CHAPTER 8
I skip my other class that afternoon and just go back to the apartment where Patrick and Sarah are yelling at each other, so I sort of sneak in and pretend like I’m not there, hoping I can get to my room and not get dragged into it. They hardly ever fight though, so a part of me wants to stay and see if I can help.
“Calm down, honey. You’re being irrational here. You just need to sit down and breathe.”
“I’m already breathing, Patrick. I don’t need to sit down and breathe. I just want to know why I saw you hugging that girl after class.”
“She was a friend of mine who I hadn’t seen in a while. It was an innocent hug. Believe me. You can call her right now and ask her.”
“Innocent hugs don’t last for three minutes, and don’t involve you picking her up and her holding onto you with her legs.”
“Regardless of what the hug looked like, it was innocent. I hadn’t seen her in a year. She just got back from England. She was studying abroad. Seriously, there’s nothing to be worried about.”
“Then why the fuck did you look surprised when you saw me?”
“Because I didn’t know you were meeting me after class.”
“Fuck this.” Sarah gets her purse and storms out, not before pushing me out of the way and slamming the door. Too many slammed doors in a day.
Patrick sits down on the couch, and he looks like he’s about to explode.
“What was that about?”
“Oh, that. Nothing. She’s just overreacting. I was hugging Samantha, seeing as I hadn’t seen her in a year, Sarah saw, freaked out. You heard most of it.”
“Samantha Barrington?”
“Yeah.”
“Didn’t you used to date Samantha before you and Sarah started dating?”
“Yeah, but that was three years ago.”
“Does she know that you used to date her?”
“Probably. It would explain why she flipped a shit about it all.”
“Don’t worry, she’ll calm down and be okay in a day or so. You and Sarah hardly ever get in fights. Sometimes I think you just fight because you think you’re supposed to. Like that one time she got angry because you let her cereal get soggy because you poured milk in it before she asked you to.” I start laughing and Patrick does too, and I can tell he’s going to be okay.
“You’re probably right. Nothing to worry about. I still love her. So that’s all that matters.”
“How did Samantha look?”
“Why do you think I was hugging her for three minutes?”
That night I sit in my room and try to recollect my thoughts on the previous day. At least now, I’m calmer than I was. At least now I’ll never have to see that shithead therapist again. I stare at the ceiling and I can see where the paint is starting to crack, and I’m tempted to just get up and start peeling it off. Then I’ll have a huge mess, but I won’t have to look at the crack anymore. I wish Ashley would call me back. I text her three times asking if she’s okay. My friend Rebecca calls and wants to know if I want to get dinner since she was busy during lunch. I tell her I’ll call sometime this week.
I remember in middle school, a couple of months after my parents had died, they had a parent teacher meet day at school, and a lot of kids asked where my parents were. I told them they were busy at work, but that they’d be back soon. I sort of just smiled and walked around, looking at all of the happy families, and I was the only one walking around without a mom or dad. Just me. My grandparents couldn’t come because they had a doctor’s appointment. They said they felt terrible, but I told them that their health was more important than some bullshit parent teacher meeting. In reality, I wish they had come and stood there with me. But I didn’t want to be a prick and make them miss a doctor’s appointment. They were already in their mid-seventies at that point. They were too old. My grandpa was too old to throw a baseball with me, or play basketball, and there were no kids around close enough for me to invite over. I used to play baseball for the school though, and I was damn good at it. They had me batting second and playing shortstop for five years, until I quit, and realized that I was more interested in women than throwing baseballs.
My grandparents started losing it around my junior year of high school. They’d start asking when Judy and Christopher were going to be over for dinner, or to pick me up. I hated to keep reminding them that they had died, because the only response I would get would be “Oh dear, I’m sorry. Maybe they can come another day.” It came to the point where we had to get a nurse in there to help them move and eat and just about everything else. Then my senior year, they went off to the nursing home, so I had to look over at the empty house from the window of my apartment every night. That night was the first night I had cried in the last ten years. I didn’t cry when I found out my parents had died, or at their funeral, or even afterwards when the therapist asshole made me feel like shit about it. But that night I just cried and cried, until I couldn’t cry anymore, and then I slept for about a day, and stayed in the apartment all weekend. Friends would call and see what I was doing, but I never picked up the phone. I just let it ring, and laid in bed with my head on the pillow, watching the fan blades spin, around and around. They couldn’t remember who I was anymore. Or anything about me. They would ask what I was doing in their house when I would come to visit, and threaten to call the police. It was like watching another set of parents disappear. I remember thinking, 'Wouldn't it be great if this was all just some elaborate prank and one day I’d come home and my parents would pop out from behind the couch and take pictures of the look on my face. Which I’m not sure how I’d look. Probably surprised, sad, confused and happy all at the same time. Something a picture really can’t capture. But that never happened either. So at my graduation, I didn’t have a family to take pictures with, or anyone to congratulate me on what a good future I had ahead of me. I just got my diploma, walked off the stage, and kept on walking until I was in my car, and back at the apartment.
There are moments in my life that I wish I could erase. There are ten years of my life I wish I could erase, that being, when my parents were alive. So when I came to, it would be like nothing ever happened. I could grow up more normal than I was. I would just assume that my parents were old when they had me, because no one would ever tell me my parents had died. And I’d just coast through life, having no recollection of the past, or any memories attached to it.
It would be blissful.