3. Haley
3
HALEY
A unt Cindy stopped nagging me after we got home.
The drive between the campus and the house she got from my grandparents was a long one, but I preferred the distance, despite the headache it was to go back and forth. Being stuck in a dorm room didn’t appeal, and I certainly didn’t have the money to afford an apartment near the campus.
While she ranted and nagged on the drive home, put out for having to wait for me for so long, I let it all in one ear and out the other. This was far from the first time I was the sole audience for her grievances. Since she was all I had of my family in town, I felt obligated to let her say her piece—her lengthy piece—and wait for her to lose the energy to carry on. I was twenty-one, not eleven. I was an adult, not a child. It peeved me that she’d act like I was still a kid or adolescent who could benefit from a lecture, but I understood why she was so upset.
The West family had caused hell for us, mostly in the sense that it was always a case of he said, she said , and their voice mattered more.
Aunt Cindy’s life was hard enough, primarily because she had fibromyalgia and couldn’t hold down a steady job well.
It was nice to get home and escape to my room after making us a quick dinner. The second I closed my door and leaned my back against it, I shut my eyes and drew in a deep breath.
And the peace was shattered. With one buzz of my phone in my back pocket, I was jarred and thrust back into reality, not the comforting blackness of my closed eyes as I just breathed, as I decompressed, safe in my own space.
“Now what?” I mumbled as I walked over to my bed and dropped onto the mattress. Rolling until I lay on my stomach, I unlocked the old-model phone and read the messages that had come in.
Davina: Mr. Popular is here at the party.
Davina: He mentioned you.
“See if I care,” I replied aloud.
Eli Young “mentioning” me was a kind and false way of saying he’d made fun of me. Ever since fourth grade, he'd made it his life’s mission to ridicule me at every chance he could get.
Davina: This place is packed.
I sighed, wondering if I should bother replying.
Davina: You sure you don’t want to come for a little bit?
“One hundred percent,” I muttered. Davina was the closest thing I had to a true friend. She’d moved to Marsten our freshman year of college. Because she wasn’t born and raised in town and privy to the fact that the Feldstones were supposed to be the bottom of the barrel, socially speaking, she had the open mind to befriend me when we were partnered in a biology lab. I struggled to truly let her in because of how much I’d been an outcast all my life—though through no actions of my own—but I accepted her as a friend and valued having someone to talk to.
Haley: I’m sure.
Would I want to voluntarily attend a party at the West mansion?
Over my dead body.
I didn’t care who was there celebrating whatever those happy, peppy people wanted to cheer about. So many of my classmates seemed stuck in the teenage years—carefree and oblivious to how life could suck for others.
Davina: Are you saying you don’t want to come because I said Eli is here?
I appreciated her reporting in to me that Eli was there. She was well aware of the antagonism between us, a force that set in when he decided he was too cool to be friendly to me since fourth grade. But it wasn’t just avoiding him that kept me home.
It was avoiding them all.
Haley: I don’t care who is at this dumb party.
I didn’t. I’d stubbornly stand by that fact. After the way everyone talked crap about me all my life? No thanks. I wasn’t a glutton for punishment to the point I’d want to go somewhere and be subjected to more bullying and teasing just for being alive and breathing. It didn’t matter what I did or didn’t do. Those jerks would never stop targeting me.
Haley: And I especially don’t care about an asshole like him being there.
She didn’t reply, but she had something on her mind. Three dots appeared, vanished, and popped back up, over and over as she debated a response. Whatever she said wouldn’t make me change my mind, though. I learned from my mistakes, and the hard lesson I’d gotten years ago was that bullies never changed. They’d never stop acting like I was a leper or a freak, so I stopped trying to fit in.
That elusive goal hadn’t died, though. While I refused to be social and put myself in the position for the popular, wealthy students to try to make my life hell, I wished so badly that I could fit in. That it was at least possible to be included and valued as a member of society.
And it could happen—just not in Marsten. Not at this college. Not while I lived in this house with Aunt Cindy. This little place I had grown up in was too prejudiced against me all because of my last name. My family reputation was a dark stain I could never wash off, and it was all the more reason I couldn’t wait to get out of here after graduation.
It wasn’t wanderlust or pure escapism that fueled my fantasy of getting out of here. It was realistic acceptance that I’d always be judged by association.
When I moved to the city to live near my older sister, Natasha, no one there would sneer at me because my mom had participated in multiple affairs and acted like a homewrecker for multiple couples and families in Marsten.
When I relocated to the city to work in a school that needed new teachers, no one there would frown upon me because my sister got pregnant when she was a teenager.
And when I walked away from all the bullies, I could blissfully blend in as a nobody, one among many, never worrying about what people could say to me to bring me down.
Renewed with the promise of a new start, I turned my phone over and scrolled through my contacts. Just zoning out at the wall and thinking about all I could look forward to prompted me to call the one person who never dismissed me.
As my Irish twin, Natasha was almost one year older than me, and she got me. She understood what it was like to be victimized and targeted for things we hadn’t done ourselves. Where Aunt Cindy would nag and assume I was doing something wrong, my sister would know that I was just surviving the best I could.
We didn’t talk often, what with her raising her five-year-old son, Grayson, in the city on her own. Between her job, being a single mother, and trying to get her GED, she didn’t have much time to hear me out on the bad nights. But she was always there for me when I needed her. And soon, once I had my diploma, I’d be in the city with her to help her out.
“Hay-ie!” Grayson answered on the video call.
“Hey, buddy!” I grinned at my adorable nephew who was growing so damn fast. I swore he looked so much older and different every time I saw him.
“Is that Ha ley ?” Natasha asked, gently emphasizing the l that he struggled to form with his lisp.
“Yeah, it’s Ha… Ha…” He pouted, frustrated to try to say it.
“It’s me, Nat.” Looking at Grayson and enunciating so he could follow along, I slowly said, “Ha- ley .”
“Ha…ley.” He grinned, his dimples showing in his cheeks. “I did it. I did it, Mama. Ha-ley!”
I cheered him on, so glad he was determined to work hard. Every time he seemed to improve with his speech issues, he looked so damn proud, and it made my heart full. It was a big part of my decision to not only become a teacher but also to stick with a goal to later go into graduate studies to specialize in speech therapy.
The three of us talked for a while. Nat wasn’t the kind of mom who let her child just be on screens all day, nor would she let Grayson answer any old call. With Grayson standing on a stool as he kind of chopped cucumbers with a kid-safe knife, and Nat mixing something in a bowl, I figured I’d caught them making a late dinner. Her phone seemed to be propped up against the backsplash of the counter, which was probably why she'd let him answer.
“Want to go finish watching Miss Rachel?” she asked him.
He said goodbye to me and left the screen. Nat smiled at me, moving the phone to the table where she sat with a glass of wine.
“Long day?” I asked. She seldom drank.
“Yeah.” She sighed and gave me a patient look. “But it looks like it’s been a long one for you, too. What’s up?”
Sometimes, it was unnerving how good she was at reading me. I shrugged. “Just the usual.”
“Bullies?”
I nodded.
“Eli?” She sipped her wine. “Or Preston?”
“Both.”
She shook her head. “Hang in there, Sis. You’re almost done with Marsten.”
“I know. It just…”
“Sucks,” she summed up bluntly. She’d know it, too. When she got pregnant at sixteen, she was severely judged. “But I’ve been asking around for places you could stay.” She smiled a little, perking up about the preliminary apartment hunting she was doing on my behalf. Her home with Grayson was a studio unit, all she could afford at the time. While it was spacious for the two of them, there wasn’t any easy way to fit me in there.
Hearing her talk about my eventual move lifted my spirits, but only a bit. Hearing and seeing Grayson had made me happy too.
Yet, as we stayed on the line, I couldn’t help but feel so rooted in this loneliness.
Because come the next day of classes, I’d have to squeeze myself back into the shell I hid in. I’d have to face Preston. Eli. All the snarky snobs who looked down on me.
It was exhausting, putting up with the judgment and rude treatment. Even though I knew there was an end in sight, even though I could count on getting out of here and having something different to look forward to after graduation, it dragged me down to bolster up the courage to make it through this hell one day at a time.
I didn’t deserve this burden of trying to make myself small and unnoticeable to avoid others’ cruelty. I wanted to convince myself that I deserved something good now.
The advice to focus on the present, to be full in the moment, fell flat. I didn’t waste my time dwelling on the past and being angry about why I had to be judged because of what my family did. I didn’t want to get my hopes too high that the future would fall into place as I wanted it to, either.
But telling myself to make the most of every minute as it came?
I wished I could.
Shaking my head and determined not to wallow all night in my loneliness in my room, I headed downstairs to watch TV with my aunt. Even if nothing good was on, it’d be a distraction.
This is the last semester.
Just tough it out and graduate.
Then hopefully, a new start on my life would be something good and fulfilling without any of this despairing loneliness.