Uncle Timothy.
He was my father’s brother who lived four hours away, up north. My grandma, really the only family member my parents had forced us around when we were younger, had been put into a nursing home a couple years ago with Alzheimer’s. My sister and I had one more aunt, but she lived in a different country due to work, and that was about all the family members we had.
Uncle Timothy was it.
He was also a recovering alcoholic who had a serious gambling problem – hence the reason that all the money my parents had to their name was already gone. He paid off his debts in order to stay out of jail…in other words, in order to be considered a “fit” guardian.
I should feel thankful that he’d taken us in. If it weren’t for him, my sister and I would have been thrown into foster care, at least according to CPS, who had taken us in for the couple days that it took to get things settled with my uncle. They had to come up with a plan, figure out the money issue, and so on.
I no longer had my cell phone, I no longer had the clothes that I’d obtained over the years from shopping with my mom…I had absolutely nothing, except for my sister and the clothes on my back.
We didn’t even get to have a funeral for my parents because, well, my parents couldn’t exactly be buried, as their bodies had been burnt beyond recognition (not that I’d actually seen them; I couldn’t even bear the thought), and who was going to pay for that? According to my uncle on the first night he brought us home, as he made us mac n’ cheese from a box with the stupid SpongeBob characters on it, funerals were expensive and he couldn’t afford one. But once we got some more money, we would do something special. As if doing something special would close the wide, gaping holes in our hearts. Yeah, okay.
My uncle wasn’t a bad guy. In fact, he was really nice to us. But he wasn’t parent material. He was nothing like my father, which was probably why we’d never really seen him much over the years. Their relationship had been strained. My father had been the successful owner one of the best car dealerships in town, whereas my uncle was basically the black sheep of the family.
Uncle Timothy ended up getting me a job working at a pizza parlor, and thankfully my sister and I didn’t have to finish the last couple weeks of school, given the circumstances. I just hated that everyone at the pizza parlor looked at me as if I was about to burst into tears at any given second.
Which would be accurate, if I’d felt anything at all.
My uncle had pulled me aside a day ago, while Mia was taking a shower, worry lines making permanent wrinkles in his forehead.
“Kid, you’ve gotta work on trying to cope sooner or later. I’m getting concerned.”
I just looked up at him, not moving a single inch of my face.
He swallowed, looking away for a brief second. “I know it’s hard, Ivy. I know this isn’t ideal. You and Mia had amazing parents and now you have this…” His tanned arms fanned out around him, urging me to take a look at the house.
The kitchen was so outdated that it belonged in a 70’s sitcom. Pale green countertops and dark wooden cabinets lined the walls. The floor was tiled with strange yellowish designs on every inch, making it almost painful to look at. My uncle barely knew how to make a grilled cheese sandwich and although he made enough to support us, he liked to gamble all his money away, which was exactly why he’d gotten me a job. I was going to have to start paying for stuff on my own, now that I didn’t have my parents. It felt like a slash to my heart and that slash was opening wider each day.
He was right, though.
If there was anything I’d learned from the past three weeks, it was that life wasn’t fair. Sometimes we were given certain circumstances that were almost unfathomable to deal with, but that’s just the thing: you either deal with them or they’ll just take you down in their midst. I was learning that pretty quickly. I felt like I was just constantly drowning, except instead of waving my arms frantically above the stormy waters for someone to save me, I was tying a ball and chain to my leg to drag me further below the surface. If I didn’t deal with this profound hurt eventually, it was going to swallow me up whole.
My voice was no more than a peep. “Can I use your phone.”
It wasn’t even a question. Just a plain statement, lacking any kind of enthusiasm or hope.
“Of course,” he said, almost excited that I was actually talking. “Just try to make it quick. It’s a TracFone and I only have a few minutes left until my next paycheck.”
I nodded as I dialed the only number I knew: Becca’s home line. I instantly regretted using a cell phone and programming everyone I knew to their own special speed dial number because now I didn’t know anyone’s number.
And by anyone, I meant Dawson.
We rarely called each other, anyway. We were always together.
The phone rang and rang and rang and if I had been feeling any type of hope…it would have been long gone.
I left her a message, brief but to the point. I told her that I needed her to call me back, at my uncle’s number, but more importantly, I needed her to tell Dawson that I was okay, and that I’d see him soon. My heart almost felt something, thinking about him.
As soon as I hung up, I glanced at the Playboy calendar hanging crookedly on my uncle’s refrigerator. It was May. Becca and her family were more than l
ikely on their summer vacation which they took every single May during the last week of school. They’d been doing that for years now, like clockwork.
I knew what I needed to do.
I knew what I needed to do in order to stop feeling like I was a hollow tree without any feelings at all.
I needed my best friend.