808 Miles Away From Home Chapter 09
By September, I had been at the university for a month.
Mom called my student advisor every three days to ask how I was doing. The answer was always the same.
“Paige is doing fine. She’s attending all her classes on time, and her grades are excellent.”
Fine, on time, and excellent grades. Those few words were the only information about me that Mom could get
She tried writing me a letter, three pages long, and sent it to the campus mailroom. She had apparently cried the whole time she was writing it.
The letter came back. The mailroom staff said I had refused to accept it.
She tried getting relatives to intervene. Aunt Donna called my new number, and I picked up.
“Paige, sweetie, your mom’s lost over 15 pounds. She cries every single day. Just call her back, okay? She knows she was wrong.”
“Aunt Donna, the $300 you gave me at the graduation party? I never saw it. Mom put it under Bria’s name.”
The other end of the line went quiet.
“It’s not about the money,” I said. “I’m telling you this so you understand that this didn’t happen overnight.”
Aunt Donna sighed. “So, what are you going to do? Never come home again?”
“I don’t know.”
I meant that. I genuinely did not know.
I did not hate them. Hate required caring, and I was past that. I was just tired.
I was tired of explaining, tired of fighting for scraps of attention, and tired of standing in a corner where the spotlight was never going to reach, waiting to be noticed.
In October, the long weekend came around.
The family group chat no longer existed, but Mom passed a message through the advisor. “Are you coming home for the break? I’ll make your favorite food.”
The advisor relayed it to me word for word.
I asked the advisor, “Did she say what my favorite food was?”
The advisor paused for a moment. “She didn’t specify.”
Of course she had not.
She knew every single one of Bria’s favorites, from her comfort meals to her go-to orders, to her preferred snacks and even their brands. However, she did not know anything about what I liked to eat.
“Tell her I have plans and won’t be going back.”
“All right.”
I spent six of the seven days of the break in the library. On the remaining day, my roommate and I took the bus downtown to visit the city museum.
My roommate’s name was Vera Colby. She was a local and spoke with a soft, rounded Southern accent.
She knew my situation, but she never pried. She just made a habit of including me whenever she went anywhere, and she would always grab an extra soup from the dining hall whenever she picked up her own food.
“Paige, you’re really not going home for the break?” she had asked once.
“No.”
“Then let’s go grab dinner tonight. My treat.”
“Sure.”
Over dinner, she said something out of nowhere. “You know what? I think you’re kind of incredible.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re the kind of person who can handle everything on her own. But at the same time, I feel like that kind of incredible is actually pretty sad.”
I poked at my food and did not answer.
“Well, you’ve got me now.” She smiled and pushed some of her fries onto my plate. “If something’s going on, just say so. Stop shouldering the burden by yourself.”
I looked down at my plate and nodded.
“Okay.”
That night, back in the dorm, I lay in bed thinking for a long time.
Vera had said I was incredible. I knew that kind of incredible was not something a person was born with.
It was something that got beaten into someone by circumstance, because a child who never had anyone to catch her when she fell would either shatter or learn to land on her own feet.
I had chosen the second option. However, choosing it did not mean it had not hurt. The pain had simply gone on long enough that I stopped feeling it.
It was just like the word Mom had always used for me.
Low-maintenance.
A low-maintenance child was not a child who did not need care. She was a child whose care had simply been forgotten about.
