Chasing Leah (Journey Series)
Read Chasing Leah (Journey Series) Online
Authors: C.A. Williams
Chasing Leah
By C.A. Williams
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Copyright C.A. Williams 2012
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Leah
"Leah, are you almost
ready?" I hear my roommate and best friend,
Ally,
shout from the hallway of our brand new apartment, well brand new to us
anyways. She knows the answer to that question almost better than I do. I
sigh and slip on my new heeled black boots over my skinny jeans that add a
little bit of height to my petite size and throw a black jacket on over my royal
blue tank that Ally says matches my eyes perfectly and accentuates my chest,
just what I need. Dab a little cherry red lip gloss on; straighten out my dark
curls as best as I can and I'm ready, I guess.
My door creaks open and in
pops a blonde head with streaks, red this time, the color seems to change
almost daily. Her outfit would look wrong on anyone except her, pink kitten
heels with neon green leggings and a black leather mini skirt paired with some
kind of rainbow top, I'm pretty sure she made using duck tape, but no one would
ever know. She can pull off anything and she has the body for it too with her
willowy figure.
Ally has been my
best friend since my first day of high school at
Lairmont
High, after my Mother of the decade ditched me with my 70 year old grandma for
some guy named Tank and yes that’s his real name, I made a point to ask. He was
one of her regular customers- translation, an alcoholic, what a winner. Just
another guy in the long line I had seen coming and going through the years,
including my father whose identity she was never quite able to pin down. The
last image I have of my mom is her legs slung over the back of Tanks motorcycle
riding down the dirt road my Grandmas farmhouse was on and she never looked
back.
"L? I know you really
don't want to go, we could stay here and have a girls night, watch some sappy
lifetime movies, paint our toes...," Ally looks at me with her big blue
eyes, accented by neon green eye shadow, a huge smile plastered on her face. And
I know she would be happy to do just that, but I promised myself I wouldn't
ruin any college experiences together and our first party would definitely be
on that list. I'm sure Ally has a real list actually stashed away in her room
somewhere, each item just waiting to be checked off.
“Absolutely not Ally. Just
because I'm not a social butterfly like you does not mean we can't live it
up." Drinking really wasn't my thing. After years of watching my mother
stumble up the steps to our small one bedroom apartment that was located
conveniently above the skuzzy bar she waitressed at, I just didn't see the
appeal and normally had a three limit max if I did drink. Plus I had enough
responsibilities to worry about.
I still remember the morning
that changed my life heaping even more responsibility onto my shoulders than
was already there. I was the one who made sure rent was in on time, made
groceries stretch as far as possible till the next paycheck came in, made sure
the electric stayed on which did get turned off from time to time if Moms tips
were low.
I had been crunching on
some stale cereal before getting myself off to school that morning in the tiny
kitchenette that was crammed into the small space we had. I had scrubbed the
heck out of the place when we first moved in two years before that, but there
was no way to fix something that couldn’t be fixed in the first place.
Mom came stumbling in
still dressed in her barely
there
work “uniform”, if
you could call it that, from the night before. Her jean cutoff shorts seemed
shorter each shift she worked and she tried to see how tight her low cut tank
tops could get, I think she had some kind of competition going on with the
other waitresses there. Let’s see who could look the
sluttiest
,
winner gets best tips and maybe a sleazy guy thrown in.
Woohoo
!
“So,” she said as she lit
up a cigarette and puffed the smoke of her Marlboro lights in my face.
I
scootched
my chair away as far as
possible.
She had smoked ever since I could remember but that didn’t
mean I would ever get used to the smell or that I had to like it. “I’m
pregnant,” she blurted out with another puff of smoke, reaching for the box of
cereal. I think I choked on my cereal a bit before looking over at her in
disbelief well not so much disbelief I was kind of always waiting for this day.
With all the men it was bound to happen. I just wasn’t ready for it.
“So are you going to go to
the clinic and get it taken care of then?” I asked wondering why she was being
so nonchalant about the whole situation. I really wasn’t for abortion but I
couldn’t see another human being brought into the world by my mother.
“No I don’t believe in
that. You’re lucky I don’t or you wouldn’t be here today.” Oh yeah that’s me
the luckiest girl around, not sure where my next meal will come from sometimes
or scrounging around the thrift stores trying to find something to wear that
will make me fit in a little bit.
But hey lucky girl right
here.
Mom wasn’t religious but apparently she had morals.
Right.
“Things are going to need
to change around here but I’ll make it work,” she had said.
And things did change for
awhile. Enough for me to believe a baby brother or sister wouldn’t be so bad.
The whole nine months she was pregnant she didn’t have a drink, at least when I
was around to monitor her. I even got her to cut back on her cigarettes but she
insisted at least two a day was fine, that’s what she had done when she was
pregnant with me and I had turned out okay. The father of course wasn’t in the
picture and I’m sure his identity was just as much of a mystery as my own
Dad’s.
Then the day of delivery
finally came, moms water broke while she was in the middle of a shift and one
of her customers drove us to the hospital. The minute I laid eyes on the soft
brown curls and wide brown eyes I was in love with my baby brother Caleb. He
was perfect.
Mom not so much.
How a mother could not
fall instantly in love with her child, I would never know.
Pretty much as soon as we came
home from the hospital mom fell into her old routines again. Different guy
every day, coming home well after her shift in the wee hours of the morning
plastered. She barely gave any of her attention to Caleb, so I had to take
over. Luckily Caleb was such a good baby and he slept most of the day when he
was home with mom, even though I still worried that she wouldn’t take care of him
while I was at school. And when I came home in between homework and studying, I
was changing diapers and making bottles. My grades slipped a bit from the late
nights and I often showed up barely able to keep my eyes open. A guidance
counselor pulled me aside on more than one occasion and asked if there was
trouble I needed to talk about but I wasn’t about to let that nosey woman know
the situation at home. Even if Caleb was a lot of work, I still loved him and
he was not going to be taken away from me.
When Caleb was about three
months old, mom piled the three of us up in her old beat up Honda and told us
we were going on a road trip. I strapped Caleb into his car seat and packed up
his diaper bag loaded down with formula, diapers, and extra clothes. Mom said
we would be gone for a few days so I brought along a duffel bag for myself too
with a couple changes of clothes.
When we pulled up the dirt road
to an old farmhouse I had no clue where we were. Mom had never filled us in on
where we were actually going. A woman with a shock of white hair pulled back
severely in a clip met us out on the dilapidated front porch with peeling white
paint and missing boards.
“Um hi Mom, these are your
grandkids, Leah and Caleb.”
Mom?
I didn’t even know my
grandma was still alive, mom never talked about her but yet here she was about
an hour’s drive away from us. Caleb started whimpering and I knew he was hungry
so the woman who I guess I should start calling grandma led us into the
kitchen. She and mom moved into the living room while I fed Caleb his bottle
and patted his burps out of him until he fell back asleep.
“Well Leah,” my mom said as they
made their way back into the kitchen. My grandma was following close behind
with a not so very pleasant look on her face like she had just swallowed a
lemon. “I’m
gonna
take off.”
“What do you mean take off?” I
had asked quietly not wanting to wake Caleb back up. “I just need some time
right now and I need it alone. I’m going to leave the car here with you if you
need it, I know you’ll be getting your license soon so…” she had trailed off,
dropping the keys in my hand.
My license?
My birthday
wasn’t for another couple of months, how long was she planning on leaving us
here? Who was supposed to take care of Caleb? What kind of mother would leave
her newborn baby? Right as I was going to ask her all of the questions that
were filling my head I heard a low grumble of an engine and mom quickly headed
to the front door.
After mom left we never heard
from her again. I think grandma was under the impression that she was coming
back but I heard her complain often about her selfish no good daughter. Grandma
helped some but we were more of an inconvenience than anything. She did watch
Caleb while I went to school and worked but she never warmed up to him like a
normal Grandma would.
I met Ally on my first day of my
sophomore year at
Lairmont
High School. I wasn’t
looking to make
friends,
I just wanted to get through
school so I could make a better life for Caleb. Better than the one I had so
far. But Ally kept
worming
her way in, stopping by
the hardware store that I worked at, talking with me between classes and making
me sit with her at lunch. I finally blurted out to her one day that I had a
baby to take care of so I did not have the time to socialize. She didn’t even
blink an eye over that though, flipping her blonde hair over her shoulder.
“Well that’s
cool,
maybe we can hang out at the
playground or get some ice cream then. Oh now I have an excuse to go to Chuck E
Cheese.” She had said with a squeal.
I was taken aback right
away that she didn’t even question me about having a baby at 16 and I quickly
explained the situation to her and broke the news that Caleb wasn’t quite old
enough to hit up Chuck E Cheese and we’ve been best friends ever since. She
always found ways to include Caleb in whatever we were doing and the James clan
quickly accepted the both of us.
“Let me just go over a few
things with the sitter and then we can head out, ‘
kay
?”
Ally had taken awhile to
convince me that going off to college would work out even though I was bringing
Caleb with me. Grandma didn’t even question me when I shoved the paperwork at
her to sign over guardianship for Caleb to me. Ally already had our lease
signed and a few daycares to go check out before she finally convinced me that
even though I had Caleb I still needed the college experience and she would
help me anyway possible.
I had some money saved up and I
quickly found a daycare on campus that would be convenient while I was at class
and work. I had met with one of the teachers already and one of the helpers was
actually who was watching Caleb tonight. I had never left him with a sitter before
besides my grandma and that was only when I had to work and go to school. I
felt guilty for leaving the little man when I would much rather
stay
home with him building
leggos
and drinking chocolate milk.
I walk out into our living room
where Clarissa and Caleb were busily putting a puzzle together. The whole
apartment was already scattered with signs of having a three year old living
with us with toys almost covering every surface. “Lee Lee, look at my puzzle,”
he shouts out bouncing up and down on his tiny toddler feet.
“Awesome
buddy.”
I ruffled his brown curls and
smooched
him on the cheek. “You sure you okay with me leaving?”