Click to Subscribe - By L. M. Augustine Page 0,6

worth it.

Next I pull out a spoon from the drawer by the sink, hop up on the kitchen counter, and speed-eat my breakfast. Milk and cereal go flying everywhere and I’m sure I look like the breakfast equivalent of the Cookie Monster, but I don’t care. It’s not like the manner standards without Mom here are all that high.

My dad sits at the opposite end of the room. He eats his breakfast of toast and hardboiled eggs without meeting my gaze or so much as acknowledging my presence in the slightest. Dark circles rim his eyes, and even his glasses, which sit atop his thin nose, can’t hide the faint bloodshot tone to them. He’s been drinking again, I can tell. He’s always drinking nowadays.

After a second, a wave of nausea comes over me and I can’t look at him anymore, so I try to focus on something else in the room, anything but seeing his face. I shift my gaze to the refrigerator.

It’s white and peeling, with photos of Mom scattered all across it. I lean in, squinting a little. Some of them are older, fading pictures of Mom and Dad when they first met as teenagers, of them chasing each other on the beach post-college, and even snippets of their wedding where they’re smiling and hugging and looking so happy together—like a real couple. Like they used to be.

Then there are some pictures of me with her, me with dad, me with both of them. A drawing I made of Mom in second grade hangs in the corner of the refrigerator, depicting what’s really a stick figure with a straight line over her head that’s apparently supposed to symbolize hair, and beside it the note I wrote to her before I left for slumber camp for the first time, as well as a picture I took of Mom wearing shutter-shade glasses about a year ago, after she informed me she was going to become a hipster and “follow the teenage trends.” I laughed at her then and made fun of the insane poses she did with those glasses. I mean, she looked like a complete idiot, but she had no shame about it, either. And that’s what I miss—how she was her own person, how she never cared what anyone thought, only what she thought of herself.

I’m smiling now, but I’m not laughing with her anymore. Just like I have every day for the past six months, instantly, I regret taking her for granted. I regret just assuming she’d be there for me when I wake up in the morning, thinking she’d always be home cooking dinner for me and humming Elvis songs to herself since according to her, “Elvis is a god.” I regret not telling her how much she meant to me, how much I’d miss her, how devastated I’d be to see her go. If I could have one more second more with her, I would spend it whispering how much I love her into her ear and hugging her, just hugging her, and not letting go until she’s finally slipped away into nothing.

Most of all, I regret losing her. I regret letting her go without a fight, just like that. I don’t want to make those mistakes again. I don’t want to see anyone else leave, don’t want my heart to be ripped to shreds all over again.

I’m almost… afraid to love anyone else again. I want to be happy, and all love has done for me in life is stab me in the back.

After a while Dad looks up from his newspaper and glares at me from the kitchen table. I feel his gaze on me, and I sigh a little, pushing away the memories of Mom. I turn back to him, not wanting to look at him but not having the energy to fight it.

He looks terrible, as usual. Between his fading gray hair, his worn face, and the sad, empty look in his eyes, he looks so bad that I’m almost tempted to pity him. Hell, I would pity him, but after treating me and my mom like shit for the past year, the man is going to have to look a hell of lot worse to get any sympathy from me.

“Going to school?” Dad says, scowling.

This time, I don’t meet his gaze. I drop my spoon into my half-empty bowl of cereal, suddenly not hungry anymore. “Yes, Dad, it’s a Monday. That’s what normal people do on Mondays: they go