Page 39 of Eastern Lights

Connor:I hope to God you’re talking about her lemon bars and not her personal baked goods.

Jax:Definitely talking about her personal baked goods. It seems Danny’s really into her cinnabuns.

Connor:You think this is funny, but it’s not. Now you have to think about my sweet innocent mother having sexual relations with some random guy named Danny!

Jax:You want me to think about your mom having sex?

Connor:What? No. Stop. Don’t do that.

Jax:It’s too late. The images are already in my head.

Connor:I hope Kennedy divorces you.

Jax:Do you think sweet Rebecca is a top or bottom?

Connor:This conversation is over.

Jax:I wonder if she’s into role-playing.

Connor:Shut up.

Jax:It’s like those bad knock-knock jokes you’ve always told. Rebecca’s like knock-knock, and Danny asks who’s there, and bam! It’s her sitting on his face.

Connor:I hope you burn in hell.

Jax:I could use the tan. Night, kid.

After a conversation with Jax that only gave me more stress than I had before, I was left wondering how my sweet mother ended up getting tangled up with some dude named Danny.

8

Aaliyah

Nothing saidanxiety like entering a room filled with complete strangers. If I were ever in those oldSawmovies where I was put into a deadly situation that terrified me, it would’ve been me in a room surrounded by people I didn’t know. What were they thinking when they looked at me? What were their first impressions? Did they like me? Did I come off as weird?

Then, there was the fun habit that I had after said gathering, where I went home and overthought every conversation, wondering if someone took my words the wrong way, or if I said something idiotic. I’d only been standing around for about an hour, and my palms were already sweaty from the pressure of it all.

Why did an hour feel like ten when you were in a place you didn’t want to be?

“Say cheese!” a photographer remarked before flashing a camera in my eyes and hurrying off to his next victim. I blinked a few times to try to recover my sight and thought of his words.

Cheese.

Ugh.

What I wouldn’t have given to have some deep-fried, bad-for-my-hips-good-for-my-soul cheese in my mouth right at that moment. I daydreamed about cheese oozing out of a mozzarella stick as I placed a tiny slice of sweet potato into my mouth. It was topped with some weird smelly cheese, pecans, and cranberries. The waitress told me the green sprinkled on top was rosemary, but I was pretty sure it was grass.

Sweet potato crostini bites, she’d called them, but I knew I was actually just eating fancy trash.

I wasn’t a very fancy girl. Never had been, never would be. I never really needed more than some good wings and french fries. At least, that had been the case before my diagnosis. Alcohol had been completely cut out of my life ever since I was placed on the heart transplant list the previous summer, and it’d been two years since I had anything deep fried because of my condition. I’d been forced to give my whole life a complete makeover.

“Would you like another?” the waitress asked, and I cringed, making her hurry away with an annoyed sigh.

I didn’t mean to make a face. I simply hadn’t ever been one to have a solid poker face. All my true emotions and feelings shined through my eyes and the curves of my lips. If I was mad, annoyed, or disgusted, everyone around me could tell.

I wondered if I’d gotten that trait from my mother. I wondered if she was ever displeased with something, if her displeasure sat on the bridge of her nose as it wrinkled up. If she was happy, did her eyes shine in such a special way?

I shook the thought of her away before letting it settle in my heart. The last thing I wanted to do was make myself sad during an event meant to be a happy occasion. Therefore, heavy thoughts were strictly off-limits.

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