Zak and I hopped into a cab the second we left the hospital. He whispered to the driver who nodded and hit start on the meter and drove off. For the first half of the drive, the two of us sat in semi-uncomfortable silence as we watched the news channel on the small poorly lit TV screen. Zak finally sighed and turned it off.
"Tell me about yourself."
My eyes widened. I hated talking about myself, not to mention there was never anything to say. I didn't have any hobbies, I didn't have any friends, and it was safe to say there was nothing interesting about me whatsoever.
"Um, like what? My favorite color?"
He chuckled. It was then I noticed the color had finally returned to his face.
"Sure, if that's important to you. But I mean more like, well, anything. I just want to know you more."
I paused. "There's not much to tell. I don't really do that much."
His eyes widened. "Nothing? What do you do when you come home from school? Do you have any friends? Dream travel destination? Anything?"
I shook my head and gave a small smile. "No, not really. When I come home from school I read or watch TV. every once in a while I jog, but that's if I need to clear my head. I don't really have a dream travel destination, I've never thought about that."
"You've never thought about traveling? Paris? Italy? Canada even?"
I smiled. "Well, I've always been somewhat interested in Ireland. The landscape there is so beautiful and the medieval castles and their history has always interested me."
I wasn't going to mention the part about my old elementary crush that came from Ireland, he was the only reason I knew so much about it. I used to google Ireland all the time so I could tell him facts and impress him. That was if I could ever muster up the courage to talk to him.
"Ireland," Zak repeated. "I think you would love it there." He smiled and looked at me.
"You've been there before haven't you?"
He chuckled. "Maybe. How about next time I go, I take you with me?"
My eyes widened once more. Was he serious? What would make him think my mother would let him just take me away to another country... oh wait.
I couldn't help but frown. He was to be my legal guardian soon. A complete stranger just pops into my life and says he will take me to Ireland. I felt the familiar burning sensation in my stomach telling me to run as fast as I could.
"That would be nice." I forced. I could feel the fire burning hotter in my stomach, rising to my arms and running down my legs.
The taxi came to a halt, and the driver turned toward us.
"That will be $52.13"
Zak pulled a wallet out of his jeans and pulled out one of many cards and handed it to the driver.
"Do you mind if I wait outside?" I asked.
"Of course." He nodded.
I sighed a breath of relief and stepped outside. It had been ages since I was last in this part of the city. It was beautiful. Around us stood some of the tallest buildings in Phoenix. Both businessmen and women made their way around me. Many talking on their phones or texting. Barely anyone was looking where they were going.
"Charlie!" I heard a familiar voice call. I swung my head toward the sound to see Zak wave and make his way toward me. I had forgotten I was about to run from him.
"Too late." Said my inner voice.
"Come on let's get inside. I'm starving." He wrapped his arm around me, making me feel very small and just a little bit awkward as he guided me inside the restaurant."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The meal was delicious.
The majority of our time spent in the restaurant was swallowing our food whole. I didn't realize how sick I was getting of the same hospital food day in and day out. After we had finished our meals, we both barely spoke. We were too full and our energy from earlier had been drained by eating so much. By the time Zak waived for the cheque, I could barely keep my eyes open.
When I looked at the bill, the exhaustion in my eyes had vanished.
"$300!?" I harshly whispered.
Zak smiled and somewhat rubbed his very full stomach.
Don't worry about it. I was the one who told you to order whatever you wanted. And don't forget I was the one who ordered dessert, not you."
I sighed. Even If I tried to pay for my meal I wouldn't even be able to pay for 2% of it. I only had seven dollars to both mine and Marion's name. It truly sucked being broke.
By the time we left the restaurant, the sun was in the early stages of setting. Bright orange with flashes of pink covered the Arizona sky.
"What do you say to take a small walk and work off some of the food coma?" Zak asked.
I groaned and nodded. I hated feeling this full.
He chuckled.
A few minutes later, Zak and I found a park just a block away from the restaurant and sat on one of the benches, and watched as a man in a worker's uniform cleaned up the garbage in the park.
"What's your job?" I asked randomly. The sudden noise caused him to come back to reality and look up from the ground.
"Hmmm?" He hummed, obviously not hearing me the first time.
"What's your job? You clearly wouldn't be able to afford a $300 dinner if you cleaned up trash for a living."
He looked at me and gave a stern look with a small smile on his lips. The way the setting sun illuminated his eyes, a burst of familiarity sparked in my mind. I had seen those eyes before I met him, but where?
"Don't laugh at me" He said in a stern voice. I gulped at him and nodded, I was still looking into his eyes trying to understand why they looked so familiar.
He rubbed his face with his hand, "I'm a paranormal investigator, and I have my own paranormal television show called Ghost Adventures." I was a little star-struck, to be honest, I mean, the man just told me he hunts ghosts for a day job.
I looked at him with disbelief. "So... you hunt ghosts for a living?" My disbelieving look had turned into an upward smirk.
"Well, I wouldn't say I hunt ghosts, more like gather evidence that they exist and find answers about what happens after we die, I've gat-"
"Do you do it alone? How many haunted places have you been to? Did you always know you wanted to do this? Are you like TV famous then?" I was now genuinely interested. It's not every day you meet a famous paranormal investigator, let alone have dinner with them.
Now it was his turn to have the look of disbelief on his face. He returned my questions with a laugh. "Wow. I definitely expected you to call me weird and say ghosts don't exist."
"I do believe in ghosts, but I can't say that I've ever really experienced them before," I replied. "I mean sometimes our apartment would creak at night, but that's really about it."
He laughed.
"As I was saying" He continued. "No, I don't do it alone; I actually have a whole crew with me. But only three of them really do any of the gatherings of evidence" He paused. "They're like my family, no, they are my family. We're always there for one another and we are always just being dimwits and whatnot, but I love them. I would love for you to meet them." He smiled. Most likely re-playing a good memory he had of his family-like crew.
Now it was his turn to ask questions about me. "What was your mom like when you were growing up?" This was going to a tough one to explain. I sighed and looked back at the worker before answering his question.
"That's a very, very long story."
He shrugged. "We've got time."
I leaned back into the bench looked into the park.
"Where do I even start? I remember small moments of her being a great mother, but the majority of those moments were before the accident."
"The accident?" He asked.
I nodded. "The accident," I repeated.
"You see before I was born my real dad wanted nothing to do with me, and so my mom left and came here. When things got too hard she got really into drugs and drinking and couldn't take care of me. That was when I got sent into foster care for the first time. I was only two. That was when she realized how badly she messed up, and she cleaned up her act so she could take care of me and get me back. That was when she met Ray, my stepdad. He cleaned her up, he made her a better mom. He brought purpose into her life. But, just a few years later and he got into a car accident with me in the back seat. I was the only survivor. That was the accident.
Zak took a deep inhale, "How old were you?"
"I was four."
He sighed.
"When Ray was alive, she was a good mom. She used to let me stay up late and she would help me with my homework like any good mom."
Zak smiled.
"But after Ray died, she was never the same. It only took her a few days to fall back into her old ways, but worse. She started staying out more at night and it gradually got worse, to points where she came home so drunk she forgot she even had a daughter. Then she started blaming me for everything that went wrong in her life. She blamed me for my dad not wanting her when she told him she was pregnant, she did it so much I hated myself for it too. By the time I was seven she started to leave me alone for days. I had to learn how to fend for myself. I was stealing food at the cafeteria at school I was so hungry. That was when the school staff noticed something was wrong and for the second time I was put in a foster home. That was for a year."
"Oh my God Charlie."
I sighed. "It gets worse."
She got me back just before I turned nine, and for a while it was okay. She was there a lot more and she even gave me the feeling she cared for me. But that all changed when I turned 12. One day she came home because she got fired for coming to work on drugs, and we fell right back into the pattern that got us in trouble in the first place. She became a street worker to make money which led to more drugs and even more problems. It got really bad when she started to have her boyfriend from her job come over; they were just mean drunks who wanted an easy girlfriend. One time when I was 13, her boyfriend Jeff came back to the apartment drunk after finding out that she had been cheating and started to beat the absolute shit out of her. When I came home from school that day she was on the floor all bloody and he was sitting on the couch drinking a beer watching basketball. I guess all the rage that had been building up all those years finally got released. I snapped. I grabbed a knife from the kitchen and threatened him, telling him to get the fuck out of my damn house or I would call the cops and get him arrested."
I slowly pulled up the sleeve of my hoodie to show my forearm, where a fairly evident and large scar traveled from the side of my wrist to the end of my forearm.
Zak gasped.
"He ended up getting ahold of the knife and beat the shit out of me too. But when I kept fighting back, he got extremely frustrated and managed to pin me down." I traced the ragged vertical scar on my skin. "He slowly cut this and tried to get me to bleed out", I stifled a cry, "Luckily someone called the cops when they heard my screams. By the time the police arrived, I was half dead."
"I spent a month in the hospital recovering"
"What about your mom?" His voice cracked. When I looked over his eyes were watery, but no tears had fallen out.
"She had a massive concussion, and her right eye never worked the same. She was only in the hospital for 2 weeks and left me there on my own until I was able to come home. When they asked her what happened she actually tried to say I started it. But the person who called 911 said he heard her screams long before he saw me walk past his apartment and into our own. I tried to be mad at her and I tried to hate her, but she was high and drunk all the time, she had no idea what was wrong and right anymore"
No words were exchanged between us for a few minutes, he was still trying to process the entire life story I had just finished explaining to him. I had never told anyone so much about myself this much, yet I felt like I could completely trust him.
"What happened to Jeff?" He asked causing the silence to break. I shrugged my shoulders.
"I have no idea; he was out of the state by the time we were discovered by the cops."
He was shocked. "What the hell do you mean you don't know where he is? How could no one find him? Aren't you scared he might come back?"
I shrugged my shoulders again. "No, I don't, why would he come back? He has nothing here but a warrant for assault and attempted murder. He would be an idiot if he were to return and come for Marion and me."
He couldn't understand the calmness I had toward the entire situation. Which I understood; it was quite a bit of information, but I survived; it's really was a thing of the past now.
We didn't talk until we both agreed it was time to head back to the hospital. Zak and I stood on the sidewalk as we waited for a taxi to come near us. Once he did, we both sat in the back of the car in silence. It was clear neither of us was ready to go back to the hospital, but where else would we go.
"Where do you sleep?" He asked randomly.
"Uh, the hospital?" I looked at him with a stupid look. "Where else would I sleep?"
Now it was his turn for the stupid look. We were really good at switching emotions today.
"At home? You do have a home somewhere, don't you?" Ah. So that's what he had trouble understanding. I couldn't exactly tell him I had moved everything out and planned on running away.
"Yes." Is all that I said to him. I had no idea what else to say.
"Oh yea I did have a home, but my mom has non-curable cancer and she wasn't going to need it. So I sold it for a good chunk of money which I'm going to use to get the hell out of this city!" Definitely not.
"Yes?"
"Yes... I did have a home" I started.
"What do you mean did have a home? What happened?"
I let out a huge breath and looked around for something to grab his attention away from the not-so enjoyable conversation we were having. "Oh look! A dog! I love dogs so much isn't it so cute" I exclaimed as I pointed at an actual, and very cute German Shepherd being walked by its owner as we passed by.
Zak swung his head over and faced me, with a very disapproving look. "Really Charlie?" I sighed and decided to tell him.
"We moved out" I whispered.
"You what?" He asked, not believing that he heard. I now had no choice but to repeat myself.
"I said we moved out," I said quietly, but his time I know he heard me. He took a deep breath.
"Why on earth would you do that? Where is your mother going to go when she gets out of the hospital?" I looked at him like he was crazy.
"What are you talking about? Have you seen my mother? She's dying! Whatever she wrote to you in that letter of yours means she wasn't exaggerating! She's practically dead already!" I was yelling now. "I have absolutely nowhere to go after she dies. Which by the way, will happen. After she dies I'm gone, I'm leaving and going to live a far better life than the one I'm living now that's for sure!"
I let a huge breath of air out and crossed my arms over my chest. "Look, why do you even care? I get that my mom sent you a letter asking you to take care of me and whatnot, but that doesn't mean you have to do it. You can leave tomorrow and never look back, you don't want me in your life, trust me."
He sighed, "Charlie..."
"No. I'm giving you an out, and you should take it. You don't want this. And why do you even care so much, you aren't my dad so stop acting like it."
I didn't expect him to answer, I really didn't. That was when he really dropped the bomb.
"But Charlie, I am your dad"
What. The. Fuck.