by Judy Corry
Jess shook his head as he rinsed another plate. “I’m sorry.”
I sat down on the stool behind the counter. Nothing made sense. Sure, my dad gambled in Atlantic City every once in a while, but I never thought he did anything illegal.
“Anything else?” I asked when I found my voice again.
“No.” Jess finished loading the dishes, and started the dishwasher. “It’s like your dad disappeared into thin air.”
It did seem like that. His family in Italy hadn’t heard from him, and his passport hadn’t been flagged at any airports. It was like he disappeared into thin air.
Chapter Three
I went back to school on Monday. Big mistake. Thanks to the news and social media, everyone had heard about my dad and the rumors had run wild. It seemed like everyone had their own theories on why he needed to steal so much money.
Down the hall on my way to meet up with Jess, Ashlyn, and Luke for lunch, I overheard Kelsie Perkins, the captain of the drill team, talking to her friends Hannah and Madison.
“I heard he was supporting his other family in New Jersey.” Kelsie's voice drifted over the sound of other students talking by their lockers. “He’s been switching off between them for a few years, that’s why he went on so many business trips.”
My stomach shrunk in on itself as I continued past her, pretending I hadn’t heard her.
How did she know he’d gone on a lot of business trips? She didn’t even know my dad.
But apparently neither did I, or I would have foreseen some of this. Could Kelsie be telling the truth somehow?
Tears threatened to drop as I shuffled through the sea of people making their way toward the cafeteria. The bathroom was around the next corner. If I could keep the tears at bay until I made it into the stall, I would be okay. I would not cry in front of people. It was bad enough I’d cried in front of Jess last week. Costas don’t cry, my dad had always said. We don’t let anyone know when we’re down. We keep ourselves to ourselves. The last time I’d cried in school had been in second grade when I fell off the monkey bars at recess. I would not do it again.
I tilted my head down so no one could see my face and turned the corner, crashing right into someone’s chest.
“Sorry,” I mumbled, not looking up as I stumbled back.
A hand grabbed my arm. “Hey wait, Eliana. What’s going on?” I lifted my gaze and found myself in front of Jess. He examined my face before asking, “What happened?”
I shook my head. I couldn’t talk right now, or my voice would crack and I’d lose it.
“Do you wanna get out of here?” he whispered.
I nodded.
“Let’s go.” He led me down the hall and out the doors. Once we’d made it to the safety of his car, he asked me what was wrong.
The black leather interior was comforting with its familiarity in a world spinning out of control. I bit the inside of my cheek and willed the tears to evaporate back into my head. Once I was sure I could talk without any emotion breaking through, I said, “Everyone’s been talking about me all day.”
“I’m so sorry.” Jess reached across the console and pulled me into a hug.
I sighed, feeling the comfort from his embrace. Jess and I didn’t usually touch so much, but ever since my dad left, Jess seemed to know when I needed a hug to keep me from breaking apart.
A moment later I took a breath and leaned back against the seat. “They’re saying he got involved in some sort of cult and had to give his leader a ton of money to keep us safe. Or that he gambled away all our money and had to embezzle everyone else’s to keep us afloat.” I sighed again. “And right before I ran into you, I overheard some girls talking about how my dad had another family hidden somewhere else that he had to support.” I shook my head. “All morning I tried to tell everyone that the rumors weren’t true…but what if they are? What if my dad has another daughter or son somewhere out there? What if he’s with them now?” My voice was borderline hysterical. “He has gone on a lot of business trips over the past few years. And now that I know better, I doubt they were related to work. Maybe he was attending some other little girl’s piano recitals all along.”
Jess’s eyebrows scrunched together, telling me he was as confused as I was. “I doubt he has some other family hidden somewhere. For now, let’s stick with the idea that he got in way over his head, panicked, and that he’ll come to his senses and come back home soon.”
All through the next month I held on to the hope that my dad would come back and magically fix everything. But when March arrived and we still hadn’t heard anything from him, the last of that hope shriveled up and died. He was really gone. For good. I tried to be strong for my mom and make the best of everything, but I was screaming and crying and freaking out in my head. I was barely getting any sleep anymore and my grades were reflecting that. And when I tried to figure out how to make everything work without my dad in the picture, I came up with nothing. I had no idea what we were going to do.
My mom was hunched over a piece of paper when I walked in the door after school one day.
“What are you looking at?” I sank onto the stool beside her at the kitchen island. She was eating and showering more regularly now, so at least that had improved in the past month. Her hair was even combed into a ponytail, and she had taken the time to put on actual clothes instead of her blue robe.
“It’s our mortgage statement.” She sighed.
I inspected the bill, hoping the number at the bottom may have somehow been a lot less than the amount of money we had left. But no, it was way more than we could afford.
“What are we going to do?” I asked. “We’re going to lose the house.”
“I don’t know. Your dad took care of all our finances. I never had to worry about any of it.” She tossed the paper onto a stack of bills in the middle of the table.
“Will we have to move?” My chest tightened. Did we even have anywhere to go?
“I can’t do that!” My mom shook her head, her eyes fearful. “I love this house!”
I looked around the kitchen at the beautiful cabinets I’d helped my mom paint creamy-white last summer. I looked at the granite countertops my dad had installed for my mom’s fortieth birthday. This was our home. We’d put a little piece of our souls in with each improvement we made. All my memories were tied to this place. But as much as I loved it, I knew we couldn’t stay here. And it would be better to leave on our own than be forced out by the bank.
“I love this house as much as you do, Mom. It’s where I grew up. It’s where my friends are. But we have to do something.” I stopped, hating that I needed to be the one to think of solutions. After a minute, I asked in a calmer tone, “Could we try to rent out the house? That way if things get better, we could always move in again.”
My mom closed her eyes, as if to shut out the situation we were in.
I touched her shoulder. “We have to do something.”
She turned her blue eyes back to me, and in them I saw the anxiety of a woman who had lost everything and didn’t know where to begin picking up the pieces of her shattered life.
“We could ask the Brooks if we can stay with them for a while,” I suggested.
My mom shook her head. “I will not ask them for any more help. They’ve already done too much.”
“But we can’t afford to rent anything. We’ve already gone through most of the money we had and you still haven’t even started looking for a job.”
She clenched her teeth and gave me a look that made me stop talking. “I’ll figure things out. I just need more time.”
But we were almost out of that, too.
I had to get out of that depressing place. I texted Jess to see if he could hang out. He was stuck working on a project with Kelsie for their Adult Roles class, so I texted Ashlyn. She suggested we go out for some retail therapy, though she’d be the only one buying anything. I still hadn’t taken her out to make good on the bet we’d made before the crap hit the fan. But she
told me not to worry about it. Still, I was embarrassed I couldn’t afford a pair of cheap sunglasses anymore. I couldn’t even afford a pack of gum.
Our first stop was Ada’s Smoothie Shack, where Luke was working today. After Ashlyn and Luke said “I love you” about ten times, Ashlyn and I sat at a table.
“Are you and Luke done drooling over each other, then?” I asked once Ashlyn peeled her eyes away from her boyfriend and seemed to remember she was with me.
“Yes.” She sighed. “Doesn’t he look so cute in that apron?”
“Sure.” More like ridiculous. Luke was an all-state linebacker this year. The orange apron he sported looked out of place with his huge shoulders and buff arms.
“So what’s going on with your mom today? I’m guessing she’s the reason you texted.”
“We have to move.” I pouted as I played with my straw.
“What?” Her eyebrows lifted. “Why? I mean, I guess I can assume why… But you can’t leave us! Did your mom get a job yet?”
My shoulders slumped. “She hasn’t even started looking. She tells me she’s been busy all day, but most of the time she just looks out the window for hours…almost like she’s still waiting for my dad to walk through the front door after a long day at work.”
“Oh, Eliana.” Ashlyn reached across the table. “That is so sad.”
A quiver of emotion tried to break through as I thought of how bad things were. I stuffed the feelings back down. I would not get emotional in the food court with all these people watching. I took a sip from the Very-Berry smoothie Ashlyn bought me and waited for the moment of weakness to pass.
“Anyway, that’s why I had to leave. I couldn’t stand sitting in that house today, knowing it would be one of the last days I’d live there.” Phew. That was good. I didn’t detect the slightest tremor in my voice. I hurried and changed the subject. “Did Jess say how long he and Kelsie would be working on their project?”
“No. Though I’m pretty sure Kelsie will try to make it last all night, maybe trick him into taking her out on a date while they’re at it.”
I grimaced. “I don’t know how he can’t see how fake she is with him.”
“I’m pretty sure the main reason she wants to date him is because he's the only guy from our school going to Cornell next year. I overheard her talking to some girls at drill practice about how she wants a boyfriend on her arm at freshman orientation.”
“That's not a good reason to date someone," I said.
“She also thinks she'll be the one to cure Jess of his short attention span when it comes to girls.”
“I’m all for Jess learning how to date someone for longer than a week. I just don't want Kelsie to be the one to break the curse.
“Me neither. I can't stand her,” Ashlyn said.
I took a sip from my smoothie and realized that with all the craziness going on in my life, I’d lost touch with what was going on in Ashlyn’s life. “So what’s new with you? I feel like I’ve been such a bad friend lately.”
“Oh, things are great.” She beamed and set her cup down. “Luke asked me to prom.”
“That’s not until like May, right?”
“Yes, well.” She waved her fingers to someone behind me—probably Luke again. “He wanted to make sure I knew he wanted to take me and that he wasn’t doing it because he’s my boyfriend.”
“How thoughtful of him.” How would it be to have a guy do something like that for me? Sometimes it would be nice to have someone there to hold me when I felt like I was breaking apart.
“Remember that bet you and Jess made last spring?”
“Which one?” I’d made way too many bets with my best friends to remember them all.
“You know, the one about prom.”
Ah yes. That one. I’d felt so left out last year when everyone went to prom without me, that in my mopey state I’d whined about how I probably wouldn’t get asked this year either. With the recent dip in my social status, I was sure to win that bet at least.
“So you also remember that Jess promised that if you were both single this year’s prom, he’d take you himself.” Ashlyn smiled. “Well, he said he was swearing off girls for the rest of the year…so it looks like you’ll have a date after all.”
Just what I needed. A pity date.
“Don’t get your hopes up too high. You know as well as I do that Jess isn’t good at living the single life. Prom is still two months away. He’ll probably have gone through at least two girls by the time May rolls around, especially if Kelsie gets her way.”
It only took a week to find tenants for our house with the help of my mom’s friend across the street, Mrs. Hillyard. Her son was relocating to Ridgewater from Connecticut with his wife and three kids, and the proximity to grandma seemed to be a huge selling point to the couple. Apparently, built-in-babysitters are all the rage for young parents. They put down a deposit and gave us the first month’s rent, along with signing a year’s lease. My mom and I had three weeks to get into a new place.
Since Mom still didn’t have a job, I had no idea how we could afford to live anywhere. But she surprised me a couple days later by telling me she’d called her brother, Peter, and that we would be moving across town to live with him.
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” I asked. The last time we dropped by his house he was so drunk he forgot to put pants on before answering the door, giving me insight into his “boxer or briefs” preference that I didn’t need to know. And the time before that, he didn’t even recognize me—and I’m his only niece.
“We don’t have many options at the moment, honey. It’ll be fine.” That was all my mom had to say about our future living situation. Which made me even more apprehensive about moving.
Despite my misgivings, we began packing up the house the next day, finding things to sell since we would need money more than furniture at Uncle Peter’s place.
One thing I couldn’t bear to part with was the baby grand piano my dad bought me for my twelfth birthday. Instead of putting the piano for sale online, I found it a temporary home in the Brooks’ music room. Macey, Jess and Ashlyn's thirteen-year-old sister, was taking lessons anyway and she was excited to practice on such a nice instrument.
One day, I came home from school to find my mom cranking the wood-burning stove. She was stuffing my father’s belongings into it instead of packing them away to put in storage.
“What are you doing?” I ran over and yanked my dad’s favorite baseball cap from her hands. Had she been drinking on the sly?
“A little de-junking.” Mom picked up the photo album from their wedding.
“Don’t burn that, Mom! What if he comes back?” I grabbed it from her before she could throw it in. “What if this is all some big misunderstanding? You can’t replace these.”
“’What if he comes back? Just a big misunderstanding?’” My mom scoffed. “You think I’d take that fraud back? He left us, Eliana!” Her voice shook with rage, and she slammed the door of the wood stove shut. “He fed us a million lies, told me he loved me and that forever wouldn’t be long enough, and then he left us to deal with his mess.” She sat down on the hearth and put her head in her hands. “He’s not coming back,” she sobbed. “He’s not ever coming back. And the sooner we accept that, the better off we’ll be.”
Chapter Four
A couple of weeks later, Jess, Luke, and I drove up to my uncle’s house with a load of my bedroom furniture. One look and I wanted to turn around and go back home. Uncle Peter’s house was as much of a disaster as it had been at Christmas time when we last stopped by. The yellow paint was faded and peeling. The yard was a mess, with trash strewn everywhere. I was afraid to see what it looked like on the inside.
“Is this it?” Jess parked his dad’s black Silverado.
I double-checked the address my mom had given me. I hadn’t driven here without her before. “This is it.” My throat tightened as humiliation drowned me. “Um, can you guys wait here while I find out whi
ch room is mine?”
“Sure,” Jess answered. “We’ll wait in the driveway.”
Luke swallowed. “Yeah, we’ll just get ready.”
I hurried out of the truck before they could see the tears welling up.
I rang the doorbell. “Hi, Uncle Peter,” I said when a short, stocky man with a dark, bushy beard answered the door. He was wearing pants and didn’t look drunk… Maybe this wouldn’t be as bad as I’d feared.
“Hi, Eliana,” he answered. “Come on in and I’ll show you the place.”
Once inside, the heavy odor of cigarettes assaulted me. It was so thick, I could barely breathe.
“This here’s the living room,” Uncle Peter said as I inspected my new surroundings. We’d never come inside this far before. He made a ton of money on the role-playing game app he'd created in college. I’d been wrong to assume any of it had gone toward fixing up the inside of his house. Mom said he wanted to keep his small fortune a secret, but I didn’t think he’d keep it this much of a secret. The living room carpet had stains all over and could have been there since the eighties. It was likely it hadn’t been vacuumed since then either. A leather recliner in the corner and a huge TV on the wall were the only nice things about the room. The rest of the furniture looked as worn as the carpet.
Just off the living room was the kitchen, which was so cluttered I doubted anyone could cook in it. The kitchen sink was piled high with dirty dishes, and the garbage overflowed with beer cans and takeout boxes. My stomach churned. How could Mom think living here would be okay? We didn’t need any more problems to deal with right now.
I forced myself to follow my uncle through the rest of the house as he mumbled explanations, pointing at the different rooms. The main floor had a single bathroom. Upstairs, there were three bedrooms and a bathroom that we would all have to share. My queen-sized bed would barely fit in my new room, and I’d probably have to sell my desk.