7. Lenni
SEVEN
lenni
I’m in the middle of drafting an article about the food truck scene around Shafer, and I’ve hit a wall. After telling my Arts and Lifestyle editor I don’t get enough juicy stories, she’d assigned me this one with a cheesy grin and a promise that Cal’s Burger Truck had the juiciest burgers in town. Oof. The story isn’t without its perks—free food—but now that the eating is done and the writing has begun, I’m utterly uninspired.
My phone rings and I just about snap my neck looking for it. There are only three people who call instead of texting. I jump up and snatch my phone off the bed to see who it is. Mom. My stomach drops.
“Hey, Mom,” I answer, sending up a quick plea that she’s sober.
“Hi, love.” My mom’s clear, bright voice floods me with relief.
“Nice to hear from you. How are things at home?”
“Oh, good enough. Gus is driving me nuts bouncing off the friggin’ walls,” she says with a chuckle. “He’s got a big Boy Scouts campout Grandpa’s taking him to.”
“I know, he texted me from Nana’s phone the other day. Good for him. And how’s work?” I try to keep my voice light, but my unnatural singsong tone betrays me.
Two years ago, Mom fell back into some heavy drinking habits after getting sober when I was in middle school. She lost her job, and she and my little brother Gus had to move in with my grandparents, who don’t have much money. When Mom’s working steadily, she earns just enough to keep them afloat, but she needs her sobriety to keep her job, and she needs her job to maintain her sobriety. Things could fall apart at any minute.
“I’m hanging in,” Mom tells me. “My boss has finally come around to letting me adjust my work schedule on Thursdays so I can get to my meetings. I haven’t missed one in seven weeks now,” she says proudly.
“Mom, that’s great! Look at you!” I smile. It’s a small victory, but for our family, it’s huge. “You should celebrate.”
“Russ says when I make ten weeks in a row, he’s gonna take me out dancing.”
I whoop and my mom laughs. Russ is Mom’s first boyfriend since she got sober this time around. I don’t trust any man for shit with my mother, but so far, he seems to be a positive force in her life. Even Grandpa likes him enough that he hasn’t mentioned the fact that Mom shouldn’t be dating this early in her recovery.
“Listen, love,” Mom says, “I wanted to tell you I ran into Pete Clemmons yesterday and we got to talking.”
“Who?”
“Peter Clemmons? You know, he runs the town paper. You graduated with his son, can’t remember his name but that cute kid who drove the souped-up blue pickup.”
Ugh. AJ Clemmons. Another guy from high school I’d like to forget, along with my entire graduating class. Oh, what the hell, make it the whole town.
“Ok.” I clear my throat. “And?”
“When I told him you were a journalism student writing for Shafer, he said he’s starting some kind of digital media company. You know I don’t understand that crap, but you would. He wants to talk to you about a summer position. He promised it would pay better than any college job.”
This is what I hate about our family. It always comes down to money. Not because we’re greedy and not because we value it above all else. Just because we’ve never had any, and barely scraping by is the closest we’ve ever come to financial success.
“Mom, I appreciate you putting in a good word, but I’ve almost got my summer lined up, remember? The internship?”
“Obviously I remember.” I can tell by her voice I’ve touched a nerve. “But this is better. It pays real good and best of all, it means having you here. You know how much we all want you back home again.”
My insides churn with guilt. I adore my family, but I’m never going back to my hometown. Not to the people who knew me and not to the humiliating memories. And no one, not even Jade, knows I ended up at Shafer not because of its renowned journalism program but because it was the best school I could get into that no one else from my high school was attending. My hometown is in my past forever. I just haven’t managed to find the nerve to share that information with my mom.
“I’ll give it some thought,” I say tonelessly. Mom doesn’t get that what happened to me isn’t in the past. She knows the facts of what went down—the whole town does, for fuck’s sake. But she doesn’t understand the dark, unrelenting feelings that came with it and never left.
“Yeah, please do,” Mom says. I hate the chill that’s settled between us.
“I was thinking Gus could come up for the weekend next month,” I tell her, hoping to bring us back around to the high note we started on. “I could take him to a football game, have him spend the night, and then drive him home Sunday.”
“Oh, he’d love that! I gotta work weekends from now until Christmas, so I can’t bring him, but Grandpa’d be happy to do it.”
“Definitely. I’ll check the calendar and give you a few options.”
“Sounds great. I better get going to pick up Gus, but we’ll talk soon.”
I say goodbye and let the guilt sink deep.
I’m a crappy person for leaving home and never visiting, especially a crappy sister; my poor little brother has already been through so much in his nine years. But that guilt is my fuel to keep working hard. If I can keep it up, it’ll be worth the sacrifices we’ve all made.
I’ve made vague mentions of my plans to my mom before, but they always sound childish and fantastical spoken out loud. Still, I know they’re possible. I’m not abandoning my family. I just need more time.A summer internship, keeping my grades up and securing an editor position at the school paper will land me a spot in a good grad school, and then it’s only a matter of finding a decent job in a city with a moderate cost of living. Then I’ll move my family to me. Between Mom’s salary, mine, and my savings, which I’ve been squirreling away since the summer after high school graduation, we can support all five of us; god knows we’re experts at living on a shoestring budget. I don’t need to make a million dollars. I only need to bust my ass hard enough to succeed, and I’m already doing a pretty decent job of that.
Now if I could just figure out how to craft a riveting article about campus food trucks.