The Misfortunes of Lolita

15 | when lolita missed

THIS IS AN UNEDITED AND SIGNIFICANTLY DIFFERENT VERSION OF THE MISFORTUNES OF LOLITA. I AM PUBLISHING IT IN FALL 2021—PLEASE FOLLOW ME ON IG @/ls.akhter and GOODREADS (L AKHTER) TO STAY UPDATED. I am so excited to share TMoL with you again.

CHAPTER 15

"I'm at home. But I feel like I'm not. I feel like I left home the second I left him." Lolita's writing journal.

When Frank returned home, he found his mother lying on the couch, her face covered by the crook of her elbow.

He wanted to lie down as well. He felt as tired as the grey clouds covering the sky that afternoon, ready to pour out. He looked down the hall to see if his father was in the master bedroom. He almost hoped that he was, but there was no noise of anything - no snores, no shuffling, nothing.

Tom hadn't returned yet - it had been four days.

Martha sat up once she noticed that Frank was standing without direction on the threshold of the living room, just past the front door.

Frank wanted to ask so many things - he wanted to cry, for the first time in years, in his mother's arms. He wanted to ask her how she was doing, he wanted her to make him pancakes with strips of bacon on the side, like she used to. He felt as though he was searching for a comfort that couldn't be given by anyone but one person.

"Where's Cora?" was all he could muster out. Martha looked pale, her skin looking almost translucent with stress, and when she looked up to answer him, he noticed that her eyes were bloodshot, as if she'd been crying. He knew his mother well enough to know not to ask.

Martha liked to pretend she was strong, even when she wasn't.

"She went out," she said. "With Jacob."

"Who the fuck is Jacob?" he asked.

"Her friend," she didn't even bother furrowing her brows and muttering something about how he should watch his language. She patted on the seat beside her. "Sit down, here."

Frank sighed, shrugging the strap of his bag off his shoulder and putting it on the floor. As he sat down, the worn brown leather of the couch made a soft whisper, and the room was so quiet that he heard the sound.

Martha stayed quiet for some time, in which Frank noticed that his too-young-to-be-a-mother-of-two mother had grey hair growing at her roots, on the side of her head. From here, the dark circles under her eyes seemed even more pronounced, the hollow of her cheeks deeper.

"I joined the football team, ma," he said, finally.

She looked up from her open palms, and looked at him, her eyes giving away her surprise. "You did?"

Frank almost cringed at the hope in her voice. He knew what this meant for his family - it meant that they would have to pay less of the tuition when he went to college. It meant that he might have a chance at a football career - or any career at all. It meant that they wouldn't have to scramble for pennies in the near future - a fate that might have been pretty soon to come.

He felt guilty that he hadn't joined before.

Frank had been telling himself that it was because he didn't want to be like his father. And yet he'd done exactly the things that his father would do. He'd avoided responsibilities - he'd gotten drunk to solve his problems, and going a degree further, he'd crashed his goddamn car onto a tree, nearly killing himself in the process.

No matter how much he tried not to be like the man, he turned out exactly that way.

What was the point of running away from something that would never leave your shadow?