At one point I said, “You’re literally making this worse.”
“Probably.”
“Then why are you still here?”
“Because parents don’t get to quit before their kids do.”
Parents.
He didn’t appear to realize what he’d just called himself.
I did.
A few months later, Mom married him.
That fall, she told me something I wasn’t supposed to know.
She and Ray had started a college account for me.
“We can’t put much in,” she said. “Don’t get excited.”
“How much?”
“Whatever’s left.”
Some months, that meant almost nothing.
Ray had Danny and Cara to provide for, too.
So I tried not to think about the account.
At school, everybody was focused on something else.
Cars.
One friend received his aunt’s old Honda.
Another got a pickup.
A girl in my English class got a used convertible and complained because it wasn’t the color she wanted.
