Grace

3. Writer's Daze

Jordan lived in the historic neighborhood of downtown McKinney, only about a ten minute's bike ride from school. Pedaling around the busy shopping center of downtown, he puffed up the steep hills famous to the area. Even if he often felt like a stranger in his mom's house, he loved his colorful neighborhood, with its brightly-painted houses and huge, wrap-around porches. He biked past one residence with multi-colored glass bottles hanging from the branches of a mature live oak growing in the front lawn. Another house had the curtains drawn back from the large windows facing the street, and Jordan could see inside to a huge room filled with paintings and easels.

His mom's house was painted baby blue and had a faded white front porch with a wide swing hanging from the roof supports. When he and Caleb were kids they used to horse around on that swing and dare each other to jump on it from the porch railing. Once when Caleb was ten he clambered onto the railing only to have it snap under his weight. (Later they found out that termites had been feasting on it for quite some time.) He fell into their mother's tulips and completely smashed them. Jordan, who had just turned six, had listened wide-eyed as their mother berated Caleb soundly for recklessness. Even when they were kids, Caleb had always been so confident and sure of himself. He always succeeded at whatever he put his mind to. It was rare that he got in trouble.

Of course, a lot had changed since then. The porch railing had long since been repaired, Caleb was in the armed forces, and nowadays their mother cared more about her work than gardening. And of course, this had happened in the pre-divorce days, back when life was good.

"Mom, I'm home," Jordan called, slamming the front door behind him. As usual, there was no answer. Sage Emmerling almost never left her office. She was a successful novelist, but it consumed her life. When she did leave her computer screen, she was usually lost in what Jordan had termed her "Writer's Daze." She was always muttering to herself about characters and places from whatever book she was writing at the time, and often in the middle of a conversation she would stop, gasp "OH!" and scurry off to her office, where she would stay for hours.

She had always been slightly nerdy while Jordan had been growing up, but after the divorce the Writer's Daze had worsened. After their dad had left, Sage had gathered up all her scattered emotions and thrown them into her writing career. She spent all her time in the imaginary worlds she had created in order to escape from the real one. Jordan supposed there were worse ways to deal with depression, but it made him feel like his mother was never quite there.

By now, the ice pack was floppy and warm, so Jordan tossed it in the freezer. He barely felt his nose now, aside from the occasional throb. Good. He would look pretty ridiculous playing soccer while trying to hold an ice pack to his face. Jordan grabbed a chocolate energy bar from the pantry, glancing at the oven clock as he unwrapped it. It was four o'clock, which meant he had fifteen minutes until he had to leave for soccer practice.

Bolting down the energy bar, he went to his mom's office. The door was, as usual, closed. He knocked, then partially opened the door and poked his head into the cluttered room. Sage was wearing baggy sweatpants and a long-sleeved pink t-shirt. Her dark blonde hair, which was starting to turn grey at the roots, was tied back in a messy bun. She was sitting at her computer desk, fingers clacking madly over the keyboard, muttering incoherently to herself, her eyes glazed over behind her glasses. All classic symptoms of Writer's Daze. Jordan wondered if she had even heard him knock.

He cleared his throat. "Mom?"

His mother jumped, her glasses falling off her nose. She put them back on and glanced up at her son, obviously making a great effort to conceal her annoyance at being interrupted.