Chapter 7
AVA
Keeping a teenager alive is easy.
Keeping a teenager happy and alive? That’s a whole other beast.
I was kidding when I told Jack that taking care of my thirteen-year-old sister would be harder than caring for a newborn.
But fuck, is the joke on me.
Babies are predictable—for the most part. They cry when they need something, eat until they're full, and sleep most of the day—and Evee was an easy baby. Rumi didn’t breastfeed, so either one of us could feed her, and she was like clockwork when it came to diaper changes and her naps.
I’m not saying that the first year of Evee’s life was easy—Rumi and I were sleep-deprived and basically lived in the same pair of pajama pants for days at a time—but Evee didn’t use all my skin care and not put the caps back on, or go through my closet and leave what she didn’t want to wear on the floor, or eat like she’s going into hibernation while leaving a trail of snack wrappers in her wake.
But you know who does?
Georgie.
I guess it could be worse, though.
She could slam doors, or refuse to do basic hygiene things, or whatever else teenagers do that has their parents convinced they are possessed by the devil and not just in the midst of crazy hormonal shifts.
And right now, Georgie deserves to use all my high-end products, wear all my clothes, and eat all my food. Especially considering she’s squeezed into my two-bedroom apartment, is living out of an overnight bag, and now has a social worker assigned to her.
It’s been two days since I picked Georgie up from my mom’s—who I still have not heard from—and it’s pretty much been just the two of us at the apartment since Emerson offered to work my shifts at Hey Honey’s and take over as interim manager for a few days while I figure out what I’m going to do about all of this.
Especially now that we have our first meeting with Georgie’s social worker tonight.
After Georgie’s teacher called CPS, everything moved quickly.
Yesterday, I got a call that a social worker had been assigned to her and that we could expect a visit today.
With Georgie finding our mom unresponsive, it’s more than just a misunderstanding or something that can be easily explained away—it’s a safety concern.
Patricia, the social worker, explained that she needs eyes on Georgie as soon as possible, even if it is a Sunday night.
“Is she going to take me with her?” Georgie asks, pulling her legs and criss-crossing them under her from where she sits at the kitchen counter.
She’s in a pair of my sweatpants with a matching crewneck sweatshirt.
Her dirty blonde hair is twisted in a bun at the nape of her neck, her hazel eyes wide with concern.
“Of course not,” I answer, spraying the counter with an all-purpose cleaner and wiping it down with a paper towel.
“But what if she does?” Georgie asks, but she doesn’t look at me. Her gaze is on her hands in her lap, her fingers twirling the tie of her sweatpants.
“She won’t. She’s coming to make sure you’re okay, and hopefully she’ll help us make a plan.” With the last pass of the paper towel over the counter, I feel some of my anxiety subside.
With Georgie’s dad gone, her grandparents on both sides having died before she was born, and my mom an only child, I’m the only one left that Georgie can rely on.
My other two sisters are barely adults—Phoebe, who is just twenty-three, and Jasmine, about to turn nineteen—and I could never ask them to shoulder this responsibility. Not that they wouldn’t step up if they could, but their lives are already full, and Georgie can’t wait.
She needs someone steady, someone who won’t let her down.
It’s a decision I came to without much thought—Georgie needs to be with me.
Permanently.
“You really think she’ll help?” Georgie finally meets my eyes as she waits for my answer.
“I do,” I reply, hoping I sound more convincing than I feel. “But we have to make sure we’re honest with her.”
I reach my hand across the counter, holding my palm up for Gerogie to take.
After a moment, she does. “And that means telling the truth about Mom,” I add, squeezing my sister’s small hands, her wrists still too thin for the sleeves of my sweatshirt she keeps tugging down. “Friday night wasn’t the first time, was it?”
Georgie’s eyes glisten, and she looks away, taking her hands with her.
I haven’t been able to get her to open up about our mom and her drinking. Ever since my meeting with Callie, after seeing the assignment Georgie turned in, I can’t help but think that this wasn’t the first time my mom turned to alcohol since that day thirteen months ago.
“George,” I say, resting my elbows on the counter and leaning toward her. “When did she start drinking again?”
She pulls her knees up to her chest and rests her chin on them. Her eyes wander the kitchen, looking at everything but me.
“George,” I repeat, but she still doesn’t look my way. If she did, I know I would see my own eyes staring back at me, red-rimmed and puffy. Just like Phoebe’s and Jasmine’s, all of my sisters and I somehow got our mother’s hazel eyes.
“Georgina?” My voice is a little louder this time, but she still doesn’t move.
Georgie sniffles, wiping a stray tear that falls from the corner of her eye with her sleeve, the gray material darkening.
She tucks a piece of hair that escaped her bun behind her ear—while I got our mom’s red hair, Georgie got her dad’s, along with his freckles and the way she scrunches her nose when she’s focusing hard on something. Or when she’s trying not to cry.
“I didn’t want you to worry,” she finally says, so quietly I can barely hear it. My heart breaks even more than it did when I picked up her phone call two days ago, hearing the sobs she tried to hide as she told me that Mom wouldn’t wake up.
“I’m always worried about you, kiddo,” I tell her, reaching across the counter between us to wipe another stray tear on her cheek. “That’s never going to change.”
Georgie sighs, putting her legs down and standing up from her chair as she takes in a shaky breath. “I started to notice the bottles in the trash around Thanksgiving.”
Thanksgiving?
That’s over two months ago.
I should’ve known not to trust my mom—if she couldn’t stay sober for me, or Phoebe, or Jasmine, how could I honestly believe she’d do it for Georgie. No matter how much I wanted her to.
Needed her to.
I try to keep my features schooled. Not wanting to show too much of my surprise or frustration because I don’t want Georgie to think I’m mad at her.
I’m mad at my mom.
I’m mad at myself.
I’ve been going through my own shit the last year and a half. Between everything that happened with my ex, battling my OCD diagnosis, my job, and then the fire eight months ago, I convinced myself that the bender my mom went on thirteen months ago was a one-time thing.
And I let her assure me that it would never happen again.
Yet here we are.
“Honey, why didn’t you tell me?”
Georgie sniffles, and another crack forms in my heart. “It was never that bad.”
“What do you mean ‘that bad’?” From where I’m sitting, finding empty bottles in the trash is pretty fucking bad.
“Before Friday, I could always wake her up or help her get to bed. Or, sometimes, even get her to not open another bottle.” Georgie’s voice is pleading, like she needs to convince me she did everything she could.
“That is not your job, Georgina. Do you hear me? She is the adult, and you are the child. It is not your job to take care of her like that.” My voice is hard, but I need her to understand that she shouldn’t feel responsible for any of this.
Not one thing is her fault.
Georgie’s cheeks are wet, and she wipes at the skin with her sleeve. “If I didn’t sleep through my alarm, I could have stopped her before she drank that much.”
My eyes widen. “What are you talking about? What alarm?”
Georgie exhales, playing with her hands in her lap.
Her nose twitches, but her tears still fall in a steady stream.
“I have an alarm set for midnight. That way, I can make sure Mom is in bed. That’s usually when I dump out any opened bottles, too.
” She sniffles. “She usually doesn’t notice the next morning.
I think she just thinks she drank it all. ”
“Georgie,” I pause, trying to keep my voice even, even though the emotion weighs it down. “She should have never put you in a position where you felt you had to do that.”
Georgie nods. “I think she thought she was hiding it, but I could tell she was out of it. Like not herself, you know?”
I do know.
“It was like she was either super, super happy with me or really, really mad,” Georgie continues.
“And when I noticed she wasn’t going to work, I asked her why, and she would yell at me to mind my own business.
So, I just stopped asking.” She shakes her head, as if she could shake the memories I’m forcing her to relive.
“I kind of just stopped asking for anything.”
At Georgie’s age, I knew something was off when my mom drank—the house felt tilted, like the rules had quietly changed, like she was there but not present. Just like Georgie, I couldn’t really put what was happening into words that made sense to anyone who hasn’t lived through it themselves.
And just like her, I learned to stay small and wait for things to settle back into place.
Wait for it to pass.
I begin to feel myself unravel, the control I need slipping through my fingers like sand, as I open and close my fists.
One. Two. Three.
I had been sending my mom money for the last year to help her and Georgie, and I thought things were okay—I thought everything was going well.
Four. Five. Six.
Turns out, Mom was too drunk to go to work and probably got fired.
What was she going to do if Georgie never called me?
What was Georgie going to do?
No.
I can’t go down that road—can’t get lost in those thoughts. I don’t think I’ll find my way out.
Fifteen. Sixteen. Seventeen.