Chapter 2
Chapter Two
I drop the box I’m carrying onto the floor of my new bedroom and rub my aching muscles.
Walking back out to the living room, I stare out the picture window.
A single-level row of condominiums is between us and our view, but there, in front of the flat-roofed building, is the ocean.
The breeze ruffles the tops of a few palm trees, and waves curl across a vast ocean toward a beach hidden from view by the apartment building in front of ours.
I’m numb. It hasn’t even been three months since Gordon Talent Agency called me.
How can we have changed our lives so completely in such a short time?
My heart aches for my best friend, now two thousand miles away.
I didn’t realize missing her would feel akin to missing Dad.
She’s still alive and well. We text a million times a day. Yet the loss is too acute.
The never-at-rest action of the Pacific seems to add to my own restlessness, so I go back into my room where the only view is the alley between buildings.
The room is the size of a postage stamp.
Barely larger than my twin bed and dresser.
Mom’s isn’t much bigger. We’ll be sharing a bathroom, which ordinarily I would think was a problem.
I imagine the medicine cabinet and drawers bursting with our essential beauty products.
But Mom has been in full hermit mode since losing Dad, so she rarely takes a shower and never does more than throw on sweats and a t-shirt.
I drop onto my unmade bed and bury my fingers in my hair.
Was this the right decision? At this moment, it feels like this is the worst decision we could have made.
We. That’s laughable. There’s no “we” about it.
I don’t think Mom could agree to the movie role fast enough.
It feels like she’s relieved to have someone else take responsibility for me.
And the fact that I’m going to make more money than she’s ever seen just puts the cherry on top.
Because now she can curl up in her new room and not worry about a thing.
Just like she was doing at home, but with only the insurance money to keep us going.
Now, at least, we have the proceeds from the sale of the house as well as my surprisingly lucrative income.
Raking my fingers through my hair, I sigh dramatically and stare at the boxes stacked around me.
In the last six months, I have learned how to make funeral and cremation arrangements, how to manage household expenses, how to drive towing a trailer, and how to sell a fricking house.
But not how to pull my mom out of the well.
Tears track down my cheeks, and I angrily swipe them away.
I’m so tired of being sad and overwhelmed.
I just want to be a flipping normal seventeen-year-old.
But that possibility ended the moment I opened the front door to that policewoman.
Now I’m some angry, sad, terrified hybrid kid-adult who has no fricking clue how to proceed through life and is neck deep in a petrifying new life journey.
And now that we’re here in this beachside hovel that I’m paying a gazillion dollars per month for, I realize how completely on my own I am.
I did not think this through.
I’ve never even been away from home without my parents before, but this…I glance at the wall separating my bedroom from Mom’s…this is like being on my own with somebody else’s toddler.
I pop up from the bed, straighten my back, and take a deep, shaky breath. That’s it. Pity party is over. Today’s, at least. I’ve got crap to do, because tomorrow I start my new job.
I rub my roiling belly as I march out of my room, knock on Mom’s door, and stick my head in.
She’s in bed like I expected, all the boxes I unloaded still stacked along the walls.
It was impossible to decide what to bring for her.
One moment, she didn’t want anything, and then she’d freak out over the stuff I’d gotten rid of.
The first thing I did when we arrived yesterday was set up her bed and TV. Thanks to YouTube, I managed to hook up an analog antenna so that we can pick up a couple local channels. Cable won’t be installed for two weeks. She doesn’t really watch, anyway. I think she just needs the noise.
“Any special requests from the grocery store?”
“Cottage cheese. Some ramen.”
I close my eyes because both of those items will serve as their own meal. Mom barely eats anymore. Honestly, the cottage cheese request is a good one. “How about yogurt? You like the fruit at the bottom kind, right?”
“Yeah, yogurt’s good.”
“K. I’m gonna return the rented trailer and stop at the store to stock us up on my way home. There’s some pizza from last night in the fridge if you get hungry. Text me if you think of anything else.”
“Thanks, baby girl.”
I hate that there is no inflection to her tone when she says that. She has said that to me my whole life, but it was always with affection, sometimes joy, sometimes humor, but this new toneless delivery ruins it completely. She’s just going through the motions.
I don’t bother closing the door since she’ll be alone. Well, not quite alone. I glance through the living room. Queen Brie, our ancient Colorpoint, is traumatized somewhere around this condo. Me too, Queeny. Me too.
My map app helps me find the way to the trailer return.
I am so relieved to drop that thing off, still in one piece, it isn’t even funny.
Clearly, after dragging that thing around for more than two thousand miles, I’m proficient, but if I never have to drive with a trailer attached again, it’ll be too soon.
I feel my shoulders relax as I drive away and realize they’ve been up around my ears for the last week.
Or however long it took us to get here. It feels like months.
Next, I lean on my map app to steer me to the grocery store nearest our home, but when I pull into the parking lot, I have to drive through a homeless encampment to find parking.
More shopping carts are parked along the outside of the temporary shelters than in the cart corrals.
A guy who, based on his clothing and lack of cleanliness, I’m guessing is from the camp, stands just outside the store’s doors, ranting and waving his arms at people who are exiting or entering.
Reprogramming the app, I ask for the next nearest grocery store.
It’s surprisingly old and worn, but otherwise seems safe for a young female to patronize on her own.
I fill my cart with convenience foods and junk.
I don’t know how to cook and can’t take that on right now, so the microwave will have to remain our chef for the time being.
Because I’m starving, I grab a couple of sandwiches from the deli counter so I’ll have something to eat as soon as I get home.
Maybe Mom will pick out some of the meat and cheese from hers.
Once again, map app to the rescue. It gets me home without incident. Carrying the groceries up the stairs—though easier than the trailer of belongings I unloaded almost completely by myself—tells me I might not have thought through the second-floor condo thing thoroughly.
“Hey, Mom. I’m home.”
When there’s no answer, I drop my bags on the counter and go peek into her room. She’s asleep. Or she’s pretending. I don’t know. I sweep the room to see if Queeny is perched on a pile of boxes or the warm television. Not seeing her, I close the door and go unload groceries.
I put Mom’s sandwich in the fridge for when she’s awake again, and I take mine and a soda outside.
Weaving my way through the condo complex, I come out the other side and stare at the vast beach crawling with humanity.
I cannot get over how many people there are in California.
I’ve been to downtown Indianapolis and experienced a lot of people, but I grew up in a suburb.
A small town. Here, there are people everywhere.
One town after the next stuffed with people.
When Mom and I flew here for my reading, I wasn’t looking at it the same way I am now. Then it was shiny and new. Now that I must figure out how to exist in it, the traffic, the lines, the people everywhere are overwhelming.
I cross the big street with the pedestrian light, and as soon as I step up onto the curb, I silently scold myself for not bringing a towel or something to sit on.
Trudging through the sand, I promise myself I’ll take off my shoes and socks once I’m seated.
I find a good spot to view the ocean and sink to my butt on the sun-warmed sand.
Once my toes are bare, I dig them into the sand and unwrap half my sandwich.
The shush of the ocean, the cry of the gulls, the chattering of the people, the competing music, it all fades to background noise as I eat my sandwich and consider tomorrow.
The jury that lives inside my head is still deliberating over whether moving across the country was a good idea or not, but what’s done is done.
I’ve committed, and I need to be all in.
Dad always said, “If you’re going to do something, always do it to your best ability. Otherwise, do something else.”
So, tomorrow when I show up at the studio, I’ll be one hundred percent committed to playing a thirteen-year-old smart aleck, youngest daughter.
Thinking of how I can do it the way Dad taught me helps to ease some of my trepidations. It no longer matters if I made a good choice because now I have to make the best of it.
I pick up my soda can and open my camera app. Framing the photo so that it shows half the can, and my thumb in the forefront, but focused on the waves in the background, I snap the photo and text it to Glory.
Me: Lunch in my new backyard.
I guess it’s technically my front yard, but who eats in their front yard?
Glory: Stop it! You’re seriously that close to the ocean?
Me: Yep. Might take up surfing.
A picture of Glory’s little brother, snotty nose, hair sticking up, wide brown eyes staring at the camera, pops up.
Glory: Babysitting the extra. Mom and Phil are at some dinner party tonight. What’s she going to do when I graduate and follow my bff to California?
The extra is what we call her little brother. Glory’s parents are divorced, and her mom remarried a couple years ago and then shocked everyone, including herself, when she ended up pregnant.
Me: She’ll have to pay someone to watch him! Wipe that kid’s nose!
Glory: It’s a never-ending job. And if I leave it, he’ll just swipe it onto his hand and then lick it off anyway.
Me: [vomiting emoji]
Glory: He’s the grossest little thing in the world.
Me: And you love every little gross inch of him.
Glory: To the moon and back.
Glory: Gotta go. The extra found the bag of sugar and is drawing pictures in it on the kitchen floor.
Me: Good luck!
I pocket my phone and stare out at the ocean while dispatching my sandwich.
Moving is hard, hungry work! Texting with Glory always helps lighten my mood.
Now, when I look at the ocean, it’s a relentless wonder.
Instead of adding to my anxiety, it fills me with awe.
I breathe in the salt air and tune into the gulls.
The sounds of the beach are like a music genre of its own.
At this moment, it feels like I could sit and listen all day.
That I might want to sing along. That maybe this choice to move wasn’t all horrible.