Violetta (Violet) Jackson has big dreams. None of which happen to include sitting in detention for a week straight for a lab disaster that wasn't even her fault. That's all thanks to Will Hawthorne, his friends (one of whom she unfortunately used to...
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Between me, Willow, Evelyn, and Will, we managed to clean out the brownies pretty well, leaving only four that I put in a Tupperware for later. Evelyn excused herself to go to bed — she had a five AM shift the next day — and Willow retreated to her room, noticeably lighter-hearted than before, her eyes no longer red or wet with tears. I resolved to find out what happened tomorrow, but soon only Will and I are left standing in the kitchen. I beckoned Will over to the balcony so that we wouldn't disturb Evelyn. The balcony was just beyond the kitchen and living room, a narrow space with a white railing and two chairs sitting opposite each other. I sunk down in one, Will following my lead and sitting in the other.
"Thanks for your help," I said to him.
His brows furrowed in confusion.
"I meant with Willow."
"Oh, right. Are you apologizing and now thanking me in one day?"
I rolled my eyes, and he smiled. "Well, that's okay. I didn't like to see her down in the dumps like that, that's all."
"Me either," I said quietly, curling my legs up on the chair and wrapping my arm around them against the cold night air. "It happens sometimes."
Will doesn't say anything, just kept his eyes on me, patiently waiting for me to continue.
I took a deep breath. "Sometimes, I'll get home from school, and she's a wreck," I went on. "And other times, she'll try not to show it, but I can always tell when something's bothering her. She usually tells me everything. That's how it's always been."
Will nodded in understanding. "You two seem really close."
"Yeah." A breeze blew by, ruffling Will's hair and making it dance in the wind. I can almost hear the question that permeated the air, the question that I knew Will wouldn't ask directly, but the question that was nevertheless there, stubborn and unmoving. So I gazed at the night sky, now populated with tiny pinpricks of distant stars. "We've always been close ever since our aunt took us in."
Once again, Will doesn't speak, and I appreciated his silence. It told me everything that words never could: that I could continue if I so chose to, but he would never question me or make me feel like I had to. He was just there. He would just listen. So I talked.
"Our aunt took us in when I was about five. Willow was barely a year old." I swallowed, a tiny lump beginning to form in my throat as it always did when I ever thought about this stuff, but I kept going. "My parents were never very good at the whole parenting thing, so they decided it was better if they removed themselves from our lives entirely. Just dumped us on our aunt and left."
A car in the street below rolled past and into the distance, leaving the air behind it still and silent.
"My aunt was living her life at the time. She was a traveling journalist, going to Europe and Africa and Asia. She obviously didn't expect to suddenly be the guardian of two young children, one of them barely an infant. It was a struggle for a while. She had to find a permanent job and settle down in one place. And when that wasn't enough, she had to find two more jobs." The memories flashed back in my mind, of Evelyn hunched over at the living room table, frantically calculating the salaries of three different jobs and side-checking them with the bills that were rolling in. I didn't understand the full extent of it when I was five, but I understood enough to know that Evelyn was scrambling to make life all right for Willow and me, despite having to work herself to the bone. I understood enough to know that Evelyn was not living the life she had once lived, the life she once loved.
