Bitter

seventeen - cal

Home was the last place I wanted to be right now. Anywhere else would be great. Anywhere else.

   Mom was sitting alone (what a surprise) at the dining room table, Dad was glued to the TV in the living room (just like I'd expected), and I had just reluctantly walked through the front door. I was adamant on not eating with Mom, so I headed straight for the stairs.

"Cal." It was my dad's voice which caught me off guard. It was probably the first time he'd spoken to me that week. He was on the recliner in the corner of the room, remote resting in his hand. "Your mother wants to speak with you," he told me.

I rolled my eyes. Of course he had nothing to say and it was Mom that had used him to make me listen. "What?" I called to Mom, peering around the railing to look at her swirling a spoon around her bowl of soup. I was already a couple steps up the stairs and I really didn't feel like going down again.

"I think we need to talk about what's going on," she said steadily. She didn't look at me. Probably because if she did, she'd lose her composure and there would be one less plate in the cabinet.

I glanced at Dad, trying to read his face, see if he knew all along what Mom was going to say. I couldn't though because he was back to being hypnotized by the blue light of the TV. I looked back at Mom sitting at the dining room table, high up on her throne. "What's going on?" I asked unenthusiastically.

Mom ran a hand through her hair and heaved a heavy sigh. She finally lifted her eyes up from her soup. "Cal, you know what," she claimed, voice tired as if she already knew the outcome of tonight.

Did I? There were so many things she could've been talking about. None of them ever good. "I really don't, Mom," I replied, "please remind me." I immediately regretted what I said. There was no way I could sit through another one of her lectures about my bad grades or my "unacceptable behavior".

Mom just gave me a slow, disappointed shake of her head, her gaze dull, exhausted. It was all at once that her eyes appeared shiny and she buried her face in her hands. She stayed like that for awhile. Then came the sniffling. I just stood awkwardly on the steps, not knowing whether to go upstairs or stay put.

Her wobbly voice rose up from the silence suddenly, muffled but still understandable. "What do you want me to say, Cal?" she questioned with a shrug. She rubbed her eyes and took her hands away from her face, revealing a stream of tears running down her cheeks. "It's been hard for me and your dad too," she choked. "We're all going through the same thing."

"No, you and Dad are going through the same thing," I retorted quickly. So this was what we were talking about tonight. They had no idea what it was like for me this past summer, let alone at seven years old, dealing with what I had to.

I was kind of relieved then that Mom hadn't brought up (and probably didn't know about) what happened with Marco earlier. I definitely wasn't going to be the first one to admit to possibly breaking someone's nose. None of them (Zach, Jason, or Marco) had texted me since then. I guess it made sense, but I hadn't done it on purpose. If only Marco had let me explain maybe—

"Cal," Mom uttered, voice so low, so unnatural coming from her. Yelling in my face wouldn't have had the same effect on me. I found myself standing very still, anticipating her next words. "You don't think he's hurting too?" she gestured to Dad in the living room, brow knitted. "You don't think I am?"

I couldn't do anything but shrug. Sure, she and Dad were probably sad and all, but they didn't have to deal with it like I had and still was. It had consumed my entire life, every aspect. I started to feel that familiar urge to just spill whatever I was thinking onto the floor.

Mom continued where she'd left off. "I know it's not easy, I think we can all agree on that. But..." she sighed, sniffling and wiping a tear from her eye, "doing what you're doing right now—the arguing at home and school, the sneaking out—it isn't helping anybody. It's not helping me, or your dad, or you. It's certainly not helping Mrs. Bosher or her daughter—"

"Wait wait wait," I interrupted, almost letting a laugh slip from my mouth, "what do they have to do with anything?" I went down one step on the stairs to get a better look at Mom. "What, are you gonna start telling me how I should be more like Lydia? She's just so perfect and does nothing wrong and you love her more than me?"

Mom slammed her hand down on the dining room table, shaking every bowl and glass. "Will you just listen to me?!" she yelled, rising from her chair.

   "I am listening!" Now I was yelling. "I listen all the time to you!" I bounded back down the stairs. "I wash your car for you! I clean up after you!" I shouted. When Mom had thrown the plate a few nights before, she had forced me to scrape the pieces into the trash the next day. She hadn't even bothered to pick it up herself.

   "Oh don't you even talk about me like I don't already do enough around here!" Mom cried as her face turned completely red. "Is it so bad that I want a son who behaves like the adult he is and not a child?!"

   That's when I stormed away, back up the stairs, while she continued to scream at me. We were far from having a civil conversation (which is usually how our fights went) and I was getting pretty tired of her mouthing off in my ear. I could hear her thundering footsteps after me, so I ran into my room and slammed the door, locking it fast. She called my name once, then twice, then it went quiet, so I guess she gave up. I was breathing heavy, standing close to the door to see if I could hear anything else, like Dad and Mom talking, or someone crying. But I heard nothing.

   I drew away from the door finally and sat on the edge of my bed, feeling my pulse racing in my neck. What happened this past summer was bad, and if that wasn't enough for me to go through, Lydia became a problem again, and then West showed up so unexpectedly, out to possibly kill me. Now my friends weren't speaking to me and it just felt like I had no one. No one on my side. Not even Mom or Dad (but that made sense because that's how it always was with them). Suddenly I wasn't in my bedroom and I was instead at Landon again, sitting on the swing set, unable to understand why everyone was leaving me behind for some new kid.

   As I sunk down onto my bed, wondering how everything had gone downhill so quickly, I did what I found the most logical thing was to do in that moment. Everyone had left me, so I was not going to wait around until Meg did the same.

   I slipped my phone from my pocket, brought up our chat, and furiously typed out what was on my mind.

I don't want to go to homecoming, I said.

With you, I added, but probably shouldn't have.