Broken Compass

Secure. Safe. Happy. Excited.

Remember this. Hold on to it.

Unease seeps through me. I glance over my shoulder as Mom tugs me along, as my short legs pump to try and keep up with her, and see a dark cloud gathering inside the restaurant. A gust of wind sends the chandeliers swinging, the curtains moving.

“No!” I scream, and twist around, trying to see better, to warn my family. “No!”

But like every time, I fail, and I wake up covered in cold sweat, aware this isn’t just a dream and that it won’t fade away with the night.

As I race out of the apartment in the morning, late for my tutoring class because I couldn’t get myself together fast enough to get ready, I find a strange woman making coffee in the kitchen.

“Hi,” she says, and smiles. “I’m Jane.”

“Kash.” I hover uncertainly at the door, my backpack slung over one shoulder, my mind still cloudy. “Who are you?”

She laughs. “I’m Nate’s mom.”

I hadn’t expected this. “His mom?”

“I know, we’ve never met. I’m away a lot.”

That makes me think of Sydney and her ever-absent mom, and I rub at my forehead, fighting the headache building behind my eyes. “But you’re staying?”

She turns her attention to the coffee machine. “Not for long, I’m afraid.”

“Why not?”

Her backs stiffens. “It’s complicated. You’re the roommate, I take it?”

“That’s me.”

She nods. “I hope you’re comfortable in the guest room.”

The broom closet, you mean? But I swallow the words down and excuse myself to rush out of the apartment, thoughts chasing one another.

West had talked about Nate’s folks, but Nate never mentioned her. In all this time I’ve been here, I never met her. How can she leave him alone with that man who somehow hurts him? Does she even know? Does she care?

What’s with moms and dads and all the dark spaces in between us? Weston lives with his sister and grandfather, Nate with his father, Syd with a mom who’s never there, and as for me… I’ve lost everyone who mattered to me.

How do these absent mothers and fathers hold the strings of our lives and play us like puppets, taking over our dreams and thoughts and making us do things we wouldn’t otherwise do?

Throwing myself into work at least takes my mind off the dreams that plague me at night and the thin

gs I don’t wanna know or remember. The things I don’t understand.

Images batter me, sinking claws into my mind, shredding it. Make it stop. Make the memories stop.

It all sends me stumbling outside to the sidewalk, the dishes left unwashed in the sink, my hand trembling as I roll a cigarette and suck on it desperately, like an addict.

Like the addict I’m turning into.

George stares at me long and hard when I come back inside later, but says nothing. His small, shrewd eyes seem to see everything.

Which means it’s just a matter of time before he realizes how screwed up I am and sends me packing.

Unless I leave first.

Days pass. I tutor, I clean, I evade George’s questions about myself, evade West, Nate and Sydney altogether. I’m quite the evasion and escape artist.