There was a blizzard for the first couple days of February, senior year. The snow slammed up against our doors and laid in deep sheets across our front yards, and when it finally ended, there was a week break before school started again.

I remember how I spent most of the days looking out my bedroom window, trying to make something out of the blotted-out blankness. To pass the time, I grabbed a stack of printer paper and tore each one into a square. It was Valentine's Day in a week, so I spent my borrowed time to make a gift for him.

Then I got a thin-tipped sharpie and my old cursive handwriting book, painstakingly inscribing the origami cranes' wings with lyrics. I still have one: Chandler's favorite, New Year's Day. It's right here, beside me on my desk, dark and blotted letters along its crisp edges, I will be with you again, I will begin again...

But as I wasted the days away, my mother wasted herself on the couch, eyes bleary, mind fuzzy. Smile wrinkles dissolving into her skin. Her fingers slack around the bottle of Jack Daniel's. She left that place only for the bathroom to heave up the juice, sometimes to go to the bar, using the money I scraped together to buy herself a high. Mom had a cracked sense of reality, and I own exactly one family picture that tells me otherwise. She's smiling, and she's with Dad.

Since Dad's gone, she's not smiling. Simple math.

I never knew him. They had sex and then he died, that's it. That's it, I say, but not really. He's the reason why my mom never left the couch, why I had to eat fifty-cent noodles for dinner and work at McFarland's on weekends to scrounge up cash. He's the reason why I had to show Chandler how fucking shallow I am, and I'm so damn sorry, I really am.

I don't know how she even made it up to my room. By pulling herself up the stairs, or maybe she'd become better-versed in drunk movement than I first believed. But she was there, watching me in the doorway with this sunken glare that slung itself across the room and itched at my neck. I stopped folding, a chill sweeping down my spine. I remember taking this deep breath, because I knew she was there, and it daunted me more than I thought anything could.

I swiveled around. Her eyes were the first thing I saw, glazed over and unfocused, like she couldn't stare at one thing. I hadn't noticed the thin, sickly quality to her lips, how they were so pale against her sagging skin. Her hair clumped in unkept snarls. Her words, muddled with the bottle of Johnny Walker she bore at her waist.

"Wha' kinda shit y'pullin'?" She slurred, and a nervous jolt shot through me. She leaned against the doorway, off-balance. "Who you writin'?"

"I... Don't you remember Chandler, Mom?" I stood up, despite every nerve in my arm prickling. At the disgusted shake of her head, I tried to find the best order of words that wouldn't send her knocking Johnny Walker over my head. "He's my... my boyfriend. Mom—"

"Care more 'bout your fuckin' boyfrien' than me..." she murmured, lip curling. "We're outta money, girl. Where'd it go?"

"I'm buying the cheapest food I can, Mom. And you know I'm working at McFarland's, that's where all the money comes from, and they don't pay in fortunes—"

"I don't fuckin' care where th'fuck you're gettin't," she growled, narrowing her gaze. "You're spendin' it on y'ur fuckin' boyfrien'."

"I... No!" I scrambled up from my chair, towards Mom. She crinkled her nose in disgust.

"G'your shit togeth', gir'." She slumped a bit, fingers clawing at the doorframe. "Get y'ur ass t'Farlan o'wha'ever." Mom took a gulp of Johnny Walker, straight out of the bottle, and turned her back to me in revulsion.

I caught her shoulder, but she kept stumbling away. "Don'you fuckin' touch me till y'get som' buck."

I stopped, hand outstretched, the feel of her shoulder still scalding on my fingertips. She tripped on the third step down the stairs, and maybe I should have left her there. She deserved it.

Maybe she didn't deserve it. Either way, I gripped her arms and carefully pulled her down the stairs, cautious of her head knocking against the lip of each step. She looked so peaceful once I lifted her into her spot on the couch, but it still felt like some kind of wrong, some kind of discomfort that niched in my head.

It felt like a disservice to leave her there. So I flicked her the double-bird, and for a moment, the scales almost felt balanced.

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Published 12-2-16
Next chapter 12-5-16