Chapter Eight

 After about a month back at school, things were very slowly getting back to normal. Well, I was readjusting to a new normal. I could never go back to my normal. Life without my mom was so hard. I had to figure out where I wanted to live because I just couldn’t live with my grandparents forever, they were getting old and ill. I didn’t know what to do. My mom and I had talked about this once before when she was about to have a huge surgery, but I’d just cried and prayed and it worked. That always used to work. But unfortunately that wasn’t the case anymore. What had happened had happened now I needed to put on my big-girl panties.

     When I was younger my mom was about to get engaged to Dave. I loved Dave. He was, hands-down, my father. Ok, so he wasn’t my father. He was about to be my step-father. He was more of a dad than my dad had ever been to me. I was too little to understand why my mom and Dave broke up. I thought he ditched us. But when my mom died he came back into my life. When this happened, I learned that he was waiting for the love of his life to get better. And she never did. Here I was throwing this huge pity party for myself, but I’m not the only one who lost her. Dave lost the love of his life, Liz lost her little sister, my grandparents lost their youngest daughter, and Bel’s mom, Laura, lost her very best friend. A lot of people lost my mom. 

     But back to Dave. He was now driving me home from school because it was such a long drive out to the island every day, he was doing my grandparents a huge favor. He and Liz were close friends. He wanted me to live with Liz. 

     I was always told that it would be MY choice. That I would get to choose where I wanted to live when my mom passed away. But this could not have been farther from the truth. After everyone in my family tried convincing me to live with Liz and I still said no, I was forced to. I love my Auntie Liz very much but you have to understand, she isn’t the warm and fuzzy type. She hates children. The only little children she ever loved were Richard and I. Richard is my uncle’s son and Lizzie’s step-son. She never babysat me. Her house is always flawless. She cleans every surface, every day. When I was little she always nagged at me for this and that. Still does. She’s obsessed with perfect table manners. So you can see why I was like, no way jose, when everyone was trying to get me to live with her. I guess I could see where they were coming from. Liz and Dick (yes, that is my uncle’s name. It is indeed short for Richard) could support me, give me a good education, and a good life. But we’ll get more into that later on. 

     So I had to decide where I was supposed to live. My other option was Aunt Jojo. Which was just, no. I love Aunt Jo but I hardly knew her because she abandoned our family for most of my childhood. I probably would have lived with her in a heart beat though if she wasn’t married to a man I hardly know or had two teenaged boys of her own. Ugh, if only my mom could be here to help me make this decision. 

     So back at school, things were getting better. And then one day, I ate lunch with Kim and Connor. Now, I so wish I could take back that one lunch. Kim=best friend. Connor=hottest guy in school. Let’s keep in mind that the school was TINY. But still. He was pretty easy on the eyes. We always kind of flirted but he flirted with everyone and I flirted with everyone so it wasn’t like, OMG I AM FLIRTING WITH HIM. No. We were friends, whatever, no big deal. We’d known each other since I came in the seventh grade and occasionally came to each other with relationship problems. 

     We were sitting at lunch and Kim and I were trying to guess who he liked. I loved this game. First I named all the sluts. I probably shouldn’t tell y’all that. But he had a history of being a man of many women. Big red flag. Anywhoser, we had guessed every girl we could think of. It was after lunch that Kim caught up to me and told me, “Connor likes you.” Those three words. Just like that. I really was shocked. Usually during those guessing games, I always kind of consider myself being an option, in the very back of my head. But for Connor, I didn’t even think about it being me at all. I tried brushing it off, maybe she was just making it up. I could not get myself into this. Because I knew I would come out of this black and blue. That’s what happens to normal girls, all love-sick and happy, and then by the time Connor gets done with them they are ruined. Did this stop me? Nope. A few days later he plopped a note right on my desk like, no big deal, I’m just Mr. Cool (I wish y’all could see me rolling my eyes). The note read: Who do you like? I wrote back in my big, bubbly handwriting: No one, why? I had to think about this before I wrote it, actually, because a few days before we got a new kid. His name was Tanner. Let’s be honest here, he was pretty darn cute. But I pretended I didn’t think so because he acted like such a big shot. His second say there he was already trying to get with me. I was sitting in Social Studies totally minding my own business when he hit me with a crumpled up piece of paper that said: You’re hot. I felt my face get hot and a smile spread across my face. I looked up from my notes and realized every single person including the teacher was staring at me. And then of course Josh had to exclaim, “Katie’s bright red! Awwww.” Thank you Josh. I didn’t know Tanner too well but I didn’t really get a chance to give him a chance. 

     I threw the note back at Connor. He read it and kind of half-grinned. I wasn’t sure if I liked the way he did that. I was trying to pay attention to Mrs. Bernal but I was awaiting my note. When it came back, I unfolded it and sure enough it read, in sloppy, boyish handwriting: I like you. Just that simple, huh? Yeah. Just that simple. 

Chapter Seven

     I laughed for a second. It didn’t sound like my laugh. It sounded cold and distant. I didn’t like it at all. My Aunt’s face stayed exactly the same, though. “That’s not funny” I said, “Where is my mom?” She just repeated herself, “She didn’t wake up.” She does that a lot. But she always eventually wakes up. You’re all confused, she will wake up. She will. She has to. I cupped my hands over my mouth, and to my surprise my face was wet. When did I start crying? And then it hit me, it hit hard. I was screaming now. I didn’t really know who I was screaming at, I was just screaming. And crying. A lot. Then I couldn’t breathe and my Nana was rubbing her hands up and down my back, she was starting to cry too. She told me to take deep breaths because I was too worked up. My whole world was spinning out of control. I laid on my Nana’s chest, in that big green chair, and cried, cried for a very long time.

     I felt numb. Completely numb. Jojo gave me a towel and some clean clothes and I took a shower. I sat on the shower floor and cried some more. And then I got into bed with Nana. Papa slept on the couch, his eyes were blood shot, and he looked a billion times older. For the next few days, I didn’t move much from that spot. I laid there and stared at the wall for hours and hours. I barely slept. The next day was kind of a blur but I do remember how terrible it was. Every five minutes, I realized that she was dead, all over again. I literally just relived it over and over and over again. 

     The morning after, I heard the doorbell ring. My Nana came in and told me I had a guest. I didn’t care. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. But then she told me it was Mrs. Beeler, my principal. I finally peeled my eyes off of the wall and looked at her, “are you sure?” I asked. I always kind of thought my principal didn’t like me. I’m not sure why, though. But we sat out on the patio and talked. She told me I could come back to school whenever I was ready. She was so nice about everything, when she left I was so grateful that she had come. I walked her to the door and then I came back into the kitchen realizing that my uncle Gary was there. He was trying to make me eat breakfast but I wasn’t hungry. He made me sit down and eat. He had fixed me a sandwhich and chips and I realized I had no idea when the last time I had eaten was.  So I thanked him for making me eat. But then he made me go on a walk with him. This was pushing it too far. I didn’t want to feel sunshine on my face or wind blowing through my hair. I wanted to stay inside my little cave and be miserable. He was telling me about how he lost his dad when he was three and that I should be thankful because I got to have my mom for fourteen years. At the time, I didn’t care. At the time, I wasn’t “thankful” for anything that was happening to me. The entire time I wanted to just lay in the dark, alone, he kept asking me what I wanted to do with my mom’s body, what I wanted to do for the funeral, or if we should have a memorial service. I didn’t even know what to say, I mean hello? My mother is dead. I thought life as I knew it was just over. How could it ever be the same? How could I ever live without my mom? I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. I wanted her to meet my children. And my husband. I wanted her to walk me down the isle at my wedding. I wanted her to see me go off to college. I wanted her to see me turn sixteen. I wanted her to be there on my very first day of High School and go shopping with me for my senior prom dress. Why on Earth was this happening to me? There are people in this world that rape and murder and steal... I didn’t do anything. Why is this happening to me?

     After four or five days went by I couldn’t stand it anymore. My family was getting on my nerves. I was getting on my nerves. Laying in bed and staring into space all day and all night was getting on my nerves. I didn’t want to keep realizing my mom was dead over and over again. It was exhausting. So I went back to school. It was way too soon to go back. I regret it so much now. I never healed the way I was supposed to. It was like I broke my knee and then instead of resting it, I went out and ran a marathon and then my knee muscles were all screwed up. I never healed the way I was supposed to heal. My family let me go back though, they didn’t really know what to do, wether to let me go or not, because none of us had ever done this before. 

     The minute I got in, JJ came up and hugged me. I was so grateful just to everyone’s familiar faces. Everyone was hugging me and telling me that they were sorry. My friends were talking to me like I was super fragile and I’d just fall apart any second. People stared at me like I was some alien from outer space and any second now I was gonna do something super bizarre. But after a while they got over it. 

     This is where Kylie comes in. Kylie was my rock. She held me together. I spent every single minute of my spare time at her house. It was my escape. A place where I could just let loose and have fun. She was my shoulder to cry on. Literally. I cried and she just listened and hugged me and told me that everything was going to be okay. When I missed my mom, I told her. And she made me feel better. But it hurt so much seeing her fight with her mom. It just stung. I know that’s not her fault because teenagers fight with their parents. But I just wanted her not to take her mom for granted like I took mine for granted. Tomorrow is never promised. People don’t take that saying seriously enough. It’s silly, but don’t hang up the phone without saying I love you. When someone apologizes or wants you to apologize, just do it. Just say you’re sorry. It’s no big deal. 

     Kylie took me under her wing and put me back on my feet again. My favorite memories from her house were the mopeds. Ohhh the mopeds. Her and sister both had one. Who ever invented those things was a super genius. We could fit the both of us, sometimes we tried to cram three people which was so much fun. I remember one time we were driving to her cousin’s house (they live on the other side of the neighborhood) on the moped and I had to sit on the part where you’re supposed to put your feet. The moped was going like super slow because it was Kylie, Jackie, and me. We were laughing the entire way there. When Simone was with us we could all three sit on the seat because Simone was so tiny. Kylie didn’t really trust me driving though because I didn’t really take caution to the stop signs or how fast we were going over bumps. But the wind in your hair is the best feeling in the world. Actually, anything with your best friends is the best thing in the world. 

     Did I already mention Jackie some where in the earlier chapters? Kylie introduced me to her. She is so awesome and crazy and fun. The three of us were invincible. I couldn’t love them anymore if I tried. 

     One night Kylie and I were laying in her bed talking. She had the most incredible view of the bay from her bedroom window and I loved it. I told her how pretty the lights looked on the water every single night. I just loved it. It felt so safe and surreal. I love love loved the talks we had at night, laying in the dark, looking out at the bay. We could talk about absolutely anything. And she told me something that just made my whole life. She said, “You’re really pretty, Katie. Some girls are really pretty, but their personalities aren’t. But you have a great personality which makes you even more beautiful.” I don’t know why that stuck to me. Out of all of the things anyone has ever said to me in my entire life, that was one of the best. I don’t think I’ll ever, ever forget that. 

Chapter Six

The word cancer swirled around in my head. Cancer. My mom does not have cancer.  But I mean, if she did have it, that would explain a lot... All of the symptoms. How could I have missed that? Okay I am definitely not going to beat myself up about this. I am not a doctor and I couldn’t have seen it coming. End of story.

She told me she didn’t know for sure yet but the doctors told her she was most likely going to have radiation soon. Oh God. Radiation. Is it terrible that when I heard the word radiation I was already thinking and I’m going to be the one that has to take care of her. Yes. It is a terrible. But I’d get through this. We would get through this. Together. Like we always do. I’ll just... I’ll start skipping math tutoring, I can always pull my grades back up later. I’ll miss more school and stay home with her. That’s what I’ll do. 

It turns out I had to do this sooner than I thought because she was getting worse and worse everyday. And the worse she got, the angrier I got. I got so angry that I started ignoring her all together. I wanted to be normal, I deserved to be normal... Yeah. That’s what I kept saying to myself. That was my brilliant plan, to ignore my sick mother. I came home and she was passed out, oh well. Kept on walking. She tried to reach out to me, and just take a guess what I did in response to that. I ignored her. 

It was our secondish, maybe third week in our new apartment. We still didn’t know for sure if it was cancer because, oh yeah, my mom skipped her doctor’s appointment and guess who didn’t call her doctor back like she usually does to make sure her mom went? Me. I hadn’t even told anyone. I didn’t want to until I was sure. Even then, I didn’t really know if I wanted to. I had kept the whole thing a huge secret for so long that I just got used to it. I got used to covering it all up. 

Isabel was over at my house all weekend. I had really missed her since we hadn’t hung out in like, forever. I loved having her back as my best friend. So then on Sunday night, her mom which was practically my second mother, said that she’d just take me home and then take me to school the next day. I checked to see if my mom was okay before I left, she was passed out. Go figure. So I just left her there. Later on that night I called her and she picked up, her speech was slurred but I told her I loved her and that I was at Isabel’s and that I’d see her tomorrow. Later on that day, I was waiting outside of school for my mom to come pick me up. I was waiting for a long time. Until Laura, Isabel’s mom said that she’d take me home and we all decided to go walk on the beach for a little bit because it was right there. I just had the weirdest feeling the entire time, but I shook it off. It was probably just nothing. Since her house was on the island, Laura just dropped Isabel off at the house and took me home so that Isabel could take a shower and get ready for school the next day. When we got home though, my Aunt Jojo and my Nana took Laura outside and told me to wait on the couch. Okay... This is weird. I just sat there on the couch. That weird feeling was creeping back up on me. But the only way I can really explain that feeling, is weird. It wasn’t a sad feeling, or a scared feeling it was just weird. They came back inside and I assumed that Laura had left. I wasn’t really that close to Aunt Jojo, she came over more now to check up on Nana and Papa and visit with my mom and me. 

Nana had this big, green, super-soft chair. I always sat with her in that chair, because it was huge and we could both fit. Sometimes my mom, Nana, and I all three crammed in to the chair. Sundays, she would read the paper and I would read the Sunday Comics. I laughed with her in that chair, I cried with her in that chair. That chair saw a lot of my life. 

Jojo was sitting on the stool now, facing Nana and she told me to come over there. She patted the empty space next to Nana and said she needed to tell me something. Oh great, I thought, what did my mother do this time? 

But the next sentence tore me right away from those thoughts. The next sentence changed my life forever. “We found your mother in the apartment... She didn’t wake up.” 

Chapter Five

     Eighth grade had to be the best and worst year of my life. Like I said before, Kylie and I became good friends that summer. But honestly, eighth grade year we got so close. Like, so close. I must have went to her house every weekend. I loved her mom. I loved her house. They moved into this huge house in Portland. Another small little town surrounding the actual city. And her mom would always take us to the movies or to Whataburger runs or to get Blizzards at Sonic. Kylie always had me and Jackie over and then Kylie’s little sister always had her friends over so it was just a big house full of kids, always crazy, always fun, and always always something to do. When Kylie’s mom had people come over, they would bring their kids, and when that happened it could only mean one thing. Hide and Go Seek. It was like a tradition. There were just so many places to hide in that big house and even though the game is a little bit childish, it never gets old. Never. 

     As the school year started up I started to realize something. My mom was getting sicker. She was getting paler, and smaller. She looked kind of fragile. She was getting dark circles under her eyes. I didn’t really notice all of that though, until I noticed the pills. 

     My mom and I were bestfriends. But eighth grade year, we started fighting. A lot. I guess this is normal for teenagers and their parents, but normal teenagers and their parents fight over stupid stuff. I just started feeling so much anger toward her, so much hate. When I came home, she was always “loopy” as my grandparents liked to call it. God bless their old little souls, they tried as hard as they could to sugar-coat everything for me but they just couldn’t protect me from this. When my mom took those pills, she wasn’t my mom anymore. My sweet little mom. She’d say things that were rude and unlike her. She’d slur her speech and walk around all funny. But what made me the most upset, was when she was passed out on the floor. It scared me to death. I’d shake her violently and she’d just wake up for a second, mumble something, and konk back out. It took hours for me to get her back into her bed. One time, I came home and she was on the living room floor. I could kick her, and shake her, and poor water on her all I wanted but there was no waking her. I called Nana and Papa and they finally got her awake, but when my mom regained consciousness she was so mad at me. I felt like I betrayed her for calling them. She felt like I’d betrayed her too. From that point on, I tried to hide everything from Nana and Papa. Because I didn’t want to betray her and because she told me that they were trying to get her taken away from me. Don’t get me wrong, my mom was a good mom. She was the best mom. She was just in so much pain. It wasn’t her fault.

     I tried to be as normal as possible at school and I think it worked. No one ever knew about my home life. At home, I was miserable. At school, my life couldn’t have been any better. I was surrounded by friends, amazing friends. I felt popular and needed and just... Loved. That sounds so cliche, needy girl but I felt completely and honestly loved. 

     Okay, so I hate to be switching topics so much here, but I’m just switching from memory to memory because I don’t know how to put this all in order. This story is more like just memories. By the way, thank you for reading all of my memories. I love y’all! 

     So I think I should fill y’all in on my mom. My mom used to be really obese. Not in a sarcastic, mean way. She weighed over 300 lbs. I don’t really remember that though because I was too little. All I saw was my super hero and my super hero was beautiful. When I was five years old, I was told that my mom was getting a surgery to make her skinny. This surgery was called a Gastric Bypass surgery. The doctor that performed this surgery on her, was a total screw up. He messed up my mom’s stomach. After the surgery, she got super skinny, everyone was really worried about her because she couldn’t eat anything. She’d eat a little bit and then just throw it right back up. She was tiny. Too tiny. So of course, when we tried to get in contact with this amazing doctor, it was too late. He figured out what a mess he’d made and he packed up his office in the middle of the night. To this day, no one knows where he is. 

     This lead to more and more surgeries. More and more hospital visits. More and more procedures, hospital bills, and doctors. I’ve been to every hospital in Corpus. I went to her procedures with her, I held her hair out of her face and got a cold rag when she was throwing up, which occurred more and more all the time, I took care of her. As I took care of her, I got used to taking care of her, and we got super close. It was the end of seventh grade/beginning of eighth grade that she started to change. But I remember the day, I knew she’d never be the same. I got home to Nana and Papa’s and Nana was standing in the living room, panting. What was going on here? She’s 75 she didn’t like, work out or anything. I walked closer and as I peered around  the corner to what she was staring at. It was my mom. Out cold. On the floor. Uh oh. Papa cannot come in and see her like this, I started to panic. Nana started to panic too. “I didn’t know what to do with her so I dragged her from the kitchen all the way in here, but I can’t get her onto the couch” she’d said. But then we heard the garage door going up. It was too late. He was home. He got in, and saw her, and he looked completely vulnerable. I’d never ever seen my papa like that before. Then he got angry. I told them it was okay, she’d wake up, and just to leave her there. I went outside to get a breath of air, I needed to clear my head and figure out what to do next. But I must have been out there longer than I thought because I heard sirens. I heard them before I saw them but when I finally did see them they were pulling up to my house. No. No this is not happening. I ran inside and Nana looked like she’d just seen a ghost. “What did you do?!” I screamed at her. “She didn’t have pulse, Katie, I had to.” I started screaming that they were going to take her away from me, they couldn’t take her away from me. But there was nothing I could do about it. I ran outside and watched from the back gate, as they rolled her stretcher into the ambulance. When they closed the doors, I fell to my knees. 

     Later on, the cops asked me questions like when she was born and where she was born, blah blah blah. I was so mad at her. How could she do this to me? She over dosed. Really, mom? Really? Thanks a lot. Do you only think about yourself? I refused to go visit her in the hospital but Papa finally made me. When I got there my eyes filled with tears. She was in ICU (Intensive Care Unit) a place I’d been to many times before. She was so so sorry. And I forgave her because I just wanted it all to be over and done with. 

     After that she went to rehab for three days. I wasn’t allowed to talk to her or call her or anything. But when she came back, she was my mom again. It was the best two weeks, of her just being her. And we were super close again, and I wouldn’t have traded those two weeks for anything in the entire world. But of course it didn’t last. Addiction is addiction. She found her way back to the pain, back to the pain killers. Could I really blame her? Doctors said that on a scale from one to ten, her pain was a ten, every day all day. Who wants to live like that? 

     And then one day I come home from school and she sat me on her bed. I asked her how her doctor’s visit went and she replied, “they think it’s cancer.”

Chapter Four

     The last week of summer is the first week before school starts. Everyone is anxious and excited and nervous and excited and scared and excited. I was really excited. I just got out of the shower and I had laid out all of my brand new school clothes trying to find one perfect outfit. I finally chose a pair of gray jeans and a purple and gray plaid shirt. I blow dried and straightened my hair that night, even though I re-straightened every single strand when I woke up the next morning. That night, I also broke up with Kevin. I cried. But I refused to let it get me down! I mean come on, the very next day was my first day of eighth grade! I had to be excited here. 

     I woke up the next morning to my mom saying, “Katie wake up honey, it’s the first day of school.” As soon as I heard that I sat straight up, suddenly not being tired anymore. There is just something about days like that when you wake and you’re just not as tired as you would be any other day of school at six o ‘clock in the morning. Kelly texted me asking where I was every five seconds, my whole way to school. 

When I got to school I dropped all of my supplies off in Mrs. Trial’s room and walked to the brand new gym. Before I opened the door though, I stopped. I closed my eyes,  took a breath, and then I walked in. It was the world’s best entrance. Kim yelled “KATIE” and everyone looked up from their conversations and whirled around. Before I knew it all of my friends were engulfing me in a huge hug, especially JJ. Goodness, I love her. We walked back to the bleachers where all the other students were, still in our big huddle. Paul was sitting in the front and he turned around to give me a dirty look, I glared back. Paul hated me for no reason and I hated him because he hated me for no reason. 

     After lunch, I had drama class. I’d never really taken it before, except for one time in seventh grade but it was only for one semester and we didn’t do anything because the drama teacher had to take a long league of absence. I didn’t really know what to expect from this class. I only put it as one of my electives because my mother made me. She kept saying, “I loved drama in high school! You’re going to love it! Blah blah blah.” But when I got to the class there were only, like, six people. Wow. LAME. The teacher made us get into a little circle and play ice-breaker games. This was when I got to get a good look at her. She was new to SMA but she’d worked at the elementary school, apparently. She looked like she’d stepped right off a page of a magazine and into our classroom. Her cheek bones were perfect, her make up was perfect, her hair was perfect, and her outfit was so so perfect. She talked to us more like we were her friends, rather than adult to child. I already knew she was going to be my favorite teacher. But at that moment, I had no idea what a huge impact she was going to have on my life. 

     That day, at the end of the day, I was sitting outside on the bench waiting for my mom to get there. Since it was such a small school, that was like the place to be. Everyone was out there. There were three or four long benches against the wall and an over head thing above. The car line was right in front, and from there you could look out and see most of the island. If you looked directly to your right you saw the beach. For a minute I had tuned out whoever was sitting there talking to me. I took a good look around, at all of my classmates, my friends... Little did I know these were going to be the people that I’d never forget.