By Lindsay Geimer
I woke up and she was there. She always came around when a rough period in my life was about to begin. She appeared two days before my parent’s divorce, although I saw it coming. It was still a tough time. The divorce was messy. She showed up a week before my first break up. I was devasted. That time she stayed for four months. Maybe more. I was too caught up in heartbreak to keep track of the exact number of days. And here she is again. I have been wanting to move out for a long time. I am already nineteen. I was on the verge of telling my mom.
Her coming means this won’t be easy or simple. It will be difficult. And maybe devasting. I can never tell exactly why or in what ways the situation that brings my twin around will be tough, but it’s always tough. She’s a good indicator of that and she’s never been wrong before. I sit up, rubbing my eyes. After the blurs clear, and I put on my glasses, which makes everything sharper, I wave to the brown-haired figure. Nickie looks, or would’ve looked nothing like me, despite being my twin. I have blonde hair and blue eyes, while her copper eyes go nicely with her caramel-colored hair. She’s thin and inches taller than me. I like having her here, but at the same time, I almost wish we exchanged our looks. She smiles and waves back.
As I get dressed, Nickie stays seated in the reading chair in the corner. I was going to tell mom that I’ve been looking at apartments today, but now that Nickie’s here, I want to put it off for a few days. But, as I’m going downstairs with Nickie right behind me, I feel her grab my hand. Her hand on mine feels warm. Comforting. Like always.
I make myself some coffee and pull the pop tarts from their wrapper, placing them on a paper plate. When my coffee is done, I take the mug and my food to sit at the four-person dining room table. Waiting for mom to come down is agonizing. We have been fighting more. And this news won’t help at all. When she comes down, I wait for her to fix her coffee and grab some food for herself. She makes eggs, so it takes longer than I thought. I squirm more as the seconds pass and get more impatient while waiting. I fidget with my hands in between bites of my food.
When she finally sits down, I break the news. It’s not an explosive reaction like I was expecting. Instead, she goes with a passive-aggressive approach, which makes things so much worse. I hate being at home. Feeling unwelcome isn’t the desired atmosphere for a place considered to be a “home.” It makes me want to leave even more. All the apartments I looked at before telling my mom are too expensive, so I’m stuck. Mom continues to be passive-aggressive, instead of direct. She makes snide comments and refuses to acknowledge me on certain days.
The small slights make my blood boil more than it would if she just said whatever she wanted to say. I lean into being the peacemaker. I don’t want to fall to her level. Nickie still lingers. Her presence is comforting, still, but it makes me wonder what it’d be like if things had turned out different. Maybe mom wouldn’t be so controlling or have as strong of a grip on me. Maybe she would let go easier. God, just let me go already. Please.
Finally, I decide I can’t take it anymore. I wait at the dinning room table. Mom should be getting here around six. I’m stiff, still. I’m not nervous and my heart isn’t pounding to the point that I can feel the beat in my ears. My hands don’t shake, and my leg doesn’t bounce like it does when I have to take a test. I’m so focused that even without looking at the door, I know my mom has arrived. I can see that she’s caught off guard by my presence at the table. Nickie is next to me. She has her hand on my shoulder and squeezes it. I take it as a sign of affirmation. When mom takes a seat, I tell her to speak her mind. Then I speak mine. “Let me go.”
Lindsay Geimer is an English major at NMSU. She will be graduating this Spring and will be pursuing her master’s in library sciences. She is enthusiastic about both reading and writing and hopes to get others interested in reading with her own writing. Last year she was published in the DIN poetry micro-zine and now works on the fiction editorial board.
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