Beautiful Lives

Chapter 6

Chapter 6 – Bad Day (Daniel Powter)

"Lexi would you mind stopping at the grocery store on your way home from school today?" my mom walked into the kitchen, looking slightly frazzled, with a giant shopping list clutched tightly in her fist. "We still need at least five pounds of potatoes, and we need turnips, and mix for the stuffing..."

I looked up from the cup of coffee I was preparing, and narrowed my eyebrows. My mom was usually stressed out around Thanksgiving, but that was because we usually had huge gatherings that she had to prepare for. As far as I was aware, this year was only supposed to be Ryder, my mother, and me.

"How many people are coming to this?" I asked, gently prying the list out of her hand. "I mean five pounds of potatoes is enough to feed an army, and I thought it was just the three of us,"

"I know honey, but I just wanted to make sure that we have leftovers," she explained, and although I didn't believe a word she said, I nodded as I turned back to my coffee.

I knew exactly why my mom was so hell-bent on making an obscene amount of food for Thanksgiving. When she was growing up, her parents had hosted the best Thanksgiving's I'd ever heard of. They'd invited dozens of people, and my mom had done her best to uphold their traditions, by always inviting our grandparents, aunts, uncles, and family friends to visit for the weekend. This year, with everybody so far away from us, I knew she was nostalgic for the big celebrations, and was letting her old habits die-hard.

For me, the holiday was difficult for a very different reason. I had fond memories from when I was a toddler of my mother and father in the kitchen, laughing and cooking together, only stopping to kiss each other's cheeks, or pick up my brother or I when we waddled into their sight lines. For some reason, Thanksgiving was the holiday I associated the most with my father, and ever since the divorce, I hadn't enjoyed it nearly as much as when I was a child.

That day, as I sped towards school, I found myself unable to keep my mind off of my father. Sometimes I wondered if it would be a bad idea to track him down and call him. I figured he would be dying to hear from Ryder or me, since that last time he'd seen us, we were putting ourselves back together after I'd finally gone into remission. Even though I would never admit it to my mom, I desperately wanted my dad to see the woman I'd turned into, and I hoped with all of my heart that he would be proud of me.

On the other hand, I knew that if I so much as made a reference to contacting him, my mother would be deeply hurt. She'd put her entire life on hold when he left in order to take care of Ryder and me. Once we were old enough to fend for ourselves in the evenings, she'd started working two different jobs in order to bring in the paychecks to keep our family afloat. The job offer from her dream office in Pennsylvania had brought her more joy than I'd seen in her in years, and I knew that it would all be ruined if I started talking about my dad again. She'd spent so long trying to get over him, and bringing him back when she was finally happy seemed too cruel to measure.

Once I got to school, I didn't even bother to go and find my friends. Usually I could track down Sebastian or Maya before my first class, but I wasn't in any mood to talk to them, and I didn't want to bring down their spirits either, especially with the holidays approaching. However, my attempts turned out to be in vain, since as soon as I started to put my books into my locker, Sebastian showed up beside me.

"Hey, you're late today," he said, reaching past me to knock over my textbooks that I lined up dutifully every day after class. It had become kind of an inside joke between the two of us, so most days I would have smiled, maybe smacked him, and put things back to where they were. But somehow, in my bad mood, it wasn't funny, so I slammed the locker door, narrowly missing his fingers.