Page 41 of Something Good
I figuredI’d gotten maybe five total hours of sleep. I’d tossed and turned and woken up so many times that I wasn’t sure it even amounted to that much. My phone was dead since I’d forgotten my charger, but the clock on Will’s desk read 7:08.
I slipped on my joggers and T-shirt and snuck across the hall to use the bathroom. I took a piss, washed my hands, and brushed my teeth with the toothbrush someone had left out for me. Then I just stood there, staring at my reflection in the mirror. My curls were a mess, there were dark circles under my eyes, and my fair skin was even more pale than usual.
What had become of my life? How had it all come down to this? Eighteen and holding on by a thread, responsible for a brother with undiagnosed and untreated anxiety, dirt poor, and on the verge of homelessness. Most kids my age were having the summer of their lives balanced on the precipice between high school and college, between childhood and adulthood, and with all the freedom and promise of a bright future.
I’d known from a very young age that college wasn’t in the cards for me. I wasn’t upset that I wasn’t going. I hadn’t enjoyed school and couldn’t imagine voluntarily paying money to gofor four more years. But never in my life had I imagined my future would be limited to a minimum-wage job at Walmart and groceries from a food pantry.
I couldn’t see my way out of this. I’d been trying for days to figure out what I was going to do, but I could only see so far as my next shift at Walmart. I couldn’t see further than that. I couldn’t see afuture.
I scrubbed my hands over my face and crossed back into Will’s room. I needed to get out of here. I needed space to think.
I found my tattered Vans, still damp, and slipped them on without socks, then made my way down the stairs as quietly as I could, pausing at the bottom when I caught sight of Will asleep on the couch. He was lying on his back, one hand resting on his chest with his head turned to one side. Even in sleep, there was tension in his features, a crease on his brow, and I knew I’d been the one to put it there. Why couldn’t the stubborn fucker understand that his life would be so much better without me in it?
I made my way outside, shutting the door behind me as quietly as possible. The sun, shining bright in a clear blue sky, felt like a slap in the face after the events of last night. It seemed to me that when your life went to hell in spectacular fashion, the sun could at least have the decency to hide behind a cloud.
“You’re up early.”
I stopped with my foot on the first step down to the sidewalk, guilt slithering up my spine as I looked over my shoulder. Olivia was sitting in a chair on the corner of the porch with a steaming mug in her hand. She wore leggings and a T-shirt, and her long brown hair was pulled into a messy bun. A tablet rested on the little café table in front of her.
“I just wanted to go check on the house,” I lied right to the face of the woman who’d given Jimmy and me a place to stay during a thunderstorm in the middle of the night after findingout her son was gay and we were dating. The woman who’d offered me nothing but warmth and care despite all that. And still, I couldn’t help it. The need to just…go…to escape…was visceral. I needed to be in a place without walls, where it was just me and the trees and solitude.
I needed tobreathe.
“Did Will ever tell you about his father?”
That gave me pause. I’d never once heard him voluntarily mention his father. When asked, he just said his father was gone, that he’d never known him. Once, when I’d really pressed, he’d clenched his jaw and told me his mom was all he ever needed. I’d never pushed after that. After all, I didn’t know who my father was either.
“Not really.”
She patted the chair next to her, and unwillingly, I found myself crossing the porch to take a seat.
“There’s a lot of the story he doesn’t know. He knows his dad left before he was born, abandoned me the moment he found out I was pregnant, but that’s really it. He never wanted to know more, and I didn’t like to talk about it, so that was that.”
“Okay…” I wasn’t sure where she was going with this.
“There’s a lot about my past and his childhood he isn’t aware of. I shielded him from a lot of it, but I also think he was afraid to hear it. He didn’t want to burst the little bubble I’d built for him, so I let it be. But I think it would be good for you to hear some of it now.”
I shifted uncomfortably. I was uneasy with the idea of her telling me things she hadn’t even told her son. “I don’t know if that’s such a good idea.”
“Humor me.” She gave me a look, one I knew most moms gave their kids to get them to comply. My mom hadn’t ever figured that one out—it was hard to look stern when you were strung out on one substance or another—but the raised browsand pointed eye contact of Olivia’s glare had my ass glued to my seat.
“I was a foster kid. The story of how that came to be is one for another day, but the short version is that at the age of twelve, I was placed in the system. Bounced around from home to home, some better than others. None were abusive, but there was neglect and poverty. When I was eighteen, I was evicted from the system and left to figure things out on my own. My education had been such a hodgepodge as I’d bounced from place to place that I couldn’t cobble together good enough grades for scholarships, so I had to hustle to keep myself afloat.
“I was nineteen when I met the man who fathered Will. I’d only been in Astaire for a couple of months when he walked into my checkout lane at Walmart. Six months later, I found myself pregnant, and when I went to him scared and in a panic, he said some very unkind things, and I never saw him again. He’d been much older and a truck driver, so I’d only seen him infrequently when he came through town on one of his routes.”
I clenched the armrests in fury. I wanted to beat the bastard who’d done that to her and left Will without a father. But I remained quiet, waiting for her to continue, still unsure why she was unloading all of this now.
“If it hadn’t been for Mrs. McGee, I’m not sure we would have made it.” My eyes flew open wide at the name of my landlady. “Yes, the same Mrs. McGee your mom rents from. Or maybeyourent from?” She lifted her eyebrows, seeking confirmation of her suspicions, and I nodded. “I thought as much. In any case, it was Mrs. McGee who rented me a house for a far lower payment than she should have. She found me sobbing in the bathroom of Walmart and demanded to know why. I don’t know if it was because she found me in a weak moment or if there was just something about her, but she had me unloading the whole pitiful story. She left the store with a determined gleam in hereye, and when she came back a few hours later at the end of my shift, she had keys to a rental property, the name of a free clinic that provided care for expectant mothers, and a check for two hundred dollars. The only thing she asked of me was that I kept her anonymous. She didn’t want word to get around town that she was some sort of benefactor, I guess.”
I was flummoxed. The thought of anyone doing something like that without asking for any repayment was mind-boggling. No one in my life had ever been that generous.
She slid an envelope across the table toward me, and I picked it up in reflex. “What’s this?”
“Open it.”
I lifted the flap and pulled out a check. My eyes nearly fell out of my head at the number of zeros written in her neat handwriting. One thousand dollars was an insane amount of money, more than I’d ever received at one time. My mind immediately started calculating the amount due for all the bills sitting on the counter at home. This would make a sizable dent in some of our bills, and I could give at least a little of it to Mrs. McGee until I could get the rest. It would be enough to get us through the rest of this month while I continued to try to find a job that paid better than Walmart.
I swallowed past the lump in my throat, blinking back the tears that sprang to my eyes. It didn’t feel right to take this. I was dating her son, and it was a lot of money, and every bit of that stubborn, prideful side of me wanted to push back. Insist that it wasn’t necessary. That I could handle it. But the truth was, I didn’t think I could. I was drowning, and she was throwing me a life preserver. I’d be stupid not to take it.
