Chapter Text
The key sticks in the latch of my apartment door and I have to shove my shoulder into it to force it open. I hang the key on the hook and set my backpack on the floor, letting the door slam shut behind me. I normally don’t like to be loud, but the door in the old building is so stiff that I don’t have a choice.
“Simon,” my mom says from the couch with a smile in her voice.
“Hi Mom,” I say. “Did you eat dinner yet?” I walk toward the kitchen.
“No,” she says vaguely. “It’s still early, isn’t it?”
“It’s almost six,” I say, opening the fridge. It’s mostly empty. I close it again.
“Oh,” she says. She loses track of time a lot, sometimes for hours. “What did you do after school?”
“I just hung out and did homework while Rylie had band practice and Colt had football. Then their dad picked us up and gave me a ride home.” I open the cupboard. I thought there were some Cheerios in there, but they’re gone now. There’s a little peanut butter left, and some crackers. I close it again.
“Oh, honey, I meant to grab us some things from the store today,” she says apologetically. She said this yesterday, too.
"It’s okay, Mom,” I say automatically. I open the fridge again and take out the carton of eggs. Good, there are still two left. And there’s a bit of milk left in the jug. I open the vegetable drawer. There’s a withered carrot and half a stick of celery. I grab them too.
“How was school?” my mom asks, padding over to the kitchen and leaning on the counter, arms folded around herself, smiling at me.
“Good,” I say, setting the carrot and celery on a cutting board. I take a chef’s knife from the drawer and carefully test the edge with my finger, making sure it’s still sharp, and then start to neatly dice the vegetables.
“Didn’t you have a chemistry test today?” she asks.
“That’s tomorrow,” I say. I’m surprised she remembered. I know she cares so much about what’s going on in my life but she just has a lot of trouble remembering things. Sometimes I think our time in Eden messed up her mind a little bit.
“I had a quiz in English,” I offer, scraping the diced vegetables into the hot frying pan. “We’re reading Watership Down.”
“Oh, I loved that book when I was a kid,” she says, smiling dreamily. Reading has always been a comfort and an escape for both of us. Of course, we were only allowed certain books in Eden. But before and since, we’ve been able to share our love of books as much as we want.
I crack the eggs into a bowl and pour in the last bit of the milk. I add salt and pepper and whisk them together with a fork. My mom stares across the kitchen, lost in thought.
“It’s Adrian and Rocky’s six month anniversary this weekend,” I say. I wouldn’t mind never hearing or speaking about Adrian and Rocky’s anniversary again, personally. They’re pretty annoying. But, it’s the kind of thing moms like to hear about.
Sure enough, she smiles really big and her eyes crinkle. “Awww! How sweet! Tell them I said congratulations!”
“I will,” I lie. I pour the eggs into the hot pan with the now softened vegetables and give them a stir.
“Do they have big plans?” she asks.
“I think they’re going to this weird modern art show that Adrian is into,” I say. I stir the eggs and veggies to scramble them.
“Awww,” she smiles warmly.
“How was work?” I ask. She works part time at a grocery store.
“Oh, it was good,” she says, sighing lightly, looking down and picking at her thumbnail. I scoot past her to get two bowls and two glasses out of the cupboard behind her. I set them down on the counter by the stove.
“Did you get to work bakery again?”
“No, Marissa made me work deli today.”
“Ugh,” I scoff, tipping scrambled eggs onto each plate. “Mom, Marissa has it out for you.”
She frowns, looking up at me. “No, I’m sure it’s not like that, honey.”
“She totally does,” I insist, filling our glasses with water at the sink. “She always has you do your least favorite jobs. She had you work register every day last week.” I carry the glasses to the small table and set them down on the scuffed wood. She follows and carefully sets the bowls down.
“Oh, I don’t mind,” she says softly. I step back to the kitchen. There’s one banana left in the bowl. I cut it in half, grab two forks, tear off two paper towels, and bring them all to the table. My mom is still standing next to her chair, picking at her thumbnail again. She gets the green chair because she likes how the cushion feels. I sit in the gray one because I like the shape of the backrest better. I set the things down and drop into my chair while she slowly sits down in hers.
She tucks her hair behind her ears and I mirror her without thinking. My “brothers” in Eden used to make fun of me for how much like her I am, how close I am to her. She and I are each other’s only real family. My biological dad convinced her to move us there when I was a kid and then left not long after. We had nowhere to go and it took us years longer to finally get out. So yeah, we’re close. For most of my life we only had each other.
“How’s Rylie?” she asks, taking a small bite and smiling at me while she chews, mouth closed.
“He’s good,” I say, which isn’t totally untrue. He’s my best friend and he has been deeply depressed the whole time we’ve known each other, which is four years.
“He’s excited that it’s parade season for marching band now instead of competition,” I offer, trying to find a cheerful yet honest Rylie update. “He likes the walking and mind-wandering instead of all the drills. He says he likes to imagine he’s in Star Trek or something.” Actually I think he said “imagine I’m anywhere but here” but I’m trying to keep it more mom-friendly.
“Awww,” her face scrunches like this is the cutest thing ever. Rylie is small and dorky and adults do tend to think he’s cute, which is funny because it makes him mad, which makes it funnier, which makes him more mad. It’s a feedback loop, like in computer science class.
“Rocky finished his metalsmithing project,” I say, since I can’t think of anything else cheerful to say about Rylie. “He made this little box with hinges, shaped like a feather, and it fits perfectly around an actual bird feather he found. It’s so sick.”
“Wow!” she says, her mouth in a perfect O of astonishment. I nod. She’s a mom so she has to react like that, but honestly, it is actually incredible.
“It’s so cool,” I agree, shaking my head.
After we finish eating a few minutes later I check on my plants on the windowsill. I don’t have any unusual species or anything, just some pothos cuttings, but I’m proud of how I’ve cared for them and arranged them. I’ve used small nails to make each of them custom ladders, one rung at a time, as they grow, all around and over the window. Since I’ve cared for them meticulously, they grow smooth and bright green and strong, with large shiny leaves of lime green with splotchy pale jade stripes.
In bed after showering, I pull out my phone. I put in one earbud and start playing the album Zaba by Glass Animals like I do every night. Something about the familiar rainforesty sounds is soothing to me.
I have texts from Rylie, Rocky, and Adrian. I open Rylie’s.
Dr. Cpt. Prof. Rye Land Grace Seavers
(me)
i freaking hate this nonsense
what
billy. freaking. budd. if i ever read this
mans name again itll be too soon.
and i dont care about the biblical
symbolism, SHARON. i would rather
NOT be writing a 2000 word essay
on that very topic even as we are
speaking now.
uh yeah I wouldn’t mind
never writing about the biblical
symbolism of anything ever again
EXACTLY
you get me
this is why we’re bffs
bc I grew up in a death cult and
now probably have religious
trauma?
precisely
and you share my disdain for irritating junior
english writing assignments
dumbass
buttface
___
I open the text from Rocky.
Rrrrricardo Rocky Not Balboa Ortiz
(me)
r u awake
my man it is 9:12 pm
?
yes i’m awake
ok wut pgs of bly bud were we spsd
to read
….the essay is due tomorrow, you
know that, right?
ah shit fuck i thought it was nxt wk
spent last 2 days on metalsmithing prj
feather box
fuck
how mny wrds ??
2000
fuck
___
He goes offline.
I open the text from Adrian.
They One Them Only Thee Icon Adrian Abebe
(me)
hi lovely
hii
I hear a muffled crash from somewhere outside my room. I’m on my feet and my knife, which was in its sheath on my bedside table, is in my left hand. My right hand has swiped the earbud away and snatched up a hoodie to fling over my arm in one smooth motion. Time has stopped. My heart thunders in my ears, so fast it’s almost continuous. The dim orange glow of the bedside lamp has become so bright I can barely see.
I freeze for eternity, listening, but I can hear nothing over the roaring in my ears. When enough time has gone by so that there is some space between my heart beats, I pad silently to the door, knife at my side. I grasp the handle with my right hand, turning it silently, and open the door while smoothly stepping back, raising my arms to defend myself.
No one is there. The bathroom door to my left stands open on emptiness. The living room is in shadow, only a dim night light is on in the corner. I can see into the empty kitchen. My mom usually sleeps on the couch and her pallet is made up, the blankets ruffled like she’d been laying down, but she’s not there.
I edge out into the room. I turn in a careful circle to make absolutely sure. No one is here.
I go around the end of the couch to the little space by the wall. My mom sits there on the floor in the corner in her pajamas, her knees pulled up to her chest, silently staring at me with huge eyes. I do an exaggerated deep breath for her, in and out, and slowly set the knife and hoodie down on the table in front of the couch, then sit down on the floor with my back to the wall, facing the door and blocking the space in front of her.
“It’s okay, Mom,” I say softly, my heart still racing. I pretend to take calm breaths. “It was just a noise from neighbors in the hall or something.”
She says nothing. I keep doing the deep, slow breaths. It takes a long, long time for my heart to gradually slow.
When my alarm goes off in my room at dawn, we’re still curled up on the floor.