For the reader: I know a lot of you are eager to get onto the Jared part of the story and might feel as if my story is dragging, but I really do want to establish Kim's character as well as the story's basic setting and background before I delve deeper. So, please, offer as much feedback as you can and hopefully, keep reading!
I really enjoy walking home from school, especially when the weather is this nice. In La Push, sunny days are rarities that are always cherished. My load was a lot lighter than usual without my umbrella and galoshes stuffed into my backpack, and I had finally been able to wear one of my summer dresses.
Everyone's outside. Kids play on the street while parents set up for barbecues out in their backyards. A few people jog around the neighborhood or walk dogs. I smile at them as they pass by me.
As I walk by the beach, I notice that a lot of people from school are already there, playing beach volleyball or swimming in the ocean. The elders are congregated in the center, arranging the bonfire and selecting which of the legends they will tell tonight. I spot Meg, leaning on some ropes that lined the dock , flirting with some guys a little far off from them. For a moment I consider just dropping my bag off at home and joining her, but I know that I shouldn't. Socializing was never my forte. I wouldn't be able to get through a conversation without blushing or leaving an awkward silence. I couldn't flirt nor was I daring or outgoing enough. Most likely, I'd end up walking alongside the shore and watch everyone else have fun, watch them look as if they conquered the world, act as if they hadn't any problems or flaws to think about.
I let a frustrated sigh, but when I reach to my front door, it becomes one of apprehension. I don't know whether my father would be home. It had been three weeks since I had last seen him, the longest of his many disappearances since my mother's death. Every so often he would show up at the house drunk and disillusioned, carousing with a bar-mate and walking in circles around the yard. He always came at night, so the noise would wake me almost immediately and I could go down and bring him in. Stepping into the bleak, empty house, I hope that today would be one of those days, as scary as they were, so that I could feel better knowing that he was okay.
I soon find myself in my room flipping restlessly through my mother's battered copy of Catch-22. Normally, reading it would have made me laugh and feel better, but today I was so worried about my father that I couldn't concentrate. Who knows what sort of trouble he could have gotten into. His occasional presence and feigned sobriety was the only thing keeping us together, keeping me out of a foster home. For now we had enough of our old savings to live off of until I'd turn eighteen next year and get access to my trust fund. Money wasn't the problem. It was just everything else.
My eyes catch glimpse of a picture sitting atop the dresser and a pang of grief hits my chest. It was of my mother and I, taken on my thirteenth birthday. She had taken me to Portland for the day, and I had had so much fun. Before dinner, we had gone to see Coppélia performed by the Portland Ballet Company and afterwards, we'd sat at a small café drinking hot chocolate and eating sandwiches. It was there that some street photographer had found us and asked if we wanted our picture to be taken.
But that all seemed like the distant past, before she started throwing up in the mornings and staying in her bedroom all day. It was before the doctors had located a malignant tumor irresponsive to chemo and was given less than a couple of weeks to live. It was before she had died by the roadside, her body mangled and mutilated, when it was supposed to have happened in a hospital bed. My father had come home almost delusional.
I start to cry. But it's not one of those bawling sobs that people let out in movies. The tears fall silently, and my lungs choke on air. I pull a pillow into my chest and buy my face in it, thinking of just how quickly my life had changed, how it had shattered into pieces like a vase knocked over by a careless child. I truly had been left alone. Now I have nothing to love, to keep company, or to live for.
A knock suddenly sounds at the door, forcing me to regain my composure and go answer the door. I close my eyes and tilt my head back slightly as an effort to quell my tears. Someone knocks again, this time harder, My eyes fly open. I check to make sure the red blotches on my face aren't noticeable and fly downstairs to get the door.
It's the sour-faced woman who works at the bar that my father frequents. As she examines me for a short moment, I notice her car parked on my driveway.
"It's been two weeks," she tells me outright, her eyes shifting past me and into the house. I give her a confused look and her eyes come back to mine.
"They told me to come and tell you that it's been two weeks since your dad's come and paid his bill."