Cracked by Walton K. M

Author:Walton, K. M. [Walton, K. M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Published: 2012-01-03T00:00:00+00:00

Victor

BULL STOPS CURSING AND CRYING AND IT IS QUIET. I lie back on my bed even though it’s the middle of the day. What the hell else do I have to do? Silence always makes my mind go deep; I usually try to make it come up for air and get out of the murky depths. But I let it go this time. You think I’d be reliving the whole Nikole moment, but no, I sink down . . . down . . . down . . . down. . . .

My parents leave me home from our family vacation so I can get perfect SAT scores. My parents leave me behind. On purpose. Not like in Home Alone. It was a real decision—and I know it made them happy. This makes me sick and angry.

I start sweating. I turn over on my stomach and breathe rage into my pillow. I’m almost sure I hate my parents.

I struggle for a few minutes to conjure one good thing about them. Memories invade my dive into blackness, pulling me closer to the surface.

My mom is brilliant with wound care. Not that I got hurt a lot, but she would always swoop in with her first aid kit and bandage me up. Like when I fell off of my bike in fourth grade and ripped my knee wide open. It was so bad you could see bone. Did she get all woozy and call for my father? No, she calmly held the cut closed with one hand and worked the first aid kit with the other. But on the way to the emergency room, I distinctly remember her ruining the moment with, “Now, Victor, if that bandage isn’t sufficient to stop your bleeding, please tell me immediately. I don’t want your blood ruining the seats in my car. Do you understand me?”

Tenderness.

But I have this other memory that I’m not entirely sure I haven’t imagined. I was four, and I had woken up in the middle of the night because of a bad thunderstorm. I remember walking into my parents’ bedroom and tapping my mother awake. She had smiled, pulled the covers back, and patted the bed. I had crawled into my mother’s warm arms, and she’d kissed the back of my head. I’d laid still and remember telling myself not to move because I didn’t want to be told to go back to my own bed, alone. I had felt perfect. I had felt safe. I had felt loved.

I don’t think it really happened. My mother isn’t capable of such compassion. I think I cooked it up just to make my mom seem human. More like an actual mom, you know?

I’ve never asked my mother if it was real, and I never will, because I know she’d tell me I was being ridiculous or pathetic or ludicrous. She’d say I must’ve made it up.

And then I’d be left with nothing.

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