not expecting to field another offer to hang quite so soon.
Tonight was fun. Mostly. But I’m not sure it’s something I want to repeat. My plan for getting through my senior year without any more drama is to keep my head down and fly under the radar as much as possible until graduation. Somehow, I think that might prove difficult if I keep spending time with Duy and their crew.
Besides, I’m not really in the market for new friends.
“Let me check with my aunt,” I hedge. “I think we have plans tomorrow.”
“Oh, really?” Duy pouts in disappointment. “Well, if anything changes, you know where to find me. Also, you have my number.”
I do. I actually have everyone’s number from tonight. Duy insisted on adding me to their group text before we left the carnival.
“Night, Miss Haines!” Duy calls to my aunt, giving her an enthusiastic wave as they stroll across the lawn to their own house.
“Night, Duy,” Aunt Rachel calls back. “Thanks again for the bánh xoai.”
“My pleasure!”
There’s a second lawn chair set up next to my aunt’s in the garage, so after grabbing a Coke out of the minifridge, I plop down beside her.
“You have a good time tonight, kiddo?” she asks, setting aside the magazine she was skimming. She’s wearing her navy-blue coveralls, and her brown hair is pulled up into a red bandanna, giving her a real Rosie the Riveter vibe. She must have been sculpting earlier.
“Yeah. Carnival was fun.”
“See?” she crows, breaking into a wide grin. “I told you the world wouldn’t end if you left your room foronenight.”
I can’t help smiling. Despite her tendency to exaggerate about anything and everything, Rachel has always been my favorite aunt.
She’s almost ten years younger than my father, and because of that they’ve never been especially close. Even so, from the moment I was born, Rachel and I just clicked. I think it’s because, in a family of overachievers and perfectionists, my aunt is the one person I’m related to who thinks that you should be allowed to enjoy life and not spend every waking second trying to conquer it.
That’s what my father does. Conquer.
When he was growing up, his one goal in life was to play for the NFL. He ate, slept, and breathed football. By all accounts, he wasdamn good at it too. Everyone was convinced he’d go pro. That is until a knee injury in college sidelined his dreams of glory.
Even then, he didn’t lose his drive. He just switched his focus, channeling all his energy into sports medicine and building up the state’s most successful physical therapy and rehab center. Now when the Seminoles’ quarterback tears his ACL or the Dolphins’ wide receiver dislocates his shoulder, they come to my father, and he gets them back on the gridiron. Because Dr. Wyatt Haines is a man who gets results.
My mother isn’t much different, at least when it comes to ambition. She spent her teens and twenties dominating the pageant circuit in the hopes of becoming Miss Florida and, ultimately, Miss America. She never managed to take home the big crown, but she did eventually take home my dad, becoming Mrs. Holly Haines in the process. Now she runs a successful real estate agency catering to footballers and other newly rich sports professionals looking to buy retirement homes for their parents in the Florida panhandle.
Then there’s Aunt Rachel.
My father always says Aunt Rachel could’ve been a really successful artist if she’d had a bit more ambition and approached her sculpting the way that he approached medicine. But world domination has never been Rachel’s thing. Sure, she might be only an adjunct art professor at a community college who spends her weekends sculpting in her garage. But unlike my parents, Aunt Rachel seems genuinely happy with the life she’s built for herself. She doesn’t need a trophy or an empire to prove her worth to the world. Or to herself.
Is it any wonder I wanted to live with her after everything that went down in December?
“Did I hear Duy invite you to go skating tomorrow?” my aunt asks, finishing off the last of her wine.
“Yeah. He did—theydid.”
“That was nice of them.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Did I also hear you say that you wouldn’t be able to go because you and I have some vague mystery plans that I am unaware of?”
Shit. I was hoping Aunt Rachel didn’t hear that part. “Yeah, sorry. I shouldn’t have lied.”
“No, please, don’t apologize. I just wanted to make sure I hadn’t scheduled important bonding time with my nephew and then forgotten. You know I’m a senile old crone who can barely remember what day it is.”
