Page 11 of North
We were getting ready to ride around the same circle we’d been riding around since I got to Telluride last night. If I didn’t tell him the truth, we’d always go around in circles. He was the only person I had in the entire world. I didn’t want to lose him too.
My heart thundered against my chest while my mouth turned to sand. “I couldn’t come with you,” I said.
“I know. You didn’t want to leave Izzy.” I heard the threads of contempt in his voice and they stung.
“I couldn’t stay with you after what happened on my birthday. I thought you hated me. I thought you were disgusted and only asked me to come out of obligation. I didn’t think you really wanted me with you.” My lips quivered as tears escaped down my face.
Dad’s eyebrows pulled together to a point on his forehead. His jaw ticked a few times as he mulled over his thoughts and words. I couldn’t help squirming in my seat and toying with the seatbelt to disperse the nervous energy bolting through me.
“North, we need to talk about that. I know it’s heavy on both of our minds and ever since it happened we’ve been avoiding each other. I never wanted that.” My body hummed when his paint-speckled hand slid across my skin. I wasn’t cold anymore. My body temperature climbed higher and higher.
I couldn’t look at him without thinking about how stupid I was that night.
It was my sixteenth birthday and Mom promised she’d spend time with me. She said it would be a mother/daughter day. She was going to pick me up early from school then we were going to hang out at the movies and get something to eat. I was beside myself with excitement.
I must have talked Dad’s ear off about it the entire night before my birthday. I tried to sleep but you know how anticipation eats away at your belly until all you can do is watch the sun to rise in the sky? Well, that’s what happened.
I was so exhausted I barely made it through the school day. Hours ticked on and my name was never called over the loudspeaker.
By the last period, disappointment settled in, weighing my chest down and making every step I took heavy. She did it again. She managed to get my hopes up only to drop them so they shattered.
I held on to a sliver of hope reserved for the instance where Mom picked me up after school instead of picking me up early. I craned my neck looking into the parking lot for her green Honda as I made my way outside.
Nothing.
I waited until the dense crowd of high school students turned into a barren area void of everyone. When an administrator asked me if I needed to call my parents, I shook my head and started walking home.
She wasn’t coming.
I don’t know why I thought she would. I knew better than that. I never wanted to admit Mom would choose meth over me but I had no choice but to face the facts when she left me stranded on my birthday.
A sixteenth birthday should be celebrated. It should be a time where a girl moves closer to womanhood and understanding the world a little more. It should have been all those things for me but it wasn’t.
My sixteenth birthday was spent slipping into a murky and dark depression.
On the way home, I passed a bar where most of the local junkies and alcoholics hung out and something caught my eye. It was a streak of bright green. The same bright green of my mother’s Honda. I slowed in my stride, turning my head to make sure I wasn’t seeing things.
I wasn’t.
It was her car. I even saw the first three letters of her license plate.
She was at the bar on my sixteenth birthday. The birthday she promised to spend with me. The birthday that was supposed to be special.
The hot sting of tears pricked the corners of my eyes as I moved faster toward home. The moment I got inside, Dad looked up from his painting and his expression warped into concern. I didn’t wait for him to stand from the stool. I barreled into him, barely able to control my wild emotions.
“Hey, hey, Shortcake…” His nickname for me melted through the pain and resentment, living in my heart. I buried my slick face against his warm neck.
God, he smelled so good and fresh. Soap still clung to his olive skin even hours after he got out of the shower. Shampoo threaded through his thick deep brown hair.
He was my security blanket. His strong arms wrapped around my middle holding still all the pieces of freefalling emotions. “Hey, are you gonna tell me what’s wrong? I can’t help if I don’t know what’s wrong.”
Help.
Dad always tried to help me. He was always there to catch me when nobody else was. He wasn’t my real father but I couldn’t call him anything else but Dad. That’s what he’d been but in this space, at this moment, he felt like more. He felt like everything I needed and everything Mom didn’t deserve.
I looked up long enough to catch his golden-green eyes. They were full of so much love. I loved him too. I loved him in a way I shouldn’t have. In a way that tipped my belly on its side and set fire to my bones.
“Mom was supposed to get me early from school,” I finally said when my tears subsided. Dad groaned and leaned his head back, remembering the way I bubbled over with excitement.
