Gram knew just how to cheer me up without even trying. With my parents gone, she was the one person who knew me better than anyone else. She knew what my reaction would be before I did, and she went out of her way to make sure that nothing within her power had the opportunity to upset me. Thus, the visit when I had my braces taken off. The braces that my parents had saved up for and been so proud of. I hadn’t been able to brush it off like I’d pretended.

After her visit, Asa came to see me again and was able to stay an entire week. He had something going on with the Sacramento Chapter, so he was gone a lot of the time, but I didn’t care. Knowing that he was just minutes away for an entire week had me practically dancing through work and school. Even the drama with Farrah that week hadn’t brought me down.

Farrah’s mom had a falling out with her man, and apparently had gone off the rails. She was partying like it was the end of the world, and Farrah had to deal with junkies and drunken assholes pounding on her locked bedroom door at all hours of the night. There must have been a breaking point—something must have happened—because soon after, Farrah was hot and heavy with Echo and staying with him more than she was home. I tried to talk to her about it, but she was shut up tighter than a bank vault. She’d just roll her eyes and tell me she couldn’t deal with the drama, changing the subject before I learned anything worth knowing. I was a shit friend, because when she changed the subject? I let her.

Because I wasn’t willing to upset the life raft I was on by taking on her problems.

I was an asshole.

That time, when Asa left, I wasn’t as lost. I’d made a pretty steady life for myself in Sacramento, and I was finally comfortable in my surroundings. I knew the neighborhood I was living in, I had a best friend that hung out at the apartment almost every day, I had a decent job that gave me a little bit of spending money, and I knew that Asa and I were solid.

I got good at paying bills and taking out the trash. I figured out which Laundromats always had wet clothes in their washing machines for hours on end and which ones were the cleanest. I figured out how to buy groceries on a budget without living on ramen noodles, and I cut coupons and filled a box in my bedroom closet with free toiletries that would take me years to use up.

I figured out how to take care of myself.

I finished out my junior year of high school, and instead of taking a break, decided to take a few classes that summer. I’d taken extra credits in San Diego, and it left me with a surplus that, with the help of a few summer classes, had me graduating a full year earlier than I was supposed to. Farrah was irritated that I wasn’t going to be able to spend the summer laying out by Echo’s apartment complex’s dilapidated pool, but I knew if I had too much time on my hands, my carefully constructed life would crumble. I couldn’t allow myself to slow down for fear that I would start thinking about things that were better left forgotten.

Once she realized that I couldn’t be swayed, we settled into a life not unlike the one we’d had during school. She was usually at my apartment by the time I got home, and hung out until I had to go to work. I ended up making her a key, and a lot of nights I’d get home to her sleeping on my couch. She rarely went home anymore—the only time she made herself go there was during Asa’s visits, which left me feeling both ecstatic that he was there and guilty that she wasn’t staying.

My life became a monotonous schedule, broken up only by my graduation from high school and Asa’s visits. I planned everything around them, eventually making every visit an event that I spent weeks planning for. I began waxing my legs, armpits and girly bits the week before I knew he was scheduled to come. I cleaned the house from top to bottom and filled the fridge in preparation for another person sharing my space.

We became more and more comfortable with each other, bickering about stupid things and feeling free to vent our frustrations. “The Fight”, as I remembered it in my mind, was slowly forgotten as we settled more into our relationship. I was no longer worried that he would forget me once he was in Oregon, and he no longer stressed about how I was handling life alone. We turned into a couple like any other long-distance couple, spending time every day to talk or text each other, and fucking like rabbits when we were in the same zip code.

Over time, my life became measured by how long it had been since I’d seen him. It was a sequence of, “two weeks until Asa comes” or “only two days since Asa left”.

My world revolved around him, even when he was hundreds of miles away.

If I still woke up occasionally from nightmares, I pretended like I didn’t. When Cody called and didn’t sound right, I bolstered him until he sounded normal, and when I hung up I pushed the conversations to the back of my mind. I didn’t think of my parents, or the worst twenty-four hours of my life. I didn’t wish for things I couldn’t have.

I refused to worry about how deep Farrah was falling in with Echo.

I refused to get upset when Gram visited and she had to go back to San Diego, leaving me alone once again.

And I absolutely refused to acknowledge that over the course of that year, Asa’s visits became further and further apart.

Chapter 40

Callie

My eighteenth birthday began like any other day of the year. I had a hard time making a big deal out of becoming an adult when I’d already been one for so long.

I’d been promoted to manager of the restaurant I worked at right after I’d graduated. I thought the owner was an idiot for making a seventeen-year-old a manager after a few months, but I wasn’t about to argue with him. The boob ogler had been caught grabbing the asses of other employees and was fired, and I think the owner just didn’t want to deal with hiring someone older. All of the employees were in high school, or drop outs, and I was the cream of the crop—as sad as that was.