Dramatic Child Stars

Ten.

Percy,
July 21, 2021,
1:52 pm.

I was definitely in a hurry to get back home. My class had been with the preschool at the local college, so it wasn't exactly the most precision work. It didn't require intense focus. Mostly I was just supervising children as they slammed piano keys and beat mallets on xylophone tiles. It left plenty of room for my mind to wander.

When I was leaving, my departure was met with a round of tiny sticky fingered hugs around my legs and a chorus of small voices shouting, "Thank you Mr. Valentine!"

The childlike voices brought about of stabbing pain in my chest because the one voice I wanted to hear was still being very suddenly kept from me. Leah hadn't been back home in two nights. I'd only seen Flynn a handful of times through grainy FaceTime videos. I'd failed to be present when he went down for his naps and bedtime for two whole days. I'd never missed a day of his life and now I'd been gone for two whole days.

When confronted with that, the fact that I was spending time with a bunch of other peoples children just felt ludicrous. I needed to be there for my own.

I'd found myself unable to relax for days in the wake of Leah's departure. I normally loved this class at the college. I never intended to teach private music lessons. I'd always wanted to be a music teacher for small classes of children and although I hadn't finished getting my masters to actually teach in elementary schools like I'd planned, a preschool was the next best option in my book. I liked the college anyways. I hadn't gone to this particular school and I'd only gotten in to teach because a friend of a friend had invited me, but university campuses were still one of my favorite places to roam. Everything was colorful and exciting all the time. Driven, young and successful people were everywhere. The energies of youths with futures were abundant.

Plus there was a bagel shop on campus that was absolutely life changing.

After my class I went to the shop to pick up lunch before I planned to walk home. It wasn't a long walk down to the high rise, but I knew Riley wasn't going to be up for eating, so I wanted to eat before I got into his presence. He was probably going to be nauseas. I didn't want to eat infront of him at risk of making it worse. Last time he'd made an attempt at sobriety, he'd practically lived on the bathroom floor for several days due to the retching.

I was acutely aware that Riley wasn't even in the worst of it. He was uncomfortable. That much was obvious, but it wasn't anything compared to where I'd seen him get before. Going in and out of substance use just wasn't abnormal for him, and in the long term he'd been oddly and cyclically committed to it with very little fight. I'd seen him skip a few days until he got mopey and irritable before going back to using. I'd also seen him stop completely for nearly a month where he'd just sit in his room watching rom coms and crying at night as if he thought I couldn't hear. That hadn't happened since Los Angeles when he'd finished the movie and sobered up for the PR and premieres. Riley being off drugs for prolonged time hadn't ever actually happened beyond that. The best I'd actually seen him do was during this past 2 years when Leah, and eventually Flynn, had lived with us. I'd never been under the illusion that he was clean and sober, but he'd seemed managed. He'd not caused huge ripples, or at least he hadn't until this summer when things seemed to be very suddenly falling apart.

"Percy?"

I looked up at my name. I'd been lost in thought infront of the bagel shop, absentmindedly staring at the bulletin board of events, clubs and jobs offered on and around the campus. It sounded like my name had been repeated a few times based on her tone of voice.

Behind the bagel counter was a familiar woman clad in an apron, her hair pulled back under a hat with the bagel shop logo on it. She seemed amused to see me so distracted. On a regular day, I'd likely stand there talking to her for far too long. She was holding out the white paper wrapped bagel in my direction.