Dear Diary,
Things got intense last night. I don't even know if intense is the right word.
I again fell asleep before I could write down what happened after Calvin and I left the restaurant.
When I first woke up this morning, I think about the flower Calvin handed me, the smile he gave me in the staff room, I think of all the things that happened the day before that made me feel dizzy. But then... then I think of all the things that happened the night before, that made me feel dizzy in a completely different way.
Darla had been talking for 15 minutes straight at the dinner table, it wasn't out of the ordinary for her to rant on for minutes on end without letting anyone else join her one sided conversation. The only difference that night was that Calvin and Sylvia were also there to put up with her ramblings; except they pretended to care about what she was talking about, unlike me and grandpa. She went on about her flowers and the next shipment she was expecting, and the bridesmaid dresses that Mrs. Maple was making, and the mice that were in the barn and so on and so on. Calvin and I shared a few looks, but he just laughed and ate, loving Darla even more for being herself. She could talk forever.
Thankfully my phone started ringing, and finally it actually was uncle Ger calling. I had been hoping and hoping he would, but now I almost didn't want to talk to him. I felt so different, I was coming to accept that he may really have left me here, with no intention of coming back for me.
"Jane!" Darla actually stops her stories to reprimand me for getting up at the dinner table.
"It's Uncle Ger." I say, holding my phone up with a little shake. I see Calvin in the corner of my eye look at me.
"Alright, fine then." She says before launching back into whatever she was talking about without taking a breath.
"Uncle Ger?" I answer once I'm securely in the back yard with the door shut behind me.
"Sunflower!" His happy go lucky attitude was annoying in a completely different way than Darla's was.
Darla at least seemed genuine. But with him, it just felt like he was using it to mask so many things. Like he was trying to prove to me that what he was doing was okay. And suddenly, I had nothing to say to him. I didn't want to get mad at him, or ask when he was coming back, I didn't want to hear another poetic line that was just used to dodge me, to put me off.
"So, how's it going?" He continues, like he cared what I would say either way.
"Fine."
The sound of people and music in the background is reminding me of what I'm missing, of where he is.
"Did you get a call from Fad?" He breaks the silence.
I take a moment to try and place what he's saying.
"What? How did you know about that?"
"Let's just say I pulled some strings." I could hear his proud smile on the other end of the line.
Pulled some strings? Pulled some strings? That call from Fad was my uncles doing? That's why they called me months after I had applied. My ears were ringing, I could feel my knees shaking below me.
He thought he could make up for everything, make up for abandoning me, for leaving me when my world was falling apart, make up for not helping me through this. He thought he could just make a call and it would all be fine, and he could stop pretending that he wasn't guilty.
The interview felt disgusting now, the very thought of it was making me sick.
"Are you not happy about it?" He sighs and the tears I was trying to hold back begin to spill out.
YOU ARE READING
That One Summer
Teen FictionJane was raised by her free spirited uncle, but when he moves to Paris she is forced to live with her grandpa for the summer in a small town where she finds romance and secrets to her past that she never knew were there.
