The Very Best

Chapter Two

Music Video is an audio of Panic!'s "Sarah Smiles." One of my favorites. Give it a watch. Thanks!!!

Finally, I was allowed to leave the school and had taken the bus home to go back to sleep. I used my keys to open up the empty house. I grabbed a bag of pretzels out of the kitchen and sat on the couch, flipping through channels before settling on some meaningless cooking show. It was one of those competition things and I couldn't help but laugh as I watched them scramble and drop things, some near tears. I watched for about thirty minutes before I got bored and switched it off.

Usually, I wouldn't be stranded at home, but my Dads had to use both the cars today so they could both go to work. Daddy had a photoshoot he had to go to and my dad had to go to work as usual. I pulled out my cellphone to see five texts and three calls from Daddy. I redialed his number and waited. He picked up on the second ring.

"Ky, are you okay?" He said worriedly.
"Yeah, I'm fine," I replied.
He sighs. "Why did we give you a phone if you aren't going to answer it?" He asked rhetorically.

"I don't know. I occasionally answer," I said in response.
He sighed again in defeat. "Is Dad home?"
"Nope," I said, popping the 'P.' "Working late again?" I asked.
"Not that I know of, but I'll call and check. There was a reason for me calling," he begins, trying to remember. "Oh, yeah, your laundry is in the dryer."
"That deserved three phone calls?"
"Don't get smart with me," he warned, and I choked down a laugh. We both knew he wasn't a disciplinarian. "The texts were for that. The calls were when I started to worry."
"Well, I'm fine. Just watching TV."
"Okay. I'm going to call Dad. I should be home within the next hour. I love you, Kaya." He paused. "Even if you have a smart mouth."
"Ouch, shots fired," I teased. "I love you too."

He hung up and I went to go get my laundry. I carried it into my room, dumping it on my bed. I turned on the radio. I folded it all and put it away. I opened up my laptop and scrolled through my media feed. Per usual, I looked up my biological Mom's name. She had just gotten married to a guy named Daniel. She had been Lisa Michaels, but now was Lisa Montgomery. It was always a little weird looking at her page. It was like watching her life move forward without me, although I had never really been apart of it. It's not like it upset me, it was just weird.
Sometimes, I would look up my biological dad. He was still single-no wife or kids. He didn't even know I existed. He lived with his college roommate, Nathan. Although being single, he seemed to be having a wonderful life. I sometimes debated writing him a letter, but then I would find pictures of him in Hawaii with a group of his friends or going skydiving in Washington. As far as I can tell, he's done everything there is to do; seen everything there is to see. Who I am I to take that away from him?

It's not like I intended to abandon my life here. I just wanted to meet him. I knew close to nothing about him. Maybe sometime in the future, when I feel like I have the words to say. As of now, I don't know what I would tell him. That I'm happy? That I want to meet him? Something about my dads? My friends? My life? Nothing I ever wrote down felt right, so I never sent anything. My dads had told me they thought it was okay for me to try and I appreciated that, but I wanted to write to him when I felt like I had the strength to not wait around all my life for a response.

But still I wrote thousands of drafts, each as bad as the last. Some were angry, others were sad, and some were just numb. Void of emotion or feeling.

I knew I had no reason to be angry. He hadn't done anything to deserve it. He didn't know about me. He couldn't have been apart of my life if he wanted to. I had a family here. I ended up probably better than I ever would have been if circumstances had changed. It was times like this when instead of sending an angry, hateful letter, I instead called my best friend. And at that moment, as I scrolled through all of his happy memories, I became angry. Angry at my Mom, angry at the world. Why shouldn't he know I was here?

I pulled out my cellphone and called Ian.
He picked up on the first ring.
"Hey," he answered.
"Hey," I replied. "I was scrolling through his page again."
"I'll be there in five," he said before clicking off.
I was so grateful for him.

I heard his car pull up into the driveway three minutes later. He walked right in and came and sat on the floor with me. He sat in silence with me for a few minutes before he said anything.

"Why did you look through his page?" He asked quietly. I shrugged in response. I didn't know anymore. Why had I been looking at it?
"Ky?" He asked when I didn't answer.
"I don't really know," I said quietly.
"Ky," he sighed. "Why do you do this to yourself."
"I don't know," I answered again, honestly. "I guess I was just curious."
"Well, I'm here now, so let's go do something," Ian said after a while. "Picnic?"

I nodded in enthusiasm, and went to go pack a bag, equipped with a blanket, chips, grapes, soda, and chocolate chip cookies my Dads had made the other night. I wrote a note to them, explaining where I had gone.

We walked over to the nearby park. In the lawn, I laid out the blanket. He laid down across it and I sat cross-legged beside him. It was still November, so of course it was cold, but I had bundled up before leaving the house and it was almost nice sitting outside.

"Thanksgiving is in a few days," he mentioned. "What are you doing?"
"Well, my grandparents are coming down and my Dad's sister. So that should be really interesting," I replied.

He laughed. I'm sure he remembered my eighth birthday, when my entire family had come down to celebrate. It really just turned into a screaming match between my Aunt and her parents, my Grandma Mae and Grandpa Sam. The yelling had consisted of my grandparents telling her to settle down and act like an adult and my Aunt screaming back about how they needed to let her live her life.
"Anyways, what are your plans?" I asked.
"We're apparently going to Indiana to celebrate with my Uncle and his family," he groaned.
"That should be fun," I teased sarcastically. He gave me a joking glare.

We sat for a little while in comfortable silence before he spoke again. "Do you want to go on the swing set?"

And once again, it felt like we went back to third grade. He pushed me up and I soared into the sky, almost as if flying through my lifetime, back to a time when the only things I worried about were who would sit by me at lunch and where Canada was. Spoiler alert: it's not in Europe.

When finally we decided it was time to walk home, we've both laughed so hard, we'd nearly cried.

He walked me up to the door. "I would stay, but my mom is supposedly making dinner soon."

"Don't worry. Tomorrow night, maybe?" I suggested.

"That'd be awesome," he replied, enthusiastically. I smiled and hugged him, before he turned, got in his car, and drove away.

I opened up the front door and escaped the cold. It had become nearly unbearable out there. We were lucky we had come back when we had. Any longer and we would have been frozen.

My dads were busy making lasagna in the kitchen, but I couldn't sneak past past them.
"Kaya," my dad called after me, stopping me dead in my tracks. "Come set the table."
I groaned in exasperation, but complied, although groaning and making my feelings on the task known the entire time. What can I say?

I'm a bit of a pain. But I'm their pain.

After sitting down at the table with my dads, eating up, and finally washing up, I was able to lay down and go to sleep.