Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 66565 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 333(@200wpm)___ 266(@250wpm)___ 222(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 66565 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 333(@200wpm)___ 266(@250wpm)___ 222(@300wpm)
It’s time for that long, hot bath I never got. I need some time to clear my head and try to untangle the truth from fiction. If that’s even possible at this point.
Twenty-Nine
22 Years Ago
Logan
“Yeah, you better run! Run home to mommy!”
I flee up the steps of my trailer home and make it inside right as a rock hits the door behind me. Bastards!
I slam the door shut and put my back against it, breathing hard. They’ll leave me alone now that I’m home, but it’s really only putting it off until tomorrow.
Caleb, Pete, and Pete’s brother Paul are these giant assholes from school who live in the same trailer park but have somehow decided they’re better than me. Really there’s just more of them and Pete got held back a year so they’re all giant fucks even though we’re all just twelve.
I thunk my head back against the flimsy wooden barrier. But at least for tonight, I’m safe.
I have to blink to see around the double-wide, Mom keeps it so dark in here. I can immediately tell she hasn’t been out to look for a job like she promised.
She’s stuck in the same place on the couch where I left her this morning when I took off for school. Nestled in the couch with about a thousand blankets over her, zoned out to what’s on TV.
“Have you eaten?” I start to ask when I notice a new addition to the discarded packages of chips and TV dinners.
“Mom,” I say slowly. “Why are all your pills out on the table like that?” There are dozens of bottles all grouped together, beside a tall glass of water.
It’s like for the first time since I banged into house she even realizes I’m home. “Oh, Logan. I didn’t hear you come in.”
It’s then that I really take in my mom. She used to be really pretty. I’ve seen pictures. But now she just looks…old and tired. Her eyes are sunken and barely open. Her hair is kind of papery and fried from being bleached too many times.
She was doing okay last year when she had this boyfriend, Rog, but he was a loser like every other guy she chooses and after they broke up, she’s just never really recovered.
When my dad left when I was little, she tried to kill herself. She wears bracelets on her wrists to cover the marks, but I never forget they’re there.
I eye all the little bottles again, wanting to grab them all up and pour them down the kitchen sink.
“Mom,” I insist. “What are you doing?”
Her eyes drift back towards me. “I don’t really understand the point of it all anymore. Why we’re all trying so hard. For what?”
For me! I want to grab her shoulders and scream. For your fucking son!
Why can she find the point in living for all those boyfriends but never for me? I guess I’m not enough. Was never enough.
I clench my jaw and stubbornly move past her to the coffee table and start gathering up all the little pill bottles.
“Wait, what are you doing?” It’s the first time all afternoon I’ve heard any life in her. “Stop that. Logan, I need those.”
I spin on her. “For what? So you can kill yourself and leave me all alone?”
She looks hurt, like I’ve wounded her, but then her eyes drop guiltily. Because we both know I’ve just spoken the truth. “It’s not like that, Logan. It’s not about you. These are grown-up problems. You can’t underst—”
“And if you die and leave me alone? You think that’s not some grown-up shit I’ll have to deal with?”
“Logan,” she gasps. “Language.”
“See?” I take her hands. “I need my mom to get on my case about language. I need you, Mom. I love you. It’s us against the world, right?”
She nods wobbly and squeezes my hands back.
“So you won’t leave me?”
She shakes her head. “I won’t leave you. I promise. Just trust me.”
“I trust you, mama.” And I do, I trust her more than anyone else, she’s all I’ve got in the whole entire world.
She starts pulling the pill bottles out of my hands. “I’m sorry I scared you. Let me just go put these back in the medicine cabinet.”
Reluctantly, I let go, but only after she gave me another long hug, and whispered in my ear, “You’re becoming such a good man, Logan. I’m so proud of you.”
I hugged her back, hard. Maybe we’d make it after all…
Except that the next morning I found her dead in her bathtub, bottles of empty pills strewn on the ground.
Thirty
Present Day
Daphne
When I finally make it back to my apartment yet again, still hauling my stupid suitcases around with me, I’m exhausted. Emotionally. Physically. The world is tilted upside down and all I want is to crash for about a hundred years.