The Makeover

31

"You cannot let the pain of the past destroy the happiness of the future."

Tracie Peterson

31|Abandoned Junkyards

The next week had been absolute torture. Not only did I not have a laptop, but Jake had been M.I.A for majority of it. The loneliness of not having him around at school was eating at me. Plus, it felt really wrong to sit with his friends without him actually being there.

So what had I done?

I'd found the old janitor's closet and had made it my designated lunch area until Jake returned. Every smell inside the closet was strong and hurt my nose, but being outside of it without Jake - without my confidence - made me feel so small.

To add even more problems to the mix, things weren't okay at home again.

Ever since that day that my mother had walked out of my room, she had been treating me as if I had received a week's worth of detention slips or stolen every packet of skittles from the forbidden cabinet.

At breakfast, she would openly give me the cold shoulder and when I asked her to pass me some eggs - or anything at all for that matter - she would act as if she hadn't heard me.

Luckily after a few minutes of nothing happening at the table, Kayleigh would always see my distress and help me out. Kayleigh knew my mother longer than I had known her, so she was pretty clued up on the fact that my mother believed that she was always right.

She ignored me because I had told her the truth. I had told her what I felt.

But in her books that was seen as something wrong.

I guess she appreciated it more if we all pretended that our lives were perfect and that money could buy happiness, but we all knew that wasn't possible.

Having a couple of business and maths degrees didn't give you the privilege to dangle your attention over your children's heads as if they were a group of hungry dogs.

When you have children in your life, it should only be right to give them everything you are able to. It doesn't have to be money - Hugs? Smiles? Laughs? Kisses? Love?

These were all practically foreign concepts to my mother.

At least my dad had still given us some extent of love. If we were sad he would buy us candy. If we were happy he would laugh along with us and make sure that the smiles stayed on our faces. If we were bored, he would take us outside to play a few games.

But then again, that was how my dad had grown up since he was a descendant of a Latino family. He had eventually changed his surname and married my mother so that they could start a "new" life together, but really what he meant was that he was dropping all of his culture.

He dropped it all for her.

My dad wasn't like that anymore, though. Ever since Kayleigh had made it to high school he must have figured that we could take care of ourselves when obviously we couldn't.

So for the last few years, we had grown up with no hugs, smiles, laughs, kisses and love from our parents - except for extremely rare occasions like the first day of school or birthdays.

It was just how life was and by now we had all learned to deal with it. I just hoped that Jake would be at school so all of the painful memories wouldn't have to seem so painful anymore.

● ● ●

Jake was at school the next day, but not as I expected him to be.