Chapter 2
By the time Lily was dressed and ready for school her Aunt Jenny was already pouring pancake batter onto a sizzling pan. She stood hovering over the stove in her striped robe with curlers still in her hair. Lily wheeled herself up to the table to pour some orange juice.
“Lillian Harrison, you’re running late again. Today was your morning to make breakfast. Now I won’t have time to get ready,” her aunt said clearly annoyed.
Aunt Jenny seemed to be annoyed a lot lately. The anniversary of the divorce was in just a few days, so Lily wasn’t too surprised. Jenny had married Uncle Max after a whirlwind romance her last year of college. It seemed like a perfect match and the perfect timing. Max was handsome, charming, and everything else Jenny wanted in a man. Everyone thought he was kind and sweet, and he was, but only in public. Max was a salesman by profession, and he did a brilliant job of selling himself. After they were married, he had fooled almost everyone into believing he was a devoted, loving husband and father, but he wasn’t. Nothing was ever good enough for Max. And he made sure his wife and children knew it. He demanded perfection, and if he didn’t get it he resorted to blasting everyone with insults until he was blue in the face. Lily thought that anyone with a shred of self-respect would have left him by the end of the first year, but Jenny loved him and truly believed he could change. She had been so sure that after the children came, things would be different. She had hoped that maybe he would change after the next vacation, party, or anniversary, but he never did. If anything, he got worse. He was never challenged by Jenny, or any friends or family, because everyone was either afraid of him or they didn’t really believe he was like that at home. A couple years ago Jenny showed up at the Harrison house with her two children and a few overstuffed bags. She never went back to him even though at times she wanted to. After all that time, Jenny had finally come to realize that he wasn’t going to change. A month after she moved into the Harrison house, Jenny filed for a divorce. Even though she would never go back to her life with Max, she still seemed to get irritated at every little thing at this time every year. Lily knew it wasn’t really personal, but sometimes it felt that way.
“It looks like I’m going to be late for work again. I really need you to be on top of things. I have a hard enough time getting Jackson and Ruthie out the door. I need you to take more responsibility for getting yourself up and ready in the morning,” Jenny said as she accidentally burnt her finger on the frying pan in front of her.
“Sorry, I’ll try to do better,” Lily said sincerely as her aunt ran her hand under the cool water flowing from the faucet. Sometimes Lily felt like such a burden to her aunt.
“It’s okay,” Jenny said with a sigh. She turned off the water and put her unburned hand on her hip as she stared at Lily.
“I’m definitely not an expert at raising teenagers,” she said patting her hand dry. “I may be expecting too much out of you. I know you try to do everything I ask, and I know it’s hard to get around in your condition, but it would really help me out if you could just be on time. When you’re late, everyone else is late too.”
Lily nodded her head as she stared at the floor. She knew her aunt was right, but whenever she had a dream about her parents, she had the hardest time getting out of bed. She just wanted to go back to sleep and dream it all over again. Lily probably should have told her aunt the reason why she kept getting up so late, but she didn’t want to bother her with it and she wasn’t always comfortable talking to her aunt anyway. There weren’t very many people she did feel comfortable talking to. She always felt so shy and struggled to know what to say. At least Lily could tell her best friend, Malaya, about it at school. She always told Malaya everything, especially now that she didn’t have her mom to talk to anymore. Lily used to talk to her mother about everything under the sun. Some of her favorite memories she had of her mother were the times they sat together in the garden and talked for hours. Springtime in the garden was magical. Lying on the soft, vibrant, green grass surrounded by the most beautiful flowers, they would laugh at Lily’s made-up fairy stories, and her mother would sing songs to her. When spring grew into summer they would sip homemade lemonade through swirly straws and swat at the bees who tried to steal a sip. When fall came around, Lily and her mother would make a pile of leaves into a fort and then snuggle themselves in flannel blankets to drink their hot chocolate out of pink heart patterned mugs her mother had found at a garage sale. The flowers, blankets, and swirly straws were all gone now. Almost all the contents of the house they had rented were sold to pay for the funeral and hospital bills. The heart mugs, a few family pictures, the contents of Lily’s room, and her mother’s hope chest were all that remained. At first it had bothered Lily that she couldn’t keep more of her mother’s things, but she knew there wasn’t any room for them, and they couldn’t afford to store them. After mourning all the contents of their home for a month or two, she came to realize that her memories were probably the most precious things her mother left for her.
Lily piled pancakes onto plates for everyone, still feeling bad that she had let her aunt down again. She could hear her cousins coming down the stairs as she set the plate of pancakes on the table. Lily could always tell who was coming down the stairs by their footsteps. Ten year old Jackson pounded heavily when he walked the steps. Ruthie, a spirited seven year old, bounced as she went. When her cousins reached the kitchen table, they each grabbed a plate of pancakes, and sat down at the breakfast table.
“Eww, why do you always eat them that way? It’s just gross,” Jackson said grimacing at Ruthie as she dolloped peanut butter onto her plate.
“Because it’s yummy,” she replied stuffing her mouth full of peanut butter and pancake.
“Well, it’s still gross,” he sneered.
“Well, applesauce on pancakes is even grosser,” Ruthie said out as she poked her empty fork in the direction of Jackson’s plate.
He had put a layer of applesauce on top of his pancake with some maple syrup in a tiny dipping bowl at the side of his plate.
“What do you know anyway,” Jackson snapped suddenly becoming absorbed in devouring his stack of pancakes.
Luckily Aunt Jenny had already hurried upstairs to finish getting ready, because she would have had little patience for their bickering. The three of them sat in silence eating their pancakes. Then a few minutes later Ruthie sneezed milk out her nose, and they burst out laughing. All differences of opinion were forgotten, and the siblings began a conversation on how they would convince their mother that they needed a dog. Lily listened to them quietly, and joined the conversation only when spoken to. Lily loved her cousins, and she enjoyed spending time with them. They always seemed to have a good time when they were together. She knew she would probably be going away to college in a couple years, so she had decided to enjoy this adopted family as much as she could. Jenny and the kids were all the family she had left. Jenny wasn’t anything like her mother, but they got along fairly well. Jackson and Ruthie were pretty great kids considering everything they had been through. They were typical siblings who clashed occasionally, but most of the time they were very nice to each other. She had only been living with them for a few months, and in that time Lily felt like they were almost her brother and sister. Almost.
***
Two hours later Aunt Jenny pulled out of the driveway to deliver her children to the local elementary school and Lily to Westview High School. The brick building was a typical Texas high school. The majority of students were big on football or sports in general. So if you weren’t on a sports team, a cheerleader, or in marching band you were nobody. At least you felt like a nobody. Everyone pretty much ignored Lily. She didn’t mind too much. She figured being ignored was better than being bullied. It was certainly better that being picked on by the notorious Dean Brady and his gang of bullies. They were such jerks. Slade Turner, one of Dean’s closest friends, was probably worse than he was. Last semester Slade had made it a habit to be especially horrible. He decided to infiltrate the cafeteria with something smelling of rotten eggs. The source still hadn’t been located. Luckily, the smell was tolerable thanks to the cheerleaders. They took it upon themselves to save the school from nostril peril and bring gallons of perfume and body spray to make the place bearable. Poor Jason Hadley has to eat in the teachers’ lounge because the perfume gives him an asthma attack. And then there was the time it was picture day, and Slade somehow ended up in every class picture. Nobody knows how he managed that one. The list went on and on. Dean and his gang bullied the “nobody’s” incessantly. The gang never tired of the tried and true, so shoving ninth graders in their lockers was a daily occurrence. Slade’s girlfriend, Amberly, was almost worse. She would never play pranks or bully people physically. She bullied people emotionally. She could destroy them if she wanted to. Her targets were mostly girls, but there was that one time when Jason Hadley, who is pretty much the biggest nerd in school, swore that she asked him to be her boyfriend. Everyone laughed at him, of course. No one let him forget it for a full semester. The thing is she did ask him. There were witnesses. Best guess was that he wouldn’t let her cheat off of him in algebra and she was getting back at him for it. That’s how Amberly works. She knows the most damage can be done on the inside of a person. She could rip your emotional heart out of your chest and leave it writhing on the floor, and she wouldn’t even care. She was brutal.
“Wow, I think this is the latest I have ever seen you here.”
It was Malaya. The only person in the world she could really talk to. Lily had met Malaya freshman year and they were instant friends. Malaya had been the only one from school to come to her mom’s funeral. She was the only one to sit by Lily’s bed at the hospital for hours on end after the car crash. Malaya was always there for her in her darkest hour. Malaya was the best friend a girl could ask for. Lily had only known her since the beginning of high school, but it seemed like they had known each other since the beginning of time. They were more than best friends, they were soul sisters. Lily wheeled herself steadily along beside Malaya.
“I know. I had this crazy dream, and I kept hitting the snooze button. You’ll never believe who was in it.”
She paused and looked at Malaya’s blank, puzzled expression. When she realized the look on her face wasn’t disappearing any time soon, she continued.
“My parents were there. Both of them! I was surrounded by these gorgeous trees, almost like Bradford pear trees, but fluffier, and different colors, and….”
“I want to hear all about it, but we are already going to be late so….” Lily understood.
“I’ll tell you the rest at lunch.”
“It’s a deal.”
***
“And then they were just gone. It was like someone had sucked them into a vacuum and shoved them in a closet where I can’t see them. I still can’t believe my dad was there, and why do you think I couldn’t remember them?”
Malaya was staring at her tuna sandwich intently, but her thoughts were clearly focused on something else. After a brief moment of quiet meditation, she took a small bite of the sandwich, chewing thoughtfully.
“It’s hard to say,” Malaya said after swallowing her mouthful. “I mean, it could just be your subconscious mind missing your parents, or it could be a deeper message for your life.”
“Yeah.”
“Maybe the reason you couldn’t remember them was so you wouldn’t talk to them.”
“What? Why?”
Lily wasn’t following the tangled maze Malaya’s thoughts were rushing through.
“Because if you spent time talking to them, they wouldn’t have time to talk to you. You would have missed what they had to say.”
“That actually makes a lot of sense! You should be a professional dream interpreter.”
Nodding in agreement Malaya went on, “Okay, so what did they tell you again?”
“Um, they told me that they loved me and to be strong. I’m guessing maybe the being strong part was mostly about my leg.” It had been almost a year since the car accident that had taken her mother away from her. She had survived, but she hadn’t come away unscathed. Both her legs had been broken. Her right leg had escaped with a hairline fracture that healed fairly quickly and the cast was off in seven weeks. Her left leg was not as fortunate. Part of her shin bone had been crushed, and it was taking a long time to heal. The doctor had said this type of break would take a long time, but it seemed an eternity had already gone by, and she was more than ready to get her cast off and start physical therapy.
“Oh, and he said that it wouldn’t be long before something. They didn’t say what. They just said it wouldn’t be long.”
Malaya pondered for a minute over a carrot stick.
“They must mean before you can walk again. That has to be it. You’ll probably get your cast off soon. There isn’t really any other option.”
But there was.