Chapter 26 – Obligations and Revelations

As I had joylessly predicted, my mother's flare didn't pass; it bloomed. If it wasn't one thing it was another over the past couple of months and I was desperately looking forward to the point at which things became easier again, but I had to ask myself if I truly believed they would. Life only seemed to grow more hectic and complicated the older a person got, so would this the new easy? I could only hope not.

I spent the rest of the weekend cooped up inside with my father as we tried our best to both accommodate my mother in her ill state and duck her wrath whenever possible... sometimes it was just completely unavoidable, though. Since I had nothing but an enormous amount of time on my hands, I decided to study up on the playbook that Coach had provided after our little pep talk. If he was going to force me to try for the role, then I just had to suck it up and accept my lot... because I had bigger issues to stress me out than someone believing in me. Besides, stumbling around blindly on the field was painful and probably made me look like a huge buffoon... and it was simply not something I wanted a repeat of when it was my turn to play quarterback again.

There were so many different plays, so many things to take into consideration and be mindful of... just studying it gave me a headache. I found that if I split my time reading, checking in on my mother from time to time, trying to formulate my own runs and going outside to practice my throws every now and again (my accuracy was god-awful), cabin fever did not have a chance to set in and my jittery states were far and few between.

Save for football practice (which I looked forward to more than usual with my mother under the influence of a flare), my week commenced pretty much the same as the weekend had. Somewhat claustrophobic and very repetitive. On Wednesday, after being yelled at by my mother for absolutely nothing other than her reasoning of me 'planning' something and she knew it, I decided it was time to call Lindsay and see if I could convince her to team up with me to save Andopolis' stupid ass from military service. Much to my dismay, the phone just rang endlessly. As far as I knew, she was supposed to be back in town on Monday, but not a soul was answering at their house. I tried again and again throughout the rest of the afternoon, but was met with the same result each time.

On Thursday, I decided to quickly head over to the Weir household after practice (before I was stuck at home with my mother for the rest of the day). I knocked on the door and waited. No answer. I knocked again. No answer. After the third time and a lengthy wait (and more than a few attempts to peek in some windows), I gave up and began heading back to my car, rather surprised to see Millie just staring at me from the stoop of the next house over.

"Hey Millie," I greeted as I stopped at the bottom of the steps, looking up to talk with her. She was dressed in her usual attire- a colorful, long-sleeved shirt that covered all but her neck and a long pair of brown pants.

She flashed a quick smile and continued looking down at me awkwardly, leaving me to wonder if she was secretly judging me for something or not. "Hi, Donovan," she greeted and then, almost timidly, walked down the three levels of stairs so we were standing on even ground.

"Do you, uh, know where Lindsay or, well any of the Weirs are?"

She shook her head, squinting as the sun bounced off of somewhere and plastered her in the face. I shifted my body to block the path of the beam and stop the poor girl from going sun blind. Once the light was out of her face I could see that she was still squinting, as if trying to come to terms with some argument going on inside of her head.

"Do you know if Lindsay got back into town yet? I mean, the summit ended on Monday, I thought she would have been home by now."

"Lindsay might be in some kind of trouble," she finally breathed out in a hurry, as if the secret was just bursting to be freed.

I tilted my head and looked at her questioningly. "What? What do you mean?"

There was more squinting and random gesturing before she looked back to me and sighed. "Look, I don't want people to think I'm spreading rumors, so just keep this between us, okay? I'm only telling you because you're her friend, too."

I nodded and waited for her to continue on.

Apparently, Lindsay never went to the academic summit at all. She skipped out on it altogether to join up with some deadheads and follow the Grateful Dead around on their tour for two weeks. I could feel my eyes widen in shock at the news. A little stunt like that really shouldn't have shaken me as much as it did, I mean I knew the kind of people we hung out with and the influences they could have, but I never would have pegged Linds as having the guts to up and ditch something that big. I could only imagine she went with the hippie twosome from school, as I noticed her sitting down and talking with them a few more times after their initial introduction.

The Weirs found out about their daughter's deceitful ways just a few days after the summit began and she called them to come clean about what she was really doing. Her parents, Mr. Weir especially, were beyond angry and demanded she return home at once, but Lindsay clearly stood firm in her decision and was not returning to Chippewa until after the tour was over on July fourteenth.

With my eyes as big as saucer plates (I'm almost certain they were), I asked the girl with the answers a question that was at the top of my curiosity list ever since she started talking. "How do you know all of this, Millie?"

She shuffled her feet for a moment and looked around anxiously, as if someone else may be listening in. The action would have been comical to me if I wasn't so concentrated on what she was saying, as the street had been eerily empty ever since I first knocked on the Weir's door and it never picked up in activity after that.

"Mrs. Weir was helping me make cookies for my church's bake sale tomorrow. We were talking about stuff and when Lindsay's name came up she just started to get mad and told me all about it. And then I was right next to her when she got the call from the hospital-"

"The hospital?!" I spat out, almost in a shout, cutting her off entirely.

"Oh..." Millie said mournfully, averting her gaze as her face grew red with embarrassment.

I wasn't sure if she was going to continue, as her reaction led me to believe that she said more than she wanted to already. "Millie, what happened?"

She sighed and continued on, still looking away. "On Tuesday, they got a call from some hospital, asking if they were Lindsay's parents and informing them that their daughter was in the ER for..." She looked at me for a brief moment, her face telling the tale of a girl struggling with how much more information she should be sharing when none of it was hers to spread to begin with. "With something," she finally finished and immediately looked away again.

She knew what had landed Lindsay in the emergency room, she had to... but she didn't trust me enough to tell me. That was fine and understandable, I supposed. After all, it's not like we were close or anything. All we ever did was hang out at a school dance and play a few games of UNO.

"Mrs. Weir was the one who answered. She looked as pale as a ghost when they told her about Lindsay and the person on the other end was talking so loud that I could hear everything they said. The whole family left almost right after that."

"Oh, wow." I scratched my head and began to wonder just what had happened and if Lindsay was okay. "Do you know where they went?"

She half shrugged while answering, "Some hospital in Denver. Saint Luke's, I think."

"Denver? That's like... two days away or something."

"It's over a twenty-hour drive if they keep to the speed limit," Millie corrected, looking at me once more. "I did the math last night."

My quick memory saved me from making a fool of myself and giving her and odd look. Oh yeah, she's still a practicing mathlete...

She suddenly sighed and lowered her head slightly. "I should have known something like this would happen to her when she started hanging out with those freaks."

That little quip felt like somewhat of an undeserved cheap shot to me. "Hey, come on now. I'm one of them too, ya know? And you and Kim are friends."

Or 'were', maybe? I really don't know anymore.

Millie's face changed abruptly and she looked altogether angry. "Kim is the whole reason Lindsay is in this mess! She went with her to all those shows and she's the one who made sure Lindsay went to the hospital. She got on the phone and started apologizing to Mrs. Weir, but that only made things worse."

"She- wait, what? Kim's with her?" My mind all at once was flooded with a sense of relief at that fact that I knew Kim had not just vanished off the face of the earth and she was with Linds.

Millie simply rolled her eyes at me and began to shamble away in her earmark fashion, flopping her arms to her side in frustration. "Maybe you should be more concerned with the friend who's been hospitalized instead of the one you... fornicated with."

Oh my god! Even Millie knows? Word spread way farther than I originally thought.

It wasn't that I lacked concern over Linds and her current situation, Millie just didn't know how important Kim was to me as well. I had to quickly try to backpedal. "No, wait- I mean is Lindsay alright? Do you know? Millie?"

The religious girl just kept walking, making her way back up the stairs and into her house.

Shit...

After I made it home and had another difficult run-in with my mother, I gave Nick a call and asked him if he had heard anything about Lindsay. I figured there was a good chance that he knew something; he was working right alongside Mr. Weir at his store, A-1 Sporting Goods, after all.

"Nah," Nick answered me casually. "I haven't heard anything and Mr. Weir gave me the rest of the week off. I think it was his way of saying sorry for being in such a bad mood last week or something. She should be back in town, though, right? Maybe we should all drop by her place tonight or something."

It was painfully apparent that Nick had no clue what was going on. Mr. Weir was pissed because they had found out about Lindsay not going to the academic summit and he likely gave Nick the rest of the week off because he was driving like crazy to get to Denver.

"I, uh, I can't tonight, bud. I gotta take care of stuff at home. My mom... she's sick... again."

"Oh man, I'm sorry. Anything I can do?"

"Not really. Just gotta wait it out. Thanks though."

"Oh, yeah, no. No problem," my friend said, sounding somewhat downtrodden. I wasn't sure if it was because he knew how much my mother's illness affected me or that his plans to see Lindsay may have just been nixed. His next sentence somewhat pointed me in a different direction entirely.

"Sara's coming over and then I got- I got drum lessons in a little while anyway. They're, like, really hard and I don't even know if I'm getting any better."

Nick was sort of an oddball when it came to his passion for being a famous drummer. It was a dream he never wanted to let go of, but putting any kind of effort into actually pulling it off seemed like torture for him. It was as if he wanted the talent to just appear out of thin air, fully formed and understood. Then again, at least he had some kind of vision for his future, even if he wasn't pursuing it as hard as he should be. What was I doing? Going back to football to get into a good college to do what exactly? That was a question for which I had absolutely no answer.