The Specks of Smallness

Aaron | Sixteen

Aaron | Sixteen

When I wake up in the morning, the smell of french toast and citrus tickles the hairs in my nose, and I instantly smile at my alarm clock and a poster that sits behind it. The time is 8:03 am, and small flakes of snow are falling to the ground. There's an envelope on my dresser, right beside my remote, with my name written on it very professionally. A wider smile creeps on my face as I get up to read it.

    'Mom' is written on the outside, along with a heart. A part of me frowns, noticing that, on my seventeenth birthday, that Dad will not be here. He's gone. Him and Mom are getting a divorce.

    The day I came home from Reagan's, when Bentley had told me that I changed and the day I knew that nothing would ever be the same between us, was when she sat me down in the kitchen while she held her glass of wine. She had offered me something to drink, one of the drinks I recognized as Dad's, but quickly threw it in the trash bin, digging her nails into her palms when she returned her attention to me. I wondered what she had to tell me, why she threw a perfectly good, expensive drink away. Mom looked like a total mess after Dad decided to walk out on us. Day after day I would watch her move away from reality, under a shell of hatred and sadness and a thin line of depression. Her attitude as a whole turned into something bipolar. I'm pretty sure she got fired from work, since she hasn't been out the house that much, unless it was to get groceries, which I would end up getting for her anyway, or they would get delivered by a family friend.

    But today, today is something different. Walking to the kitchen in my pajamas only, I can feel the warmness in the house, even if it is freezing balls outside in the quietness of the winter. I picture what it would be like to have a dog or a cat running alongside my feet as I made my way into the busy kitchen. I picture a bright smile on Mom's face as I kissed her cheek and she hugged me, pretending like I didn't end a relationship she had for twenty years, and pretending like she didn't care that I liked kissing boys instead of girls. But that was a fantasy—something that was far from coming true, and I was an idiot to even think about it.

    The sizzling from a pan comes louder as I round the corner of the foyer and enter the kitchen. Mom is working over the stove with a spatula in her hand scrambling eggs, a glass of white wine sitting just in her reach. She doesn't flinch when I told her good morning. I hug her from behind and kiss her cheek slightly. She doesn't say anything, just places her cold hand on my cheek and grinned a little.

    There is a plate of french toast and bacon on the kitchen island, and a stack of pancakes that smelled a lot like maple syrup next to it. Mom had sliced bananas and apples and strawberries into one bowl. I pick one of the strawberries out and dip it into a bowl of sugar that sits next to a mug of coffee that she prepared me. The sweetness of the fruit brings back memories of my birthday's during my childhood—memories that will always remain nostalgic.

    Mom and I sit in the kitchen eating breakfast, the newsman talking in the background about how horrible the weather was in Chicago. A pregnant woman who found herself homeless after having a disagreement with her partner was found dead in the morning. She had frozen to death.

    I turn my ear away from the television, shaking my head as I dip my french toast into a puddle of syrup that streams off my pancakes. Mom barely touches her plate, toying her fruit salad with her spoon. In the light, she looks like she did when I was younger—not too happy, but happy enough that it made me smile. I reach my arm over for her hand that she gives up too easily. Mom wears a small smile on her lips, strands of her brown hair falling to her cheeks. Her eyes are read around the edges, and for a moment I frown, but I quickly try to smile at her. But my emotions, like hers, range. I start to think if she can handle my leaving to college; thinking if she'll drink her life away one bottle of wine at a time.