Around the same time, several other things happened, putting more stress on teenage-brained me. Nathan became much more of the ‘I wanna be YOUR BoyFriend’ at me, making Heather and I have a big fight. We cancelled a trip to one of her favorite stores because we could not be in the same room together, and we had been planning it for a while to get her some of the latest girly things, and me, too since I was going to be there. School decided that I needed some sort of remedial class for something I had aced the year before, bumping me out of English Lit, the only class I don’t mind going to, and making me sit through baby Algebra for two hours a day. Oh, and that was over my only study hall, too. And then, because the father person had started to poke around with lawyers and stuff, claiming that he was the breadwinner and crap... Sorry. And stuff, Mom’s insurance decided that I was covered by whatever he had and dropped me without warning. Not that I was sick or anything, but going to the therapist’s and being strong-armed out because it wasn’t covered? More than embarrassing. And at that point, I needed someone to talk to.
The time I was forced to be with my dad, I guess wasn’t so bad. But having to meet his girlfiend and being forced to go to movies and shopping with her... And no, I didn’t misspell that. She was sweet for about five minutes to me, then dad went to go get something at the pizza place and she showed her horns and teeth. She did not like that he had found a renewed interest in me. AT ALL. It took several outings with them, never just with her, thank goodness, to have me figure out what was part of what was behind this stupid push to reconnect.
Money.
Not just any money. I had not seen anyone from that side of the family since he had left. Though, I only remember seeing that side of the family once, at a strange holiday gathering at a hotel. Once he was out of our life, even my grandparents had decided we were not worth it. That meant that I did not know what had been going on with them, and did not know that my Grands were rich. Super rich. As in the accountant to Trump does their taxes rich. Not that we EVER saw this when I was a kid with him in our lives. With him out, we had to scrounge for a few years and I will always remember the first time Mom and I didn’t have to pay partial utilities or put off something because we didn’t have the money. That was only a few years ago, too.
Grandpa had grown some sort of conscience about how his son had treated us. Dad was not going to get anything from them when they died. He had a position in one of the companies they owned, but that was all he would get. Unless he made up and took responsibility for me. Well, bully for them, as my Mom would say. Kicking him in the wallet seemed to make a big difference.
I found out because I let slip that I needed to get to the stables for my chores and my training time. He brightened, she glowered, and dad said that he would have something for me the next weekend when we met. I thought nothing of it, since he had nothing to do with me for so long I figured he had nothing to really offer me. When we met at the museum the next week, he gave me a pink note card with fancy lettering on it. And a credit card.
It sounds like it would be a dream come true, but it wasn’t. After seven years of no contact, and the year and a half before that that he put Mom through hell, he gave me an unlimited credit card and had made an appointment for me at one of the high end equestrian shops about an hour’s drive away. With them waiting to take my measurements for a new helmet, jodhpurs, boots... I took it, but I really wanted to do something that would have made my sensei very displeased. Stuffing the gift up my own dad’s butt is not what I had been studying martial arts for.
I debated hiding the gifts from Mom. I knew I couldn’t, but I didn’t like what I knew would happen. And it did.
Mom blew up. I knew it would happen. She sent me to my room, the first time since I hit twelve, and I could hear her screaming at dad on the phone. Yes, he was trying to buy my attention. He was trying to buy my time. He was trying to buy my love, but what he didn’t know was I felt nauseated every time I left a meeting with him. It was not just him, it was the girlfiend, too, but it was mostly him.
Mom tried to take the gift away from me. The first real thing he had given me directly... That I could remember. I said no. Then I yelled no. Then I swore at her and she slammed the door on me. The Week of Silence descended after that.
It was hard. I had no one to talk to about what was going on. I didn’t have anyone in my life who wasn’t a least partially involved with the different dramas that had been piling up. I really did not want the adventures of emotions I had been presented with, but I had been and I was not handling it well.
****
About a month after dad had slunk back into my life, I had my first meeting with the Grands. I know they were not called that, but with how rich, and snooty, they were, I could only ever think of them as that. With the measurements that the equestrian shop had taken, dad had been sneaky and had bought me a few outfits, all packed for me when he arrived on our doorstep for our now weekly outing.
He had not told Mom. Anything. He told me he had, but I found out later he lied. Great way to get my trust, dad.
He took me to the airport and we were on his corporate jet and off to meet the Grands. I had to change from my decent jeans and shirt into some sort of high end name brand torture device that looked like a dress. It technically fit, but was a little tight in places, and showed that my undies were not skin tone. I really wish he had warned me, even if he had not asked Mom if he could take me out of state. I felt very out of place when I was ushered into the pristine temple to money that was the estate the Grands lived on.
At least Grandpa was not as bad as I had feared. Grandmother was. She looked down at me and would not talk to me past the initial greeting. Grandpa had heard about the equestrian training I had done, and even though it was mostly Western, we were able to talk some about horses over lunch. He even brought out some albums of he and dad with the horses they had owned over the years, mostly Hunters.
I was allowed to change into my new riding gear, which dad had brought with the torture dress, and we went to the stables. I had just started to get aquatinted with one of the Morgans they had when there was a call to the stables. Yup, phone service to the out buildings. I’m not surprised, since we took a golf-cart out to it. Grandpa took the call and was unhappy, but didn’t look surprised. Mom had figured out that I was not in town when I did not come home at the usual time after dad had taken me. And then she found out that he had taken me out of state, because the girlfiend was so concerned.
Grandpa understood. There was little I know I could do and he didn’t seem to have much in the way of a plan to deal with what had happened, other than to do what we were doing. We were able to ride together for about 20 minutes before we were contacted by Mom’s new lawyer. That cut everything short.
The Grands were not too bad, if you even them out. I found that there was a small present in my new luggage when I changed back into my jeans and shirt. I kept the boots on. It was a struggle, but I loved how they felt. And I was damned if I was going to wear the torture dress on the plane back.
****
It was another week of silence. From almost everyone. And with weather, even my BJJ class was cancelled. Sucked.
I started to make the stupidest plan of my life. Guess. Hints - teenager in throes of uncertainty and mental anguish without a place to vent. Yup, I decided to run away.
The present was what pushed me to going. It was not fancy, but it held lots of promise. A small photo album of the Grands when they went to Europe and North Africa at some point. It looked like it was pre-dad. They were happy. The last picture in the album was behind a small note. Grandmother said that she could not face me, yet, but that she wanted me to know that she was working on accepting that I was in the family, again. There was a phone number and I called. She answered and we were able to talk that way.
It was the conversation about why dad had left that made lots of things much clearer, and broke Mom’s silence.
Dad had been cheating. No, not cheating, he had another family. We were the second family. I guess that meant we were the cheating family. I was his only child, and when the first wife found out about Mom and I, she tried to get him to confess. And then divorced him. Which then made waves because Mom was now his legal wife, which Grandmother did not approve of.
I only really remember meeting the Grands a few times, and that was between the divorce of his first family and when he left us. I don’t know if I understood anything, really. He went away and didn’t come back. For a while, I thought maybe he had gone to Brazil and was lost in the Amazon. I had been reading “The Lost World’. I always have been too accepting of alternate universes. And too accepting of what was going on around me.
Dad had been lying to everyone. It took time and money to extract him from our lives. The time, worked. The money he stopped paying only a year after the papers were signed because he had a new lawyer have a judge declare the marriage completely void because of the first marriage. No, it wasn’t fair, but it happened.
The money was also to keep him out of prison for being married to several people at once. For some reason, it’s against the law. I am a little biased and such about that right now, but he worked the system to advantage and won. If he could use the system, I would use him.
I figured, I had a drivers license, even though I never got to use it, so I could survive on my own. I started to use the credit card dad had given me to buy a few supplies here and there. New running shoes. A good pair of jeans. Some basic camping gear. I didn’t know where I was going to go, but I knew it was going to be tough once I dropped the card.
I even started to go through my leathers and such and repaired and replaced things that needed it. Buttons and thong and straps that were not right were dealt with. I am glad I did.
***
Remember that table top that Nathan gave me? Well, he never did finish the legs for it. It stayed against my wall for months, taking up room and gathering dust. He was one of the blots in my life, having gone from simpering puppy to Emo stalker in one conversation. I don’t know why, but I just couldn’t see him and I being together. With Heather really liking him, and un-friending me in real life because he had declared his intentions for me, I just couldn’t let him near me. Which meant he seemed to always be hanging around places I might be.
BJJ class was always a study in ignoring the situation. None of us were willing to drop the class.
There were a few days where I tried to get a grip on my life, and my emotions. I started to clean out my room, partially to get rid of things that I would not be able to take with me when I left. I thought that I would try to give the table back to him. Or throw it away.
I pulled it from against the wall and my hand must have hit something on the thick, oddly ornamented side. I felt a shock go through me and a small panel opened up. The shock was more of a... shock than hurt, but I dropped the thing and something fell out. It was a thick necklace. It was a dark metal with an oval piece in the middle. There were little holes on the oval, lines of them. They did not go all the way through, and the design was sort of... blah other than that. I had something similar that I had bought with hard earned money at a convention that the dealer had called a torque. This was close, though I was not sure how my neck was going to fit in through the open slot at the back.
It never occurred to me not to wear it. I figured that, since it was second hand, Nathan probably had no idea that it was in the table thing. He gave it to me, it was mine.
I don’t know when I became so cynical. I was not reacting well to things. I was acting like a twelve year old, not a seventeen year old. I know that. I knew that. I knew I was having a prolonged temper tantrum. I felt I deserved it. Finding the necklace kept me from tossing the table thing in the trash.
When I tried to put the necklace on, it at first was too small. Then it flexed a little and I was able to push it on. It was a few panicked heartbeats as it felt like it might pinch off my breathing or blood flow or something else important, but didn’t. It was very comfortable and reminded me of some of the jewelry I saw in the illustrations on the pulp magazines. Mostly the slave girls, but there was something about it that was really nice.
I wore the necklace to school. I had worn it to bed and just forgot to take it off when I dressed. It wasn’t until hall time between second and third period that I thought something was going on.
I was walking slowly, trying to avoid places that any of my former friends might be and smiled at a conversation that I passed by. I hadn’t realized that the girl had such a large family, and that her mother had just given birth to another baby that morning. She was talking fast to her friend and smiling so broad that I thought her teeth could have been used to show a movie on. She looked at me with that smile and I said congratulations. Her smile slipped, but she thanked me and kept talking with her friend, just not as loud.
Thing is, I don’t know her language. I mean, I didn’t know her language. Right then, it was clear to me what she had said, and what I said was in her language. I had flunked first year Spanish, twice. How the heck did I know Korean?
I tried to keep my mouth shut for the rest of the day. I could listen in on conversations and no one knew, because they didn’t know I could understand them. It was thrilling. I was finding out things about my school mates that I hadn’t known before. Then it was concerning. I wasn’t sure if I suddenly was an idiot savant with languages or just going crazy. Then my stressed brain put together me putting the necklace on to being able to hear and understand things. And then it was so scary I tried to take the necklace off in the bathroom and couldn’t. I think I broke down crying and the councillor came and took me to the office and then Mom came and took me home. It sort of blurred together for a while.
I had never done anything like that before. I just sat in my room and cried. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I didn’t want to see anyone. I just let a bunch of my frustrations out and fell asleep.
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