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[Author’s Note: This chapter is part of an ongoing saga of a young woman uncovering the mystery of her family’s past. This chapter contains major spoilers for those who have not read earlier chapters. If continuity is important to you, it’s highly recommended that you read the earlier chapters before this one. Otherwise, please enjoy.]
Chapter 13 – Falling Down, Falling Down
Through blurred vision I managed to make a beeline to my car and head home. I’d never skipped school before – not like this, anyway. Taking such risks was out of character of my “little miss goodie-two-shoes” personality, but I didn’t care.
All I could think about was getting home into the safety of my bed. I wanted to crawl under the covers, pull them over my head, and hide. Outside of that, I had no idea what I would do. I might get into trouble for missing school unexcused, but I’d make some sort of “not feeling well” excuse later.
After all, I was definitely not well.
At least my mother wouldn’t be there – oh, crap. Yes, she would. She wasn’t going to go into work for at least a few hours today. Fantastic. Now I’d have to face her, as well.
It wasn’t a long drive, but it felt like forever. I couldn’t believe my misfortune. I liked Andrew, but as Tracy said – what did I really know about him?
I thought about it. Andrew must have contacted Simone right after we had sex. Probably right when I was on the phone with Tracy! While I still had his come all over my chest, he had probably been on the phone with Simone, bragging about his conquest to her.
I banged my hand on the steering wheel. I had felt guilty about being selfish with him. Sonofabitch! There I was, obsessing over how I had treated him, when he was in the process of betraying me!
And then I blew the fucker, my mind snarled at me. Andrew had betrayed me, had thrown me to the wolves, and yet I felt like I was to blame for letting him do that to me. How could I have been so stupid? So naive?
I pulled up to the house, grabbed my things, and practically raced to the door. I fumbled for the right key and managed to get the door open in such frantic haste that it felt like there was someone chasing me.
Inside, I closed the door, and leaned against it. I closed my eyes, and felt a pounding pressure in my chest. I was barely holding it together.
My mother came into the room and saw me. “Shannon?” she asked, confused. “What are you doing home? Shouldn’t you-“
She stopped when she saw the state I was in. I opened my eyes, burning and teary, and my lip started quivering. A rush in my nose felt like it had been punched.
I broke.
My face screwed up and I put it into my hands, the sobs coming hard and fast, wracking my body. I slid to the floor in a heap, leaning back against the door for support. My legs simply didn’t work.
My mother rushed over to me and knelt on the floor, then wrapped me in her arms. Despite how I treated her, despite how we couldn’t even speak to each other this morning, she was there for me.
It just made me cry even harder.
“Shanny?” my mother said, softly but alarmed. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
I couldn’t speak. I could barely breathe in between huge bawls of pain, rage, and anguish. Her arms wrapped around me tighter, and I buried my face into her breasts looking for comfort.
All the weight of the world seemed like it was falling on me. I simply couldn’t understand what had happened, why I deserved all of these things. Why couldn’t I just be left alone? Whatever it was that I did, I didn’t mean to do it!
I told you so, Team Morality just had to get a dig in.
I held onto my mother tightly, holding on to her like a life preserver. It felt like I was drowning, slipping beneath the waves of my depression. She returned the squeeze, and I felt like I was being kept afloat.
Here I was, a complete hot mess, and the woman that I had disrespected the night before was on her knees next to me, supporting me. She hadn’t deserved what I did, and the first thing that I needed to do was try to make it right, somehow.
“I-” I managed to get out. “I’m so sorry, Mom!”
The tears burst out again, renewed. I couldn’t even begin to imagine what my mother was thinking, but once again I had my own problems to deal with and couldn’t find the emotional energy to put myself in her shoes.
She began stroking my hair, which helped more than I thought it should. I didn’t want to let go, but I realized that I had already stained her shirt with my tears. One more thing that I had done to her that she didn’t deserve. Even though I wasn’t ready to separate, I started to pull back.
Somehow, though, she knew that it was too soon, and pulled me back to her bosom. “Shhh,” she said. “It’s all right. It’ll be all right.”
Just about anything my mother could have said would have been the wrong thing to say, escort eryaman except that. For some reason, her words soothed me a little, and I wasn’t sure how or why but I wanted to believe her.
“I was such a bitch to you last night,” I managed to say after a few moments. “I’m so sorry.”
My mother was understandably confused. “So this is because of last night?” she asked.
I suddenly realized how strange this must look like to her. I go off to school, right as rain, and then I come back an hour or so later and burst into tears, apologizing for a fight from the previous night? Really?
“No,” I said, rubbing my eyes and nose with the heel of my hand. “I just realized that I needed to say that.”
“Okay,” my mother said, uncertain. “Well, your apology is accepted. So what’s happened? What’s wrong?”
What could I tell her? How much could I tell her? More to the point, how much could I leave out?
I could only look at her, sniffing to keep my nose from running.
“Look, let me make us some tea, and we can talk, okay?” she said when it appeared I wasn’t going to be able to speak right away. “Why don’t you go get yourself cleaned up, and meet me in the kitchen.”
I nodded, and did as I was told. Inside the bathroom, I finally got a chance to take a look at myself, and I was a complete wreck. I turned on the faucet, took my glasses off, and waited for the water to warm up.
In the meantime, I heard the phone ring.
“Hello?” my mother’s voice echoed in from the other room. “Oh, yes, she’s here. Apparently she made it to school but then got violently ill and had to come home.”
I wondered if my mother was making the story up, but then I realized that my mother could probably smell my breath and it wasn’t exactly a mystery. I reached for my toothbrush.
“No, I don’t know if she’ll be able to make it back to school today,” she said. A shiver went up my spine as I thought about returning to my classes in my current state. I didn’t want to face Andrew or Simone.
“Thank you,” my mother said, a hint of irritation creeping into her voice. I wasn’t sure what the school administrator must have said, but it obviously didn’t make my mother happy. “If she feels better, you’ll be the first to know.”
I washed my face and brushed my teeth. I contemplated whether or not to simply make a dash for my bedroom, but knew that wasn’t going to fly. I finished in the bathroom and then headed to the kitchen to face the music.
When I got there, my mother was pouring the boiling water into two cups with tea bags. “Okay, Shanny,” she said. Her voice was back to its normal, calm level. “Tell me what happened.”
In that moment, I knew that this was going to be a defining point in our relationship. What I told her – or didn’t tell her – was going to have repercussions for a long, long time. The weight of that realization added to the grief that I was already dealing with, and didn’t help.
I decided to slowly tell her what I could, and only add to the revelation if absolutely necessary.
“I-” I started, thinking about how this was going to sound to my mother’s ears. “There’s this boy…”
My mother arched an eyebrow, and raised the cup to her lips to hide the beginning of a knowing smile. I caught it, however, and her presumptiveness brought a rise in irritation in me.
“No, it’s not like that,” I protested. Then I paused. “Actually, it’s exactly like that.”
Now that I had opened the door a crack, I had to press forward.
“Last night, we… did things,” I said. Under normal circumstances – if such a thing could ever be “normal” – I have a feeling my mother would have cheered me on. Given the heightened state of both of our emotions, though, this was unpredictable and scary.
My mother’s smile turned into a deep frown. This was precisely what I had feared.
“Go on,” she said, trying to keep her voice calm. “What kind of ‘things’?”
I looked at her, trying to find the right words. I didn’t want to get side-tracked on just how far I had gone with Andrew. “I gave him a hand job and he went down on me,” I said.
I hoped that being direct would stave off additional requests for details. It was true, anyway, so I didn’t have to worry about the story not checking out in case she actually asked for specifics.
As it was, it worked. “I see,” she said. She had a strange look on her face, almost as if she couldn’t decide whether to be upset with me, or proud of me. “Was he any good, at least?”
I blushed. It wasn’t the question I expected. “Um,” I said, embarrassed. “Yeah.”
She nodded. “Good,” she said. “Okay, please continue.”
“Well,” I said, trying to choose my words carefully. “This morning I found out that he had told people about it.”
My phone buzzed. I looked down at it, and it was Andrew. Where are you? We are supposed to be handing in our report!
I swallowed, incredulous ankara escort at Andrew’s nonchalance. How dare he act like today was business as usual? I wanted to text him back with all kinds of detailed description of what I thought of him and that fucking report, but it would have to wait.
“Is that him?” my mother asked, indicating the phone. She must have read my change in expression.
I nodded. I turned over the phone like I would have turned my back on him. In disgust.
“So anyway,” I said. “There’s been this girl at school who has been…”
“A bully?” my mother asked, picking up on my hesitation. Her jaw was tensing and releasing, a sign that she was doing her best to stay calm and not react. I had to be careful, because the last thing that I needed was for her to rush to become “mama bear” and head over to the school to give the principal a piece of her mind. That was not the outcome I wanted.
I nodded. As much as I hated to do it, I needed to downplay Simone’s penchant for torment. I wanted commiseration, needed to hear some encouragement that she was a bitch and deserved to die. Telling my mother all of the gory details this time, though, would not end well.
“It wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle,” I said, and my thoughts immediately went to how I’d “handled” the dildo better than she could. I shook the thought from my head. Focus, Shannon, focus! “But apparently he told her and now he’s given her ammunition to use against me.”
I paused, waiting for some words of wisdom. She looked at me thoughtfully, contemplating what I had said. I expected her to fish for more details, try to get more information about Andrew or Simone or things that happened at school. It felt like it was her turn to talk, and so I waited patiently.
“Well, I think there’s only one thing to do,” she said slowly. I prepared myself for the soothing, calm, rational voice telling me that I needed to finish my tea and crawl into bed. Things would be better in the morning. I could feel my bed calling to me from the other room already.
“What’s that?” I asked. All I needed was her permission.
She put the cup down and looked at me intently. Here it comes.
“You need to go back to school,” she said.
I was shocked. “Wh-what?” I sputtered.
She sat back and studied me carefully. “You are a young woman now, Shannon,” she said. Her tone was calm and direct, with none of the flighty, emotional tenor with which she usually spoke. “You can’t run away from your problems.”
“I can’t go back there!” I protested. “You don’t understand!”
“I do understand,” my mother said, soberly. “You have been able to avoid your issues with people by running away from your problems. I don’t think we’ve really helped you learn how to work through them. I think we’ve coddled you too much.”
It didn’t sound like her. It was too calm, too… rehearsed.
“What do you mean, ‘we’?” I asked, my voice rising. I couldn’t believe my ears.
“Your father and I had this discussion yesterday, in fact,” she said. It was then that I saw a redness beginning to form in her eyes. That explained everything. These weren’t her words, they were his. He had told her how to talk to me.
“What you don’t understand yet,” she said, and for perhaps the first time she actually sounded like she was giving motherly advice, “is that right now, what happens in school really doesn’t matter very much in the grand scheme of things. How you react to what happens in school is what matters.”
I felt like I was on the verge of tears again. “That’s not true,” I argued. “What happens in school is everything.”
She shook her head and smiled, sadly. “No, honey,” she said. “It really isn’t. But it is painful and it hurts and it sucks. Trust me, it gets worse.”
I was dumbstruck. “Worse?!” I gasped.
She nodded. “Oh yes,” she said. “Life will throw you more and more problems, bigger ones, more devastating ones. It will get overwhelming if you don’t know how to handle them. As your father likes to say, you gotta learn to love the small problems so that they don’t become big problems.”
“Dad says that?” I asked. I’d never heard him say that before.
“Well, to be fair, he said it yesterday,” she admitted. “He’s concerned that there are going to be some big problems coming your way, and you aren’t prepared to handle them.”
My mind immediately flew back to the conversation I’d had with him in the car. Remember, he had said, everything I’ve done, I’ve done because I love you so very much.
Now, my mother was telling me that there were worse things to come? Is that why they needed to talk in private? So there’s going to be something on top of everything I’ve been going through? I could barely walk through the door fifteen minutes ago, and it’s going to get worse?
“What problems are coming my way?” I asked timidly.
My mother elvakent escort blinked a couple of times as she thought how to respond to my question. Then she waved her hand as if to wave away the importance of what she said. “I mean,” she said a little too quickly, “in life. Life! And you need to start learning how to deal with them while they’re still small before they get too big.”
I realized that my mother had reached the limit of her ability to argue the point. All of her arguments were really coming from my father, and she was trying to convey them as if they were hers.
“I see,” I said, sparing her the embarrassment of needing to defend ideas that were not her own. I didn’t see the point in arguing with her. At best, all I’d be able to do is get her to let me crawl into bed, and it didn’t look like she was going to budge on that.
“Look,” she said after taking another sip of tea. “You’re a smart girl, but smarts ain’t going to help you if you hide from your problems. You need to be able to handle the messy relationships.”
A strange look came over her face. “We,” she said, pointing at herself and then at me, “can’t be the only friendship you have. I’m safe and predictable, and you know how to handle me, and I know how to handle you.”
Somehow, I doubted that, but I didn’t interrupt. She was on a roll. My phone buzzed. I ignored it.
“You can’t run away from your problems and hide yourself in your room whenever the world gets messy, Shannon,” she said. “People are mean and they’re idiots, and assholes, and you have every right to want to stay away from them.
“But you can’t go through life not knowing how to deal with them,” she continued. “This girl, this bully. I don’t know her, but I’m willing to bet that she is a pathetic little weasel compared to other people that you will meet in the future.”
“Like who?” I asked.
My mother’s lips flattened into a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “Trust me,” she said with a knowing look. “There are some truly evil people out there that get off on eating people like you alive.”
There was something in her voice, a pointed edge of experience and dread. I swallowed.
“So,” she said, looking at me with a calm expression that was drastically unlike her normal flighty self, “unless you are truly sick, you need to go back to school. Are you truly sick, Shannon?”
I lowered my eyes. I couldn’t bring myself to lie to her. Sure, I had thrown up in the bathroom and my stomach was tied in knots, but I knew what she was asking and there was only one truthful answer.
“No,” I said, taking a deep breath.
My phone buzzed on the table again.
“Okay,” she said, her expression flat. “Then you need to get back to school. Now.”
This was not what I had expected. My mother had always taken my side, had always comforted me when I needed it the most. Today was one of those days, and it felt like she was kicking me back into the lion’s den.
I didn’t say anything. My mother picked up her phone, swiped a couple of times and brought it to her ear. “Hello?” she said into the phone. “Yes, this is Shannon Rochet’s mother. I just wanted to let you know that Shannon will be returning to school today. Okay, thank you.”
She hung up the phone, and looked at me, saying nothing. Silence hung in the air as I contemplated my options, and there really didn’t seem to be any. She expected me to go back to school, and now she had told the school that I was going to do it.
Once again, it didn’t seem fair. I didn’t understand why I had to put up with so much crap from everyone. Now, it appeared, my mother (and father, by proxy) wanted to be added to the list.
My phone buzzed again, and it prompted me into motion.
Without saying anything, I stood up, and my mother stood up with me. She held out her arms to welcome me into a hug, and I moved around the table to accept.
“It’ll be okay,” she said. “It may not seem like it now, but it will be okay.”
“What about Andrew?” I asked, meekly. “What do I do?”
“My first suggestion would be to talk to him,” my mother said, calmly. “Find out what you can before you make any rash decisions.”
Talk to him? Talk to him? Like, in person? Confront him?
She read my expression perfectly. “Yes, Shannon,” she said. “That’s how adults solve problems. They talk to each other.”
I swallowed. That was the last thing that I wanted to do, but I knew she was right.
She pulled me away from her and held me at arm’s length. “Shanny,” she said in a comforting tone. “Like I said, you’re a smart girl. You’ll figure it out. Trust in yourself.”
She gave me one more quick hug, and then let me go. “Now go back to school,” she said, turned me around, and gave me a playful swat on the butt.
It was inappropriate, I wasn’t in the mood, but it was exactly the kind of thing that I’d expect from my mother.
I left the house and got into my car, and finally checked my text messages before I started to drive.
Shannon, where are you?
I did the report and handed it in. Mrs. Villanova wanted to know where you were. I think you may have to talk to her.
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