Renaissance (boyxboy)

Chapter 1

You know it wasn’t really often that I thought about dying, but sometimes you just can’t help yourself.  Like today for instance: I’d been waiting for my father to pick me up for the past half hour and had already witnessed at least five ways I could have been road pizza by now. 

Forks was just as rainy as I’d remembered, which meant it would be way too easy for a car to just happen to…slip.  Hydroplane.  I took a healthy three steps back from the roadside, the image of me becoming road pizza too vivid.  What could you even do around here?  I guess it would have been pretty cool if you were into nature or something, but this was like a completely different world.  Phoenix had been hot and dry, not cool and wet.  Even the air felt wet.  I’d never get used to it here.

I pulled my phone out and tucked a pair of earbuds into my ears.  What to listen to.  Music?  Nah.  I’d heard so much of my favorite playlists already on the plane and bus rides here.  I arched an eyebrow and opted to listen to an audiobook.  It helped time go by faster and made it seem like someone else was there with me. 

How long was Dad gonna be anyways…?  He knew that today was the day right?  My last bus had been on time, and Mom had given him the right information, right…?  I should have double checked that.  Between Mom’s spaceyness and Dad’s lack of punctuality it was nothing short of amazing that they even managed to produce a kid.  Sometimes with Mom it was more like living with a big sister.  But then I’d get sick, and she’d call out of work, and we’d spend the entire day eating cold soup out of a can and watching badly recorded VHSs of broadway numbers.

That was when she was more Mom than Heather.  Heather was the woman that quit her job because it was too ‘restricting’, leaving us on foodstamps for a year.  But Mom was the strong force that demanded a spot in a gallery, that declared her work was worth it and damn anyone that didn’t think so.  Mom was the person that got food put back on the table.  I liked Heather, but I loved Mom.

But now she’d found another man to be in her life.  Yeah I know that sounds creepy, but I was used to being the only guy around the house.  I was far beyond thinking my parents would get back together, and really I didn’t want them to: they got along like this, and they still loved each other, just…they weren’t in love with each other.  It wasn’t even that Simon was a bad guy, he was just so normal compared to Mom that it was awkward.  Hell knows he’d tried with me, but to be honest I was just waiting for him to realize that she was ‘too strange’ or ‘too independent’ or too anything else that usually sent men packing.  It looked like he was here to stay, but that meant traveling around.  In keeping with boring guy stereotypes, he travelled a lot for business.  Work paid for it and his spouse too, which is great…except when you have a sixteen year old boy that comes with said spouse.

Mom didn’t want me to get uprooted from school, but the Heather side of her let me make a decision: come with her and Simon, stay home alone, or go live with Dad.  It wasn’t that hard of a choice.  Dad may not have always been there growing up, but he was a constant on birthdays and Easters.  And I needed something constant.  Besides, what type of person could even consider leaving their kid behind?  What parent would be comfortable with leaving their sixteen year old by themselves at home?  A lot of my friends would have thought that was ‘so cool!’ or that I was ‘soooo lucky!’.  No, I wasn’t, I loved Mom for all of her eccentricities, but she could have tried a little harder at the parenting side.

As I got to Chapter Three, a police car pulled up next to me on the shoulder of the road.  Oh man he’d actually came in the police car.  At least I’d be in the front.  He leaned across the seats and pushed my door opened for me, “Sorry for running late.  Things got held up at work and I got the times mixed up.”

Of course he had.  Well, he’d shown up at least.  I mean, it could have been worse: he could have mixed up the dates.  I shook my head, “It’s fine…Dad.” Ricky?  I still wasn’t sure what to call him.  Not out of disrespect, just, do you call a guy you didn’t live with for years Dad just because he helped make you? 

He turned the heat on full blast and I closed my car door: trying to sink down as low in the seat as possible and hope beyond hope that no one would spot me.