Chapter 2

July 31, 2017

         I got off the plane in Miami with absolutely no word from my mom since the phone call she gave me 4 days ago. The two flights back were almost as painful as these next couple of days will be. In no way am I expecting anyone to be at baggage claim when I get there; this way it’s eases the blow when it’s actually true. I walk through the airport, a place I’ve grown to hate. Airports are filled with happy families traveling to Mexico, stern business pricks traveling across the country just for a damn meeting, and then sorry loner like me. Everyone with their own shit, just trying to make it from point A to point B in one piece. I don’t know everyone knowing my shit either, that’s I don’t wear my uniform when I travel. Yeah, a lot of stuck up dicks do because they think it gets them girls. If that’s the girl you want, then go right ahead. Don’t come up and thank me for my service, I haven’t done a god damn thing. 

         My bag comes around the luggage carousel and I grab it quickly and turn for the door with my head down and headphones in. I hop in the cab line without making so much as a glance at anyone. But I soon realize I don’t know where the hell I’m going. I have no idea where my mom, stepdad, and sister are staying in the area and all of my “friends” from before I left for South Carolina are god knows where doing god knows what. I hop out of line and then back in it again. I played this game for a good 20 minutes before I completely said fuck it and gave the cab driver my old address. 

         When the cab pulls around the block down to my old street, I don’t recognize a whole lot. He awkwardly drives up the street slowly and I just tell him to pull over. I toss him the money and step out of the cab and onto what used to be my front yard. Well, it wasn’t ever necessarily a ‘yard,’ but to me it counted as one. I spent most of my childhood in a trailer park with my abusive dad and not so useful mom. But instead of rows of trailers all next to each other, the land is filled with overgrown grass and a sign for new condos that are going up soon. I knew this would be a dead end, but not so much as one until I actually got here and saw my childhood home’s disappearance.

         Instead of calling my mom just yet, I decide to head to the drug store on the corner two blocks over to see if my guy still works around there. Not my guy as in drug guy, which is what it would mean to some of my old friends, but my guy as in a good friend of mine. Steve worked at the convenience shop that’s attached to the gas station there. He used to let me buy beer and cigs even though I was too young for it. He always knew it was for my mom or dad and never me, even though I would be lying if I said that I didn’t consider it once or twice. He was kind of my best friend that really understood the nature of what was going on in my house. 

         

         I make the five-minute walk that brings back weird nostalgia, some good and some not so good. I finally get to the gas station, that without its gleaming lights showing that it’s open, most would probably consider it abandoned. I don’t see Steve working once I walk inside, and I figure I’ve run out of all of my options, until I hear an all but too familiar voice coming from the door that just swung open.