*Quick Note*
I'm sorry for not posting for months. I have been really busy with college and stuff. I'll try my best to post often. That's it. Enjoy:)
The morning that Hazel Snow turned eighteen began like any other morning.
For a late-December baby, this was pretty much par for the course. While the rest of the world slept off their holiday hangovers, just in time to settle on plans for New Year's Eve, Hazel was used to quietly welcoming another year on her own. For Hazel, "welcoming" typically involved trying not to give the day much thought, and working up just enough enthusiasm to hope that the coming year would be any less miserable than the one that had just passed.
This year was no different. After snoozing through her alarm three times, Hazel finally dragged herself up from the crooked futon she'd been sleeping on for the past few months and arched her long, slender arms overhead.
The futon was supposed to be temporary. That's what Roy, Hazel's sort-of stepdad, had said when he'd brought her home from the city. Roy was always calling things temporary, as if his life was full of phases and any day now, this, too, would pass.
But the futon, an old flea-market find missing half of its fake-wooden slats, was still there. And so was Hazel. She'd made a deal with Roy to finish high school in San Rafael, the sleepy northern California town where he'd been renting a basement apartment, as long as she could save up to get a place of her own after graduation. With less than a semester to go, and a constant crick in her neck from the lumpy mattress, graduation couldn't come soon enough.
Hazel drew back the green-and-white checkered curtains to let in the gray morning light. An old radiator in the corner clicked and hissed as she slid into her favorite faded black jeans, still soggy at the hems from trudging through yesterday's puddles. She couldn't remember the last time she hadn't woken up to rain.
After brushing her teeth and pinning back a few of the front pieces of her shoulder-length blond hair, she glanced at her reflection. Her reddish roots were growing out and she made a mental note to swipe another box of Nice 'N Easy the next time she stocked the hair-care aisle at the pharmacy where she worked. So far, she'd spent every day of winter break there, which might gave been disappointing if she'd have anywhere else to be.
And that's when she remembered.
Wasn't eighteen supposed to feel like something?
Hazel's gaze traveled up to the corner of the square mirror. Tucked against the glass was a washed-out Polaroid of a woman in a yellow apron, chubby-faced baby clinging to one hip. It was the only picture Hazel had of herself with Wendy, the chef who had adopted Hazel as a newborn and died soon after, when her restaurant burned to the ground. Hazel was not even one at the time, and didn't remember anything about her adoptive mother. But she knew, somehow, that eighteen would feel different if Wendy were still around.
Downstairs, Roy was watching basketball highlights, and he turned down the volume as she shuffled past on her way to the kitchen. This, she assumed, was probably supposed to be some sort of present.
"Morning," he grunted, scratching at the edges of his scruffy, rust-colored beard. He'd been trying to grow it out since the beginning of fall and kept asking what she thought. It was almost---- but not actually----funny, how interested he was in her opinion these days. All of the times she'd lived with him before, she could have walked around the house with a tambourine taped to each hand and a neon sign flashing across her forehead, and he probably wouldn't have given more than a sideways glance from his permanent slouch on the sofa.
"Morning," Hazel muttered back, wedging a bowl out of the wire dish rack and using one moth-bitten sleeve to wipe it dry. She poured herself a bowl of Cheerios and ate, as she always did, standing at the kitchen sink, staring out the window.
"I can drive you to work,if you want," Roy offered from the couch, his spoon scraping at the last bits of milk, puddled in one corner of the bowl.
"No, thanks," Hazel replied automatically, turning on the tap and filling a Dixie cup with water. She swallowed it down in one gulp, praying the whole ride-discussion was over. Roy claimed he'd been sober for a year before he asked Hazel to come back, and she hadn't so much as seen him in the same room with a bottle of cough syrup since. But that didn't mean she was ready to drive with him again.
"All righty."
Roy said "all righty" when he didn't know what else to say. Which meant he said it a lot. She heard the squeak of the couch springs as Roy got up, and felt him puttering around the kitchen behind her.
"Here," Roy said suddenly. She turned to find him laying a brown envelope on the kitchen table. He shuffled to the door, pulling his Giants hat down over his head. Tufts of dark, curly hair pushed out over the tops of his ears, like leafy ferns stretching towards the sun.
"Happy birthday, Hazel," he said to the doorknob as he pulled it toward him. A burst of wet, cool air settled on the kitchen like a mood, and before Hazel could say anything---if she'd even had anything to say--- Roy was gone.
Hazel stared at the envelope, as if expecting it to talk, or walk away. She couldn't think of the last time Roy had even remembered her birthday, let alone marked it with any kind of sentimental gesture.
Hazel dropped her bowl in the sink and sat down at the table, turning the envelope over in her hands. It was bigger than a regular envelope, and didn't have any markings on it. No Hallmark seal or cheesy cartoon like the ones they sold at the pharmacy. She ran her finger under the fold, her breath catching in the back of her throat. A part of her wanted to just throw the envelope away, maybe even toss it on top of the trash so Roy could see it there, unopened. He'd left her, not once, not twice, but three times, with perfect strangers. Right different schools, from Santa Cruz to Santa Rosa. Seven goodbyes to friends she didn't even bother making anymore.
What card could possibly make up for all that?
But the not-knowing was too much. She flicked her finger up to one edge and tore back the thin paper, ripping the envelope in half and pulling out what was inside.
Not a card but a white piece of paper, folded twice.
Of course Roy hadn't brought her a card. Hazel rolled her eyes at her own idiotic imagination. A square yellow sticky note fluttered to the table, and Hazel leaned over to read it. Her stomach clenched into a knot as she recognized what could only be Wendy's curlicue script.
Give to Hazel on her 18the birthday.
A distant ringing filled Hazel's ears as she ran her hand over the smooth paper, carefully unfolding it.
It was an official-looking document, with small, boxy type and underscored lines. BIRTH CERTIFICATE was scrolled in fancy script at the top. The date: eighteen years ago, today. The hospital: St. Mary's, San Francisco. The rest of the words blurred like a foreign language, her eyes scanning to the bottom of the page.
Two words, the question she'd lived with every day and every night, long after she'd stopped asking it out loud:
Birth. Mother.
And the next two words, the answer:
ROSANNA SCOTT.
