“It’s early and they’re still serving breakfast.” Mom smiles at me when she places the car into Park. She looks very youthful and refreshed for nine thirty in the morning in her red sweater, dark blue jeans and blond hair in a very complicated bun. It’s Monday and today is a teacher in-service day. Tomorrow will be my and Chevy’s first day back. Today was my first physical therapy torture session.
Breakfast. With my mom. After shaking off the initial sensation that doing so would be like having my fingernails pulled off, there’s a sense of excitement. I can’t remember the last time Mom has voluntarily spent time with me. “I am hungry.”
“Great! Eli’s waiting for you inside.”
Wow. I need to be tested for a personality disorder because I just went from anxiously happy to wanting to tear up pictures of cute kittens. “I’m sorry. I must have misunderstood. I thought you said I’m having breakfast with Eli.”
And there it is. The Mom frown. The constant state of disappointment my mother has with me and me alone. “Please don’t start. You really are being ungrateful, and your behavior—the way you’ve been yelling at Eli—it’s embarrassing. He’s gone out of his way to take care of us. To take care of you.”
Embarrassing. It’s so funny, I’m numb. “You know I was kidnapped, right? My knee was busted out because the guy who really hates Eli beat the hell out of me. Did anyone fill you in on these details? I mean, you were there when the police came and showed us photos. That wasn’t a dating match service.”
A disgusted noise manages to slip through her throat. “Why do you have to be so crude?”
Crude? I didn’t even use colorful curse words. “You’re the one that married a biker and then reproduced. You can’t blame me for crude.”
“Your father was never crude,” Mom whispers.
I sigh because she’s right. He was never crude around her. Dad taught me to burp the alphabet in the clubhouse and every curse word I know I learned from working on the Chevelle with him, but he was on point with Mom.
I wish he were here. He knew how to keep peace between me and Mom. He used to help me navigate between being the person he raised me to be and living in his world. Without him, I’m lost.
“Go have breakfast with Eli.” Full-fledged disappointed voice. “I’m going to run errands and he’ll bring you back to Cyrus’s.”
I open the door, grab my crutches and slide out. Before shutting the door, I lean back in. “I would have liked to have breakfast with you.”
Not bothering to wait for a response, I slam it shut.
Snowflake, Kentucky, is a forgotten place. Hundreds of years ago, people climbed up and over the Appalachian Mountains and some of them settled here. There’s a river, fertile farmland, and I often wonder if the people who planted roots here thought this place would become the center of commerce and the universe.
It didn’t. Instead, it’s stuck back in a different time. Back when towns had Main Streets with old buildings and bustling shops. Back when people rode their buggy into town and had to hitch their horses. There’s a green space in the middle of the town with a statue of a Confederate war hero and nobody remembers or cares why he’s there.
The buildings are now cracked and the streets look odd as parking spots were added in front
of the stores. It’s all out of proportion—time catching up to a place never meant to go forward.
In front of the diner is a row of motorcycles. Two prospects turn over the engines on their bikes and take off. Don’t have to look to know they’re tailing Mom.
The bell over the diner door rings when I hobble in. To the left, Pigpen, Man O’ War and Dust are laughing in a booth with my brother, Brandon. To the right, Eli is in a booth by himself and he’s watching me. Mom would be pissed if I took the left instead of the right, but I like the guys to the left a lot better than Eli.
Frost had it wrong. Two roads converged and I didn’t want to travel either. Where’s the poem where the person runs screaming in the opposite direction? That one I would understand.
The dominatrix at physical therapy wants me to get a walker because she wants me to put pressure on my leg. I’d rather shoot myself in the head than go around school like that. It’s going to be bad enough to fit back into my hard-won old life that had new non-Terror friends with that Amber Alert. A walker will only make people think I’m weak. Crutches I might be able to pull off. Limping would be better.
Keeping my physical therapist’s request in mind, I gather the crutches with one hand and slowly attempt to walk on my own. Eli jerks like he’s going to jump to his feet, but luckily I reach the booth before he has the opportunity to act like an idiot in a room full of people.
“Why are you putting weight on your knee?” he demands.
“I’m having pancakes with blueberries, blueberry syrup and whip cream. I’m also having bacon and your bacon and as much orange juice as I want. You’re buying. And walking, which requires placing weight on my knee, is what the lady at physical therapy told me to do.” I add asshole in my head, but I’m pretty sure my expression said it loud and clear.
Eli pulls at the plug in his earlobe, then fold his hands together on the table. “I don’t like how we’ve turned out.”
Even though I know what I’m ordering, I open up the plastic tri-fold menu and pretend I don’t have it memorized.
“We used to be close,” he says.
Yep. We were.
“What happened?”