|CHAPTER TEN|

My first day back to my final year of school began and ended with my mother. She woke me that morning, her orange perfume waking me before her voice could. She ran through a checklist at the front door: backpack, notebooks, folders, pencils...She had it down better than I did. Like always, before I left she reminded me to be polite and to take advantage of my opportunities. Then, I was off to school, mind turning like the pedals of my bike.

The day went slowly, each teacher repeating the same things in my ears, my counselor reminding me of everything I would need for each college application. He seemed surprised that none of the schools I chose were in state. I just smiled and left.

I could already feel the shift in myself. It turned from tempted curiosity in human desire to focused thirst in the pursuit of knowledge. My future depended on my success here, and with all of their tools hanging in my reach, I was eager to pull them off the shelf and start building without interruption.

The mere idea of taking time out of my day for Bash felt overwhelming, so although I didn’t want to, I pushed him to the very back of my priorities. Summer had fooled me into thinking our time wasn’t enough, I realized that the night before when all of my fears began to consume me. Now, on my first day back into my routine—back into the person that I was, I knew I’d been stubbornly foolish. My emotions were too conflicted. I’d let it all get the best of me. I lived too wholly in the moment.

Bash would soon become frustrated with my disinterest and leave. That’s what he was supposed to do, and I was counting on it. I always left the official cutting of the ties to the other person. It was less painful to put distance between us until nothing was there to feel when the other person walked away completely. Maybe I was too much of a coward to do it myself, maybe a part of me knew it wasn’t necessary. I isolated myself. I was scared of disappointing them. It’s the only thing I knew how to do with all of my relationships.

When I returned home at the end of day, Quinn was by my side, walking while I biked at a painfully slow pace. She radiated a certain spirit that I was jealous of. She was happily oblivious to everything I noticed. She chatted away about nothing in particular as we drew closer to our destination. Only the screeching of the chickens kept me conscious enough to pay attention to her words. I would lapse, otherwise, hide away in myself.    

“You look awful,” she said when we stopped in front of her house. It was the first time she had turned to look at me since we started our trek back home. “Are you feeling okay?”

I sat back and forced a smile. “I’m fine.”

Her eyes narrowed like a lie detector test started blaring the moment the sentence left my mouth. “You’re doing it.”

“Doing what?” I asked defensively.

“That thing where you think so hard you create a crisis that isn’t even there.” She placed a hand on her hips. “I can see it on your face.”

I swallowed hard and looked up the street where the Pea Shucker was happily singing while opening pods for no reason at all. How could any sane person let their life fall directionless? How could they joyfully go about doing things that aren’t worthwhile? I gritted my teeth.

“You always get this way in the beginning of the school year. Just get settled. I’m sure whatever you’re freaking out about will pass,” Quinn spoke again as she hiked her backpack up. “See you tomorrow.”

With that she turned away and headed inside. I sat there a moment longer, listening to the Pea Shucker and the squabbling chickens, trying to let Quinn’s words sink in. She’s right. I was panicky in the beginning of the school year. Always had been. It’s the time of the year where I dropped everything to focus on what I deemed most important—and I never understood why nobody else got that way. While my anxiety peaked, everyone else seemed cool and collected.

When my mother came home later that day, I understood why I got panicky. She called me into the kitchen and pulled out a recipe from the cupboard. We robotically pulled drawers open to grab bowls and utensils and began to prep our dinner. While we worked, she began a conversation.

“Did you talk to your counselor today?”

“Mhmm.”

“You need to get those applications in as soon as possible. You don’t want to miss any opportunities.”

“Okay.”

“You and Quinn find your classes alright?”

“Yep.”

“Good.”

Silence.

“Everything after high school gets harder,” she told me when I didn’t bother to continue the conversation she began. “You want to be well prepared—which shouldn’t be too hard for you. We’re a family of hard workers. I expect it.”

I nodded.

“The goal should always be to make a difference. You give back to this life, Jovie. No dilly-dally. When you’re good and secure, then you can have fun.” Her voice was almost demanding, like she was sitting in one of her conferences delivering a speech. “All of this will pay off in the end.”  

“Okay.”

She patted my back as she passed me on her way to the sink. “Crunch time. Make it count.”

I don’t know why these talks always made my insides twist. Maybe I felt inspired, maybe I felt anxious—like I was at risk for disappointing her if I didn’t meet her standards. If I had nothing to prove, she never seemed interested.

Make it count.

She reminded me that I was drawing on a whiteboard with permanent marker. There was little room for mistake making—because here’s the thing about mistakes: they can make or break a masterpiece, and you never know which it is until you make it.

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It took two weeks for the panic to diffuse. I channeled most of my anxiety into doing meticulous work in the classroom and out as I finished my college applications and sent them in. After that, I curled up in front of Henry’s TV with homework and a History Channel documentation of King Tut.

Henry was sleepily draped beside me on the couch, arm resting on the back of the couch, watching me scribble down answers during the commercial break.

“How’s Meredith?” He asked. It’s the first time the question had popped up in the past month, and it was only fitting that it came up while he was sleepy and I was working at Meredith-pace.

The brain had stopped demanding that the heart beat for it, but the urge was still there.

I looked over at him. His tired eyes reflected the television screen, and his hair was becoming increasingly grey.

“I can never tell,” I admitted. I knew exactly how she operated, but I had no idea how she felt. I could only get an inkling, and after seeing her get so uncomfortable with my outburst, I could only assume there was more there than what met the eye.  

“Me either.” He sighed and his hand came to massage the top of my head. “I used to catch glimpses of something different...something exciting before she got pregnant. Now, I feel like she blames me for messing up her life. She always had a plan, and I ruined it.”

“It takes two people to make a baby,” I said in return.

When it came to mentioning me, ever, in terms of my mother’s life, I was considered the mistake or the mess. That part hurt. I knew Henry didn’t mean it that way, didn’t intend for me to get lumped in the messing up part, but I knew what I was. That was always my struggle, making her proud and not creating more of a mess. I knew that to do that I had to be successul in life, the kind of successful that gets you a letter from Yale. Deep inside, however, I yearned for something more.

Henry detected my bitterness and stopped massaging my head to put his hand on my shoulder instead. “Jovie, I think it’s important that you know Meredith loves you. She loves you more than anything else in this world.”

His statement only made the fire in my lungs grow hotter.

“All she does is give me pep talks and checklists,” I gritted out. “Quinn pointed out that we haven’t had a proper hug since I was, like, ten, Henry. I have to question everything I do because I’m afraid she’ll reject me. How is that saying she loves me?”

“Jovie,” he said back carefully. “She works her butt off to make a good example for you.”

“Why are you defending her?” I asked incredulously, gripping my pen so hard my knuckles turn white. After how much she hurt him, I couldn’t believe he wasn’t taking this opportunity to tell me I was right.

“Because how I see something shouldn’t be the way you see something,” he shot back crossly. “My relationship with her will always be different than your relationship with her. I’m not going to let my opinions guide yours. She loves you, Jovie. Circumstances have changed between her and I, but that doesn’t mean it has anything to do with you.”

I jerked away and sat up. “It has everything to do with me. Everything. You said so yourself that she was different before she got pregnant—because of me. Maybe she wasn’t meant to have kids.”

He looked up at me tiredly. “Maybe she was.”

“What?”

“Maybe you show her who she is and that terrifies her. Maybe she’s trying to make sense of it, Jovie. I know she’s not motherly, but she cares. Maybe she wants you to succeed so badly because it validates her as a parent. Maybe she doesn’t believe in herself.” He looked at me pleadingly, like he understood something I didn’t, something she might have told him—although that didn’t make sense because they so much as said hello to each other. “She didn’t want to be a mom. She thought she would be bad at it, that she was too selfish to handle it. She was scared you wouldn’t feel loved. Jovie, if you really don’t feel that way, then you need to tell her because the last thing she wanted was for you to feel unloved.”

I stared at him, my stomach churning and guilt weighing down on my heart. I was holding back frustrated tears until this point, and I could feel them spilling down my cheeks, now. “She’s an adult,” I choked out. “She’s supposed to have it figured out. She’s always preaching that I need it all figured out...why..?”

I broke down and Henry reached for me, pulling me into his arms to hold me while I cried, long and hard.

 “I can’t talk to her,” I sobbed into his shoulder.

“You can talk to her,” he muttered in my ear as he rubbed my back. “She’s only as scary as you make her out to be.”

My voice was muffled when I argued, “As she makes herself out to be.”

“I think it’s a defense mechanism,” he said gently. “You two need to stop being scared of each other. Meredith has no excuse, and neither do you. She raised you to be strong. Make her proud.”

I buried my head further into his chest and nodded. It was time to do as Quinn had suggested. Demand answers.

●════════●♥●════════●

I called Bash that night, after my tears had dried all sticky on my skin and Henry left to go to sleep.

He answered in his signature low voice that made my insides feel like they had hot chocolate sliding down them. “Jovie?”

“Hi, Bash.”

“How...astonishing it is to hear your voice,” he teases, though there is a sadness laced with his words. “I thought you gave people deadlines instead of dropping off the face of the Earth.”

“I gave you a deadline,” I told him, “And I didn’t stick to it—so I guess that means I plan on keeping you around for a while.”

He delivered a short chuckle, and cleared his throat. “I didn’t know zero communication was your way of putting me on the back burner. I admit I was aggrieved.”

“I worked myself up and got overwhelmed,” I confessed, wrinkling my nose at his formality. “I’m better, now. I miss you.”

“I work tomorrow. Come see me,” he suggested, his voice was perkier, but he seemed careful. I closed my eyes sadly, hating to hear that in the person I saw as indefinitely cheerful—as a haven, strong and sure.

“Okay,” I agreed. “And, Bash, I was wondering something.”

“Anything.”

I bit my lip, knowing this was a bold request. But, if I was going to break the ice with my mother, I needed to conjure something from within her. Bash would help beautifully. He had a way about him that made everyone trust him, a lingering effect that made people open up.

“Meet my mother?” I asked.

“It would be my pleasure,” was all he said.