The Incident – Chapter 2

Chapter 2—Dinner

At least the secret seems to be something that makes both of my parents happy, so they can’t be telling us they’re getting a divorce or anything awful like that. I’ve heard kids talk about stuff like that happening.

When we get to Jack’s, Rose wants pepperoni pizza and I want veggie. Usually we end up with a large half and half, except the grease from the pepperoni leeches over onto the veggie side, too. It’s cheaper to order one extra large than two mediums. Dad usually has us drink water, too. He says drinks are overpriced when you eat out.

Tonight, however, is different.

“Two mediums,” he says. “And a glass of soda for each of the girls, and a pitcher of beer for us.”

My parents don’t drink a lot, usually at parties or a couple beers on hot days at home, so his ordering a pitcher is really strange. We get our drinks and sit down to wait for the pizza. Dad clears his throat.

“I know you’ve been wondering about our trip,” he says.

Then he stops and takes Mom’s hand. They give each other a look like newlyweds or something.

“So, what is it?” I demand. “What’s going on?”

“Several things,” says Mom.

“First of all,” says Dad. “The reason we went to Chicago is that I had a job interview. The company is bumping me up.”

“That’s why we’re getting two pizzas?” I ask. “You’re going to make more money?”

“A lot more,” he says.

“Cool,” says Rose. “Can I get a new bike then? The one that was Tina’s is too small for me now.”

“We can do that,” says Dad. “When we get back from California.”

“California?” I’m suspicious. “When, why are we going to California?”

“Well,” he says. “My new position is going to be very demanding. I won’t have much time with you while I’m learning all the ropes. But they’re giving me a couple weeks to make the transition, and your mother and I decided we’d take one week of that for a family vacation to Disneyland.”

“Disneyland?”

I can’t believe this is the big surprise. I’m fifteen. I’ve been learning to drive for six months. So my parents have decided it’s time to go to Disneyland? Rose is the perfect age for that, and she’s bouncing all over asking them a million questions, but I quit wanting to go there a long time ago. Mom picks up on this.

“We’ll spend some time at the beach, too,” she says. “You’ve never been to the ocean. And Mary and Laurie are going to come with us.”

“When?” asks Rose.

“We’re leaving tomorrow morning,” says Mom.

“You’re flying all of us there?” I ask.

“Yup,” says Dad.

This new position must really make some bucks. But something is bothering me.

“Why are they giving you two weeks off to transition into a new job?” I ask. “That doesn’t make any sense. Shouldn’t they want you to start right away?”

They look at each other again. This time it’s not that newlywed thing, this is my parents worried about delivering bad news.

“The transition time is so we can make moving arrangements,” Mom says.

“When we get back from California, I have to go on ahead and start in my new job,” says Dad. “Last week was the first of my two weeks and your mom and I found a house. The closing date’s the week before school starts, so that gives you and your mom the rest of the summer to pack up and get our old house ready to sell.”

“We’re moving?” Rose finally catches onto that. She doesn’t sound so excited anymore.

I’m speechless. Sell our house? I’ve never lived anywhere else. Even when I was a baby, we lived there with Dad’s mom, until she passed away when I was four and left the house to Dad. Mom’s parents live in Arizona. I haven’t seen them since I was ten, except for Skype. All of our friends live here, too. Mine, Rose’s, our parents’ friends all live here. But they’re still acting happy about this.

“Aren’t you going to miss your friends?” asks Rose.

Good question. Why are they so happy to move?

“Where are we going to live?” I finally find my voice to ask.

“Jackson, Illinois. It’s a small town, about the same size as ours, but a reasonable commute from Rockford. That’s where I’ll be working. It’s about an hour west of Chicago.”

“There aren’t any mountains in Illinois,” I say.

Dad looks sad for a moment. “True. But it’s really green and pretty out there, and there’s a lake not far from the house we’re buying where you’ll be able to swim and kayak.”

“On a lake?” I ask.

Besides climbing mountains, my parents have always done whitewater kayaking. They’ve always taken us rafting once the spring melt is done and the rivers are milder, but last summer I got my own kayak and practiced enough that they let me do a few runs this spring while there was still some Class Three whitewater. I’m not interested in being a fourteener, but kayaking those rapids was a rush.

“What about skiing?” asks Rose.

She’ll be in fourth grade next year. In sixth grade, Colorado kids get free passes to world-class ski areas.

“I can’t kid you on that one,” says Dad. “There are some ski areas close enough to go to, but they measure vertical drop in feet, not meters.”

“That’s because Illinois has no mountains,” I say.

Dad’s not looking nearly as happy as he was, and that obviously bothers Mom, so she starts talking it up.

“It’s going to be an adventure,” she says. “We’ll have to try out cross-country skiing. I’ve only done it a few times, but it’s a real workout. And I’m sure with all that water we can find some rivers for the kayaks. It doesn’t have to be Class Four to be fun. And we’ll be meeting new people, making new friends. And while your father may not be able to get away much, I’ll bring you girls back here to visit in the summers.”

“Are you going to work?” I ask.

Mom’s had a part time job at the elementary school since Rose started kindergarten.

“I’m going to look for something once we’ve settled in,” she says. “We have two kids to put through college, you know.”

“We’re leaving for Disneyland tomorrow?” asks Rose.

“Yup,” says Dad. “Your friends will be ready for us first thing in the morning.”

It’s dawning on me that the main reason for Dad to take this job is money for college for me and Rose, so I need to stop whining and get with the program.

“With internet and Skype, it’ll be easy to keep our friends here,” I say. “It’ll be cool, trying out a new place and making new friends.”

Mom looks relieved. Dad gives me a big grin.

“Yup,” he says. “This way you won’t be so lost when you go off to college, either. I was miserable my freshman year, because I’d never had to make new friends before and I’d never lived anywhere but here. There’s a whole world out there and lots of different kinds of places.”

There are a lot of things I think, but do not say, like he chose to come back to his home town. So did Mom. Neither of them has ever shown interest in travel outside Colorado. That’s part of why their trip seemed so strange. They don’t even go into Denver much. We go to Grand Junction for school clothes and special stuff like my dress for the dance, and Grand Junction may be a city, but it’s not a big one.

Of course, they say we’re moving into a town not much bigger than ours, which means about seven thousand people, so it shouldn’t be that crazy. My school should be about the same size. Maybe it won’t be that bad. And meantime, we’re going to California!

www.sherimcguinn.com www.amazon.com/author/sherimcguinn

The Incident is contemporary YA (Young Adult). Following time-honored tradition, I’m publishing it here in installments. To be alerted when the next segment goes online, “follow” this blog. The entire story will be published here. You are welcome to share this link with others, but please respect copyright by contacting me for permission if you want to publish the story elsewhere. Thank you.

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The Incident – Chapter 1

A mountain lion could be out here, ready to pounce. They say you never know what hit you. But I’ve been out here plenty of starry nights and that never happened. It’s not likely to happen tonight, either. I won’t get off that easy.

My feet dangle over the edge, far above the tree tops. The stone is chilling my insides from the butt up. A wave of wind flows through the pines below and then above me as well. I sniff the pine, half disappointed there’s no salt in the air when it sounds so much like surf.

I wonder if he ever saw the ocean.

I saw it once, a year ago, but that was another life, before the incident. My parents were so disappointed in me for that. There’s no way I can ever tell them the rest, what happened after. They must never know. They won’t, of course. No one’s saying a word about what we did, and I don’t see my family enough to get stupid and tell them. If it weren’t for the incident, I’d never have been there.

I wouldn’t be wishing for that mountain lion to end it all. I can’t commit suicide. That would hurt my family even more than I already have. An accident, though. That would be tragic, but they’d be able to accept that and move on, instead of driving themselves crazy wondering what they did wrong. So it can’t be an accident like driving drunk into a tree, either, because they’d think it was their fault I was drunk. It has to be something where they can’t blame themselves for anything.

I think I used to be happy, but I can’t feel it anymore.

Chapter 1—Secrets

“Your mother will be here to pick you up in half an hour, Montina.”

Mary’s mother is the only person in our little Colorado town who calls me by the name on my birth certificate. When I started kindergarten, I insisted everyone call me Tina, even my parents, and they do. A lot of kids don’t even know my real name is Montina. Mountain. Can you imagine if I’d been a fat kid? My parents didn’t think of that, though. It probably never occurred to them that they could have anything but an athletic child.

They started doing Colorado’s fourteeners when they were in high school. Fourteeners are mountains that are fourteen-thousand-something feet high. There are like fifty-four of them in Colorado. Some of the easy ones they did with Dad carrying me in a pack when I was a baby. The last few years they’ve slowed down some because a lot of weekends they’re driving us to soccer matches all over the state. My kid sister and I both play, and sometimes our games are in different directions. They named her Parry Primrose, for the pretty purple flowers that grow mainly above ten thousand feet. It’s a lot better than Montina, but she goes by Rose anyway. She’s only eight, but not too much of a pain. She’s been staying at one of her friend’s houses the last two weeks, while I’ve been staying with Mary. We’re both fifteen.

“Come on, Tina,” says Mary. “Let’s get your stuff.”

It only takes a minute to grab my bathroom things and throw them into my school bag. Mary’s mom insisted on washing all my stuff last night, so it’s already folded up in the pack I used for a suitcase. The only place I’ve ever gone this long before is camping with my family. That’s why I don’t have a proper suitcase. We don’t take that kind of vacation. My parents even had to buy luggage for their trip. They were very secretive about where they were going. When I asked Dad if it was an overdue honeymoon, he looked over my head and said it might be something like that, partially, anyway.

“My mom looks like she knows a secret,” Mary says.

“Yeah, I noticed,” I say, as I look around to make sure I’ve got all my stuff.

Our parents were all friends in school, so Mary and I have known each other forever. There are even photos of us together in a playpen, though our parents say neither of us could be contained in one for long. So whenever my folks wanted to climb a mountain, I stayed with Mary for the weekend. Her parents were still pretty outdoorsy, and we’d all gone camping together a lot of times, but they didn’t do the mountain climbing stuff anymore. Sometimes they’d go into Denver for the weekend, though, and Mary would stay with us.

“So what do you think the big secret is?” asked Mary. “It’s got to be something your mom said to her.”

“Beats me,” I say.

It bothers me a lot that my parents are suddenly having secrets. They’ve always been honest with us, and insisted we be honest with them. I even confessed when I was twelve and tried a puff of a cigarette. They didn’t get mad, either. They were just majorly relieved that I didn’t like it. Their having some big secret now feels like a betrayal, especially if they’re sharing it with Mary’s mom before me or Rose. Mary picks up on my feelings. It’s like that when you’ve known somebody your whole life.

“You’ll probably find out tonight,” she says.

“Yeah, I guess. It’s so weird, though. I mean, they went to Chicago. Hawaii, Mexico, even a city like San Francisco or New York, any of those would make sense if it was like a honeymoon. Why would they go to Chicago, though?” When my parents got married, they spent their first week together climbing in the San Juan Mountain Range in southeast Colorado. That included Mount Wilson, which is one of the most difficult, dangerous climbs. That’s why I thought this trip might be a second honeymoon, or honeymoon never taken.

“They didn’t actually say it was a honeymoon,” Mary reminds me, “and Chicago does have a lot of art galleries and stuff and it’s not as far as New York.”

“San Francisco would be closer. Besides, their timing sucked.”

“I know,” said Mary.

My parents took this sudden trip right at the end of the school year. It was supposed to be just a few days. Mom and I had just gotten back from Grand Junction with my first formal dress, for the Freshman Spring Fling. Tim Withers actually asked me! The next morning, they told us they had to go to Chicago for a few days, but they’d be back by Friday. But they weren’t. Tim’s parents had to pick me up at Mary’s house. Then they ended up staying away all the next week, so they missed the high school awards ceremony, too. I got three—for soccer, Spanish, and good citizenship.

They were gone almost two full weeks.

They’d never been away for more than three days. Rose called me the first couple nights, kind of homesick, but then I guess she settled in at her friend’s house. It’s not that they disappeared. Mom called and asked me all about the dance, then again about awards night, but it wasn’t the same. She was excited about something that had nothing to do with me, and it was there even when she was trying to be sympathetic and sound sorry for missing my first real date and my first high school awards. The worst part was that she didn’t tell me what she was so happy about.

Mary is looking out her window.

“They’re here,” she said. “Call me as soon as you know what they’ve been doing!”

“I will.”

Mom comes to the door to say thank you to Mary’s mom. They exchange big smiles and a hug with lots of eye-widening and more smiles.

“We’ll be here by eight tomorrow morning,” says my mom.

“Great,” says Mary’s mom. “Oh, and I just emailed you photos from the dance and graduation.”

“Thank you so much,” says Mom.

Mary and I look at them, then each other.

“Call me tonight,” says Mary.

I nod.

On the way to the car, I ask Mom why we’re going to Mary’s the next morning.

“You’ll see,” she says. “We’ll tell you at dinner.”

Rose is in the car with Dad. It makes sense that they’d pick her up first. Her friend lives on the east side of town. Coming from Denver, their house comes first. Mom and Dad flew out of Denver to Chicago.

Mom starts quizzing me about awards night and the dance.

“I told you all that on the phone,” I remind her.

“It’s not the same,” she says.

“Yeah, I know,” I grumble.

Dad speaks up to defend her. “It’s not your mother’s fault we couldn’t get back in time for all that.”

“So whose fault is it?” I ask, trying not to sound like a total snot.

“Nobody’s,” he says. “We’ll explain more at dinner.”

I guess Rose already told them all her stuff before they picked me up, because no one asks her anything. Fortunately it’s a short trip home and almost time to eat.

“Put your stuff away, then we’ll go to Jack’s for pizza,” says Dad.

He doesn’t like Jack’s, but it’s a favorite of mine, so I know he means to make me feel better. I try to lighten up.

“Okay,” I say. “It’ll only take a couple minutes.”

“Take our suitcase to the laundry room,” Mom tells him. “I want to start a load before we leave for dinner. Do you girls have any dirty clothes?”

“Nope,” I say. “Mary’s mom insisted on washing everything last night.”

“Laurie’s mom, too,” says Rose.

“Great!” says Mom. “That’ll help a bunch.”

I start to ask what it will help, but she’s already on her way to the laundry. I go to my room and put my clean clothes away. Dad stops by my door.

“Mom said you don’t need to bother hanging everything up,” he says. “If it’s folded nicely, just leave it on your bed for now.”

That definitely doesn’t sound like Mom.

www.sherimcguinn.com www.amazon.com/author/sherimcguinn

The Incident is contemporary YA (Young Adult). Following time-honored tradition, I’m publishing it here in installments. To be alerted when the next segment goes online, “follow” this blog. The entire story will be published here. You are welcome to share this link with others, but please respect copyright by contacting me for permission if you want to publish the story elsewhere. Thank you.

#secrets #teenintrouble #teencontemplatingsuicide #YA #fiction #kayak #Colorado #Writing