Page 12 of As a Last Resort
My eyes flicked up to him.
“That’s why I don’t go back home,” he continued.“When I was in high school, my dad fell off a ladder, shattered his leg, and has been a mess ever since.”
That was a curveball I hadn’t expected.“I’m sorry,” was the only thing I could conjure up.I shook my head.“God, I hate when people say that to me.Never mind.That sucks.That’s what I really mean to say.”
“I couldn’t agree with you more.”He took another sip.“So, what’s your deal, Leigh?”
I’m not sure if it was the couple of drinks, or the fact that for the first time, Robby seemed remotely human, but I answered him.
“Alcohol.Or pills.Or anything else she could get her hands on, honestly.”I inspected the melting sugar on the rim of my glass.“My mom.”
“Ah, that sucks too.”
“Yes, it totally does.”I hated when people looked at me with pity in their eyes once they found out my mom was an addict.But he didn’t.He laughed.But not in a mocking way, in a knowing way.In a—that sucks—way.
“I walked in on my dad passed out butt-ass naked on the couch one time,” he offered.“Couldn’t wake him for the life of me.WhenI called 911, my former kindergarten teacher, who was a part-time paramedic, was the one who answered the call.”
I couldn’t help but laugh.“The joys of living in a small town.I once got a call from my high school science teacher at midnight.He was fully bought into the idea that corporate America was controlling humans through the aluminum in their antiperspirant, so he refused to wear any.”
Robby scrunched his nose as I continued.
“Turns out he’d been sleeping with my mom for a few weeks.She was on a date with him and mixed too many substances.She passed out at the bar and I had to come get her.Needless to say, the rest of the year was super awesome.”
“I hated school.”He started tearing up the bar napkin into tiny little squares.“All my teachers knew about my dad so everyone walked on eggshells around me.I was awkward compared to my older brother anyway.He was the star player on our high school baseball team.Took them to states.Was a big deal at the time.I was more the nerd with my head stuck in a spreadsheet.”
I couldn’t imagine Robby being awkward in high school.He was annoyingly confident.Self-assurance wasn’t something he lacked.
“You’re thinking it’s hard to believe I wasn’t always this good-looking, huh?”He winked.“Would you ever go back?”
“Like, for good?Voluntarily?Oh, God no.”I shuddered at the thought.“It’d be like willingly walking into purgatory.More than half my high school still lives there.It’s bad enough when I have to visit, running into the entire male staff of my high school who have most definitely seen my mother naked.Not to mention the gaggle of mean girls, the Blondtourage, who made my life a living hell.They’re just older now, with little, grumpy spawns on their hips, patrolling the town with their perfectly coordinated strollers, ready to cut anyone without a matching pickleball paddle.”
“I also had my fair share of classmates who weren’t held enough as babies.My underwear got sent up the flagpole once.”
“It did not.”
“It did.”
“I cheered for the football team and one time during a pep rally, the Blondtourage sent little mice in windup cars across the track to where I was sitting.Like, twenty of them.”
His eyebrows pulled.“Where did they find mice windup cars?”
“You know, I have no idea.”Of all the time I spent thinking about that pep rally, I never thought of where they actually came from.
“That must have taken some dedication to find.That was back before Amazon.They couldn’t have been cheap.”
“That never even crossed my mind.”
“I finally found my groove when I took calculus as a junior.”His face lit up as he said it.“Everything all of a sudden made sense once I could bury my head in numbers.”
I remembered that exact feeling.Math always seemed easy.A place where I could focus my energy on figuring out complex problems that, at the end of the day, had a solution, instead of home drama that seemingly never ended.
At the beginning of senior year, I thought we’d turned a corner.Months had passed without a late-night pickup call from a stranger, or police showing up at my door, Mom in tow.We watched movies together.She cooked.She smiled.She seemed happier.Bright eyed.Full of energy.I came home one day and she was napping on the couch.But two hours went by and she hadn’t stirred.I tried to wake her up and I couldn’t.Apparently mixing amphetamines with alcohol awards you respiratory depression and overexertion simultaneously, which is a fancy way of saying her body couldn’t regain consciousness on its own, according to the paramedic who also said,Thank God you called us when you did.
What if I had waited twenty minutes longer?What if I had gone and taken a shower instead of seeing the shine on her forehead when I walked by that made me stop and check on her?Would she have stopped breathing while I was shampooing my hair?
I hated myself for letting her lie there for hours.And decided I never wanted that responsibility again.
The next day, I went to the guidance counselor and doubled up on algebra and calc.I even signed up for night classes just to be able to catch up to the math honors track for college and make myself a shoo-in for a school far, far away.
