Chapter Thirty-Four
Mom is sitting at the kitchen table when I walk into the house. She gives me a weak smile.
“Hey.”
I take my time dropping my book bag on the ground and toeing off my shoes. I wish I could walk straight past her and up the stairs to my room, but she’ll only follow me. Or maybe she won’t and then Dad will come home and make us sit down together.
I sigh and sit across the table from her.
I will admit, she doesn’t look good. Her eyes are rimmed in red, her face is blotchy, and her hair is a mess the way mine gets when I’m frazzled and can’t give it the time it requires.
I avoided reflective surfaces on my way home, but I’m sure I’m not looking much better.
“Hazel.” Her voice is soft and low. I don’t look at her. “I’m so sorry about missing today. You know how much I was looking forward to being there to support you and the rest of the band. I promise it wasn’t intentional.”
“I know it wasn’t.”
If it was intentional, we’d be having a whole different conversation.
My thoughts drift to Max and how upset he was when he heard his dad was choosing to skip state.
There’s something almost cruel about that.
Mom only made a mistake, and I know I’ve made plenty as well.
Resentment still bubbles up inside me, though.
How could she put so much pressure on me and then not take it seriously herself?
She could make elaborate meals for her D&D games, and advise Kelsey’s 4-H club, and volunteer for every position known to man, but she couldn’t prioritize today?
When I stay silent, she asks, “So…do you want to tell me how it went?”
My stomach twists and my throat grows tight.
I don’t want to tell her and watch her try to hold back her disappointment.
I don’t want to hear her patronizing words.
At least if she’d been at school, there would’ve been a possibility of missing her initial reaction since I’d be too busy cheering for Nova.
But now…in this silent kitchen? I don’t know that I can get the words out.
“Uh, Li won the freshman award,” I reply, chickening out.
“Oh, that’s wonderful!”
“She was really shocked.” I smile for a moment. “But she was a shoo-in. There was no question.”
“Like you freshman year.”
I meet her eye, and the tears I’ve been fighting against finally spill down my cheeks. “I didn’t win, Mom. Okay? I know you really wanted me to, but I didn’t win.” I swallow down a sob. “I’m sorry.”
I push back my chair to leave, but she leans forward and grabs my hand. “Wait, Hazel, please.” She stands and pulls me up to my feet and then into her arms. “It’s okay,” she whispers.
I cry harder and I think maybe she’s crying too, but I’m not certain. After a few minutes she pulls away and studies my face.
“I didn’t know you wanted it this much.”
I shake my head. “I didn’t. I’m not crying about that. I mean, sure, it feels good to win things and I worked really hard with color guard this season, but it’s okay. Nova won and she totally deserved it—she’s never won anything like that before and I have. I’m happy for her.”
“I am too. She’s a great kid.”
“But I know how much you wanted it for me. You wanted me to continue your legacy, and I didn’t.” I swallow to stop my voice from breaking. “I let you down. It’s probably good you weren’t there to see it.”
“No!” She lifts her hands to cup my cheeks. “I don’t care about the award. I don’t care if you get Superiors at state. I don’t care if you decide to drop out of band tonight. I just want you to be happy. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”
I shake my head at the words.
“It’s true. Listen to me when I say this.” She lowers her hands from my face and instead squeezes both my hands. “I don’t care about anything but your happiness. Yes, maybe I’ve been a little intense this season—”
I snort-laugh, which is a very weird feeling because I’m also still crying. She smiles ruefully.
“My intensity wasn’t about the awards and the rankings and all that.
I just remember how happy I was in band and the joy I felt when we performed well at state and how special it felt to get that award.
Those were some of the best times of my life.
And so I thought, if you had similar experiences, then you’d feel the same way as me. But clearly I was very wrong.”
“I was already happy, even without all that stuff. And it’s not that I don’t want the band to do well, but it’s exhausting having this pressure on me all the time.
Like today, I wanted to focus on Nova and Li, but all I could think about was the fact that you weren’t there and how you were going to react when you eventually found out the results. ”
She slowly drops down into her chair, wiping at her tears, and I do the same.
“I never meant for any of this to happen.” She crumples in on herself. “I’m sorry if you didn’t have the experience you were hoping for this year because of me. That’s the opposite of what I wanted.”
She looks so crushed. Since the moment I realized she wasn’t coming today, I’ve been upset and resentful, but more than anything I’ve been scared. I was worried her reaction would break me, but instead I’m the one doing the breaking.
I lean forward. “Mom, I had an awesome year of marching band. I was with my best friend, I had an amazing group of guard members, and we actually won against Oak Grove. No one has done that in years. Maybe our senior years weren’t identical, but they were both really great. You don’t have to worry about that.”
“Yeah?” She lifts her eyes hopefully.
“Yeah.” I squeeze her hand. “And I also had parents who came to every single show, and cheered so loudly I could hear them across a football field, and wore embarrassing T-shirts and buttons—”
She laugh-sobs and I do the same.
“And not everyone has parents like that. Senior year wouldn’t have been as good without you there for every step of it.”
“Oh, Hazel,” she whispers and pulls me into another hug. “I’m so sorry I wasn’t there today.”
“It’s okay.” I squeeze her back. “But there’s something you can do to make it up to me.”
She sits back expectantly. “Name it, I’ll do whatever you want.”
“Don’t wear those shirts to state with that horrible picture of me on them?”
She bursts out laughing. “Hey, I tried my best on those!”
“You chose a picture where you can clearly see my zit!”
“Did I? I didn’t notice. You always look beautiful to me.”
“Mom! It’s a very bad picture.” I sigh. “Fine, I guess you can wear them—but only for the performance. Bring sweaters or something to put over them for the drive home.”
She chuckles. “Absolutely.”
I’m shaky and my heart is still racing from our conversation, but I also feel weightless, like I could float away into the sky if there wasn’t a ceiling above me. Mom, on the other hand, looks absolutely exhausted. If she laid her head on the table, I bet she could fall asleep in an instant.
“Is everything okay with you?” I ask. “Not to rub it in, but you never miss band stuff.”
She laughs sadly. “Do you ever have a day—or a week—when it feels like you’ve taken on way too much and there’s no way you can handle it all?”
“That sounds like a lot of my weeks.”
She leans back in her chair. “Really? But you always have your life together.”
My mouth drops open. “I have everything together? It’s the opposite. Between being captain and DMing for the first time, plus school, I felt like I was constantly dropping balls and letting people down. You’re the superhero around here.”
“Not lately, I’m not. If you ever looked at my Notes app on my phone, you’d find about five billion half-completed notes to keep me on schedule. But even then, the wheels fly off the bus sometimes. Like today.”
“Maybe today was a good thing? In a very weird way.”
“Maybe. I’m glad we talked, though I wish the circumstances were different. Thank you for not shutting me out.”
“Thank you for taking time to create shockingly embarrassing T-shirts of me.”
She laughs and stands up. “You’re very welcome.”
“Do you need help with dinner?” Usually Mom has a Crock-Pot or Instant Pot or some kind of pot going by early evening.
“Definitely not. I’m texting your dad—we’re all going out to eat tonight. I think we could both use the break.”