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Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.
- Carl Sagan
The trip to the mall distracted me enough to not think of the lie I’m living with. Dany kept me occupied during the day, and even when we needed to get back to school and attend a few of the elective classes. She had foreign language while I had advanced calculus, and my mind was pretty much preoccupied with what was on hand.
I engrossed myself with schoolwork, and it was no problem for me. I have always loved numbers. The sequences and patterns of numbers made me feel safe. Made me feel like a puzzle slotting into its pieces. My mother always wondered where I got this mind of mine. She’s adamant that she wasn’t that smart or that the man who contributed to my existence hasn’t touched my level at this age.
I wonder about that too. I ask why and how a lot.
By the time school was finished, everything was slowly melting away as I knew I had to face my mother again, the one I ran away from this morning. Even ignoring the birthday breakfast, she made me, it was just normal breakfast with a birthday cake and gifts.
I sat on the bus as it drove to my stop. The farthest stop is my stop, which gave me time to open my phone and go to eBay. I knew the moment I made an account that it would truly nail the last of my coffin. Selling something as important as my telescope would have been unthinkable to me a few years ago.
The telescope was my life. I snuck out at night not to go to parties, but to look at stars in the cemetery or at the park. I was high with passion then. High with the happiness of seeing stars blinking at me.
But here I am listing it for as cheap as four hundred dollars when I know it is worth four times more. I just needed to get rid of it as fast as I could as I could make an excuse that I let Dany borrow it, they wouldn’t bat an eye. Dany had borrowed it a few times, when she tried to like Astronomy but failed.
She liked the arts more than the numbers.
The bust finally stops by mine, and I fumble to stand and hop out of the front doors by the driver. He smiles. “Have a good day.”
“you too, Gerard” I smile back. He has been my bus driver for over a decade now, he aged but he always greeted me with a smile, and always waited for me to get in at times. “Listen to your doctor and drink your meds.”
He laughs, one that rose from the depths of his large belly. White wispy hair has receded a few inches back from his original hairline a few years ago. “You’re starting to sound like your mother.”
I wave as I hop down the steps and into the heat of the outside. The air-conditioning of the bus, then to the wild heat of central North America still gives me a shock.
It’s cold in MiT
The insidious thought rose before I could even will it away, it just popped into existence, and I was hit with the freight of emotions along with it, the sadness churning my gut, the lie heavy on my skin, and the dread weighed my foot to the ground.
I am such a horrible liar, I thought. I counted my breaths as I slowly walked back home, a long walk that seemed to go by quickly this time.
The old ranch house with nailed down roof boards, and the paint that never seem to finish as only the front of it is painted to mother’s royal blue paint. We didn’t have the time, or the manpower to finish any of the things to fix the entirety of the house, but I love seeing it.
Our shutters were from different eras and colors. The door would creak and the neighbors a few miles away could hear it, and the royal blue was painted three years ago, which is now an off-blue kind of hue. All of which are endearing characters of the house I grew up in.
The same house that was once called “Squalor” by the agent, when my mom bought it close to nothing. All she wanted was a home and a large land where I could grow up, with horses and fresh air. The same way she grew up in the Midwest.
I already spot my mom in the front garden. She was pulling out the countless weeds around the bushes we planted when I was six, one of my earliest memories, while on her hands and knees. Raggedy denim overalls and her thick hair tied up and out of a baseball cap.
My loud footsteps on the gravel made her look up in my direction with a smile, one that many in town had called “Sweety charming”, she earned a lot of attention going to this small town with no future, who needed to travel to the next town to walk around a mall. Everyone was curious about the single mother who lived in the most isolated ranch in this state.
“Well, if it isn’t my birthday girl” She stands on her feet and fists her hands while placing them on her waist. A mock expression of anger on her face. “One who ran out of our traditional birthday breakfast.”
I sigh. “Mom, it was just breakfast and a cake.”
“A pretty good cake! One I made with my blood and sweat and tears” Her city accent stands out from the cold northern people here.
“Sounds like a biohazard” I plopped down on the porch steps as she kept looking at me with her thick eyebrows. “I’m sorry” I mutter. The words are true, but it doesn’t ease anything.
“Oh, it’s fine” She pulls her gardening gloves off and sits beside me.
I have lived with this woman for my whole life, and somehow, she doesn’t age. My mother is an incredible woman. One who survived, but never really became hard or cold towards me, she has always been gentle and warm. To anyone, even to Dieth and Dany. Dany once told me that her mother’s voice in her head is a negative one, but the voice I hear of my mother’s is always the same.
Come home and we’ll make do, Ehryl.
“I know you’re under a lot of stress.” She bumps her shoulder lightly against mine. A curly band of her hair peeks out of the baseball cap. “You’re preparing for college and sent applications. You’re nervous and dreading for their responses to arrive. I get it.” She meets my gaze with her honey-brown eyes, leaning towards me as if I’m five again and she’s telling me fairies exist in the forest. “You’re going to make the unknown known in a few years. Space and physics. Ah, that is such an amazing future.”
My throat runs dry, but I manage to hold my expression together. “Make the unknown known, huh? I can’t say that’s a first.”
“Honey!” she whines. “Be happy! Enjoy this moment, because you’re going to look back and see that this will be the pivotal moment of your life.”
“You’re going to be alone though”
She scoffs. “So? That’s a plus! This is what all parents wait for! Peace and quiet. Without screaming toddlers, and grungy hormonal teenagers. I am paying for you to actually get out of my damn house.”
I laugh. “you told me I was an easy kid!”
She smirks, standing on her feet in her inappropriate footwear of flip-flops. “Parents lie. We’re very good liars, my love.”
And somehow, children are even better if they want to.
- Writer
