Tread

July 31

My hands ache. I'm pretty sure it's the start of serious carpal tunnel, a warning to slow down. But when has my body ever listened to my brain? Kate being shipped off to rehab, Em retreating within herself, and the end of my relationship leaves me creatively inclined. I can't stop writing even if I tried. My body wakes up at 2AM, remembering Leo. Sometimes I hear his voice beside my ear and feel his fingers against my skin.

When I'm not thinking about Leo, I lay in bed surfing my various social media accounts, stalking Em and Kate. Em posts famous quotes from authors about making it through the struggles of life along with a picture of farm work; Kate's accounts remain blank, her last entries July 4. Obsessively, I try to pinpoint the exact moment things went off the rails for her, and I think I find it on a post she made October 23 at 4:15PM: I always thought my dad was superman. Bionic. Turns out he's human.

Three likes and one comment commiserating with the flawed human state of parents, but nothing else to suggest that someone knew what Kate was going through. Even her posts after that remain neutral, if fewer and far between, until June 10. Then it's nothing for days, followed by a comment about being drunk or getting ready to be drunk.

All that time I was mooning over Leo, tuning out my social media accounts because I didn't care about what anyone else was doing or going through. I didn't want people to intrude on the little slice of heaven he provided me. Even now, only a few people knew about him. But Kate had been trying to reach out: the signs were all there. I was simply too self-absorbed to see them.

The caretaker of the group. What a fucking joke.

Cracking my knuckles, I lean back against my headboard and stretch out my legs in front of me, forcing myself to think about something else. There's less than a month of summer left, and no matter where I apply, no one wants to hire a girl for a few weeks. My mother understands, allowing me to write while my father—the one time I spoke to him—chastised me. That kumbaya session hasn't happened yet, but I have no doubt some variation will, especially since my mother is forcing me to spend the weekend with him. He lives in Grand Rapids, not too far from Ann Arbor, but the two hours feels like two days with all my nervousness and trepidation. No matter how I coach myself to expect the worst—the usual jabs about my figure, brain, and skills—I always forget something. Leave a chink in my armor that my father thrusts a sword through and twists.

"Stop looking like you're going to a funeral, Rai. It's just your dad's house," my mother says glibly from the doorway of my bedroom, fiddling with the leather bracelet I picked up for her in Florence.

Setting my laptop beside me, I swing myself out of bed. "Says the woman who gets to stay home with her boyfriend."

"Well, if you'd brought Mr. Backpacker home then you could be doing the same thing. What's his name again?" she asks with faux ignorance.

I bark out a laugh as I head to my closet and grab a canvas bag. There aren't many things I need—a clean pair of panties, a t-shirt, yoga pants—and I get it all from my dresser and shove it to the bottom of the bag. "I never told you."

"And why is that? You obviously had—"

"Mama," I cut her off harshly, feeling her words scrape against my amour, pressing into the still raw wounds underneath. The soles of my feet burn as I stomp over to my bathroom and grab my toothbrush, face wash, and deodorant before coming back into the room. "I don't want to talk about it."

"Call Leo. That's his name, right?"

My hands still, one holding the bag open with the other poised to stuff my toothbrush in. "How do you know?"

"Em told me."

Traitor.

She leaves the doorjamb and comes closer to me, extending her hand. "You need a friend, Rai. You need to talk to someone about the stuff that's going on with Kate and Em and baba. Maybe Leo is that person."