Chapter Text
2008, Saint Paul, Minnesota
“We have to do it here, Phillip.”
“Margaret, why do we have to do it at all?”
“You know why, Phillip. I – I can’t do it anymore. I can’t be constantly reminded all the time. It’s killed me for the last 16 years.”
“He’ll be 18 in two years. We’ve made it this far with the kid, what’s two more?”
There’s a sniffle and an exasperated huff.
“I don’t know what you expect me to do, Phillip. He’s not –“
“I never asked you to think he was, Margaret,” Phillip snaps. “Jesus Christ, I just want you to show some kind of compassion.”
“Oh, like you have in the last 16 years? Every time Evan winds up getting hurt, you spoil him, whether it’s a new bike, or skateboard, or godforbid that damned rocket-bike thing. One of these day we’re going to get a call that he’s jumped off a cliff and broken every bone in his body. And I am exhausted of constantly going to the hospital for him. It’s bad enough Maddie decided to work in one.”
There’s silence, except for the small squeak of the RV’s windshield wiper blades swiping across the glass, and the passing by of traffic on the road. In the back of the RV, 16 year-old-old Evan pretends to be asleep through another one of his parent’s many arguments that he’s grown accustomed to growing up. He would kill to have his iPod blaring anything right now, if it would drown out the noise of the two bickering adults ahead of him. But of course, he had forgot the damn thing on his dresser at home.
“And what’s to stop him from finding his way back to Hershey, Margaret?” Phillip finally speaks up after a few moments. “What’s to stop him from reaching out to Maddie and telling her?”
Margaret doesn’t answer, and Phillip sighs.
“I don’t like it,” he continues. “I don’t agree with it. But if you insist –“
“I do.”
“Then we’ll do it here.”
Evan doesn’t know what “it” is, and he’s praying that his parents are into some weird freaky thing like he stumbled upon on the dark side of MySpace. Before he can think about it any further, he feels the RV turning sharp enough to force him to roll off the tiny bed that he been cramped up on, hitting the floor with a soft thud and groan.
“Sorry, buddy,” Phillip calls from the driver’s seat of the mobile home. “Didn’t realize we were already at the next RV park.”
“Great,” Evan mutters under his breath. Another boring RV park on the outskirts of some random town in America. He hadn’t even wanted to go on this stupid trip his parents were taking. But they had never seen Seattle, and what better way to travel than being cramped together in the old, beaten mobile home that they had since before he was born? He was sure it was older than Maddie, and he made a mental note to ask her when they got home.
That’s if her moronic husband even let her talk to him.
“This one has a pool,” His mother tries, turning to look at him as Phillip pulls into their temporary stop.
“Don’t think it’s going to do much good,” Evan indicated to the rainfall, small droplets covering the windows, even though the rain had dulled down to just a mist.
Margaret sighed and shook her head. Evan bit his tongue, not wanting to test his patience at the time with his parents. It was a long ride to Seattle, and an even longer one to Hershey. His dad must have sense the tension starting to rise between his wife and son, and called Evan to the back of the RV, where he was starting to settle the mobile home down for however long they decided to be there.
“Listen,” he said quietly, and pulled out of his wallet, and shoved a wad of cash into Evan’s hand. “There was a grocery store, about a block up the road. Why don’t you head up there and see about getting us a pizza or something?”
“It’s raining!” Evan protested. “And what if they don’t have a deli o-or pizza that’s already hot?”
“Well, then walk back, and we’ll just order one.”
“Why don’t we do that instead?” he challenged, and Phillip sighed, his shoulders heaving slightly.
“Just please do this one thing for me, Evan?” he asked. “Without fighting me on it?”
Evan let out a growl of frustration, and grabbed the Philadelphia Eagles hoodie that he’d been using as a pillow, and threw if over his head after shoving the thick stack of bills in his pocket. Knowing his luck, his dad just gave him all the one dollar bills he had, and it probably wouldn’t even be enough to cover a stupid pizza. He pushed the camper’s door open with force, letting it bang against the siding as he jumped down the stairs, wincing slightly as the gravel poked through the thin bottoms of his tennis shoes. He could see the grocery store, just as his dad described, and he threw his hood over his head before shoving his hands in the front pocket, and stomping towards the brightly lit store.
By the time he reached it, he was walking at a normal pace, his frustrations at his parents ebbing away with each step he took. He took his hood off as he stepped inside the store, and tried to wipe his feet the best he could before stepping through the sliding doors. He looked for any sign of a deli, making a long loop around the store, before realizing it was just a basic grocery shop – it looked like it had been there longer than Evan had been alive, or even his parents, if he was totally honest with himself. He stopped in the snack aisle and figured his dad could spare a couple of the dollars he had shoved in his pocket for a bag of Skittles or something.
As soon as he took the cash out of his pocket and unfolded it, Evan’s eyes went wide and he made an effort to hold the money as close to him as possible. What he thought was his dad’s spare change, of maybe a handful of ones and fives, was actually a stack of 20’s and even a couple 100 dollar bills. Had his dad known he’d given him the wrong stack of money? Did his dad even carry two stacks of money? Both of his parents were on the cusp of retiring on a teacher’s salary, surely that didn’t make that much, did they?
Realizing he should just get the money back to his dad instead of indulging in his sweet tooth, he gingerly folded the money back up just as Phillip had handed it to him, and put the Skittles back on the shelf. He swiftly made his way through the store, pausing to put his hood back up as the rain has started to get hard again. Gripping the stack of bills in his hand, he took off back down towards the RV Park at a slight jog, focusing on making sure he didn’t drop the precious bills.
However, once he got back to the area he was sure that his dad had parked, their RV was gone.
Evan’s eyebrows furrowed close together, and he looked back towards the grocery store and then back to the now-empty lot. He was positive this is where the RV had been. He could see just the stop of the grocery store’s sign, just as he had when he stepped out of the camper. Thinking maybe his parents had just moved to another site further into the pocket, he started to jog around the loop, looking for the beaten, off-white mobile home that he’d been calling home for the last three weeks.
But it was nowhere to be found on the tiny loop.
As the rain started to fall harder, and a soft hint of thunder rumbled in the distance, Evan suddenly realized what his mother had meant earlier. We have to do it here. Is this was the “it” was?” Abandoning her only son, her own flesh and blood in a city over 1,000 miles away from home? Is that why his dad have given him such a loaded amount of money, knowing that he couldn’t go against his wife’s wishes, but wanted to make sure he was somewhat taken care of?
Evan Buckley had been left behind by his parents, and he had no way of making anybody aware.