“What took you so long?” Gert asked when I walked in, my hair all windblown.
“I took a longer route,” I told her, kicking off my Walmart sneakers.
“Why?” she asked, sounding completely put off.
“More exercise,” I answered, not really feeling the need to explain to her. She snorted, one of Gert’s more annoying habits, she snorted a lot. I once tried to snort and completely failed; I still don’t understand how she did it.
“God knows you need it if you don’t want to get fat again.” She snorted again. I was never fat, chubby yes, I had a potbelly yes, but fat no. I walked away, unable to bear another second near her. I hated it when people called me fat, even if they were referring to the past. It was still the same me, just different looking. Did they have to be so mean? I hated people who judged based on looks. I walked to my room, lugging my school bag over my shoulder. It was actually just a nice purse; it was not from Walmart. Reggie, Gert and Paix had bought it for me at Christmas. I closed my door a bit louder than necessary but that was only because I was having a bad day. I was happy I still hadn’t received any homework but it was only the second day of school, so that would be changing pretty soon. I wasn’t very hungry so I skipped dinner and ate some protein bars and curled up under the covers and put on the old VHS tapes I had of my mom, Miguel, and I. There was only thirteen of them and I knew what happened in each one off by heart, but still every now and then when I was feeling down, I’d put them on. I chose to watch the one where we went to Miguel’s mother’s, my Grandmother’s, for Christmas dinner. In the video I helped Gran bake cookies with mom’s help as well, while dad videotaped us. I was about five in this video, for part of the video dad had forgotten to turn off the video camera and had just put the cap on, so all you saw was black but I could still hear them talking. I let their voices lull me into my comfort zone. I listened as dad explained to me how Gran used to make him wear a suit every Christmas when he was a boy.
“I’m sure you look good in a suit, Daddy,” I said sitting on his lap then. I still remembered sitting on his lap when we were at Gran’s. That was one reason I had such a hard time visiting Gran’s house, there were too many good memories there, it made me miss mom and dad even more.
“That he did, my sweet,” Gran said to me in her gingerbread apron, brown eyes smiling like all was, full of wisdom. Gran always called me her sweet or sweets.
“You should wear a suit,” I told him, playing with his curly black hair.
“I don’t like suits hon, they make me feel silly being all dressed up,” he said gently rubbing my back.
“I’ll wear one with you and then we can both be silly.” I giggled, delighted; they all laughed with me. I felt tears come from my eyes like they usually did when I watched our family videos, eventually dad realized he had forgotten to turn off the camera and shut it off. I switched to the next film, when I was in a play in kindergarten, I watched it through my blurry eyes.
“Why are you being such a hermit?” Reggie asked, opening my door and flicking on the lights. I quickly turned the power off on the TV and wiped my eyes. “Are you crying again? What’s wrong this time, did someone else call you fat?” she asked, trying to hurt me. Reggie didn’t know about the tapes, no one but dad, Gran, and James did. I tried to ignore her but she continued. “Or is it because everyone knows you’re stalking James? Yeah, I heard that and I don’t even go to high school anymore.” She smirked. Gert had probably told her but then again Spring Hill wasn’t a very populated or big town. My anger flashed for the second time today.
“Get out!” I shouted. She just smiled and examined her nails, making no effort to leave.
“Didn’t your mama ever teach you your manners? I guess not. It’s rude to shout Mike but if you try and ask me nicer, I might listen,” she said and then realized her mistake but it was too late, I was already darting at her. I slapped her as hard as I could, right across the cheek. So hard it even hurt my hand. It made a loud smack as my hand hit her face.
“Don’t you ever talk about my mom!” I warned her and then ran out of my room, down the stairs and outside. I could hear Reggie crying and everyone running to see what was wrong, they didn’t even notice as I pushed past all of them on my way down the stairs. I worked on my breathing and sat down on the grass in a yoga position. I was going to be in a lot of trouble when I came back in, so I decided I’d sleep outside tonight and avoid the punishment as long as I could. I lay on my back on one of our plastic lawn chairs, it was a nice warm night out, the clouds were all gone and the sky was full of millions of stars, the moon was still a half crescent like the night before. It was all so beautiful, James would have appreciated it if he still liked that stuff. I wondered if James was looking at it right now. I used to look
