The Sea of Tranquility(35)
Author: Katja Millay

“You fill out some paperwork, provide documentation that you’re at least sixteen and you have the financial means to support yourself. Then your guardian signs it, quick hearing and you’re on your own.”

She nods as if the explanation is acceptable to her. She doesn’t ask about the money. Maybe she has some social graces.

“Who was your legal guardian?” Interesting question, but I’m not opening that door. She could ask anyone else. Everyone knows the story, but I don’t think I’m in danger there just yet. She’ll find out sooner rather than later. I’m not deluded enough to think it won’t come out somehow, but it’s nice to have one person exist who doesn’t know all of my tragic bullshit. At least for a little while.

“Why do you care?”

“I just wondered if that’s who was visiting you on Sunday. Drew said you had company, that’s why you weren’t at dinner.” I did have company and it most definitely wasn’t my grandfather but I’m not getting anywhere near the Leigh situation with this girl. Not now or ever.

“A friend was in town.” I’m expecting another onslaught of questions but no more come. I have quite a few for her but she seems to be done talking right now and I’m afraid if I invite any more conversation tonight, I’ll probably be the one regretting it.

After about ten minutes of leg swinging and silence, she starts asking questions again. They aren’t what I expect, but nothing with this girl is. And these questions, I don’t mind. She asks about tools and wood and furniture building. I don’t know how many questions she asks but I know that my voice is hoarse by the end of the evening.

When she jumps down from the counter‌—‌her universal sign for I’m leaving now‌—‌I say the one thing that I’ve been thinking all night.

“You’re not what I expected you to be like.” I catch her eye and she actually looks a little surprised and a lot curious which I think she tries to hide.

“How did you expect me to be?”

“Quiet.”

CHAPTER 18

Nastya

My mother’s voice. It’s the first thing I remember after I opened my eyes.

My beautiful girl. You came back to us.

But she was wrong.

***

If Edna St. Vincent Millay was right and childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies, then my childhood ended when I was fifteen. Which I guess is more than Josh got, because according to what I’ve picked up on from Drew, his ended at eight. I don’t know more than that, because I don’t ask Josh questions I’m not prepared to answer myself.

I have to go home this weekend. My mom expected me to visit a month ago. I’m surprised she hasn’t shown up here. It isn’t like Charlotte Ward to wait for anything she wants.

I don’t really have much I need to pack. I left most of my old clothes there. I won’t see anyone except my family, so I’m leaving my Hollywood Boulevard attire at Margot’s, which means my feet will be happy for a couple days at least. I have to miss school on Friday so I can get to Brighton early enough to make the appointment my mom made with my therapist. I thought about telling Josh I was going, but I didn’t end up mentioning it for a lot of reasons, mostly because I’m not responsible to him. I could probably make it back by six o’clock on Sunday to get to dinner, but it might be for the best if I skip it this week.

When I walk through the front door of the very out of place Victorian-style house I grew up in, I feel home. The feeling only lasts a moment. It’s not real. It’s just a knee-jerk reaction; an echo of a feeling that used to exist. Just once, I’d like to go home and have home be what it used to be. Then again, maybe I’m just imagining some sort of halcyon days that exist more in my memory than they ever did in real life.

My mother is at the dining room table we have never used except for holidays. She has proofs spread all over the surface. My mother is a photographer, which is kind of funny, because she’s drop-dead gorgeous, but she’s never actually in any pictures because she’s always the one taking them. She works freelance but she’s never without an assignment because she’s really good, which means she can make her own rules, take the jobs she wants, come and go as she pleases. My bedroom upstairs used to be covered with her photographs. All of my favorite ones. I’d sit at the table and look at her proofs with her and pick the ones that jumped out at me. There was always one photo that resonated above the others and I’d point it out and she’d make me a copy. It was our ritual. I don’t even remember the last picture I picked. I didn’t know it was going to be the last one. I could walk over to her, sit down at the table and point one out right now, but I don’t. My walls are covered with new wallpaper now.

As soon as she sees me, she’s out of her chair. I don’t think it takes her more than three steps to reach me and wrap her arms around me. I hug her back because she needs it, even if I don’t. It’s different from hugging Mrs. Leighton but not in the way that you would think. Hugging my mother is far more awkward. She pulls back and I see the expression in her eyes; the one I have gotten so used to; the one I have seen a thousand times in the last three years. The look of person staring out a window, waiting for someone they know is never coming home.

I’m not the only one who isn’t the same person anymore. None of us are. I wish I could have made that different for them, given them everything they believed they had gotten back that day when they found me alive and not dead. Who knows what we would be like now, if my mother had been allowed to watch me fade away from her? She would have lost the little girl anyway; just later and gradually. Not the way it happened‌—‌in one big ass fell swoop. Even if everything hadn’t happened the way it did, that child part of me would still have disappeared. Imperceptibly over time. I just got too old, too fast. All at once.

And she wasn’t ready to say goodbye.

I’m saved by the appearance of my brother, Asher, who comes bounding down the stairs. He’s a year younger than me and what seems like two feet taller. He grabs me in a bear hug and lifts me off the ground. He’s gotten the memo that I don’t like being touched about fifty times but he hasn’t bothered to read it yet or he just doesn’t care. He refuses to adhere to any rules or suggested boundaries where I’m involved. It upsets my parents and pisses the crap out of me in a way that only a brother can. Asher calls bullshit on me and I let him. He’s the only one. He’s not afraid of losing me or pushing me away, because he knows that right now is about as far away as I can get, and he figures he has nothing to lose.