Some Kind of Normal

I was just about to get off my butt when my dad walked into the kitchen. He helped himself to the last bit of coffee in the pot and leaned against the counter. He was his regular Saturday self. Hair slightly askew, unshaven, and sleep still in his eyes.

He was beautiful, my dad, but we all know that beauty can hide dark and sinful things, because the reality was that my beautiful father was a snake. He just hadn’t shed his skin yet.

“So how’s Trevor?”

Funny. His voice still held that extra bit of warmth that wrapped every single word he uttered in a blanket of nice. Safe. Trustworthy. It was his secret weapon.

Too bad it was a total lie.

I shoved my cup away. Guess today wasn’t the day he was going to come clean, which meant that today wasn’t the day I could stop playing pretend. I’d thought about confronting him. I thought about it every single day. And every single day I thought no, today isn’t the day I want his lie to be real, because once his lie becomes my reality, I’d have to face a whole lot of other stuff I wasn’t ready for. It was a coward’s way out, but right now, being a coward was getting me through life.

So I took an extra moment to get my game face on (go, Everly, go) before I answered him with the most epic answer ever.

“I don’t know.”

And I didn’t. The truth was I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about Trevor since Thursday. The whole thing had been awful to watch, and thank goodness Mrs. Henney had been there. She’d shoved her sweater under Trevor’s head and just held him. I’d never felt so helpless in my life, so I couldn’t imagine what Trevor had been feeling. The ambulance had whisked him off to the hospital, leaving me to deal with all the kids who’d been there. Their questions had been stupid and I left without answering any of them.

“Did he, like, bite his tongue off?”

“Is he going to die?”

“I hope whatever he has isn’t contagious, like a disease or something.”

“It was a seizure, wasn’t it?”

Earth to Everly. Startled, I nodded.

“Hmm. I’ll keep him in my prayers.”

“You do that.” The words fell out of me before I could stop them, and I tensed, fingers gripped to my coffee mug.

I heard his feet scuff the floor, and inside my head I said every single bad word that I was never allowed to say, and I repeated a few of them. The really bad ones. He pulled out the chair across from me and set his cup on the table.

“What’s going on with you, Everly?” Aga

in with the warmth. Even now when I knew that he was angry with me. The warmth. It was nauseating.

I glanced up and shrugged. “Nothing.”

My dad, who was in his early forties, was a cross between Jared Leto (I guess the Jesus factor was a bonus, considering he worked one of his day jobs from a pulpit) and the guy who played Superman. His hair was still as dark as mine, though when he forgot to shave, there were a few silver hairs on his chin. His eyes were blue, but not the dark blue that mine were. His were so light that when I was little, I thought he’d somehow trapped the sun inside them.

“Are we going to talk about what’s been going on with you?” he asked. “You haven’t been yourself, and Everly, I’ve got to tell you, I’m concerned.”

For one perfect moment I let the warmth of his voice wrap me in that blanket of “it’s going to be okay.” For that one perfect moment it washed over me, and for that one perfect moment I felt some kind of hope.

But as much as a lot of folks in this town think that I live inside some weird, perfect world, I’d love to tell each and every one of them that there aren’t any perfect moments that are real. Not really.

So this one passed, and as I stared into my father’s eyes, the familiar pangs of hurt rushed up from my heart and crushed my larynx.

Again, I shrugged because I had nothing else. My throat was so tight I couldn’t speak, so I grabbed my coffee cup and downed the rest of it, nearly choking on the cold, overly sweet remnants that hung at the bottom. Smart move. Wiping the back of my hand across my mouth, I glared at him, in this moment blaming him for every single crappy thing that I could think of.

“Everly,” he said slowly, so slowly that those three syllables could have been four.

“Why don’t we talk about you?” I managed to squeeze out.

Silence.

My dad cleared his throat. “Is there something you want to say to me?”