Abandonment

{One} After Some Time

"I should know enough about loss to realize that you never really stop missing someone-you just learn to live around the huge gaping hole of their absence."

–Alyson Noel, Evermore

"What kind of cake were you thinking of, hon?"

I had been staring down at my hands for too long. My mind wandered to the lines, the callouses, and the nails that had since grown out. Sometimes it all seemed like a dream. I might have dismissed it all as a dream, had my brother not been there with me the whole time. Everything had changed. They'd changed in ways I'd never meant to and never wanted to. Some days I'd lie in bed and wish it'd never happened. My life would be so much different now. It felt like I'd lost purpose. What did I do after all this?

"Josie?" When I didn't answer, the older woman shook me slightly.

My mind returned, with a start, back to the present. "Hmm?"

She gave me an annoyed look and sighed. "Have you been paying attention to anything I just said?"

Biting my lip, I simply shrugged. What was there to say? It was a stupid question. I'd already been busted. What was I going to do, try to recite the last four hundred sentences? Yeah—no thank you.

She sighed again. "I asked what kind of cake you were thinking about having."

"I don't care, Mom. Pick the cake. It doesn't matter."

"It's your eighteenth birthday, I want the cake to be good," she insisted.

Rolling my eyes, I snapped, "It really doesn't matter."

Things were quiet for a minute. I was in one of my moods again. It'd been like this for two months now. Most the time, she just stayed quiet or changed the subject to something happier.

When we'd gotten back, Mom was pissed as hell. She banned us from ever going back in time at all—ever again. Apparently we had been gone longer than we'd said. She was about to call Dad and everything.

Of course when things settled down she came to her senses and realized she couldn't ban Russ from his gift. However, we were each psychologically evaluated. Mom hardly ever evaluated us. But we were to have at least one therapy session a week. She had offered to let one of her colleagues do the sessions, but both Russ and I preferred her. After all, we could be open and honest about what had happened.

Actually, scratch that—Russ could be open and honest. I shut down. He told his half and feelings and then mine. I refused to engage. I couldn't. To relive the whole thing was too painful. Every time I closed my eyes I saw his face, the disgust....

"Josephine." She had her Lisa Sherwood no-business-mom voice. "You need to talk to me."

"It's not Tuesday," I mumbled.

"I'm not joking around here."

I didn't say anything.

"Josie, look at me."

Stifling yet another eye roll, I met her gaze. "Yes?"

She looked stern, yet still concerned. "What are you thinking?"

I wasn't thinking; I was reliving. The second she turned those concerned eyes on me, it brought me back to the first three weeks we'd been back. I'd been quiet, and then I'd been downright pathetic. I had begged Russ to take me back to him, just to explain; to at least see if he was okay. I wasn't even allowed my phone or internet access to look up our new history for over a month. If I was completely honest, I'd lost my mind a little bit. Mom took me out of school and everything. The first two weeks the excuse was an illness and then mono. But when the school expected me back after four weeks, Mom finally had to reveal I was mentally unstable.