First Impressions

Josh II: WTF Chapter 13.5

We pulled up in front of the house- my house- at about 3:00 AM. My plane definitely hadn't picked the most convenient time to land, but I hadn't wanted to wait at the airport for hours. The cab driver gave me a confused look as I handed him the payment.

"You sure this is the right place?" he asked, suspicious but still taking the money. "Looks pretty dark."

"Yeah, it's definitely the right place. I have a key in my pocket," I lied. He nodded. "Thanks for the ride."

The driver- Charlie, if I was remembering right- chuckled. "Thanks for the tip. Have a good one, kid."

"You too."

In less than a few seconds the car door had slammed shut, the engine had whirred back to life, and I was left alone on the street. A streetlight across the road glowed yellow but Charlie had been right: the house was completely dark.

I hadn't told Julie I was coming, worried she would make me stay with my aunt and uncle. Melanie and Andrew, as far as they knew, had been emailing her about my return to Seattle for over a month. I was pretty proud of myself for figuring that bit out- making up an email address for them to correspond with was one of my few moments of genius, at least recently. I hadn't been feeling completely right since Elisabeth... I cringed. I did not like to think about it. Since she killed herself, Josh. Get over it, I told myself. I'd barely known her for three months when she... left. At least she was with her mom now... right? No. Not right. I should have tried harder to support her, not allowed her to shut everyone out. I could have done so much better, but I didn't. I sat down on the dark porch of my childhood home, my head in my hands.

The past few months I had spent a long time sitting by the broken bench under the water tower, or with my feet in the dry streambed, trying to pretend that I would turn to the side and Elisabeth would be there next to me. Of course she never was.

It felt like I was one of the few people in Mountain View who even noticed. James, her dad,  paid a little attention at the loss of his youngest daughter but it took prompting from his twin Craig to do anything about it, like go out and organize search groups. They didn't find her, so after a week the town's slacker police officers gave up and declared the case closed. I wasn't even sure if they were allowed to do that, but no one seemed to have a problem with it- in Mountain View, you were pretty much best friends with everyone, so it made sense that the citizens would let the officers off easy. Besides, it wasn't that out of the blue. When you had spent most of your life living with someone who claimed to be your parent, then come home to have your mom promptly die, your older siblings abandon ship, and your dad descend into depression... it made sense, to a degree.

 James expressed feeling that her suicide was his fault when he spoke at her brief funeral, and I truly believed he meant it, but his heart was still so broken from Rose's passing barely a month earlier that I understood he couldn't feel much.

I hadn't believed she had actually done it at first, but looking back it was painfully obvious that it was coming. She had shut down after Rose's passing, come back briefly about two weeks later, then slowly slipped away again. And I let her. I knew I had never been her first pick, that Timothy held a special place in her heart, but I had been Elisabeth's lifeline in Texas and let her down.

It haunted me for a month before I realized that I was letting my own life fall apart. With Kiley and her mom's sudden decision to move I really knew no one in town but my aunt and uncle, who as nice as they were didn't appear to particularly want a moody teenage boy living in their house. That's when I took action- at around the beginning of October. The fake email address belonging to "Julie" and a few pre-recorded phone calls were all it took. It was easy for my relatives to believe that my time living with them was coming to an end, because they wanted it to. My birthday was mid-month but I decided to stay in Mountain View until the end of the quarter, which happened on October 22nd.