Daddies Brat

Leslie

Coming home for Christmas break was like having aloe rubbed over a sunburn. It soothed my soul in a way I didn’t know I needed.

I did all the things I had been putting off while at school. I binged episodes of Golden Girls (it still holds up!) while painting my toenails a different shade every day. My brother and I played Super Mario Kart on our old game system, except we turned it into a drinking game by making the loser of each race take a shot. This proved to be what psychologists call a negative feedback loop. After losing the first two games due to lack of skill, I lost the next five in a row due to lack of sobriety.

We got hangover brunch the next morning at our favorite local diner. That night we drove around the neighborhood looking at Christmas lights, a family tradition that had started before my brother or I were even born.

When my grades were posted, I was too nervous to look. I had to recruit my brother to click on the hyperlink for me while I faced the opposite direction.

“Shit,” he said, sucking in his breath. “For your core classes, do you need a passing grade, or a C?”

“I need at least a C!” I replied, whirling around to look. My eyes scanned the screen hungrily, ignoring all other information except the list of final grades for each class:

A

BA-

B

B+ Semester GPA: 3. 32

I breathed a huge sigh of relief, then turned and smacked my brother on the arm. “You butthead!”

He grabbed his arm. “Ow!”

“Why did you do that?”

“Because it was funny!” he replied.

I glared at him a few seconds later, then hugged him and went downstairs to tell my parents the good news.

Christmas itself was a joy. My parents bought us snowboards for the holiday, and revealed that we were spending the weekend at the Sunrise Park Ski Resort. After three straight days of falling on my butt in the snow, we decided that maybe it would be best to get a refund on my snowboard. But we laughed, drank hot chocolate in the lodge, and enjoyed being together without any schoolwork hanging over our heads.

Back home, while I was watching TV and counting down the days until I had to drive back to school, my dad joined me on the couch with a beer. “Have you thought any more about grad school?”

“I’ve enjoyed not thinking about school while on break,” I replied.

“I know, I know,” he said. “But you told me you have to make a decision by the first week in January. And I wouldn’t be a good father if I didn’t prod you about it.”

I let out a long sigh and paused the TV show I had been watching. Deep down, I wanted to stay at Coastal California College for my graduate degree. But lately, the school had a different feel to it than it had during the first six semesters I had spent there. Harper was going to graduate school there too, and Avery said he planned on staying in the area to look for a job. Their presence gave the school a tainted feel. It was a lingering discomfort that I wanted to move past.

“I have been thinking about it,” I said. “And I’m leaning toward the fourth option you mentioned. Putting off grad school for a year and working. That will help me cleanse my palate, so to speak, and figure out what I want to do.”

He patted me on the knee. “I think that’s a good decision, Leslie. Important decisions shouldn’t be rushed into. Nobody ever hurt themselves by taking a moment to think things over.”

Applying to graduate school was a lot more personal than undergrad. I had sent individual letters to the deans at each school, asking to join their programs. Not wanting to burn any bridges, I wrote personal letters to them again, informing them of my decision to take a gap year. I stared at each letter for about an hour, then folded them into envelopes and placed them in my mailbox on December 30.

The thirty-foot walk back to the front door felt lonely. Was I making the right decision?

Mom and Dad were home since it was a Saturday, so we sat down at the kitchen table to play a board game that my brother had brought home. It was called Abducktion, and involved an alien spaceship abducting different colored ducks from the board. It was simple and fun, and we played several games while munching on Mom’s famous homemade Chex Mix.

When the doorbell rang, my brother jumped up. “I ordered Chinese food for lunch.”

“And you didn’t ask if we wanted anything?” I replied.

“You said you were going to eat Chex Mix all day!”

“Only because I didn’t know Chinese food was on the menu, butthead.”

He scowled at me. “Just for that, I’m not sharing any of my spring rolls. And I bought extras.”

I rolled my eyes and turned back to the board. “Now I really want Chinese food.”

Mom casually replied while placing her ducks on the board. “Maybe if you stopped calling him butthead…” “I’ll stop when he stops being a butthead.”

“Uh, Leslie?” my brother called from the foyer.

“What?”

“There are three guys at the door,” he replied. “And they say they’re here to see you.”

Leslie

Three men here to see me.

I rose from my chair numbly. It couldn’t be them. There was no way.

Yet when I stepped into the foyer, there they were. Riley, standing tall and proud like a viking. Avery, grinning widely when he saw me. Harper, who removed his glasses and cleaned them on his shirt. He blinked in surprise when he put them back on.

“Hi, Leslie,” he said.

“Who are these guys?” my brother asked.

“We’re her… roommates,” Riley said.

“That’s not possible,” Dad said, joining us alongside Mom. “Her roommates are women. Didn’t I meet you already? You were dating Erin.”

Avery’s mouth hung open. “Uhh…”

Riley glanced at me and mouthed, “I’m sorry.”

“I’ll explain later,” I said to my dad. “And I’ll talk to you three when I get back.”

“Will you?” Harper demanded, suddenly more angry than I had ever seen him. “Or will you keep ignoring us?”

“We drove eight hours to see you,” Riley said. “You owe us an explanation.”

“Or at least, a conversation,” Avery added.

“What on earth is happening right now?” Mom asked. “Leslie, what are they talking about?”

I felt their six pairs of eyes on me, every one as painful as a sunburn. That feeling of being overwhelmed returned, the same way I felt when I was failing my classes and struggling to find enough time for everything in my life. Along with it came another feeling, stronger than the rest: affection for my three roommates. The realization that I missed them. The weight of it all pressed down on me, short-circuiting my brain.

“I’ll be right back,” I said, grabbing my keys from the table by the door.

“Leslie? Where are you going?” Dad demanded.

I rushed out the door and into my car. I was barefoot, but it was too late to go back for my shoes. The six of them stood on the front porch as I drove away.

I didn’t know where I was going. Away from them, that’s all that mattered. I had fucked everything up. By running from my problems, and moving in with Erin, I had put everything off until later. And now it was time to pay for that decision.

Now I’m running away again. I knew it with the cold logic of a psychologist, but I couldn’t stop myself.

I pulled onto the ramp to I-40, heading west. I wasn’t going to drive all the way back to campus, but for now this felt like the right direction. Endless pine trees that helped me zone out.

My phone rang five minutes later. To my surprise, it wasn’t one of the guys or my family: it was Erin.

“Erin,” I answered, “I think I fucked everything up.”

“You’re damn right you did!” she replied. “Avery called me and told me what happened. The truth, not the excuse you gave me. They didn’t kick you out! You left them!”

“Erin, I know…”Copyright Nôv/el/Dra/ma.Org.

“How could you have lied to me like that?” she demanded. “I’m your best friend. You could have told me the truth. I still would have let you move in with me.”

“Would you have?” I replied. “Or would you have tried to talk me into staying with the guys and trying to make up?”

“Both. But wait a minute, make up for what?”

“I lied to them, Erin,” I said, tears beginning to flow. “I was sleeping with each of them individually, and it blew up in my face.”

“Oh, sweetie. It’s not as bad as you think.”

I shook my head even though she couldn’t see me. “It doesn’t matter. I can’t let myself get distracted anymore. I need to focus.”

“Even if you push everyone away who cares about you?”

The question hung in the air on the line. It felt like an accusation. One that was too close to the truth for me to hear. “I’ll talk to you later,” I said, and hung up.

The exit to Route 64 was up ahead. I turned onto it, heading north toward the Grand Canyon. I drove for an hour until I reached the park entrance, where I paid the fee to get in. Then I parked at the visitor’s center and walked down a path until I reached the rim of the canyon. I was barefoot and didn’t have a coat, but the biting cold was refreshing today.

I used to come here in high school when I needed to think. There was something about the massive canyon, incomprehensibly-large to my brain, that put life into perspective. It helped me make tough decisions. I was such a small part of this world. My problems were even smaller. Why did I let them overwhelm me?

I was reminded by something similar Harper had said when he showed me his telescope for the first time. Seeing Jupiter or Saturn through his telescope helped put things in perspective for him. It reminded him that whatever was troubling him was inconsequential compared to the vastness of the universe.

Leaning on the railing, I finally let myself cry.

My tears were long gone and I was beginning to shiver when I heard some noise on the path to my left. “Get a photo of me pretending like I’m falling in.”

“Take it yourself.”

“I don’t want a selfie. I want a real photo.”

“You take it,” a third guy said. “I’m not getting near the edge.”