Before You Go by James Preller

Author:James Preller
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Young Adult
ISBN: 9781429955300
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Published: 2012-07-17T15:12:03+00:00

FIFTEEN

Jude hit the snooze button three times before rising. He felt sour, his mouth stale and parched, his teeth wearing sweaters after a night of too much rum and coke and heartache. The house was silent. Jude shambled into the bathroom for a long, reviving shower. It helped. Failing to find a fresh work shirt, Jude fished the cleanest dirty shirt from the hamper. Sniffed it, frowned: pretty ripe. The shirt matched his mood. Mad at the world.

In the kitchen, Jude gulped a tall glass of orange juice. A note on the counter informed him that his father had gone out for a long, slow run. His father ran to get away from it all, yet despite all the hours logged and miles slogged, he always returned to the same place; the road never rose to lift him to some new, shimmering elsewhere.

Jude considered himself a different kind of runner entirely. First of all, his father jogged; Jude ran. Big diff. His father was one of those old guys who stopped after his run, winded and panting, two fingers on his neck, counting the beats of his pulse while he stared at the watch on his wrist. Goofy shit, if you asked Jude. A lot of times, Jude headed out in just a pair of shorts. No shirt, no shoes, a barefoot runner in the burbs. Nobody could say nothing, because Jude was faster than them all.

His mother was a notorious late riser; Jude rarely saw her before he left for work. He knew he should eat, so cracked three eggs into a bowl, scrambled them with a fork, and added a splash of milk while a slab of butter sizzled in the skillet. Jude tossed torn pieces of ham into a second, smaller pan. He had grown into a capable cook, and ham and cheese omelets were his specialty. His mother wasn’t big on sit-down meals these days—or had the days becomes years?—so Jude was used to fending for himself. She used to have a job, selling medical supplies, but after Lily passed, things changed. She eventually got laid off for missing too many days and …

After Lily passed.

That phrase again.

Those three words like a sword that severed his life in two.

It was how everyone talked. Empty words in hushed, polite tones. After Lily passed.

Passed? Past? And what of the present? It was defined by absence, what was no longer there. The empty mirror after someone walks away.

Lily was dead and that was that, no other way to skin the cat, yet she came to his mind every day. A visitor, a neighbor ringing the bell. Here to borrow a cup of sugar? Or with some other intent? Why ask why. Sometimes he called for her, conjured up images like a sorcerer. Lily at play, her lithe body wriggling inside a hula-hoop, the family cheering, “Go, girl, go!” The two of them drawing shoulder to shoulder on the hardwood floor. At Lily’s urging, Jude copied comics from the newspaper and she colored them in.

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