"I am not ready to raise a kid."
"No one's signing you up for a Father of the Year award."
The universe is made of stories. And Maeve Fluer-Reyes had her own.
With pictured misfits in her life, the twelve-year-old was up for anything as long as she...
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MAEVE FLUER-REYES
Crawling out of bed at six in the morning, wildly pouring into a dress before begging your neighbor to take you in as a tag along to her morning walk was anything, but easy.
Especially when Mrs. Noelle took an eternity to get ready.
I wondered if there was a secret competition among Manhasset women to see who could wear the most expensive yoga pants to take out their trash. Or worse who could flaunt a sweaty designer towel better?
Mornings, altogether, were depressing. Don't even get me started on the streets that were whisked by fancy cars with even fancier drivers.
Shamelessly humming to Hakuna Matata, I paced my bright yellow bicycle down the track, my hair momentarily stroking my cheeks in the breezy wind.
I brushed my tongue against my lips, recalling how Kai, my uncle, was running errands earlier this morning. So I wasn't sure if it would slip past the sneaking out genre if my uncle would not know about my absence, regardless of the tiny chance of Mrs. Noelle being a snitch.
I lost Mrs. Noelle a few blocks down, heavily panting with her hands on her knees and a towel cradling her neck in a way it looked like the angels on her shoulders intended on strangling her to the heavens.
That and I made a potentially cute victim. Granted, there were an address, a phone number, and the urge to kick up their fuse box if the time demands— all chanting in my head. Kai's words, not mine. Yet somehow my brain was wired to marvel at quite the opposite of what my song suggested, no worries.
Slowing down at the sight of a familiar cart, a grin broke on my face. Saturday mornings were the highlights of my week. Not 'the waking up at six' sort of highlights but 'the heavenly bagels' sort of highlights. It had become a routine and honestly above every grunt of annoyance were me and my bagels.
The bagel cart was a beloved weekend tradition, a gathering spot where families flocked like clockwork.
Families, families, and more families. Times like these made me wonder what it was like to have a normal family.
I was six when I last saw my mother- that being one of the many reasons why all her memories had unwillingly blurred. I grew up to this age in the care of my grandmother, Althea Fluer. My Deeda. The other biological, my father, was a completely different story. A discontinued one at that. I didn't know anything about him, and whenever I asked all my questions were turned down.
It was only fitting to assume if my parents weren't the constants in my life then my grandmother would be. But exactly six months from now, not only did the universe break that bubble, but it also took another constant away.
The last six months took all of me to trust that the universe only gave us what we could handle, so whatever was happening to us was exactly what we needed.
