Chapter Eleven
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Sarelia
Lying on my pretty princess bed in my pretty princess room, I gulp.
Archie left me here last night with firm instructions to do my homework in the morning and be prepared for family meeting at eleven o’clock sharp.
So, obviously, I awoke at five with a deep, bone-chilling desire to absolutely not do any such thing because wow, look how large and looming that task is.
A soft pink clock ticks on the wall, mocking me.
Ugh.
Ughhhh.
I need to do this. It won’t even take that long. It’s just thinking and writing. I do thinking and writing all the time. In fact, I get paid for all of the thinking and writing I do. Then, when I’m not getting paid to think and write, I do it for fun. Big thinker and writer, me.
I pick up my phone, bypass the many missed call and unopened message notifications, tap on Youtube, and find my playlist labelled “You’re Supposed To Be Doing Something, Aren’t You?
” A little scroll, and I’m able to pull up a video compilation I made last spring of clips of Archie being particularly productive.
I follow it up with a similar video, made more recently.
Another twenty minutes pass.
Sarelia, you like homework.
And yet…
I watch one more Archie’s Doing Stuff compilation before setting my phone aside.
Properly motivated, I move to sit at my shiny new desk where Archie has set up my laptop amidst a plethora of office supplies and stationery.
I push the laptop aside and grab one of the large notepads from a letter organizer in the desk’s corner.
Next, I carefully select a sparkly orange gel pen with a kitty-shaped clicker from one of three teacups filled to the brim with pens, pencils, markers, and highlighters.
I set both items in front of me, take a deep breath, and… remember that this task is Scary?.
My eyes stray to the window as I click, click, click the kitty pen.
Archie wants me to do this.
No, Archie needs me to do this. Am I really going to let Archie down because of something as silly as being scared?
I stop clicking as my stomach drops, then twists. I cannot let Archie down.
Biting my cheek, I put the pen to the paper and write a whopping five words at the top of the page. “Goals,” I whisper. “I can make goals.” And I can, obviously.
Obviously.
I clear my throat.
What are goals, anyway, when you break it down?
The pen taps the desktop as I consider.
Goals are… wants. Desires. The future that looks bright, and the steps to making it happen.
I straighten. I can figure out what I desire. Easy peasy.
My blank list and I regard one another.
The clock ticks.
U. G. H.
Wrinkling my nose, I write my first goal. “Make goals,” I read. Perfect. “Number two… um…”
Now that I’ve written one completely legitimate goal for my marriage, my mind has transformed from a barren wasteland to a frenzy of options, each one sliding through so fast I can hardly grab them, and the ones I do get ahold of are more inappropriate than not.
Or. Well. We are married, aren’t we? And we did spend our entire evening last night doing scandalous things, did we not?
The next not-so-innocent desire I capture gets put on the list. Then the next, and the next. Face hot, I keep going, hoping against all logic that the impropriety turns to something more substantial as I run out of desires to wrangle in my head.
Surprising me, this method works, and at number forty-two I record my first non-physical goal for my time with Archibald Pine.
42. Mutual care and respect
You know, that stuff my family doesn’t seem to have a very good lock on. I add more to the list: consideration, support, communication. I think of all the things I wish I had back at home, and I write them down.
53. Thermostat compromise
54. No decrease in quality time together if it is within our abilities
I remember what Heidi said about visiting an animal shelter, and remember that I have always wanted a pet, but was never allowed to have one.
55. A pet
Okay, so maybe my goals got a little less goal-y at some point. Assuming they were ever really goal-y in the first place, considering the first forty-one are a list of fantasies and other lascivious thoughts that will never be said aloud, lest the PG rating on our love story go from 13+ to R.
While the clock tick, tick, ticks away, I go back through my list to expand on the goals that are actually goals, moving them to a new sheet of paper and giving them clear, followable steps that Archie and I can put into action.
And then I’m done. Task completed. Archie’s directives fulfilled. Hurrah!
My shoulders drop, and I take in the first full breath I’ve had in an hour.
The clock ticks.
I wrinkle my nose at it. “I did my task,” I say. “See?” I lift my papers. “All done.”
Tick, tick, tick.
“It’s rude to point out something a person is very happily digging her head in the sand about, you know.” I sniff.
Tick, tick, tock.
I gasp. “Such language!”
Tick, tock, tick, tock.
“Okay, yes, I have a notification or two on my phone. But look! I did my goals for Archie!” I present the sheets again, in case it did not see them the first time.
Tick, tock, tock, tock.
I wince. “Well… yes, ‘or two’ is more like…” I check my phone and wince again. “One hundred and thirty-seven.”
Tock!
“Yeah, well, you didn’t hear what they said to me!”
Tick, tock.
I groan. “What do you know? You’re a clock.”
And I’m the one talking to a clock, so maybe I should not be so judgy.
The second hand continues its journey around the clock face while I nibble at my cheek and eye my phone.
I suppose I could at least look at the messages. Just because they never listen to me doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t be the bigger person and see what they have to say. Probably.
Tick, tock.
“Oh, fine,” I mumble. “Not probably. Definitely.”
I sigh to the metronome of ticks and poke at my phone screen. It lights up, letting me know that I’m now at one hundred and thirty-nine notifications.
Yikes.
Upon further investigation, I find that I have six missed calls from my mother, twenty-seven from my father, and zero from my teenage brother, Fred. This is in contrast to the sixty-three text messages from Mom, five from Dad, and thirty-eight from my brother.
Double yikes.
“What do you think, clock? Mom, Dad, or Fred? Who do I check first?”
The clock only ticks, suddenly deciding to stay in its own business.
It figures.
“I’ll do Dad first,” I decide. I regret this decision immediately when I realize that every single one of his twenty-seven missed calls comes with a voicemail, all of which contain varying degrees of “come back home so we can fix this.” This being me. No, thank you.
Mom’s voicemails are more of the same, in a slightly different tone.
She doesn’t want to fix me, she just wants to help me, and can’t I see that?
Her texts consist almost exclusively of Call me backs and Running off upset when all we want is to make sure you’re okay isn’t very kind or mature of yous and I’m starting to get worrieds. Are you safe?s. Which is just…
I mean, is she serious? Isn’t very kind or mature, as if sitting your grown child down for an intervention because she dared to do something so scary as being able to retire before she turns thirty is just the epitome of being kind and mature.
Fred’s messages, while many, contain only links to videos, some of which hint at me being dramatic and some of which hint at understanding how I’m feeling and wishing he could do the same.
There are not, I note, any messages asking me where I am or if I’m okay, only an increase in the frequency in which the videos are being sent and a more serious tone to them as I scroll to recent ones.
A new video comes in as I hold my phone, and I open it to find a series of clips of movie and tv show characters saying “I miss you.”
I sniff. I guess Fred is pretty okay, all things considered. Even if he did mostly just sit and watch as our parents made me out to be an irresponsible, idiotic, naive little girl who doesn’t know what she’s doing and needs them to let her know.
Mmm… yeah, nevermind, he sucks too, missing me or not.
Your parents love you, Sarelia. They do. They simply don’t love you in the way that I love you, or in the way that you love them.
Archie’s words flit through my mind, interrupting the resentful path my thoughts have taken, and I huff. It sounded so nice, all his words about how they love me and just don’t know how to show it right. How he would show me what it feels like to be loved in the way that feels like love.
And yet, he said that they love me. That they mean well. That they’re trying in the way that they know how to try.
And if they’re trying, then that probably means that I should try, too.
Even if it sucks and I’d rather dig one of the clock’s hands into my skull than speak to them right now because I just know they’re going to take this great, big, huge, amazing thing that’s happened to me and turn it into something bad.
Like getting kidnapped by my celebrity crush’s uncle and delivered to his doorstep isn’t the plot of half the dreams that I have.
Still, I inhale, exhale, and press “call” on Fred’s contact, pretending it’s only a little bit cowardly and bitter to call him instead of our parents.
I’m trying after all, and if my parents have taught me anything, it’s that apparently “our best” doesn’t have to be “the best” in order to pass muster.
“Hey,” Fred answers after four rings, casual as could be.
My eyebrows rise. “Hey,” I echo. “What’s up?”
“Oh, not much,” he lies. “My sister ran away from home in a fit of tears like some kind of storybook princess, and my parents are in a tizzy over it. They’ve been discussing calling the cops for a missing person report for the last two hours. What’s up with you?”
I blink. “The cops?” I ask. “I’ve not even been gone for twenty-four hours. And I’m a full-grown adult.”
“Oh? Are you? I would never have known from the way they’re acting. As far as I’m aware, you’re a woman gone too soon, lost in her prime—her youth! And I’m an only child now. I hope you don’t mind, I’ve already drawn up plans for how to turn your bedroom into an at-home gym.”
“I miss you, too,” I reply. “Can you do some recon for me? Who should I call first?”
He sighs the sigh of a teenage boy who hasn’t been getting enough attention lately, then hushes as he shuffles out of his room.
I stay quiet, waiting for him to give the all clear before I speak again. My lip smarts, protesting the presence of my teeth against it, and I run my tongue over it in apology.
“Dad,” Fred grumbles finally. “Definitely Dad. Mom’s got her funeral binder out and is looking at caskets.”
I groan. “What’s Dad doing?”
“Dad’s drinking a beer and watching the football game. His team is losing.”
That is not promising.
“Maybe I should wait a little longer,” I mutter, sliding my gaze toward the clock.
I only have seventeen minutes before I have to go to family meeting, anyway.
My parents can wait until after that, right?
Dad’s team will have pulled themselves together and won the baskets, and Mom will have…
well, Mom will have found a very nice plot of land for me to be buried in by then. And who am I to deny her that pleasure?
“If you wait any longer, I’m jumping ship and coming to you.”
“You don’t know where I am,” I remind him. “And you’re sixteen. You can’t just run off.”
“You share your location with me, bozo. And I’m sixteen. I’m practically an adult—like you. And you ran off.”
Ah, the grand delusion of youth. “Sixteen is not almost an adult,” I reply, pulling my phone away from my face to turn off location sharing. “And you can’t come to me if I turn off tracking.”
“I already took a screenshot,” he says. If an eye roll were a tone, it would be that one. “Why are you in the middle of the woods anyway? I zoomed in, and there’s like, nothing there. It’s not even close to a Chipotle or anything.”
“I don’t like Chipotle, and you need to delete that screenshot. You can’t come here. Someone needs to watch Mom and Dad.”
“Yeah, but I like Chipotle. What, you want me to starve when I visit?”
“You’re not visiting,” I reiterate. “You’re watching Mom and Dad.”
“Not if you don’t get off the phone with me and call them in the next five minutes,” he threatens.
“Then I’m out. I don’t want to answer any more questions about which gravestones I think are prettiest. They’re gravestones.
They’re not meant to be pretty. They’re meant to stand up in a graveyard long enough to get layers and layers of muck on them so that some middle-aged white lady can make a living off of posting videos of her ‘cleaning’ them in a hundred years. ”
“That is… an opinion. Yep.”
“The correct one,” he asserts. “Now, call Dad. Or I’m showing up there with a backpack full of clothes and a cigarette.”
I frown. “You don’t smoke. Smoking is gross. No smoking.”
He scoffs. “It’s not about smoking, Lia. It’s about the vibes.” And then he hangs up.
I spin in my chair and pretend that the nausea I’m feeling is because of the whirling pinks around me and not the phone call that looms.
My phone buzzes.
Freddie: Two minutes, then I’m packing a bag
Whoever said teenage girls are dramatic must have never met a teenage boy.
I let another minute pass before I pull up my father’s contact and hover my thumb over the little green phone icon. Closing my eyes, I hit the button, cringing as it rings half a ring before he answers.
“Sarelia,” he barks. “Where are you?”