(FREE TO READ) Bad Moon

chapter 63; heartbeat

He'd done it all in his mother's absence. She and Lisa Sigvard had hit it off over the venison dinner that night. In weeks time, Julia was running off with her new friend to spa's and shopping centers, dinner and movies. The moment he heard they'd be flying off to Florida together, he leapt on the opportunity to purge their home of its clutter. It wasn't so much a vacation as a business opportunity on Lisa's part—a chance to sell a large portion of land Mr. Sigvard had purchased on the Miami coast. She wasted no time inviting his mother, and Julia wasted no time fleeing the bitter cold of an early December.

Lately, she'd been looking for every opportunity to experience the things she'd never experienced before. To taste food she'd never thought to try, to take midnight trips to the city just to ease her restlessness. So Jaylinwasn't surprised when she'd packed her things the day after Thanksgiving and kissed him farewell from the window of a taxi.

It gave him time, at the very least, to clean up the mess they'd made of their lives.

It looked like a new home entirely by the time they'd finished. The floor so sparkly clean, he'd slipped on it three times in the span of a day. The dishes he'd chosen to keep had been washed and dried and put away—and the chewed up, plastic old mementos gone to a box in the closet. The only thing he left alone was her room because he knew the things inside of it were too precious to tuck away in the dark.

As he dropped the box of Anna's dusty old VHS tapes on the living room floor, the door rattled with a knock. Jaylin cracked his back as he stood and dug his wallet from his pocket. At the front steps, he greeted the pizza boy, who stood there shivering in the cold. He couldn't have been more than seventeen; scrawny and chattering, a bundle of papers atop his sleeved pizza. "Hey, uh. Your mail—it was overflowing so I think the mail guy just started leaving it on the sidewalk. It's covered in snow, but I thought you'd want it."

Jaylin took the bundle from him, damp and cold, and tucked it under his arm while he fetched a twenty from his wallet. A fair enough tip. Matt swooped in for the pizza and the boy plucked his cash before he went on his way. And while the others dove in front of the TV and stuffed themselves with pepperoni, Jaylin went through the bundle of bills in his arms. So many pink envelopes, so many final notices. Electricity, water—medical bills from his fractured ribs and his mother's treatments. He blanched at the sheer amount of debt—once his father's, now his mother's, soon to be his own. He'd hardly had a start on life and already he owed so much.

Then, finally something too large to be a bill. He thumbed open the envelope, and at the sight of the bold, purple W at the top, the rest of his mail scattered to scoured floorboards.

"Accepted." He said it quietly. To himself. To no one.

"Matt just sneezed over the pizza!" Tisper whined from the next room over.

"It's all the goddamn dust in the air."

"It's okay," Sadie assured her. "This half's fine."

And still,Jaylin stared at the paper in front of him. Accepted.

"Jay, hurry up before Matt inhales the whole thing." Tisper came skipping over, her hair messed with sweat and breaking free from its pony. When she saw the paper in front of him, her effervescence scattered. She gaped at it the same way he did.

"Jaylin..." she ripped the paper from his hands and read it for herself. Then came the excitement, like a tsunami of elation. "Jaylin! You got accepted!"

"What?" Both Sadie and Matt barked in unison. They dropped their pizza and clamored to their feet, and the both of them peaked around Tisper to see that purple W for themselves.

"Jaylin!" Sadie exclaimed.

Matt squinted his eyes to read the words from over Tisper's shoulder. "How the hell...you have a GPA of like, one."