Senior Stories: Gillian Lombart

4. What Just Happened?

Gillian woke up the next morning feeling as hung over as her father probably was. Last night was a blur, after the fight she sped home picked up and dropped off her little brother only to find my dad passed out on the couch and her little sister holed up in her room working on a science project.

It was hard to see her family like this, but two months into her mom being gone and Gillian had given up on expecting anything more and stopped trying to make them a “normal” family. They had become a shadow of a “normal” family one that went through the motions, Skype calls with her mom on Sundays, breakfasts in the morning, and trips to the movies – but there was never any closeness to it all. Left to their own devices Gillian’s family members just wanted to be left alone. It was only her little brother’s playfulness that would bring out any sort of life, but when he was asleep the house was a ghosttown.

It never hit Gillian that her father would just slip deeper into his depression once her mom left for Colorado. Part of Gillian thought that she and her dad would end hanging out like they used to when she was a freshman in highschool.  She had dreamt that once her mom left he would take care of the kids and she could end up getting a part-time job afterschool to help out. With a job she could even go out with her friends without having to feel guilty about asking for spending money.

Gillian had stopped looking for a job almost a month ago when she realized that her dad’s passing out drunk was going to be the pattern until her mom came back in the fall. Most days he would end up spending his day sleeping in forgetting to pick up her sister and brother, and not even noticing who was around the house. In the beginning she tried to get his friends to step in and help get him out of the house, even calling her uncle in Southern California. No one offered to help, they all just told Gillian it was a faze and her dad was having a rough time and that when my mom came home to visit he would snap out of it. Gillian’s uncle even tried to blame her for making it worse. These days Gillian’s mom only called on weekends, and Gillian didn’t want to stress her out so I would act like everything was okay.

After the fight with Matthew, Gillian sat on her bed with turning her phone over and over in her hand, wishing she could call her and tell her what was going on. Staring at her phone she realized that her mother would never understand and she tossed the phone on the floor into a sea of dirty clothes.

Gillian’s room was a pigsty. It was all a reminder that things were never going to be fixed. Her father was useless, she was obligated to help out with the kids, and had broken Matthew’s heart on purpose. “What was wrong with me?” Gillian thought. “The one good thing I had in this horrible situation was Matthew. Sure we had problems, and we were a very odd couple – most people at school didn’t even knew we hung out, but that is what made us work.”

She began feeling sick to her stomach. “What had I done?” Tears began slowing dripping down Gillians face. “I was helping him out, it was only going to be worse in a few months when school ended and he had to start packing for school and would be forced to just sit by him and watch.” Her mind would not shut up.

Waking up to find herself curled up in a ball surrounded by tissues, Gillian propped herself up in bed and looked at the clock, it was still dark outside and the red lights blinked 5:39 a.m. “Might as well get up and fight off the desprate need to fix yesterday,” she concluded. Grabbing her phone Gillian pushed herself out of bed and headed into the kitchen, knowing that there might be one person who could share her pain, or at least talk her out of calling Matthew.

Gilly: Hkr, u upppp!

Jorge: Y

Gilly: I need to talk?

Jorge: Y?

Gilly: Rough nite