Well...Not Anymore.

Well...Not Anymore: Chapter 15

My mom found him. They'd gotten into a huge fight, her coming home and asking why I hadn't been there the night before and why I hadn't been there all day. He'd tried to lie, telling her that I was at a slumber party, but my mom knew better. She knew that I had no girlfriends to have a slumber party with.  

So she asked him again. He told her the truth; told her that she'd raised a slut, had caught me having sex with a guy on the porch, and then hit me when I screamed at him. He said that whores weren't able to talk to him like that without getting punished. My mom apparently had enough. She walked to the closet and grabbed bags that she'd packed a while back, that she was just waiting for the little straw to break the camel's back before she really left. 

My dad hit her as well, telling her that she couldn't leave him, that he was hers and could never be anyone else's. But my mom fought back. She grabbed a lamp from the end table and crashed it over his head. It didn't knock him unconscious, didn't cause him to black out. But it did give her time to flee the house and go to her friend from work.  

The police called her right before she'd talked to Lucas' mom. The neighbor heard a gunshot around noon today and reported it. The cops arrived at our house exactly five minutes after the call and had to break down the door because no one would answer. They found my father lying in the middle of the den, a gunshot to the head causing a giant pool of blood all around his lifeless body. They'd also found a smashed picture frame in the corner of the room, the picture of the two of them kissing on their wedding day. 

Lucas' mom broke down into sobs as she gave me the rundown. I'd asked her to tell me everything, every little detail, and I know that in doing so it really did hurt her. But I had to know. I couldn't just live not knowing why or how. I had to know. I feel awful that she had to be the one to break the news to me, and I feel worse knowing that she's in her room crying her eyes out. Lucas called his dad to leave the golf tournament he was playing in today, and after he gave him a brief recap of the day's events, his dad solemnly told him that he'd be home as soon as possible. 

Lucas hasn't let go of me since. 

I haven't really cried. I've just lain on his bed, curved into a little moon, staring at the same exact curving line etched into his blue walls. I've felt his hands rubbing little circles into my back, his fingers combing through my crazy hair, his little whispers of, "It's going to be okay," and "I've got you".  

I've heard him but I haven't really listened.  

I don't know how I'm supposed to feel. My father is gone. He's taken his own life because my mother left him. She left him because he hit me, because he called me a whore. Is this my fault? Am I the real reason that he's killed himself? Does my mom blame me? Is that why she hasn't been here to come and see me? Mrs. Emma told me that the moment she heard the news she fled to Idaho to visit my Aunt Katie. Did she not invite me to come because she blames me? 

I asked Lucas this question a while back and all he said was, "This is the farthest thing from your fault, Nay. Your dad wasn't mentally stable. Don't blame yourself; it'll only make you sick in the end." 

I don't know if I believe him or not. When he told me this, I kind of just stared at his face for a while; at the flawless tan skin that I don't believe has ever met a pimple. Then I turned around and looked back at the crack in the wall and started comparing it to the Nile River. 

oOoOo 

"Are you sure you're going to be okay while I'm at school?" Lucas asks me as he stands at the foot of his bed, the bed that I don't think either of us has really left in two days. Lucas' mom let him miss school yesterday when I overheard him tell her that he can't just leave me when I've barely said two words since Saturday afternoon. Apparently yesterday messed up his perfect attendance record, but he wouldn't listen to me when I protested his skipping. All he did was roll his eyes at me and say that I was crazy for even thinking he should leave me right now.