Page 9 of How You See Me
Waiting for Mom to pick up, I pray she doesn't rope me into another conversation. I don’t have the capacity to talk about my so-called father or my failures tonight.
She must sense it, and pretends neither were ever mentioned. “Hold on, baby. I’ll get her.”
“Hi.” One small word and the rustle of bedsheets. No joy. No sparkle.
“Hi, Cupcake. You okay?”
“I’m tired.”
The honest answer slices me open across the gut. I sit up, ignoring the new throb there. “I bet. Is there anything I can do? Tell you a story? Sing you a song?”
“You can’t sing.”
“How do you know?”
“No one in our family can sing. Not even Mom and she sings all the time in the car.”
“I heard that,” Mom yells from somewhere off the line.
A smile flickers, but it hurts to hold. “I’d still try if you asked.”
“Are you going on our trip?”
A live wire flicks inside me and my body tenses. Of course, she’d ask ask that. Of course, I’m not ready.
“You know I’d do anything for you, but—”
“You can’t go?” A subtle tremble in her voice might as well have been a full sob from the way it rattles me.
“It doesn’t look good right now. My boss—” I stop. The details don’t matter. “It’s complicated.”
“Haysie?”
God, that nickname. She gave it to me when she was four, before our family fell apart. Back when our father still came home, and cancer was something other families dealtwith.
Leaning an elbow on my thigh, I pinch the bridge of my nose, hoping to hold it together long enough to get through this call. “Yeah, Cupcake?”
“Please ask again.”
There’s no explaining to her how the chain of command works. How indifference can kill you just as clean as a bullet. I want to explain that it’s out of my hands. That the military isn’t like other jobs. But I know her nine-year-old brain wouldn’t understand the rules, the denials, or the way personal lives come dead last here. Then again, she shouldn’t have to.
“I will.”
“Did Mom send you my list?”
“No. What’s on it?”
“Things.” A touch of mischief peeks through the weariness.
“What kinds of things?”
“Fun things to do on our trip. You have to doallof them when you go.”
“What if I don’t?”
“I’ll cry.”
“Cupcake . . .” I laugh to keep my chest from caving.
