Dare Me to Live

Chapter 18 (Part two)

Being at home for break wasn't nearly as stressful as I anticipated it to be. I expected it to be similar to, if not worse than, Parent's Weekend now that my mom and I were confined to the same space for a week. I walked into the house after Van dropped me off, preparing for the onslaught of questions and good-natured scolding for not calling enough, but to my pleasant surprise nothing more than a "How are you, sweetie?" passed her lips when she greeted me with a hug. As she pulled back to arm's length and studied my face, I again braced myself, but all she added through a beaming smile was that she was happy to have me home and that my favorite meal was already waiting at the table.

Through a dinner of Alfredo pasta with mushrooms, broccoli, and kielbasa, I willingly fed Mom the answers I knew she was looking for to questions like, "How is school?" "Have you been sleeping?" and "Have you started studying for finals yet?" My words were mostly true with just a sprinkling of hyperbole, and I made sure to season it with some typical college duress; she would be equally as worried if everything sounded too perfect.

After dinner, Dad retreated to his den, not because he didn't care, but because he could sense I wanted space. For all her intuition, Mom seemed to think more talking would help when I usually craved silence. She squeezed some more half-hearted answers out of me as I helped her load the dishwasher before I managed to shake her off on the pretext of going to shower and unpack. And it was as I was dragging my suitcase upstairs that I realized for the first time how much I had missed my house and the things that made it home.

The subtle smells of the potpourri in little bowls strategically placed all over the house which were reminiscent of a spice shop when you walked in the front door. The living room with its wall of couches that swallowed you whole, watched over by a painting of a rustic barn that always tilted slightly to the left. The fireplace that yawned on the far side of the room with its chipped hearth from when I knocked over the grate at six-years-old. I even missed the third step on the staircase that always squeaked and made sneaking out in high school feel like an adventure.

I had missed the feeling of living in a space where there was always a sense of belonging, where people who actually cared about every aspect of my well-being breathed the same air and touched the same objects and lived their life under the same roof—as claustrophobic as it occasionally got.

It was good to be home.

At first, I had been afraid to walk through the door, afraid to encounter any form of Danny's presence. After years of spending school day afternoons and lazy summers at each other's houses, his presence was imbibed in the house as much as mine or my parents. I was afraid to come in and see his apparition sitting on the couch teasing me about my taste in movies, rummaging through our stacked refrigerator complaining that there was nothing to eat, or coming up the basement stairs with a super-soaker locked and loaded. I could still feel him in the house, but it wasn't as unbearable as I had feared and I did my best to ignore it.

Instead, I wiled away my days of vacation in front of the TV, watching too many baking shows and eating too many cheese doodles. And I tried to make up for things I had been neglecting. I spent time with my mom, trying to silently make-up for still not calling enough and not going to counseling—the latter of which she was still unawares. I offered to go grocery shopping with her (which I usually refused to do), crawled into bed with her to watch old movies and let her braid my hair (which I had stopped doing at twelve), and played board games with her and my dad by the fire at night (which I had called lame and stupid the last time she asked if I wanted to join them).

I also texted Tyler over break too, to make up for blowing him off the last few days before break. We kept up a running, casual conversation through the days like we had been doing before the Mia reveal.