16 Things I Thought Were True

by Janet Gurtler

  A mom sitting close on the bench opposite us puts her arm around her little girl, pulls her closer, and narrows her eyes at me. A breeze fills my nose with the smell of salt water. “He’s an asshole,” I say.

  The little girl peeks out from under her mom’s arm to stare at me. Her eyes are wide.

  The rush of anger dissipates, and I’m left with disgust. Even this little girl can see the blackness in my soul. She’s right. It’s me. It’s always been me.

  Adam reaches for my arm but I pull away.

  “You okay?” he asks softly.

  “No. I’m not.”

  I have to get my head clear somehow. I have to face my mom. There’s a lot I want to say to her now. But for the life of me, I don’t know how to say it without being swallowed by my own self-loathing.

  ***

  “Hey!” Adam shouts.

  My eyes pop open and I’m surprised drool is gobbed up on the side of my mouth. I sit up and glance outside. I didn’t even realize I’d fallen asleep. We’re surrounded by familiar Washington scenery, trees and grassy hills. The windshield wipers are on, but the rain is more of a dribble. There’s a country song playing low on the radio.

  “Did you see that guy?” Adam is saying to Amy.

  Amy’s eyes are on her rearview mirror. “You mean the creepy hitchhiker.”

  “He didn’t look creepy. He looked like he was in trouble. And it’s wet out there. We should go back and see if he needs help.” Adam turns to me. “Are we in a dead Wi-Fi area?” He glances at Amy. “Maybe he can’t use his phone for help. He could be in trouble.”

  I sit up and look around for my phone. “I don’t know.” It’s on the floor beside an unopened bag of salt and vinegar chips, so I reach for it.

  “You don’t know?” Amy says. “I thought you were on the phone since we passed through the border crossing.”

  “I haven’t been on my phone at all,” I say, and it’s a shock to hear those words come out of my mouth.

  “Never mind that!” Adam shouts. “What about that guy?”

  I frown at his profile. Maybe it’s not a big deal to him, but it is to me. I turn my phone on. “I’ve got one bar,” I tell him.

  “One? I don’t have any. We should go back and help that guy.”

  “What if he’s a deranged murderer?” I ask and reach for the bag of chips. I’m not hungry but something salty can’t hurt. I rip the bag open with my teeth and the smell of vinegar immediately fills my nose.

  “What if he’s not?” Adam says. “What if he’s just a dude who needs help?”

  “Adam,” Amy says. “There is absolutely no way we are picking up a hitchhiker. Have you not watched any scary movies? Do you not know that three teenagers on a remote highway are not supposed to pick up hitchhikers? Like ever. He’s probably a serial killer. I’m not about to die now after all of this.”

  I nod agreement, dip my hand into the bag, and pull out a handful of greasy chips.

  “What are the statistical probabilities that guy is a serial killer? How many serial killers are there, really? Maybe thirty out of three billion people? What’s the likelihood he’s one?”

  “We are not picking up a hitchhiker!” Amy shouts.

  My mouth stops right in the middle of chewing chips. Adam and I both stare at her.

  “Wow.” Adam says after a silence. “You seem a little bitter, Amy. I didn’t know you were so against hitchhikers.”

  She waves her hand in the air. “Chips.”

  I hand her the bag of chips.

  “I hate statistics,” she says. “And I don’t believe you should put yourself in danger if you don’t have to.” She puts the bag on the console and scoops out a handful and dumps the pile on her lap. Then she takes one and shoves the whole thing in her mouth.

  “What about people who look away?” Adam says. “So many crimes are committed right in front of people and they don’t even help or report them. It’s a frigging epidemic. No one wants to get involved.”

  “People always think it’s not going to be them,” Amy says, “that things only happen to other people. Well, life doesn’t happen that way. Look at Morgan. What’s the statistical probability her video would go viral? How many people try and never succeed to do that? It’s like winning a lottery, only for Morgan it was a bad one.”

  “True story.” I wipe my greasy hands on my pants and reach to the floor for a Coke. Amy’s not done though.

  “What are the statistical probabilities that Morgan would never know who her dad was until she was eighteen? And never mind the statistical probability that I’d live past my survival rate.”

  Boom. The words bounce with physical force. A bee splats against the windshield, leaving behind a streak of bright yellow. Adam reaches for the radio, turns it off. The hitchhiker is a distant memory.

  “Survival rate for what?” Adam asks.

  I lean forward so my face is in the middle of them in the front seat.

  Amy’s cheeks are red, and she keeps her eyes on the road and swallows the last of her chip. “Nothing.” She presses her lips together. “I didn’t mean to say that.”

  “Amy,” I tell her in a gentle but firm voice, “pull over.”

  “No.” She shoves another chip in her mouth. “Forget it. Forget I said anything. I didn’t mean to.”

  She’s clearly flustered. There’s practically smoke coming off her cheeks.

  “Amy,” Adam says. “As your boss, I insist you pull over.”

  “You are not the boss of this road trip,” she says, but the car is already slowing down, and she puts the signal on, moves to the shoulder of the road, and puts on her hazard blinkers.

  “I really don’t want to talk about it,” she says with both hands gripping the steering wheel tightly.

  We wait.

  “Cancer, okay?”

  I point at the field beside us. “Come on,” I say. Someone has to take charge. “We’re going for a walk.” It’s not drizzling anymore, but the shoulders are muddy.

  “There’s a herd of cows over there.” Adam points to a herd of black cows in the field beside the road. The only thing keeping them from crossing onto the highway is a wire fence.

  “Screw cows, Adam,” I say. “The girl had cancer. You can face down some living steaks.”

  “I don’t want to make a big deal about it.” Amy is still gripping the wheel. “I only wanted to make my point that my mom and dad refused to believe the stats. Because they were pretty grim.”

  I open the back door. “Well, maybe you did a little, ’cause it came out. And I’m glad it did.” I climb out and bend down, holding the door. “How come you can casually mention masturbation, pee on the side of a highway, but forget to mention you had cancer?” I slam my door then and walk to the driver’s side and open her door. I’m shocked Amy’s kept such a big secret.

  She stares at me without moving. “I made it past the five-year survival mark a couple of years ago. So technically I’m considered cured.”

  I put out my hand, and she stares at it and then sighs and takes it. I pull her from the car, and chips from her lap fall to the ground. “Bird food,” I say. “Come on. Let’s go stretch our legs. Or you can pee on the side of the road again.” Amy snorts as we walk to the shoulder of the road.

  Adam comes out of his side of the car. “I still hate cows,” he mutters and slams his door and hurries to catch up to us.

  “Suck it up, princess,” I tell him. Amy giggles.

  Adam walks with both hands in his pockets and mumbles something else about cows.

  “So I’m flipping out about my stupid life, and you don’t think to mention your much bigger problems? You totally win,” I say to her.

  “I don’t win.” Amy pushes me hard and I stumble. “I don’t want people treating me like I’m fragile or creepy. Which they do—if they know.�
�� She waves her finger in front of my face. “And my problems don’t make yours less. It’s not a competition.”

  “I know.” I lift a shoulder. My troubles seem pretty shallow, no matter what she says. I’m seeing a whole new dimension of Amy. And her eternal optimism and sweetness only add more layers to her personality. I can’t even imagine what she’s been through.

  “What kind of cancer?” Adam steps up so he’s alongside us and stares down at Amy as if he’s X-raying her insides.

  “Leukemia. They found it early. I was lucky.”

  “You had a good doctor?” Adam intently studies her from behind his glasses like an investigator or something.

  “Only the best. Perks of a rich daddy—chemo, radiation, stem cell, blood transfusions.”

  Adam whistles. Amy stops walking. She stares out at the cows. “I’ve been clear for almost seven years. But two-thirds of survivors will face chronic health issues.”

  “I thought you hated statistics,” I say.

  “Sometimes they’re hard to ignore,” Amy answers.

  We all silently acknowledge that.

  “So what about now?” Adam asks. “Are you still being monitored? Do you still see an oncologist?”

  “Why do you care?” Amy asks.

  “He wants to be a doctor, remember?” I remind Amy. “Plus, we’re your friends.”

  “Yeah. You’ve kind of grown on me.” Adam bumps a hip against her and she loses her footing.

  She steadies herself, puts both hands on her hips, and glares at each of us. “Why do you two seem like you have some weird thing going on. Did you make out?” she asks.

  My mouth drops open. Adam looks at me and then looks away. “Um, change the topic much or what?” he mumbles.

  “I knew it!” She claps her hands together. “Wait, what about the girlfriend?”

  “She dumped me,” Adam says, “after Morgan threatened to kick her butt.”

  “I did NOT! It was before the summer. He’s a liar, liar pants on fire, ahhhh,” I shout and run toward the field and scissor jump across the barbed-wire fence. Unfortunately, the seam of my jeans snags on a barb. There’s a long rrrrrrrrrip sound.

  “Oh my god!” I scream and try to pull my leg off the wire, but I’m off balance and drop over half the fence from the waist, hanging off the barb by the ripped hole in the butt of my pants.

  “Eeee!” Amy screams, pointing and laughing. “You’re wearing your ‘Sexy And I Know It’ boy underpants!”

  “I am not!” I shriek. “I threw those out. Get me off, get me off!”

  Amy’s laugh erupts into an almost hysterical sound, bursting from her tiny body. “I’m ssss-sorry,” she tries to say, but she can’t stop giggling.

  Adam’s deeper laugh joins hers, and neither one moves to help me. They’re losing it over my split pants while my butt hangs out over the fence for a cow to come along and chomp.

  I manage to unsnag my leg and drop to the ground, roll, and then pull up what’s left of my pants. Both of them hold their stomachs with tears rolling down their cheeks. I try to stay mad, but their laughter is contagious. Soon my own giggling starts and I’m holding my stomach, getting cramps along with them.

  Finally when we manage to get our senses back and start walking toward the car, we’re splattered by a truck driving in the opposite direction. It zooms too close to us and the back tire hits a mud puddle. It only makes us laugh harder.

  I try to hold on to the comical break as we drive on, but reality settles in over me like dark clouds once we reach the city limits of Tadita. I listen as Adam tells Amy the truth about his girlfriend and why he lied to her, but I can no longer participate in conversation. The chips I ate no longer seem like a good idea.

  I still have to face my mom.

  chapter twenty

  14. Dear old Dad ditched the family before I was born.

  #thingsithoughtweretrue

  Amy drops me off on the sidewalk in front of my house. “You can do this,” she calls out the window. “Good luck.”

  There’s a humming in my head. I’m home. And I still haven’t heard from Bob. Does that make my mom right? He didn’t want kids. And that’s all I get from him? Tea?

  Instead of facing that or her, I turn back to the sidewalk and walk, but my knees are stiff and my gait lopsided. Mrs. Phillips from next door is working on her garden and waves and stares a little too long at my bare legs. I walk on, trying to figure out what to say to my mom. My fear bothers me. Should I really be the one who’s worried? She knows that I know. But no matter how irrational it is, I can’t stomp the feeling that I’m the one who messed things up.

  All my life, I believed that my dad left because of me, that he wanted to have nothing to do with me—that I was too flawed to love. I clench my hands into a fist and my fingernails press into my skin.

  This is my life.

  It’s time to deal.

  ***

  Mom is perched on the couch in her pink robe, her head in her hands as I yell. She hasn’t said a word since I launched into my tirade.

  “How could you have made that choice for him?” I pace in front of her. “And for me? You had no right to do that.”

  She says nothing. Her silence is worse than shouting. “Talk to me,” I beg. “Tell me why.”

  She lifts her head and presses her knuckles against her mouth and stares at me. I stare back, and then her gaze darts back to the carpeted floor.

  “Mom? Say something! How did you keep this up?” I shout. “How do you not talk about it for eighteen years? That takes a lot of dedication.” I narrow my eyes. “And alcohol.”

  I’ve crossed the line and I know it, and she glances up then, her quivering chin and watery eyes showing I finally hit a mark. Jake and Josh hurry in from where they’ve been hiding out in the kitchen, proving they’ve been hovering and waiting to swoop in to her rescue. The synchronicity in their steps and the expression on their faces irks me. It’s not fair.

  “All right, Morgan. Stop yelling. She just got out of the hospital,” Josh says. His face is still clean-shaven; it appears his ’70s phase was cured by mom’s heart condition. He walks over and sits beside her on the couch. It makes me crazy, and my head pounds with resentment. Always her over me. Always.

  “She got out of the hospital over a week ago. I think the discovery she lied to me about my father for eighteen years deserves a little yelling. I’ve been holding in my shouting for eighteen years.” The ugliness inside me is turning inside out. “Why don’t you go run off with one of your little groupies, Josh? Stay out of it!”

  “Morgan,” she snaps, because heaven forbid I insult her precious Josh.

  “What?” I snap back.

  “Morgan,” Jake says in a lower and calmer voice. “Settle down, okay? It’s not helping either one of you to be screeching.” He sits on the loveseat across from Mom and Josh and leans forward, running his hand over his closely cropped hair.

  “She was trying to protect you,” Josh says. “She wanted to warn you after you went running off on your trip, but you wouldn’t answer her texts.”

  “That was too late.” I shake my head. I’d known in my gut that she had something to say when she kept texting. But it was too late. “How would you feel if some girl appeared in your life eighteen years from now saying she was your daughter and her mother didn’t want you to know?” Heat flushes my face.

  “Let her explain,” Josh says.

  “I’m waiting! I’ve been waiting but she won’t say anything.”

  “That’s because you’re not talking; you’re yelling,” Josh says.

  “I’ve been holding things in for a long time. You guys, you precious twins, you were allowed to make noise and complain but not me. I’ve grown up feeling not good enough, that if I did something wrong, I’d be sent away.” And then my body deflates. It’s the closest I’v
e ever come to understanding the truth about myself. I sink down on the chair closest to me and drop my head.

  “I wanted to protect you from being hurt,” my mom says, repeating Josh’s excuse quietly, and then she sniffles loudly. For effect. For the boys. It’s not for me. Or for my dad. Or what she did.

  I glance up and she’s wiping under her eyes. “You were protecting yourself,” I say.

  Part of me feels like I’m inside my body watching myself. I’ve read all the books about how hard it is for girls to grow up without fathers. I checked half of them out of the library.

  Josh still has his arm protectively around her. “Morgan,” Jake says, and he glances at Mom. “She had to have good intentions.” He stares at her as if he’s waiting.

  Mom doesn’t say a thing.

  “You did what you thought was right,” Jake tells her. “Right?”

  “Lying about something so major?” My head swims in the understatement.

  “She didn’t lie,” Josh says, but the expression on his face doesn’t match his words, and he takes his arm away from around her shoulder.

  “Lying by omission is still lying. That, I believe, is a direct quote.” We all know it.

  Mom jumps to her feet. “You have no idea what it was like for me,” she cries.

  Her robe opens at the waist, revealing pajamas underneath. She looks tiny and vulnerable. I think of her heart and want to get up and re-tie her belt for her, tell her to calm down. But I don’t. “So tell me,” I say instead, “why you never told him about me.”

  Mom puts her hand to her mouth, and her eyes open wider. Jake and Josh jump to their feet and each one takes an arm, but she shakes them off.

  “I loved him, okay?” she says quietly. Her eyes are cold and hard. “I loved him, but he didn’t want a child. The day I found out I was pregnant, he told me he was going back to Canada, to get his MBA, for God’s sake. He never asked me to come. He never invited me and the boys. He certainly wasn’t about to go back to school with me and three kids to look after.” She grabs each side of her robe and pulls it tight around her and belts it.