Chapter 2
My drive home passes quickly despite the stop-and-go traffic, with sunlight reflecting off cars and asphalt in shimmering waves of heat.
The horrific scene from my hike plays on a loop in my head as I try to consider every possibility, though none of them are logical enough for me to be convinced.
I almost wish I could convince myself I hallucinated it, but I can’t.
The sight of the man being dragged beneath the ground, his mouth open in a silent scream, his fingertips raw from clawing at everything in a desperate attempt to get away…
There’s no doubt in my mind that it was real.
Strip malls and houses blur past in the dull monotony of beige stucco as I make my way home.
It’s one of the things I hate most about living here.
Everything is lifeless, blending together in faded shades of tan and brown through most of the city.
The touristy areas are juxtaposed but lifeless in their own way, with garish colors, obnoxious noises, and aggressively bright lights meant to overwhelm the senses.
I’ve wanted to leave for a long time. For years, I’ve longed to live somewhere green, somewhere with rainy days and canopies of trees and life. I want to be in a place that doesn’t feel like it’s trying to kill anything soft or vulnerable.
Guilt wells in my chest the same way it does every time the thought surfaces. As much as I want to leave, I can’t. My family needs me.
My apartment complex comes into sight as I turn the corner.
It’s a collection of two-story buildings arranged around a small rectangular pool with chipping paint that’s been empty for three years due to maintenance issues.
The stucco is the same beige as everything else in the city, but here it’s accented with water stains, hairline fissures, and a wall along the back that someone spray-painted their initials on a couple months ago.
It’s certainly not the nicest place to live, but it’s safe enough, even if it is a little run-down. I pull into a parking spot right outside my front door and mentally prepare myself to go inside. I never know what kind of environment I’ll come home to, but I’ve gotten used to the unpredictability.
As soon as I step into the dim apartment, I’m greeted by the sight of my half-brother, Christopher, sitting on the floor watching cartoons while he fidgets with one of the sensory items Mom got him for Christmas.
He barely glances my way as I shut the door behind me, too distracted by the show he’s watching to care about my arrival.
I follow the sound of dishes clinking together in the kitchen and find my mother stirring a pot of spaghetti.
“How’s Christopher been today?” I ask, plopping down at the table that sits at the far end of the narrow kitchen.
“Good. We kept up his routine without a hitch, so no breakdowns like yesterday,” she answers with a sigh.
I can tell she’s exhausted between working extra hours and taking care of Christopher when I’m not around to do it.
He’s fifteen, but his lifelong developmental disability means that he’ll need a caretaker of some sort for the rest of his life.
And since I’m the eldest of the three kids, the job is usually left to me, especially during the summertime when he and our other younger brother, Matty, are out of school.
“That’s good,” I say, standing to help her set the table despite my own exhaustion. “Will Dave be home soon?”
She shakes her head. “He’s working overtime tonight.
Hopefully, we’ll be in a better place with money in the next year and we can all take it a little easier with the extra hours.
” Her shoulders are slumped, and the dark circles under her eyes only seem to be more prominent by the day.
Her hair, the same auburn color as mine, is pulled back into a messy ponytail.
She and her husband, Dave, have been working hard to cover the bills while saving up to find a better apartment, but it’s hard to save due to Christopher’s medical bills and the rising costs of rent.
I help out as much as I can with finances, but it’s impossible for me to keep a full-time job since I’m the one taking care of Chris every summer.
“How was hiking?” Mom asks.
My stomach twists. “Fine. It’s so hot today that I did a shorter hike than usual.” No need to make her worry about something that’s already over with.
She nods, and I continue laying out silverware by our dinner plates. “Dinner will be ready in ten minutes,” she says. “Can you get Chris away from the TV and also let Matty know?”
“Sure thing.” Grateful that my mother is too frazzled to ask many questions or fully pay attention to my answers, I escape the heat of the small kitchen and crouch down by my brother.
“Hey, bud, dinner is almost ready, so once this episode is over, we need to turn off the TV, okay?”
He nods, his eyes glued to the screen.
“Okay, I’ll be back in a few minutes to turn it off,” I say. Giving him as many reminders as possible about transitions from one task to another helps to minimize the struggles that sometimes turn into meltdowns.
I stand and make my way to the bedroom at the end of the short hallway, knocking on the door of the bedroom that Christopher and Matty share.
“Dinner in ten!” I yell through the door.
I barely hear Matty grumble, “Okay.”
Sighing, I walk back to the living room to make sure I catch the end of the episode in time to turn it off before another starts.
Matty just turned twelve, and I can tell it’s weighing on him that not only does he have to share a room with Chris, but he’s also getting more and more of the responsibilities in caring for him.
Lately, he’s becoming progressively more isolated, and I’m not sure if it’s just typical teenage moodiness or something deeper.
After I’ve done the dishes following an uneventful dinner, I make sure everyone is settled before I head to my room.
It’s the smallest room in the house, barely big enough for a bed and a desk, but it’s my happy place all the same.
The window faces west, and the golden evening sun illuminates the greenery around the room.
The pothos directly across the room from the window fills almost the entire wall with its climbing vines that I’ve trained to grow upward.
Every available surface holds a plant, with succulents arranged on the windowsill, a monstera on my desk, draping plants in macrame containers hanging from the ceiling, and a peace lily in the corner.
I close the door behind me and feel like I can breathe properly for the first time since this morning. As much as I’d prefer to be out in nature, this is the second best thing, my indoor sanctuary that I’ve cultivated for myself.
I sink onto my bed, tuning out the sound of the TV droning down the hallway, and allow myself to ruminate on what happened earlier for the first time since I’ve gotten home.
I open the internet browser on my phone and feel ridiculous for the things I type in the search bar.
Of course nothing comes up about tree roots becoming sentient and acting of their own accord, because that’s insane.
If I were to ask or tell anyone about this, they’d think I lost my mind. There’s nothing else I can do.
After an hour of looking online to no avail, I decide to be productive with my time.
Forcing myself up from the bed, I sit down at my desk and open my laptop.
Unbeknownst to anyone else, I’ve started applying to grad schools.
The guilt consumes me any time I think about leaving here, but at some point I have to live for myself, right?
It’s been a couple years since I got my bachelor’s degree in botany, but I haven’t done much with it because of my inability to work consistently due to planning my life around helping the family.
I’ve been working at the plant nursery across town and have worked my way up to assistant manager, which gives me a decent paycheck, but it’s not nearly as much as it could be if I actually used my degree for a steadier, more specialized job.
But if I can’t do that right now, I could at least work toward the personal goal of getting my master’s.
The hardest part is finding something relevant that I could pursue mostly online.
A master’s in botany usually requires lab work that has to be completed in-person, and I don’t have the time to attend classes physically while also balancing my job and caring for Christopher, so I’ve been dragging my feet.
As my old laptop powers up, I glance over at the small framed photo to my left.
The picture is older than me by a few months, the colors faded but the image recognizable.
A man in his early twenties wearing jeans and a nondescript T-shirt grins at the camera.
A much younger version of my mother is tucked under his arm, her laughter frozen in time.
The latches on the back side of the picture frame are loose from so many years of me taking it out to read the short note scrawled on the back in my father’s handwriting.
“Love you, Vivian. Can’t wait to hold you in a few short months.
” Beneath it is a number that’s scrawled in small print, 005.
4476. When I asked mom what it meant, she reasoned that it’s likely my father accidentally used the picture as a piece of scrap paper to write down a note for himself, maybe the start of a phone number before realizing what he was writing on.
My heart aches as I wish for the millionth time that he was still here.
I never had the chance to meet my father, as he passed away only a few months before I was born.
According to my mother, it was a short whirlwind of a relationship, and she’d gotten pregnant with me only a couple months after they had started dating.
I can’t help but wonder if he’d be proud of me. I’ve made so many choices over the course of my life, most of them self-sacrificing, but sometimes I worry I’ve lost myself in the process. Would he even be around to care, or would he have left my mom on her own to raise me?
Maybe it’s just me being optimistic, but I’d like to think he would have stayed.
I study his face in the photograph like I have countless times, wondering what life would be like if he hadn’t died.
I return to my laptop and go through the usual routine of checking social media and emails. Ten new emails wait in my inbox, nine of which are promotions or spam.
One catches my eye, though. The subject line simply reads, Application Pending. That’s strange. It’s been a couple weeks since I’ve applied anywhere, and these emails usually come immediately after submitting the application.
I’ve only applied to a few grad schools, having convinced myself that if I didn’t try too hard to get in somewhere, the guilt wouldn’t be so heavy. But every screen confirming my application, every rejection letter, every email about my pending application status drives the guilt deeper.
Nobody knows I’m applying because if they did, the guilt wouldn’t just be internal.
Mom would plead with me to stay another year so she could figure out how to get Christopher the care he needs without me here, Dave would make passive-aggressive comments under his breath about how I’m abandoning them when they work so hard to provide for all of us, and Matty would resent me for leaving because Mom and Dave will load more responsibilities onto him.
It’s all so fucking complicated.
My skin prickles with anticipation as I click on the email expecting to see the typical “We’ll reach out if you’re a good fit for our program” along with a slew of information about what to expect and when, but there’s none of that.
The page is mostly empty white space. There’s one line of text in the body, reading, “Thank you for your application. We’ll be in touch shortly.
” Beneath that, an elegant emblem of a raven within a circle.
There is no sign-off, no attachment, no contact information, nothing.
I search for the name of the school to jog my memory of where I applied, but it’s nowhere on the page, not even in the email address.
It must be spam. Not even good spam, at that.
I breathe out a sigh of disappointment as I delete the email and tell myself it’s better this way, anyway.