Personal Effects by E. M. Kokie Read Free Book Online Page B

far away to drive back and forth. When he was away, we planned parties just for us, and indoor picnics, or went to the lake until dark.
    But even when Dad was around, a lot of the time Mom would make us our own dinner before Dad got home. We’d have breakfast for dinner, or tacos, hot dogs, or pizzas with faces out of the toppings, things that were more fun than the boring food Dad wanted. And we talked, and made up stories, and laughed. She had a great laugh. When she laughed. When things were good. Before it all went to hell.
    Before that summer ended, things were different. Mom was different. Some days she wouldn’t even get out of bed.
    Mom walked me into preschool that first day, but she started freaking out when it was time to leave, and Mrs. Gruber had to calm her down.
    By Halloween Mrs. Gruber was picking me up most days and taking me to her house until Dad got home. Mom rallied around Christmas, but was all weird again by Valentine’s Day. In April, I came home one day and she was gone.
    A few months after Mom left, we heard she was in Philadelphia, living in the basement of a church or something. An hour away, and it might as well have been the other side of the world.
    When the police came to the door to tell Dad she was dead, Dad didn’t invite them in. If there was a funeral, no one told me.
    Dad moved us to the new house a couple months after Mom died, four blocks from the old one. None of the pictures of Mom or her things came with us, not even the big picture of all four of us that had hung in the hall my whole life.
    After we moved, Shauna didn’t come over as much, but we still spent more time together than apart on weekends — at least for a while. Then she found soccer, and a whole bunch of new friends, girl friends. Later, the guys who hung around her girl friends. One day I looked up and she had a boyfriend, and huge tits, and everything about her made me hard. But to her, I was still just her old friend Matt.
    It’s been getting harder to ignore how hard she is to ignore. Sometimes it’s so stupid — she does something with her hand or mouth or laughs at a joke or, hell, sits too close, and I’m scrambling for cover. I have to remind myself not to stare.
    She has soccer, and her other friends, her “girls’ nights,” and sometimes a party. Sometimes she goes on dates, and I sit home and try not to think about what she could be doing.
    I have her calls and her texts, car rides to and from school, and a night or two a week when it’s just us — not to mention all my fantasy versions of her, who fill in when she’s off having a life.
    And since November, we have all this new weirdness — mostly mine, I know — getting in the way. She’d been busy all fall, fitting me in, between everything and everyone else. I was pissed at her. Sometimes even at the fantasy versions of her. But when we heard, I couldn’t call her, couldn’t say it, and I’m not sure she’s ever going to forgive me for her having to hear that T.J. was dead from someone else.
    Still, after T.J. died, she was right there, whenever I thought I’d lose it. But it got so that I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t tell her what I needed — too close to saying what I wanted, and I felt like shit for wanting anything when he was dead.
    She spent one too many nights trying to carry a conversation by herself, then she pushed a little too hard and I said some stuff I can never take back, about how she’ll never understand. For a few weeks, we hardly talked at all. Things got better for a while, but not back to where we were. There’s only so much of her worried looks I can take, but at least now I bail before I can say something to make her go away for good.
    Dad’s recliner creaks and groans overhead. I can track his bedtime routine by the sounds. Slow steps to the kitchen. The water runs as he washes his glass. After the water, he checks the back door — open, close, lock. Lights off. Then down the hall and up the stairs,