Page 6 of Colt
I have no memory of a move. At all. The last six days are just…gone for me. Gone forever.
“Right.”
Gentry and his dad come into the room next. “This is what happens when we go pick up dinner,” Jim says, holding up a takeout box.
“Don’t worry about it,” I say to him. I’m lucky.
My stepdad is a good guy. Before him, there was no father figure in my life at all. My own dad fucked off before I was born, and my mom was a single mom most of my life, working as hard as she could, establishing a successful real estate business before she got into buying and renting out houses. Allison and Gentry’s mom died of cancer when they were little. Gentry and I hatched a brilliant plan to hook our parents up, and it really worked. The rest is history, and we’re almost one big happy family.
Except for Allison hating me.
“Can I get some of that food?”
“We have to check with your doctor,” my mom says as my family all sits down at a table across the room and starts to dig into the takeout. It feels mean.
I’m a bit comforted by the meanness, if I’m honest. Because at least I know I’m not dying. If they were all being too nice, then I would think that the doctors were lying, and I had some kind ofticking time bomb injury that was going to result in my untimely demise.
Especially if Allison started being nice.
I’m out of it, even though I’m awake now. Drifting in and out of consciousness as I lie there in bed, unable to stay fully awake, but I know my family is all there.
Not all of them.
Images of my dad— my biological dad— click through in my head like a slideshow. Because I only have a few memories of him. Very specific, and very short. In his cowboy hat, his Wrangler jeans, his boots, walking away from me at a rodeo. I had just done the mutton busting and fallen on my ass.
Did you see, Dad?
I don’t know if he saw. I don’t remember. I was little. It doesn’t really matter.
And then again, at my… It was a birthday. But it wasn’t my party. We met at the zoo.
I can still see him standing, facing away from me.
Watch this!
I wake up with a start. It’s dark. And I can’t see anything.
There’s a faint shape in the corner, in the chair. And I remember where I am. The hospital. When I went to sleep, my family was eating dinner, and now they’re gone.
Butsomeone’sthere.
“Hello?”
I hear groggy, sleepy sounds, and I realize that whoever’s there they were snoozing pretty hard.
“Do you need something?”
Allison. Allison is still here.
“What are you doing here?” I ask.
She makes an exasperated sound, and I see as she rises up into a standing position, looking more like a ghost than a person in the dimly lit room.
“Your mom needed to sleep. To actually sleep through the night. And now that you aren’t on death’s door…”
“Was I on death’s door?”
I can see her crossing her arms even through the darkness.
