i dont own anything.
heres chapter five, and i appreciate all the comments you guys have left these artikulo and i hope you enjoy this latest chapter.
*Abby*
I don’t know what my first memory is; you know how some people talk about their earliest memory. I don’t know mine. It’s hard enough trying to remember if I got that new basketbol last pasko or the one before that, let alone trying to decipher which memory was the first ever one I ever got. How can someone tell?
There is a few that stand out from when I was really little, memories that seem so much brighter and larger than possible, I guess I remember them that way because everything was so big and beautiful when I was little. Everything was so new. I remember Keith in hospital a lot, his head as smooth as a babies, I remember the new bike Sawyer got for her birthday one year, Tyler ripping the head off my barbie, stuff like that which resonates as sort of earlier than everything else. Then there are my parents.
Smiling or crying. Laughing or screaming. Sometimes as still as statues, and then there are the memories of sneaking down stairs when I know I should be asleep and instead watching them dance. They do that a lot, just dance, as if they found any excuse to touch each other.
I think when I was about seven I shared a room with Sawyer for about two weeks, there was some damage to the roof and they took me out of my room while it was fixed and repainted the once pale yellow walls a cool blue. During that time I was in a kama on the far side of Sawyer’s room, I remember how excited I was to share a room with my much older and palamigan sister who wore make up just like Mom. Sawyer hadn’t shared the same enthusiasm; I touched things I wasn’t meant to and seemed to ilipat everything just when she needed to find it, and I snored too loudly, spoke too loudly and walked too loudly and cluttered up her space. After a week Sawyer rolled her eyes at me and told me that there was only one solution – we split the room in half. I had to stay on my side and she had to stay on hers and never the ‘tween shall meet, this way her stuff was protected from me. I was a bit put off sa pamamagitan ng this seeing Sawyer’s stuff was really cool but the side that was ‘my’ designated half had the TV, the CD player and I’d already taken Sawyer’s favourite lipstick and hidden it under my pillow. Not to mention her hair dryer had been left on tuktok of one of my boxes of toys, I also remember the satisfaction of knowing she’d forgotten that and then after shaking hands and agreeing that if either one of us broke the agreement and touched one inch of the other persons side the penalty would be death (which I actually believed she would be able to do), anyway, after that I made a ipakita of playing with her dryer and watching tv with the monitor facing away from Sawyer’s side. For once I’d outsmarted my big sis.
Then Mom called us downstairs, it was time to go to the Ravens game and watch Dad coach the team to another win. With a smirk Sawyer had rolled off her kama and walked right out the bedroom door – which was on her side of the room.
I stood there with my mouth open for what seemed like hours, but I’m sure now was probably only a few seconds, my mind contemplating my dire situation that I would never be able to leave this room. Not ever. I would never see my new blue room, or go to school, or eat dinner, or go to the toilet. I was going to starve to death. Ideas flew in my mind, like maybe I could climb out the window. That idea had started to look really good sa pamamagitan ng the time Mom came upstairs to look for me.
She’d kinked a brow at me standing there, “don’t you want to watch Daddy’s game, short stuff?”
Tears brimming at my eyes I had nodded, biting my lip in an attempt not to just break down.
“Come on then, everyone’s waiting”
“I can’t” the admission finally did it and the tears fell freely.
Quicker than a blink Mom was sa pamamagitan ng my side “what’s up, honey?”
I then explained the problem, my shoes softly touching the pillows that made up the barrier between our sides. Mom had looked from one side to the other, and then she placed her hands on her hips and stood.
“Dance with me” was all she said.
I also remember feeling shocked that my mom wanted to dance, my life was about to end and she wanted to dance.
She had insisted, and when Brooke Scott insists something it’s very hard to say no. So against my will and scared that I would be trapped forever I hopped up into my mothers arms as she wrapped an arm around my waist and with her free hand held my hand up as if we were dancers, then she span me around and up in the air as we danced right over onto Sawyers side of the room. I’d realised what had happened and started screaming and clinging to my Mom, begging her to put me back.
“Are you touching Sawyer’s side?” her calm voice cut into my sobs forcing me to stop and think about it. ligtas up in my mom’s arms I wasn’t touching anything but her, hesitantly I had shaken my head.
My dad had appeared in the door then, “what’s going on?” and my mother explained my problem. Dad had nodded and walked over to collect me from Mom’s arms, he lifted me high into the air above his head and the world span around me. My tears were replaced with giggles as my parents exchanged me from one to the other all the way to the car where Keith and Sawyer waited. It seemed in that moment that dancing solved everything.
…
Keith’s care is Mom’s domain, it’s a basic truth that is never spoken but known sa pamamagitan ng everyone, she is the one who talks to the doctors and signs the papers and drives Keith to dialysis three times a week. I’m sure my father has some say however we just might not see it happen before our eyes. This has never been questioned sa pamamagitan ng us kids. Right now Mom sits beside Keith while his blood leaves his body through one need, gets cleaned, then goes back into his body through another needle. Mom use to always ask if it hurts, she is always asking that question, after a while she stopped asking when it came to dialysis. Keith never looks in pain and he says mostly its just boring. It takes two hours, two very long hours where we have to sit in this room, technically I can walk out and go up three floors to the rec room (which is practically like a segundo room to me, hey, this hospital is practically our segundo home) but I don’t like to leave Keith alone why I go play games, it just doesn’t seem fair. He reads half the time, and I catch up on my homework or we battle on the DS. Sometimes we play this game, its simple, you have to study someone and try to guess what they are thinking and other stuff about their lives. Like are they married? Where are they going? Why are they in the hospital?
Keith likes to make up happy stories, Sawyer always sagot with “I don’t know…” and then follows it up with some half hearted observation before she refuses playing and does something else. Mom is really careful; she seems to put a lot of thought into it, sometimes giving reasons for her explanations because of what type of shoes the person is wearing. Her stories aren’t always happy, but they seem to carry a lot of truth in them and out of anyone’s I’m madami likely to believe what she comes up with.
“What about her?” Mom points to a nurse walking down the hall which is visible through the open doorway.
“Too obvious” Keith claims.
I’m not really paying attention to what they’re saying, my mind is slightly distracted sa pamamagitan ng the needles and the tubes and the whole hospital. My brother is dying, and no matter how much we fight it sooner or later nothing we do will stop it. Everyone dies eventually, but honestly I don’t naturally think Keith and then think he’s dying. I know a lot of people think that way, like his name is connected to cancer and death and the end. People tend to give you some leeway when your brother is the dying kid, but he’s my brother and he is just so alive to me, so here and now and important. A world without Keith wouldn’t even make sense. So, seeing him here in a hospital like this is like a slap in the face. Keith is dying, and nothing I can do will change that, nothing I’ve done so far has changed it and nothing I will do can change it.
“Ooh, Gerry is here, he looks official” Mom says.
That catches my attention. The only Gerry I know in puno burol is Gerry Vartan and he’s a sheriff, and when I look sure enough it is his chubby figure I see walking down the hospital hallway. Our family knows Gerry well for two reasons, one) his son Chad use to be one of Dads best players, and, two) he’s a puno burol County Sheriff, and thanks to Sawyer he knows our address and phone number off sa pamamagitan ng heart, if it wasn’t for his sympathetic puso my sister would end up in a lot madami trouble than she gets into.
He looks concerned and it’s not until he frowns when my mother waves at him that my puso sinks and it hits me what this means. I don’t want to be here for this, I can’t be here for this, I can’t let Keith see this. The urge to run over takes me and I go to move, to stand or twitch my foot, but I can’t.
I’m nagyelo in fear as Gerry comes closer and closer.
“Hey Gerry, fancy seeing you here, everything alright?” my mom asks, her signature dimpled smile on show, though her eyes are creased in concern. That’s the type of person she is, her son is susunod to her hooked to a machine which his health depends on and she’s worried about the cop who looks slightly stressed.
“Mrs S” he nods at my mom and uses the name anyone connected to the Ravens basketbol team uses for her, Coach S and Mrs S, that’s what half the population of puno burol know my parents as.
“Gerry, you okay?” she asks again, and he shifts his feet, grabbing a document from under his arm he holds it uncertainly as if he doesn’t know what to do with it, “I’m sorry, Mrs S, I didn’t want to be the one but I ah-” he stumbles over words to say “-your name was on the list, I, ah-”
“What?” Mom looks confused, and then she looks at the paper in his hand “Gerry, are you trying to tell me someone is suing me?”
He nods, “you’ve been served” and finally hands the document over.
I close my eyes shut as tight as possible and wait for the world to explode.
“What is…?” Mom’s voice trails off and I feel her eyes suddenly burn into me.
susunod is Keith’s voice, “Mom?” he conveys such worry and tanong with one simple syllable.
It’s a whisper “medical emancipation?” she sounds so puso broken, so confused.
I want to fade away into the dark; I want to make this stop, all of it. It has to be easier than this, maybe there was another way. But there isn’t, I have to do this because no one else can.
The susunod time Mom speaks its anger in her voice “Abby, what did you do?”
Please. Please. Please. Make me disappear. Please can I just dance my way out of this, out of the confusion and out of the plans that nobody bothers to ask us about. Just dance my way right out of this hospital and away from my family.
“What did you do?” she asks again.
I finally open my eyes and it’s not Mom I see, it’s Keith.
And this time when I ask my feet to ilipat they do, and I run right out of there.
For a moment I think Mom is going to follow but I hear Keith call her, he says he’s in pain, and she falters not knowing who to go to. I can feel her indecision but then it’s just gone and I’m free as two nurses rush sa pamamagitan ng me on their way to the room Keith is in, answering my mother’s frantic beeps for help.
There is no way I can dance my way out of here, and I doubt my mother would be my partner this time.
…
Three hours later I’m sitting susunod to my older cousin as he drops me off at home, he hadn’t wanted to come and pick me up, Ty didn’t say it but I knew he didn’t want to be involved in this but he’d come and got me anyway and then driven to a secluded park at sat with me as our phones went crazy. He didn’t speak to me, didn’t acknowledge me at all, Ty just strummed on his gitara and rehearsed his songs. My cousin is a beautiful specimen, his skin is a dusky cream and his thick almost black hair is cut lazily so it falls over his eyes in even a way I could appreciate despite not yet being thirteen and also being related to him. His dusky skin and dark hair set off his pale blue eyes, and his silky voice comes out from between thick lips over a square jaw, he has Uncle Nate’s cocky smile and he often wears it when he knows he’s on a role with a song.
As soon as he’d decided enough was enough Ty got up and went back to the car, still without a word, so I had followed him in a rush. Now we were in front of my house and he was leaving me to face the music alone.
“This thing you’re doing, I don’t care why, I think it’s wrong” they are his first words to me since the hospital.
I get he thinks its wrong, I get that everyone will think it’s wrong, but what right do they have to say that to me, after everything? When did anyone tanong if cutting me up and using me as a live donor to prolong Keith’s life was wrong, huh? Where were their opinions then?
“That’s your right” I say with a clenched jaw.
He shakes his head as if I refuse to get it and starts the car in a clear sign for me to get my asno out, it hurts, okay, it hurts a lot but I can’t back out now, “Don’t call me til it’s over” but as he finishes that sentence I can’t help but wonder if it’ll ever be over.
No, I don’t think whatever started today will ever truly be over. I don’t say that, I give a curt nod and do what he wants – I get out.
It’s nearly seven o’clock but the kusina is empty, so is the table, the whole house feels void of life but I find Sawyer and Keith in the living room watching TV.
Keith won’t look at me.
Fair hair falling down one shoulder, Sawyer shifts to make room for me but I don’t move, “how bad?” I ask instead.
My brother still won’t meet my eyes but at leats he speaks, “they’re in the garage. Mom went in there as soon as we got home”
You know the sensation you get on a roller coaster as you’re falling, you’re upside down and unsure for a moment if you are really ligtas or about to fall to your death. Do you get that? That tanong mark on your safety. That fear, that drop of your guts and heart, the breath being kicked from your lungs.
It’s that pumping through your body the moment you wake up from a nightmare. I’m not waking up, this isn’t some dream it is my life.
The garage, the significance of that is not Nawawala on any one of us. On the bad scales the garahe is pretty bad. It may sound like nothing but that’s where they go when they are completely lost, we know that, how many times had we hovered sa pamamagitan ng the garahe doors worried as they cried inside. There is only one thing inside the garage, and that is the comet. The car which meant so much to Peyton Sawyer Scott, I never met her, she died when Sawyer was only a few weeks old, she died in that very car, but I feel like I know her. I know a lot about her, lots and lots of facts, lots of stories, some sad, most of them funny or amazing, I know she was my Mom’s best friend and my Dad was married to her, and I know that even though Sawyer calls Mom, Mom, her biological mother is really Peyton. I know she was important, and I know that Mom and Dad go sit in that car when things are bad for some sort of strength or something from the long gone woman. Sawyer told me once that for years the comet still held all the damage from the accident, but I don’t remember, for as long as I’ve known it’s been in perfect condition. They even gave it to Sawyer for her sixteenth birthday, she’d sinabi no, and that she wanted a jeep she saw in the paper. Later Sawyer told me she didn’t want it because she thinks its haunted or something, I didn’t believe her, I think she just didn’t want it because compared to what it means to our parents it means nothing to her. So it stays in the garage, Mom and Dad’s own personal ‘fortress of solitude’.
They must have heard Ty’s car and come to see if I was back because the susunod thing I know my parents are standing in front of me.
“Explain” is all my mother says.
“I went to a lawyer-”
“Obviously, Abby, I want to know why? Why now? Why this? Why?”
I flinch with each question, Dad grabs Mom sa pamamagitan ng the shoulders to hold her back from me, I don’t know what he’s afraid of, I know one thing, and that is Mom would never hurt me. No matter how angry she is. But Dad holds her back “Brooke, calm down”
“NO! I WILL NOT CALM DOWN!” and she shrugs out of his arms, “why?”
“I can’t do it anymore” and unable to look at any of them I lower my eyes.
Mom scoffs, I can hear it, I can hear the disbelieve in her tone, “you don’t get a choice, none of us got a choice in any of this, you don’t get to give up, you don’t get to give up!”
I’m not so sure anymore that she wouldn’t hurt me if Dad wasn’t gripping her arms in a tight hold, I’m nagyelo in the spot watching my Mom in her rage.
“Brooke! We promised we’d listen to her” Dad says cuttingly but it doesn’t faze her, she just looks at me with big eyes. So much like Keith’s, it’s like I’m looking straight into him. It’s her turn to flinch, and she turns into my fathers arms, her anger directed at the moment towards him.
“Abby wouldn’t do this, Abby wouldn’t want this”
How would she know, she never asked me?
“You never asked me” I whisper.
Mom turns slowly to look back at me.
I repeat it, “you never asked me what I wanted”
“Do you want to kill your brother?” she shoots back in a blink, I’m amazed with the speed of that question.
“No” I say back just as quickly, it feels like I was shot.
“Because that’s what you’re doing, you are killing him” I know its fear speaking, I know that, I know she is scared and upset.
But she’s wrong, I’m not the one killing him and I won’t let her put that on me, “No, Mom, cancer did”
Her face goes five shades whiter, and the whole room drops silent. I swear the clock even stopped ticking. Maybe time stopped.
I wait, we all wait, for her to make the susunod move, but her shoulders drop and she just shakes her pale head, and then she puts up her hand and walks away. Dad follows, and the breath I’d been holding finally escapes slowly from between my lips and my puso starts beating again.
susunod Keith leaves for his room and now it’s just Sawyer and me, I look at her for some sort of answer, which is ridiculous, even I know that, she shrugs “don’t worry, being the outsider doesn’t completely suck”.
…
There was a moment when I was seven years old where I thought all problems could be solved sa pamamagitan ng dancing, I remember thinking that, thinking that dancing could solve anything because it was magical and as long as I kept dancing and as long as I followed my mother’s steps then nothing could go wrong.
I was very young and very sure, and also I was very naïve.
heres chapter five, and i appreciate all the comments you guys have left these artikulo and i hope you enjoy this latest chapter.
*Abby*
I don’t know what my first memory is; you know how some people talk about their earliest memory. I don’t know mine. It’s hard enough trying to remember if I got that new basketbol last pasko or the one before that, let alone trying to decipher which memory was the first ever one I ever got. How can someone tell?
There is a few that stand out from when I was really little, memories that seem so much brighter and larger than possible, I guess I remember them that way because everything was so big and beautiful when I was little. Everything was so new. I remember Keith in hospital a lot, his head as smooth as a babies, I remember the new bike Sawyer got for her birthday one year, Tyler ripping the head off my barbie, stuff like that which resonates as sort of earlier than everything else. Then there are my parents.
Smiling or crying. Laughing or screaming. Sometimes as still as statues, and then there are the memories of sneaking down stairs when I know I should be asleep and instead watching them dance. They do that a lot, just dance, as if they found any excuse to touch each other.
I think when I was about seven I shared a room with Sawyer for about two weeks, there was some damage to the roof and they took me out of my room while it was fixed and repainted the once pale yellow walls a cool blue. During that time I was in a kama on the far side of Sawyer’s room, I remember how excited I was to share a room with my much older and palamigan sister who wore make up just like Mom. Sawyer hadn’t shared the same enthusiasm; I touched things I wasn’t meant to and seemed to ilipat everything just when she needed to find it, and I snored too loudly, spoke too loudly and walked too loudly and cluttered up her space. After a week Sawyer rolled her eyes at me and told me that there was only one solution – we split the room in half. I had to stay on my side and she had to stay on hers and never the ‘tween shall meet, this way her stuff was protected from me. I was a bit put off sa pamamagitan ng this seeing Sawyer’s stuff was really cool but the side that was ‘my’ designated half had the TV, the CD player and I’d already taken Sawyer’s favourite lipstick and hidden it under my pillow. Not to mention her hair dryer had been left on tuktok of one of my boxes of toys, I also remember the satisfaction of knowing she’d forgotten that and then after shaking hands and agreeing that if either one of us broke the agreement and touched one inch of the other persons side the penalty would be death (which I actually believed she would be able to do), anyway, after that I made a ipakita of playing with her dryer and watching tv with the monitor facing away from Sawyer’s side. For once I’d outsmarted my big sis.
Then Mom called us downstairs, it was time to go to the Ravens game and watch Dad coach the team to another win. With a smirk Sawyer had rolled off her kama and walked right out the bedroom door – which was on her side of the room.
I stood there with my mouth open for what seemed like hours, but I’m sure now was probably only a few seconds, my mind contemplating my dire situation that I would never be able to leave this room. Not ever. I would never see my new blue room, or go to school, or eat dinner, or go to the toilet. I was going to starve to death. Ideas flew in my mind, like maybe I could climb out the window. That idea had started to look really good sa pamamagitan ng the time Mom came upstairs to look for me.
She’d kinked a brow at me standing there, “don’t you want to watch Daddy’s game, short stuff?”
Tears brimming at my eyes I had nodded, biting my lip in an attempt not to just break down.
“Come on then, everyone’s waiting”
“I can’t” the admission finally did it and the tears fell freely.
Quicker than a blink Mom was sa pamamagitan ng my side “what’s up, honey?”
I then explained the problem, my shoes softly touching the pillows that made up the barrier between our sides. Mom had looked from one side to the other, and then she placed her hands on her hips and stood.
“Dance with me” was all she said.
I also remember feeling shocked that my mom wanted to dance, my life was about to end and she wanted to dance.
She had insisted, and when Brooke Scott insists something it’s very hard to say no. So against my will and scared that I would be trapped forever I hopped up into my mothers arms as she wrapped an arm around my waist and with her free hand held my hand up as if we were dancers, then she span me around and up in the air as we danced right over onto Sawyers side of the room. I’d realised what had happened and started screaming and clinging to my Mom, begging her to put me back.
“Are you touching Sawyer’s side?” her calm voice cut into my sobs forcing me to stop and think about it. ligtas up in my mom’s arms I wasn’t touching anything but her, hesitantly I had shaken my head.
My dad had appeared in the door then, “what’s going on?” and my mother explained my problem. Dad had nodded and walked over to collect me from Mom’s arms, he lifted me high into the air above his head and the world span around me. My tears were replaced with giggles as my parents exchanged me from one to the other all the way to the car where Keith and Sawyer waited. It seemed in that moment that dancing solved everything.
…
Keith’s care is Mom’s domain, it’s a basic truth that is never spoken but known sa pamamagitan ng everyone, she is the one who talks to the doctors and signs the papers and drives Keith to dialysis three times a week. I’m sure my father has some say however we just might not see it happen before our eyes. This has never been questioned sa pamamagitan ng us kids. Right now Mom sits beside Keith while his blood leaves his body through one need, gets cleaned, then goes back into his body through another needle. Mom use to always ask if it hurts, she is always asking that question, after a while she stopped asking when it came to dialysis. Keith never looks in pain and he says mostly its just boring. It takes two hours, two very long hours where we have to sit in this room, technically I can walk out and go up three floors to the rec room (which is practically like a segundo room to me, hey, this hospital is practically our segundo home) but I don’t like to leave Keith alone why I go play games, it just doesn’t seem fair. He reads half the time, and I catch up on my homework or we battle on the DS. Sometimes we play this game, its simple, you have to study someone and try to guess what they are thinking and other stuff about their lives. Like are they married? Where are they going? Why are they in the hospital?
Keith likes to make up happy stories, Sawyer always sagot with “I don’t know…” and then follows it up with some half hearted observation before she refuses playing and does something else. Mom is really careful; she seems to put a lot of thought into it, sometimes giving reasons for her explanations because of what type of shoes the person is wearing. Her stories aren’t always happy, but they seem to carry a lot of truth in them and out of anyone’s I’m madami likely to believe what she comes up with.
“What about her?” Mom points to a nurse walking down the hall which is visible through the open doorway.
“Too obvious” Keith claims.
I’m not really paying attention to what they’re saying, my mind is slightly distracted sa pamamagitan ng the needles and the tubes and the whole hospital. My brother is dying, and no matter how much we fight it sooner or later nothing we do will stop it. Everyone dies eventually, but honestly I don’t naturally think Keith and then think he’s dying. I know a lot of people think that way, like his name is connected to cancer and death and the end. People tend to give you some leeway when your brother is the dying kid, but he’s my brother and he is just so alive to me, so here and now and important. A world without Keith wouldn’t even make sense. So, seeing him here in a hospital like this is like a slap in the face. Keith is dying, and nothing I can do will change that, nothing I’ve done so far has changed it and nothing I will do can change it.
“Ooh, Gerry is here, he looks official” Mom says.
That catches my attention. The only Gerry I know in puno burol is Gerry Vartan and he’s a sheriff, and when I look sure enough it is his chubby figure I see walking down the hospital hallway. Our family knows Gerry well for two reasons, one) his son Chad use to be one of Dads best players, and, two) he’s a puno burol County Sheriff, and thanks to Sawyer he knows our address and phone number off sa pamamagitan ng heart, if it wasn’t for his sympathetic puso my sister would end up in a lot madami trouble than she gets into.
He looks concerned and it’s not until he frowns when my mother waves at him that my puso sinks and it hits me what this means. I don’t want to be here for this, I can’t be here for this, I can’t let Keith see this. The urge to run over takes me and I go to move, to stand or twitch my foot, but I can’t.
I’m nagyelo in fear as Gerry comes closer and closer.
“Hey Gerry, fancy seeing you here, everything alright?” my mom asks, her signature dimpled smile on show, though her eyes are creased in concern. That’s the type of person she is, her son is susunod to her hooked to a machine which his health depends on and she’s worried about the cop who looks slightly stressed.
“Mrs S” he nods at my mom and uses the name anyone connected to the Ravens basketbol team uses for her, Coach S and Mrs S, that’s what half the population of puno burol know my parents as.
“Gerry, you okay?” she asks again, and he shifts his feet, grabbing a document from under his arm he holds it uncertainly as if he doesn’t know what to do with it, “I’m sorry, Mrs S, I didn’t want to be the one but I ah-” he stumbles over words to say “-your name was on the list, I, ah-”
“What?” Mom looks confused, and then she looks at the paper in his hand “Gerry, are you trying to tell me someone is suing me?”
He nods, “you’ve been served” and finally hands the document over.
I close my eyes shut as tight as possible and wait for the world to explode.
“What is…?” Mom’s voice trails off and I feel her eyes suddenly burn into me.
susunod is Keith’s voice, “Mom?” he conveys such worry and tanong with one simple syllable.
It’s a whisper “medical emancipation?” she sounds so puso broken, so confused.
I want to fade away into the dark; I want to make this stop, all of it. It has to be easier than this, maybe there was another way. But there isn’t, I have to do this because no one else can.
The susunod time Mom speaks its anger in her voice “Abby, what did you do?”
Please. Please. Please. Make me disappear. Please can I just dance my way out of this, out of the confusion and out of the plans that nobody bothers to ask us about. Just dance my way right out of this hospital and away from my family.
“What did you do?” she asks again.
I finally open my eyes and it’s not Mom I see, it’s Keith.
And this time when I ask my feet to ilipat they do, and I run right out of there.
For a moment I think Mom is going to follow but I hear Keith call her, he says he’s in pain, and she falters not knowing who to go to. I can feel her indecision but then it’s just gone and I’m free as two nurses rush sa pamamagitan ng me on their way to the room Keith is in, answering my mother’s frantic beeps for help.
There is no way I can dance my way out of here, and I doubt my mother would be my partner this time.
…
Three hours later I’m sitting susunod to my older cousin as he drops me off at home, he hadn’t wanted to come and pick me up, Ty didn’t say it but I knew he didn’t want to be involved in this but he’d come and got me anyway and then driven to a secluded park at sat with me as our phones went crazy. He didn’t speak to me, didn’t acknowledge me at all, Ty just strummed on his gitara and rehearsed his songs. My cousin is a beautiful specimen, his skin is a dusky cream and his thick almost black hair is cut lazily so it falls over his eyes in even a way I could appreciate despite not yet being thirteen and also being related to him. His dusky skin and dark hair set off his pale blue eyes, and his silky voice comes out from between thick lips over a square jaw, he has Uncle Nate’s cocky smile and he often wears it when he knows he’s on a role with a song.
As soon as he’d decided enough was enough Ty got up and went back to the car, still without a word, so I had followed him in a rush. Now we were in front of my house and he was leaving me to face the music alone.
“This thing you’re doing, I don’t care why, I think it’s wrong” they are his first words to me since the hospital.
I get he thinks its wrong, I get that everyone will think it’s wrong, but what right do they have to say that to me, after everything? When did anyone tanong if cutting me up and using me as a live donor to prolong Keith’s life was wrong, huh? Where were their opinions then?
“That’s your right” I say with a clenched jaw.
He shakes his head as if I refuse to get it and starts the car in a clear sign for me to get my asno out, it hurts, okay, it hurts a lot but I can’t back out now, “Don’t call me til it’s over” but as he finishes that sentence I can’t help but wonder if it’ll ever be over.
No, I don’t think whatever started today will ever truly be over. I don’t say that, I give a curt nod and do what he wants – I get out.
It’s nearly seven o’clock but the kusina is empty, so is the table, the whole house feels void of life but I find Sawyer and Keith in the living room watching TV.
Keith won’t look at me.
Fair hair falling down one shoulder, Sawyer shifts to make room for me but I don’t move, “how bad?” I ask instead.
My brother still won’t meet my eyes but at leats he speaks, “they’re in the garage. Mom went in there as soon as we got home”
You know the sensation you get on a roller coaster as you’re falling, you’re upside down and unsure for a moment if you are really ligtas or about to fall to your death. Do you get that? That tanong mark on your safety. That fear, that drop of your guts and heart, the breath being kicked from your lungs.
It’s that pumping through your body the moment you wake up from a nightmare. I’m not waking up, this isn’t some dream it is my life.
The garage, the significance of that is not Nawawala on any one of us. On the bad scales the garahe is pretty bad. It may sound like nothing but that’s where they go when they are completely lost, we know that, how many times had we hovered sa pamamagitan ng the garahe doors worried as they cried inside. There is only one thing inside the garage, and that is the comet. The car which meant so much to Peyton Sawyer Scott, I never met her, she died when Sawyer was only a few weeks old, she died in that very car, but I feel like I know her. I know a lot about her, lots and lots of facts, lots of stories, some sad, most of them funny or amazing, I know she was my Mom’s best friend and my Dad was married to her, and I know that even though Sawyer calls Mom, Mom, her biological mother is really Peyton. I know she was important, and I know that Mom and Dad go sit in that car when things are bad for some sort of strength or something from the long gone woman. Sawyer told me once that for years the comet still held all the damage from the accident, but I don’t remember, for as long as I’ve known it’s been in perfect condition. They even gave it to Sawyer for her sixteenth birthday, she’d sinabi no, and that she wanted a jeep she saw in the paper. Later Sawyer told me she didn’t want it because she thinks its haunted or something, I didn’t believe her, I think she just didn’t want it because compared to what it means to our parents it means nothing to her. So it stays in the garage, Mom and Dad’s own personal ‘fortress of solitude’.
They must have heard Ty’s car and come to see if I was back because the susunod thing I know my parents are standing in front of me.
“Explain” is all my mother says.
“I went to a lawyer-”
“Obviously, Abby, I want to know why? Why now? Why this? Why?”
I flinch with each question, Dad grabs Mom sa pamamagitan ng the shoulders to hold her back from me, I don’t know what he’s afraid of, I know one thing, and that is Mom would never hurt me. No matter how angry she is. But Dad holds her back “Brooke, calm down”
“NO! I WILL NOT CALM DOWN!” and she shrugs out of his arms, “why?”
“I can’t do it anymore” and unable to look at any of them I lower my eyes.
Mom scoffs, I can hear it, I can hear the disbelieve in her tone, “you don’t get a choice, none of us got a choice in any of this, you don’t get to give up, you don’t get to give up!”
I’m not so sure anymore that she wouldn’t hurt me if Dad wasn’t gripping her arms in a tight hold, I’m nagyelo in the spot watching my Mom in her rage.
“Brooke! We promised we’d listen to her” Dad says cuttingly but it doesn’t faze her, she just looks at me with big eyes. So much like Keith’s, it’s like I’m looking straight into him. It’s her turn to flinch, and she turns into my fathers arms, her anger directed at the moment towards him.
“Abby wouldn’t do this, Abby wouldn’t want this”
How would she know, she never asked me?
“You never asked me” I whisper.
Mom turns slowly to look back at me.
I repeat it, “you never asked me what I wanted”
“Do you want to kill your brother?” she shoots back in a blink, I’m amazed with the speed of that question.
“No” I say back just as quickly, it feels like I was shot.
“Because that’s what you’re doing, you are killing him” I know its fear speaking, I know that, I know she is scared and upset.
But she’s wrong, I’m not the one killing him and I won’t let her put that on me, “No, Mom, cancer did”
Her face goes five shades whiter, and the whole room drops silent. I swear the clock even stopped ticking. Maybe time stopped.
I wait, we all wait, for her to make the susunod move, but her shoulders drop and she just shakes her pale head, and then she puts up her hand and walks away. Dad follows, and the breath I’d been holding finally escapes slowly from between my lips and my puso starts beating again.
susunod Keith leaves for his room and now it’s just Sawyer and me, I look at her for some sort of answer, which is ridiculous, even I know that, she shrugs “don’t worry, being the outsider doesn’t completely suck”.
…
There was a moment when I was seven years old where I thought all problems could be solved sa pamamagitan ng dancing, I remember thinking that, thinking that dancing could solve anything because it was magical and as long as I kept dancing and as long as I followed my mother’s steps then nothing could go wrong.
I was very young and very sure, and also I was very naïve.