Monty After Dark

Epilogue

My first mimosa was delicious. The rest of the holidays were awesome. Carts' World Juniors party was tons of fun, I led my team in scoring through the rest of the regular season and continued my sessions with Shel. The scout from Vernon came to another game and said he saw improvement in my game and was looking forward to seeing me at camp in April. I even passed algebra with a B+ after final exams at the end of January. I heard a rumour that if we have enough time off from hockey, Chris is going with Mel to check out the residence at UVic over March break, but they're both denying it. Kind of hard when I saw her trying to sneak out of his house before I got home from the shop the other night. I'm happy for them, though.

Splitting time living with my mom has been difficult at times, but I'm glad I'm getting to have a relationship with her. We don't always see eye to eye on everything, but she's supportive of Chan and I, and she tells me every day that she loves me. She even comes to my games and helps me with my homework, when she can. She's still holding down her job and still sober. I'm really proud of her. I still haven't been able to go back home. Dad still refuses to go to therapy, and Shel says I need to maintain my boundaries with him, like holding him to my condition that he goes to counselling before I would consider staying with him again. Shel even called and left him a message, asking him if he was interested in some referrals, but he hasn't budged. My mom even suggested doing family therapy, with all of us, but he doesn't seem to have interest in that, either.

I went by to see him a few times when I was staying at Chan's. I tell him how the team is doing, invite him to my games, but he hasn't bothered to come. Not even once. Part of me misses him, but the other part of me is relieved, that I no longer have to try vying

for his attention. Shel says lots of people are like that, instead of trying to work through things, their coping mechanism is to just do nothing.

And as for Chan, seeing her brother really seemed to perk her up. She's heading to Montreal in March for her shoot with the department store. We're taking our train trip in July and going to spend some time in Calgary with my family there and go to the Stampede. I'm still not sure what we're going to do if I end up moving to Vernon in September, but we'll figure out a way to make it work. Maybe when she comes up to visit me, we can finally do it in the back seat of the Mustang...