Page 46 of Deeper

Rylan

Eighteen Years Old

Beep.

Beep.

Beep.

The noise of my alarm jolts me awake. I automatically hit snooze before my eyes are even open. Today should be like any other Tuesday morning.

I slept at home, which is rare because this place has never felt like home to me. It’s a run-down two bedroom in a white trash neighborhood my mom moved us to three years ago. I hate this place—not because it’s a dump, but because it’s harder to hold on to the good memories when I only have the bad ones here. I’ve become the new white trash princess on the wrong side of town.

My alarm blares again, and I curse under my breath.

Today isn’t a normal day—I can feel it in my bones—and I don’t want to get out of bed. There is a knot in my stomach and a violent grip on my heart. I shift my feet to the floor, and I shove away the urge to get back under my covers.

There is one more week until the date I’ve been counting down to for years—my eighteenth birthday. It’s my escape from the world I’ve been trapped in. But maybe only symbolically because turning eighteen isn’t going to magically fix all my problems. But it’s a step.

Today though is school picture day for my senior year. I’ll go to the fancy photographer and be given that black smock thing to wear for all the posed headshots.

I turn the water on in my shower and get in, so I can primp for photo day.

My skin becomes raw from scrubbing and pruned from exposure, so I get out of the shower and throw on a robe. I’m met with silence as I turn on my hair dryer. The fucking thing shows no sign of life. I’ll have to steal Mom’s.

My feet move until I stand outside my mother’s closed bedroom door, but I’m hesitant to enter. She’ll be pissed if I wake her up, and dealing with her wrath is never how I want to start my mornings. She was out late last night, and I never even heard her come home. That means there is a better chance of me sneaking in and out without waking her.

I creak the door open, mindful of staying quiet.

But, once the door is open, it becomes apparent that my silence isn’t necessary.

I wasn’t being paranoid. It isn’t just my mind playing tricks on me.

The deep-rooted anxious sensation I felt before getting out of bed was instinct. It’s mysterious—the reasons behind how your body can sense bad fate before you’re informed—but it just happens sometimes.

What I see knocks the wind out of me, and I can no longer breathe deeply. I can barely breathe at all. I stand paralyzed.

Tuesday morning. Picture day. A week before my eighteenth birthday.

The day I find Mom hanging from her ceiling fan.

I have no reaction. Zero. I’m not shocked or scared or angry or relieved. I’m empty.

Her feet dangle inches from the cracked and cluttered floor. Her head hangs forward with her unwashed hair hiding her face from me. She’s dead, long gone before I ever opened the door. You’d think I’d run to cut her down, but I just stand there, unable to take my eyes off her, while her body sways from the makeshift noose.

Every dark thought concerning Mom over the last few years runs through my head, and shame rushes through me. I should be remembering when she tucked me in as a little girl or when she was the parent helper in my second grade classroom, but I can’t help which thoughts filter through my mind. I imagine the arguments, the angry fists, the times I came home to her passed out on the floor, and all the school functions she missed. I remember her reasoning—that my behavior pushed her to act these ways. I see the scary men she invited into our home and remember the times she didn’t turn up for weeks. Her words as she told me I was the reason she disappeared rings through my head.

Even now, I’m the monster who can’t forgive my mother’s mistakes. This was her choice. She left me, but I am the one guilt-ridden about moments like this—where all I can see is the bad and believing that’s the reason she’s dead. She’s dead because of me. Because I couldn’t love her the way she needed to be loved. Because I couldn’t forgive her for everything that’d happened since Dad died.

I am the child, her child, but guilt about not being enough eats at me.

My fingers hit the numbers on my phone.

9-1-1.

Somehow, I give my address and explain what’s going on, but I don’t remember doing so.

“Stay on the line. Somebody is on their way,” the operator’s voice says from my phone, but I just set it down.

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