All We Have Left by Wendy Mills

Author:Wendy Mills [Mills, Wendy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781619633445
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2016-06-14T04:00:00+00:00

As I bike toward home, I slow near Teeny’s house, seeing Emi’s car in her driveway. I wonder what would happen if I went up to the door and knocked. Would Teeny say, “Yeah, no, loser, climb back into your hole” and slam the door in my face? I’d seen my friends’ faces when I went back to school. I wasn’t the person they thought I was.

My phone dings, and I see that I have a message from Deka.

Hank says look in his closet, the Tupperware container with blue lid in the back.

Dad has been different in the weeks since Mom left, and he exploded at me for asking what Travis was doing in the towers. While Mom has launched us into a flurry of girl-outings and church services that have left both of us bewildered and exhausted, Dad has gotten quieter and quieter.

But since that night I’ve caught him looking at me a couple of times, a strange expression on his face. He’s stopped watching the news, and now watches fishing shows, or ESPN, and while he still yells at the TV, it’s because someone missed a fish or dropped a ball.

He hasn’t slept in the room that he used to share with my mother.

He’s sitting at the counter doing some paperwork, a pair of glasses perched on the end of his nose. He hates those glasses, hates that he can’t see the way he used to.

“Where were you?” he asks when he sees me.

I hesitate, surprised by the question. I can’t remember the last time he asked where I was.

“Community service,” I say, which is partially true, though I didn’t have to go tonight.

“How are they treating you? Okay?”

“Okay,” I say. “Everybody’s been nice, actually.”

He stares at me a long moment, as if there is more that he wants to say, but then just nods and looks back down at his papers.

Conversation with Dad officially over, but at least it didn’t end with him screaming.

I hurry past him and throw my bag in my room, and then continue down the hall to Hank’s old room. Mom turned it into an office, and it’s full of bookcases and a desk covered with fourth-grade schoolbooks and old tests. I head for the closet, which is jammed full of stuff Hank left when he went away and never came back.

Underneath his ice hockey equipment, I see the clear Tupperware container with a blue top, like the one Mom used to put cupcakes in to send with me to school on my birthday. I pull it out and set it on her desk. I glance guiltily at the closed door, half expecting to see Dad there, and then dig my fingers underneath the plastic lid. It comes loose with a pop. The plastic is old and fragile, and a piece of it breaks off in my fingers.

Inside is an answering machine.

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