FLOOD [Pokémon]

Chapter 23

DARWIN

Saturday, March 24, 2018

"Your grandpa, huh?" Thomas stopped at a light, looked over at me, and snickered. "Are you still hot, Snowman?"

He reached for the AC dial and cranked it up from three to four, but the flop sweat running down my face wasn't due to the heat (or at least, most of it wasn't). We're moving in with your grandfather until further notice. I remembered Mom's face as she'd said it — she'd looked like she'd been forced to sucker ten Warheads all at once. And that could only mean one thing: Grandpa Jon.

Ahead, the light turned green; Mom's car pulled away, leaving streaks on the pavement, and Thomas's truck snarled like a dragon-type Pokémon in its pursuit. He snapped his fingers in front of my face. "Earth to Darwin," he said. "What's wrong with your face? You're sitting right in front of the vents. Or is my driving that bad?"

Actually, Thomas's driving was very good — I'd expected for a healthy young man like him to be a speed demon, like Mom, but he was surprisingly restrained behind the wheel, probably because he wanted to avoid the eyes of the cops.

Unfortunately, that didn't make for a better ride — Thomas's dad's truck was...clean (in the same way that the back of a garbage truck is technically "clean" if you take out all the trash bags), but the amenities had been worn down to nearly nothing with time. The dash was faded and crusty with dust and dirt and Arceus-knew what else; the cassette — cassette — player was broken; the passenger glove box hung open thanks to a broken latch; and the seats' coverings were so thin as to be nearly threadbare — as we crossed a stretch of train tracks, I bounced so deep that my ass actually hit the frame.

I guess I shouldn't have expected much from a jalopy that had clocked more than 350,000 miles, but part of me still wished that I was in the smooth handling of Mom's used sedan. Unfortunately, she'd packed it up to the gills with stuff from the house, so that hadn't been possible.

Remembering her sour face again, I swallowed.

"I'm fine," I told Thomas, wiping at the sweat running down my face.

"Then what's your deal? Is it your grandpa? You went all stiff after you told me."

Why had I told him? I guess I needed someone to dump this mounting anxiety on. And since Thomas was asking, he could have it. "I just haven't seen him in..." I trailed off.

"In?" he prompted.

Another swallow, this one harder. "Ever," I admitted.

"Whoa." A grin sprang to his face. "So that's it. First time meeting the old man's old man. And you're just the type to piss your pants over that kind of thing."

Damn it. I hated that he was right. But it wasn't just that. Me and Mom were an...estranged part of the family, to put it bluntly. Ninety-nine point nine-nine-nine percent of my relatives, both sides, lived in the Sinnoh Region, and had for the last few centuries, according to Mom. Our root of the family tree had branched out when Grandpa Jon's service in the military had taken him abroad. Eventually he'd landed in Hoenn, and after he was discharged, he'd married, had a daughter, Mom. Then she'd married Dad and...

What?

I wasn't sure — still wasn't to this day. Mom didn't like talking about the Thing that had caused a sudden and huge rift to yawn wide between her and her father. It had something to do with Dad and his stomach cancer — that's all I knew. But to hear her tell it — and she'd only told it once, and had glowered at me whenever I'd so much as tiptoed in the direction of the subject ever again — it had been something bad, and it had been Grandpa Jon's fault, and so catastrophic to their relationship that she'd essentially disowned herself from him a short time later, striking out on her own with a frickin' baby in tow.