Nineteen

Visitation rights. Katie spits the words. Like hell. 

She calls Him, angry and upset. He's defensive, but Katie keeps pushing until he gives a little. In the end she says some things she needs to say, and he says some things she needs to hear. On the whole not too bad. But Katie knows it isn't over, but she suspects he will think it is. An hour later he's commented on something she said on Facebook, confirming her suspicions. Katie's done pretending. He will know in uncertain terms that everything is not all right. Not by a long shot.

She sighs. Coffee with Esther tomorrow. She has a letter to write. Or rewrite. She's not sure which. But, coffee. Katie's missed coffee almost as much as she's missed Esther. There is coffee in the city, but coffee always tastes better with Esther.

Eighteen

Katie rules the halls with her best friend by her side. College. Katie can almost smell it; it’s not the bad this-building-has-mold college smell, it’s the smell of hormones and learning. Katie breathes it in. She doesn’t recognize the campus, but she isn’t worried because Esther is at her side, emitting a quiet strength everyone assumes is shyness. Katie knows better and she loves that she knows better, like Esther is her secret and she’s waiting to scandalize the world with the realization. Esther is her ace in the hole, and while she isn’t sure what game they are playing, she’s sure Esther will be her winning move. 
The girls make their way up a zig-zagged flight of stairs, stopping halfway up the last flight when a professor calls to them from the lower flight. They stop and he says something about how good it is to see them and he’s looking forward to the semester. Katie and Esther agree and Katie cracks a joke which makes the professor laugh. Making the professor laugh is as rewarding to Katie as correctly answering a question, so she smiles and inwardly congratulates herself at a job well done. 
Nothing can touch Katie as she and Esther sprint up the last few steps, giggling about something; nothing can topple Katie, she feels alive. They round the corner and He’s there, waiting. Katie falters, tripping a little on her own feet. He’s silent but his eyes flash. Katie tells Esther to run on without her. The girl hesitates, but something in Katie’s tone makes her obey. Very grudgingly.

Katie has always felt it was her responsibility to protect Esther from the world. The world is so full of ugliness, and Esther is like the purest snow, so very innocent. Though she would blush and emphatically disagree, Katie doesn’t care; Esther is too humble to see the truth. Katie did her best over the years of their friendship to keep the ugliness away from Esther, but she was selfish. When Katie was with Esther, she felt a little more pure; being around Esther made her a better person, and she loved Esther for that. She always felt guilty around Esther because she knew she wasn't worthy, that she was too impure, but she stayed because she couldn't bear to leave. He took that away too when he infected her already wicked heart with anger and hatred. Katie feels the blackness eating at her heart like gangrene. She knows her friend, her friend who would never turn away someone in need, her friend who would insist on helping though there was nothing she could do. But Katie knows how infectious the blackness is, and she won’t risk her friend. It’s her responsibility to protect Esther. For once she has to stop being selfish. It was stupid to think she could keep the world from touching her heart, but maybe she can save Esther from it a little longer. So, Katie lets Esther go, her rock in the storm, her guiding light, her secret weapon… gone.

He starts yelling and berating her and Katie doesn’t even hear the words as she collapses into a heap. The walls begin to melt and she curls into a ball, but he’s still standing over her, yelling. In her head she is screaming for it to stop, but it doesn’t. She mentally begs for the professor to come along, to shut Him up, but he never comes. The university is gone and Katie is left in a swirling whiteness with Him yelling. She feels rather than hears the barrage of words. Each word is a fresh stab of excruciating pain. The hateful vitriol consumes her as a final whimper escapes her lips.

In the split second between dreaming and being awake, Katie panics. She doesn’t know where she is, how she got there, or even how to breathe. Then she wakes up the rest of the way and sucks in a lungful of air. Well, more rasps in a shallow breath, followed by another and another until her heart finally starts to slow down. Katie fights back the tears. An eternity passes before Katie feels safe enough to close her eyes, terrified He’ll be waiting for her.

The next morning she has a spitting headache and can’t bring herself to eat breakfast. She lies on the cough and reads more Jack/Daniel fic, trying to lose herself in the familiar, nonexistent, love stories. The morning on the couch turns into a day. Eating makes her nauseous and the headache only lessens if she doesn’t move, or stay in one position for too long, so it effectively never lessens. Katie is shaken to her core and she rehashes the dream over and over, but is too frightened to try to recall exact words. It’s all straightforward enough. Katie’s place in the world was pretty set before He brought it crashing down, and in the aftermath He robbed her of every last security she had. And she’s his Facebook friend. Katie feels like puking but hold down her turkey sandwich lunch. Katie is supposed to visit with Esther the following Monday, but snow is threatening to delay the trip. However, if Katie waits too long, Esther will return to college to start the spring semester while Katie tries to figure out life without everything she’s ever known.

Seventeen

Katie publishes her first book review of the year, pleased with herself. Katie believes in self-improvement projects, and this is one of many she's undertaking in the new year. Besides, in a new city with no friends, books look like they will be her only friends for some time.

Sixteen

Katie’s funk has lifted, thought she could hardly put the cause to words. Nothing had changed—well, the kids were back in school—except her attitude. Everything was passing through her “happy” filter instead of her “pissy-as-hell” filter. Well, not everything. There was the odd annoyance, mostly a gentleman who seemingly fancies himself her literary mentor. Katie chastises herself, because her resentment only rings of arrogance, but she’s positive it isn’t that. Well, not only that; it’s in there a little bit. He writes songs and poems and despite herself, Katie has a deep loathing of poets. Her relationship with poetry is complicated. When asked if she likes it she replies, “No. I mean yes. Only the good kind.” When pressed to define good poetry Katie can only offer up the macabre guideline that “if the poet isn’t dying inside, it’s no good.” Which is obviously hard on poets, but Katie has noticed all the good poets tend to die young. Still, the profession is too open to posers and bad poetry is the most atrocious offence to Katie’s mind. That’s why she doesn’t write it; poetry isn’t in her soul.

At any rate, her would be mentor was missing the point of her argument about Twilight and gender roles, and then he insulted her generation, though he clarified and said he was only insulting an entire century. She made an argument back to him, defending her generation, getting annoyed by his ageism but not wanting to come off whiny.

Katie puts it out of her mind now. It was a good day. She must admit, she took great pleasure in teasing one of her old friends all day via Facebook. He was having a hellish day, but keeping a good attitude, as he almost always does. Katie loves teasing him; it’s natural and if they aren’t arguing about life, the universe, and everything, then they are teasing each other. Well, Katie teases more; he’s too polite to start the teasing. Honestly, he’s a very egotistical person by nature, and while Katie’s jabs are aimed to sting, the jabs only seem to conflate him on a deep level. If Katie’s teasing him then he is on her good graces and can afford to be big-headed. Katie misses arguing with her friend and makes a mental note to stoke the fires sometime soon. She giggles, he’s a Stargate: SG-1 fan. I feel a deep discussion of slash fic coming on. Katie chuckles wickedly and cuddles deeper beneath her blankets, ready for sleep to overtake her.

Fifteen

Katie’s body is peppered with bruises. The most colorful is on her right ankle from teaching her cousin how to ride her bike; Katie’s glad the weather has taken a turn for the nasty, halting the riding lessons. Another on her left calf, growing darker by the day, from where her sister threw a tree branch at her leg, point first; Katie and playfully shoved her into the snow. There’s a nearly invisible sore spot on her left hip, doubtlessly from sledding down Mad Dog Hill the day before. The last is on the back of her head, a goose egg really, from hitting her head on the corner of the bathroom counter; she’d been naked and trying to reach the garment her sister had tossed just outside the door, just out of reach.

Katie makes a mental note to hit her sister a little harder next time the opportunity arises. Though her only reward will be short lived; Katie’s sister has a rule: You hit me, I hit back twice as hard. And damn, if she doesn’t follow that rule like religion. Katie takes two Advil before settling down on the couch, wondering what shade of purple, red, yellow, and green, the various bruises will be tomorrow.

Fourteen

Katie loves the ALA weekend, when the American Library Association awards its numerous awards to deserving books for teens and children. But she doesn’t get around to reviewing the winners and honorees until Tuesday. She’s outgrown the Newberry Award, but makes a note of the title for her little cousin. The Printz Award recipient (the young adult equivalent of a Newberry) is a book called Ship Breaker, about a kid eking out an existence near New Orleans; she’s not overly enthused. Skipping past the little kid awards Katie finds the newest award to be added to the ALA list, the Stonewall Award, which honors LGBT fiction. One of her favorite books has received an honor, but not the award proper. Katie reads the winner’s synopsis and is intrigued. More than intrigued, she gets on Amazon and buys it, dipping into the twenty-five dollars He gave her in gift card form. Merry Christmas.

The kids are on their second snow day and word comes down that tomorrow will be a third. Katie thinks she might kill them. Which isn’t fair, because they aren’t so bad really; Katie’s ready to kill anyone, she’s not too concerned by specifics. She has cabin fever, but not the kind which sets in from being indoors too long, the kind that comes from being inside her soul too long. The book is a portal from her soul to someone else’s. Katie is a writer, she knows that the pain and the happiness on the page isn’t the character’s, it’s the author’s. Maybe if I write a happy scene I’ll feel better. But Katie knows that isn’t how it works. She’d be faking it and later delete whatever she wrote because it wouldn’t ring true. Pretending to be happy just reminds her she isn’t.

Reading on her Kindle, Katie checks her progress. Thirteen percent.

A lifetime passes in the space of a couple hours. Forty-two percent.

Damnnit, do I really need to eat? Fifty percent.

Katie knows she won’t be putting the book down any time soon. Seventy-one percent.

She has to stop. It hurts too much. She turns the reader off. Eighty-eight percent.

Katie and her sister occasionally make jokes that they can get away with a lot of shit now because they have “daddy issues.” It always makes Katie think of Charlie from Two and a Half Men describing his prerequisites for women; or Barney from How I Met Your Mother, all the sit com man whores. Now it isn’t funny. Katie gets a glass of water and waits for her heart to stop pounding. She wants to kill the character’s father. The girl just wants a scrap of love and a shred of understanding, but he can’t give her that. Katie’s situation isn’t as bad as the character, and He’s never told her he would rather she die than be who she is, but Katie can’t shake the parallels. Envisioning taking out her frustration on the couch, Katie sighs. She can’t break down, not here, not now.

Katie knows on a philosophical level that the great tragedy of the human race is that humans can never attain the level of connection they desire. But goddamn, why can’t they love each other with their little hearts as much as they can? Why conditions? Why pride? Why reservations? Why prejudices? WHY? WHY? WHY? Great, I’ve reverted to a three year old.

Katie is scared to pick up the book again. She knows she won’t be able to put it down again, but she’s not going to be able to sleep until she finishes it, so she might as well get to it.

Thirteen

Katie wishes life was…

Oreos and milk.

Watching videos by charlieissocoollike.

Tickling her sister on places that shouldn’t be ticklish but are, like her gums.

Climbing a little higher than normal in her favorite tree before chickening out.

Picking Queen Anne’s Lace and Black-Eyed Susans in May and hanging them upside down to dry in her friend’s barn.

Making agility obstacles out of leftover plywood and teaching her friend’s dog new tricks.

Knowing the answer to obscure questions like, “Who is the current Press Secretary of the United States of America?”

Playing music with people she loves and admires.

The music professor she respects most asking her to help coach middle school cellists at a summer camp next summer.

When you’re trying to out-do your friend and leap over a creek, knowing you aren’t going to make it to the other side, and then you do make it. And then they try, and they fall in.

Telling your friend you like him.

Your friend telling you he likes you back.

You and your friend saying how silly your siblings are for telling each other they like each other when she clearly pressured him into it by saying she like him first.

Realizing you did the exact same thing, meaning your friend doesn’t like you like that.

Finding out years later that your friend made a plan to leave, make his fortune, and come back to marry you.

Noticing that your friend is still following those plans, and he’s on the “making his fortune” part, but you’re pretty sure the “marrying you” part won’t be happening since you haven’t spoken in years.

Wondering if he remembered that plan or still thought of you the way you think of him. Because even though it’s been forever and you’ve changed and he’s probably changed too, you have a theory that something about your friendship will never change.

Getting the silly boy out of your head because seriously, it’s been YEARS.

Going to bed and having a dream, because you haven’t dreamed in weeks.

Twelve

Katie is fed up with the little, orange Nerf darts even before they start flying. Her boy cousin not only has an armful of the little projectiles, but half a dozen guns to go with them. He hands her one and calls her team.

“What? No. There are no TEAMS. I’m not playing.”

“Me either,” says her sister as the girl cousin calls her team.

“Oh, come on,” he pleaded. “Look, you get a big gun.”

“Fine. But if you shoot me, you will die. I don’t care if you’re on my team or not. You. Will. Die.”

He just laughs. Katie sighs and goes back to writing. The girl cousin runs from the room, squealing as she escapes. Her bother gives chase.

“I hate Nerf Wars,” says Katie’s sister.

“Me too.”

All Katie hears is the thonk of Nerf weapon discharges and bickering. There’s also a bad smell which is putting her off. All right, downstairs. Katie liberates her laptop and ducks under the fire of combat to make her escape. She plops onto the couch, stretching out on her stomach. Just as she gets the pillows positioned perfectly beneath her torso, the kids troop downstairs.

“No. No. No. Upstairs, both you!”

Katie’s girl cousin protests and she hates to do it, but Katie insists they both must go. The boy camps out behind the couch, firing a round every few seconds. She tries to move upstairs but the kids promise to follow her. Then the kids start arguing over which one is most entitled to stay near her. Katie takes the bickering as long as she can before she’s had enough. She confiscates all the weapons and deposits them in her aunt and uncle’s bedroom, covering them with a pile of laundry. The boy is nearly in tears when she returns to the basement.

“Nerf War is over.”

“They’re MY weapons!”

“Sorry. Peace has broken out. No more guns.”

The boy throws a fit, so Katie sends him to pick up all the Nerf darts from all over the house. He pouts and snivels his way through the procedure. The girl has gone quiet but stays near Katie. The bullets are taken to the boy’s room, and when he emerges once more, he’s armed with two new guns.

“Hand ‘em over.”

“NO!”

“Well, then put them away. No guns.”

“THEY ARE MINE!”

“You may have them in your room, but they are not to leave there. Nerf War is over.”

He sulks back to his room. His sister chases after him.

“Oh, crap. One of them is crying. Hey, can you check on them for me?” Katie asks her sister.

“Uh, sure.”

“If it’s her, tell her I’m sorry I had to be stern with both of them, but he’s being bad enough without accusing me of favoring her. If it’s him, tell him to buck up.”

She nods and goes upstairs, pausing at his door only long enough to peek. When she returns she is grimacing.

“She’s crying really hard under her covers with the lights off.”

Katie sighs. “Gosh. I’ll go.” Katie feels like beating herself over the head.

“Hey,” Katie crawls onto the bed, careful to not crush any limbs. “You okay?”

“He’s being a butt!” the little girl says between sniffs.

“I know, sweetie.” Katie hugs the little girl. “I’m sorry he got you in trouble. You must hate that. I know I did when I was your age. I still don’t like being in trouble.”

“He always gets me in trouble.”

“My little sister was the same way.” Katie sighs. “I’m so sorry, sweetie. I’m not mad at you and you’re not in trouble, okay? I just had to be that way so he wouldn’t say I was being unfair. If you ever want him to stop, just leave. Come get me and say you want him to stop. I’ll always listen. I completely understand.”

The girl nods and sniffs. The two first-borns lay on the bed for a while until the younger of the two has stopped crying.

“I have homework. Will you help me?”

“Sure.”

The girls leave the room and as they pass the boy’s room he is on his bed, a Nerf rifle aimed out the door, his eye to the sights.

“Put it away,” says Katie.

“It’s in my room.”

“It is pointed outside your room with the door open. Put it away. Now.”

He pouts but does as she says. Katie puts a protective hand on her cousin’s back and leads her downstairs. They work through the homework and some piano practice and soon forget all about the grumpy boy upstairs.

Katie sighs as she sinks further into dreamland. Her cousin did ask her to help with her brother, Katie just wasn’t listening because she didn’t use words. Stupid. You have to be smarter. The little girl reminds Katie of herself at that age so much that she marvels she could have been so stupid. She never just asked an adult to help, she always thought she could control the situation on her own and only gave out nonverbal pleas for help. Katie makes a silent promise to be smarter, more sensitive. Being a big sister again is going to mean getting back in touch with her inner eleven year old. Katie shivers. Eleven was confusing.

Eleven

Werewolves save Bella

From a crazy vampire

She ditches them

I am Team Jacob

He has personality

Edward is a douche

Bella is crazy

Stephanie Meyer is nuts

Please, God, save me from this hell!!!

Katie doubts exclamation points are allowed in haiku, but doesn’t care. She must do something to counteract the cinematic and literary awfulness unfolding before her eyes. Her biggest complaint is Bella’s lack of self-identity. Around Edward she is serious, depressed, and brooding. Around Jake she is adventurous, jokes, and occasionally rages. Hell, even around spineless Charlie she takes on his personality: awkward, lame, and slightly concerned.

Katie never wants to be a Bella. She wants no girl ever to be a Bella, because Bella’s get themselves killed by their boyfriends. When the movie ends Katie braids her cousin’s hair.

“So, what did you think of the movie?” Katie hazards.

“It was stupid. There’s something wrong with Bella.”

Katie sighs with relief and nods, tucking in a stray strand of golden hair.

“Big time. There, all done. Now run off to bed.”

The little girl scampers and Katie shakes her head, grumbling about poor role models for bright kids.

Ten

Staying in contact is proving to be a challenge for Katie. She misses her best friend, Esther, like mad, but every time she goes to text or to send her friend a message she stops. Inexplicably stops. However, today Esther is online at the same time as Katie. Katie had been trying to compose a message to her friend all day, but an I.M. sounds even better. Chats are almost like having a conversation. Katie’s sister spends hours on the phone talking to her friends, but except for a few exceptions, Katie has never been one for phone conversation.

She clicks the little icon with her friend’s face.

Katie: Bonjour mon ami!

Esther: Hi!

Katie: how are you beautiful lady??

Katie cringed at her grammar, reminding herself it’s “Let’s eat, Grandma” rather than “Let’s eat Grandma.”

The girls exchanged niceties before rushing to pump each other for information. Eager to fill each other in on all the events they had missed. It’s all Katie can do to not end every line with “I miss you.” Esther is the first to say it, popping it in after a quick, humorous exchange. Katie stops a second and then with all her greatest conviction types back that she misses her too. She tries to contain herself to a degree, keenly aware at how inadequate words are to express her feelings without sounding needy.

Well, I am needy.

Yeah, but you don’t have to sound needy.

Katie sighs, forever doomed to talk back to herself. As the conversation continues, Katie feels her spirits soaring, but she’s still careful to try to hold back. As is she is injecting “I miss you” into the conversation left and right. Eventually, Esther’s internet connection dies, but the girls had already drawn the conversation to something of a close. Katie imagines what they would like if this were happening at their favorite coffee shop. They’d be sitting beside each other, silent, just enjoying each other’s company, completely content in the silence. Even across the cold internet, Katie feels the contentment in the silence, not the awkward waiting so often felt when conversations go quiet. Best friends, kindred spirits, bosom buddies. They know how to be silent together just as well as loud and raucous.

Katie thinks of telling her everything. She hints at a lot of it, but holds it back. She loves Esther and doesn’t want to burden her with her heavy heart. So, Katie wishes her a good evening through a text and yearns for her next trip to Esther.

Nine

The plans were made with the best of intentions, but Katie knows they are doomed from the start when she realizes who her mom is talking to on the phone. He’s going to ruin their day because he’s being willfully stupid. The plan is to have a day on the town with her mom and sister, meeting her aunt for lunch at their favorite Italian restaurant before some shopping and catching a movie. Now He was calling, demanding information about insurance or something, unable to comprehend the basic concept of “What’s mine, I pay for. What’s yours, you pay for.”

They all head to the car while she is still on the phone. Katie’s uncle pulls up in his red pick-up truck, saying Jake got out and is running around the neighborhood. Katie hops in with him and they speed off to find the dog after instructing her sister to meet them at the other house when their mom is done. As Katie and her uncle pull out of the driveway her mom hangs up and starts shaking the phone in frustration, muttering curses they can’t hear.

Katie’s sister is taking Jake by the collar as she pulls up with her uncle.

“Yeah, I figured he’d circle back around,” says Katie.

“That’s great. Goofy dog.”

They part ways and the girls travel on to lunch in a funk brought on by the phone call. Katie’s mom cries. Lunch goes wonderfully; Katie’s aunt completely distracts and diverts the three girls. As they walk in Katie leans over to her sister.

“Hey, our moms are taking us to lunch,” she whispers.

Her sister laughs at the thought and quickly shares the joke with the two older women. After lunch the girls split off once more, striking out into the city. But the funk returns and after two stores they give up and head home, completely skipping the movie. Only after the kids get home from school do they start to perk up. By the end of the night they are having a fun time once more, but Katie feels a blotch on her memory where their fun day should have gone.

Eight

When Katie talks to her mom she asks, “Do we have a divorce yet?” and the answer this morning is “I don’t know.”

“Just heard from your mom,” says her uncle. “It’s final.”

Katie’s sister walks into the room.

“Hey! We’re divorced!” Katie yells, smiling widely at her little sister.

“Good. I don’t love you like I did yesterday,” she replies, quoting song lyrics.

Katie’s grin can’t be suppressed.

Pondering what to say first, Katie is surprised to see a message notification pop up. She clicks it and it’s from Him. No mention of today’s event, it’s about a missing library book. Well, three. So Katie bites her tongue and holds back her vitriol until she resolves the book crisis. Librarians are mean and she wants Him to handle it. Consider it an early birthday present, she says, willing to exchange another half-hearted attempt at a gift with something which will actually contribute to humanity. Hopefully they buy three new books about Pakistan, she thinks, bitter that the lost books weren’t even published in her lifetime.

Seven

An electrical signal travels down the headphone wires, triggering the cone to vibrate, creating sounds. The vibrations translate into four cellos in Katie’s brain as her ears relay the raw data of the vibrations. It’s her second favorite cello quartet and her favorite piece by them, the theme from The Magnificent Seven. The beginning is full and thick with harmony, and then one of the cellists drops out to pizzicato the almost-syncopated bassline. The three other cellists break apart from the synchronized harmony to each fill a position in the score, but all melding to create a vivid sound picture of hired guns saving the day in Old Mexico. Two of the cellists rejoin each other, one plays the high melody while the other harmonizes a third down. Katie can see each line of music in her head from the sound, but the piece is so magical to her that the technical knowledge of how the harmonies are created does not dampen her enjoyment.

Relaxing into the music, Katie opens her eyes, wondering when they fluttered shut. It’s time to get to work. But doing what? The day before a friend had sent her a message about her writing, after reading the first few chapters of her work in progress. The glowing assessment is still swirling in her head, as well as the urgent plea. Write, write, write. You may never get a chance like this again. It isn’t verbatim, but the sentiment is there, crashing over her conscious in waves like the ocean. Katie hasn’t seen the ocean in person, but she’s seen the Great Lakes, and it was the largest mass of waters she’d ever seen, so Katie amends the mental image in her mind. The words are lapping at her mind, rolling in, like the morning tide she saw beating the beach in Vermilion, Ohio.

What was I doing? Oh yeah, work. Stop getting distracted.

Katie hesitates, unsure. She needs to get back to work on her novel, but she’s a touch stuck. On the other hand, she also wants to start a book review blog. It is part of her self-improvement campaign, Operation Be a Better Writer by Being a Better Reader: 2011 Edition.

I might as well make the book blog. I have a book to review, after all.

So she opens a browser and logs onto Blogger. While she sets up the new blog she ponders what to say about the book she needs to review. She loved the book, but that hardly makes for an interesting blog post. It was a love story between an American girl sent to a boarding school in Paris for her senior year of highschool and the American-French guy who was raised in England living in the room above her at the school. Katie suspects the realness of the unreal circumstances is what she admires about the book, but isn’t sure all her love of the novel can be attributed to “realness.” Besides, when does real life have purely realistic circumstances? As Sir Arthur Conan Doyle said, “Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We would not dare to conceive the things which are really mere commonplaces of existence. If we could fly out of that window hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove the roofs, and peep in at the queer things which are going on, the strange coincidences, the plannings, the cross-purposes, the wonderful chains of events, working through generations, and leading to the most outré results, it would make all fiction with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale and unprofitable.”

Katie’s life doesn’t feel real sometimes. Every time she tries to explain the happenings of the past year she sees her listener’s face grow more and more confused. The look of total shock and disbelief which dawns over a person’s face the second, third, or even fourth time Katie repeats herself is her signal that the person has finally started to grasp what she’s saying. It is all a bit fantastical, but it’s the truth, at least as near as she knows it to be. Her mom walks in the room, breaking her reverie.

“The vet called.”

Katie perks up, yanking off her headphones.

“Is he okay? What did the vet say?”

Her black Labrador, German Shepherd mix named Jake got sick while He was watching him and everyone thought he was going to die. Katie didn’t want to lose one more thing in her life. Especially since this one could be her fault. The dog had gotten into a box of rat poison the day before going to say with Him. However, all her frantic research said the amount her dog had ingested would have little affect on a dog over fifty pounds. Jake didn’t get sick until he’d been with Him for a few days. Katie knew dogs have a much faster digestive track than humans, which is part of the reason they don’t get sick from eating all the gross stuff they eat; their bodies dispose of the food faster. So the poison should have been absorbed sooner, Katie should have seen the effect of the poison the day it happened. Not when she got back from working on the new house to find her dog passing blood in his urine, huddled in the back yard in the sub-zero temperatures.

Katie listens as her mom relays what little information he vet has to offer. Jake seems to be fine, most of his ails, like favoring his hind legs, seem to be from old age, not disease. But, the vet concedes, Jake doesn’t seem to be a complainer. He’s being given medication for his stomach and sent home. Katie smiles, feeling encouraged.

“He’s been so much happier since we picked him up again” she says. Her mom nods.

Katie wants to kill Him. This is just the latest in a long line of neglect and abuse perpetrated against her pets. They had a beautiful, white Turkish Angora cat with a blue eye and a gold eye. She was the sweetest cat and completely deaf. He kicked her in the head every time he caught the cat inside after Katie, her sister, and her mom left. He never let Katie’s personal companion, a special needs Border Collie, Shetland Sheepdog mix named Lilli, or her sister’s dog, a little Jack Russell Terrier mix named Jadzia, outside to use the bathroom, leaving them locked in their crates and yelling at them for barking. Jake’s companion, a black Lab named Jewel, ran away because she wasn’t getting the love she needed. Katie sighs unhappily, remembering the way Jewel used to lean against people, even while walking, after being rescued from the animal shelter, as if she was weary of the world and needed someone to lean on. The crazy, little Calico, Tonks, ran away for the same reason, but she stayed close, adopting the next door neighbor.

Katie hated herself for not being able to do anything about it the first couple months. She didn’t have a place for the pets to go. But eventually she found them homes, good homes, and now all of them were placed, those that hadn’t run away. That’s what was so unhealthy about Him. He made her hate herself for the things He did. Not fair.

Katie wants a pet, something to love and care for, and something to love her back, giving her care simply by being there. There’s no possibility in her mind though. Dogs and cats need a stable home, and Katie can’t offer that. She gave up on rodents and hermit crabs, and knows she can never have a reptile while in her mother’s home. Not that she’d want one anyways. Okay, maybe if snakes didn’t eat mice she’d be interested. Despite her hatred of mice in the house, she can’t bear the thought of feeding them to a predator. Maybe I’ll get plants. I can commit to a plant or two.  Katie is reminded of a boy in her English class who described the room he’d left behind when he went to college. According to him he had filled it with plants as well as the back porch just off the room. He talked for almost half an hour about his plants. Plant Boy is now synonymous with Cat Lady in her mind. Well, Katie will just have to be tasteful about it, maybe a few fanciful terrariums for growing moss to decorate her desk and a couple airplants to hang from her ceiling. Tasteful. Though none of the little plants would be as beautiful as her rosebush at His house, the one she’d nursed for years, growing it into a large, strong plant. It had a bumper crop this year. Katie could pick a dozen deep red roses off it a couple times a week. It was still flowering when they left to get away from Him in October and now it was ratty and covered in rosehips. Katie wished she could prune the plant. If the rosehips remained, it would go dormant, putting all its energy towards nurturing the seeds rather than making flowers next spring. But maybe taking a season off to nurture new growth isn’t a bad thing. Katie resigns herself to a summer without roses.

Six

I sense a disturbance in the force, Katie thinks before looking up from the story she’s reading on her computer. Her cousins are arguing, each making his or her case in front of Katie and her sister, trying to talk over each other. Her sister is trying to listen, but Katie had been unconsciously drowning them out. They’d just been upstairs cleaning their rooms, but they must have stopped long enough in order to get into a fight.

“Okay, okay. That will do! What the heck is this all about?” Katie says over the cacophony, snapping the laptop lid closed.

“She stole my car!” the little boy accused.

“It’s my car,” says the girl.

“No!”

“Yeeeees!”

“Stop! Enough. Both of you,” Katie adds as the girl starts to open her mouth in protest. The girl is holding the car, a red and black matchbox car. “Time to go all King Solomon on this thing. Dude, what did you name the car?”

The boy crosses his arms and glares at her, pouting. “Why would I name a car? That’s silly!”

“Are you kidding? That’s like the number one guy thing to do with cars.” Katie’s sister says, backing her up. Unfortunately, his expression does not change. The light-hearted tactic isn’t going to work today; it’s always a long shot.

“Did you name it?” Katie asks the girl.

“I’m not a guy.”

And yet you are fighting with your brother over Hotwheels. Katie is distracted from her snark as the two siblings start talking over each other again.

“ENOUGH!” Wrath of Katie time. “Give me the car,” The little girl starts to protest, but gives it to Katie after receiving a don’t-mess-with-me-or-else look. “Now, I think everyone is hungry right now, and I know everything is more dramatic when you’re hungry. So, I’m going to keep this car with me while I make lunch. We will deal with the car situation in two hours after everyone has been fed and started digesting. Okay?”

Both of the children protest, but the boy protests the loudest.

“Listen, the only way to be fair to both of you is for me to keep the car until we sort through this. I want to be fair, so neither can have the car right now. Okay, buddy?”

“Fine,” he grumbles.

“Good. Now, both of you go back to your rooms and clean. I’ll holler when lunch is ready.”

The boy does as she says, but the girl hangs back.

“Okay, you can give me the car back now,” she says in hushed tones, holding her hand out to Katie.

“No, sweetie. I meant it. I am going to be fair.”

The girl stares at her, hand still outstretched.

“Go clean. Now.”

The girl blinks, turns, and trudges back up the stairs to her room to digest what happened.

“Dang, you are mean,” says Katie’s sister.

“I know, but she doesn’t care about the car. She’s bored and trying to get a rise out of him. I’m not putting up with that. If she’s bored she can clean, that’s what I had to do when I was her age and tormenting you.”

Her sister nods.

“Besides, they aren’t going to remember that I’m supposed to fix this in two hours anyways.”

“Clever.”

Katie shrugs, hoping she’s right. She gets up and puts lunch on, two small frozen pizzas, before returning to her laptop. Facebook has three new notifications: a friend liking her status, a friend request, and a message. Katie ignores the like, notes that the friend request is from Him and pauses only a moment before confirming the “friendship.” She swallows down her emotions, turning her attention to the message. It’s a note from her best friend newly returned from a North Carolina Christmas trip. The message is sweet and supportive and Katie wishes her friend were sitting next to her on the couch so she could give her a giant hug.

“Is that from Esther?” Katie’s sister asks, leaning over her shoulder.

“Yep.”

“Did she survive her trip with the million children?”

“There aren’t a million,” Katie says automatically.

Esther does have several siblings, six to be specific, and only one of which is older. Katie wonders how Esther would have handled a squabbling eleven and nine year old. In becoming a mixed family, Katie has realized she is now a brand new older sister for her cousins. She’s used to bossing and being in charge of her own sister, but for years they’d been close to equals. Katie knows she doesn’t control her sister in most areas, so she doesn’t try. The age gap between her and her cousins is proving difficult. She is seven years the superior to the girl, and nine to the boy. I’m the Mr. Darcy to their Georgiana, she thinks. Discipline is a challenge because she wants to strike a balance between playmate and responsible party. Her performance has made the children meek as they clean their rooms, and her girl cousin is downright offended that her partner-in-crime didn’t take her side.

I need my Charlotte Lucas. Oh, but I’m Mr. Darcy. And Esther is way smarter than Charlotte anyways. She’s my Jane? Okay, I have to be Lizzy, this just isn’t going to work out otherwise. But Jane wasn’t awesome like Esther. Maybe this is Sense and Sensibilities instead and I’m Colonel Brandon, my cousins are Marianne, and Esther is Elinor. I always loved Elinor.

The parallel is nearer to correct, but still off, so Katie abandons the thought. Reaching into her pants pocket she pulls out the matchbox car, placing it on a shelf by the kitchen sink. After lunch the kids have all but forgotten “Mean Katie” and are begging her to play.

When Katie gets a glass of water before bed that night she sees the car on the shelf and smiles. Mission accomplished. The kids never once asked her about the toy again. Maybe Katie is ready to be a big sister again after all.

Five

“Your uncle had an idea.”

“Oh?” Katie addresses her aunt, raising an eyebrow.

“We’d fix up the back room for your mom, your sister would live in the room behind the laundry room and you’d share a room with your cousin.”

There’s a room behind the laundry room? What the heck?

“That’s so Full House, I love it,” says Katie. “Ooo! Ooo! Can I be Uncle Joey?”

“I want to be Uncle Jesse!” her sister shouts.

“It wouldn’t be Full House, it would just be our mixed family,” says Katie’s uncle. She smiles at him. Moments like that she feels a little corner of her plundered heart replenish. Its darkness lightens just the tiniest of shades.

Katie is still exhausted from her weekend labors. Crashing on her uncle’s familiar couch, Katie thanks her lucky stars for her mixed family. A girl who moves four and a half times in the space of a year becomes keenly aware that home is not a place, it is people. Katie is at home with her mixed family, a term her great-grandfather coined the summer before when everyone was with him, taking care of him in his final days. A piece of Katie’s home died with her grandfather, and a piece died when He decided Katie and her sister and her mom weren’t enough, but Katie is far from homeless. No matter where she is, she’s at home with her mixed family.

Four

Katie sighs, silently cursing technology. She hadn’t wanted to believe it was an innocent mistake, but it seems it was. He hit a wrong button in the Facebook settings and blocked everyone from seeing his wall. More than anything, Katie hates being wrong, be it an issue of the brain or heart, she hates being wrong. Katie was wrong in both areas. Wrong to assume and wrong to pounce on the opportunity. She sends him an email after unblocking him, telling him she was wrong and that she was big enough to admit it, and she is sorry.

Katie pushes the mini-drama from her mind. Today was bigger than Facebook. Today she moved the last of her things from his house. Katie sighs. Her thoughts are all a mix and even her moody stomach is unsure what to feel. Except, when she thinks of it, Katie is starving. She pads into the kitchen, toasting a bagel before bed.

She faces a heavy workload again tomorrow, and she can’t even imagine what she’ll feel like at the end. She’s exhausted in every way. So Katie eats her bagel and goes to bed. She’ll figure out what moving out meant later. After the move.