Icy roads

“Come on, Mellie! Help with the ritual. Please?” Jones had a handful of purple crayons.

”No.” I realized that I was being rude. I tried to wrangle my voice into something polite. “No, thank you. I’m reading right now.”

”Come on, we all want a snow day.”

Jones put three crayons on the windowsill. Weird frickin activity. I just wanted to be left alone, and was not superstitious enough for this. ”No, thank you, I’m reading.”

”I don’t really want a snow day. I wouldn’t get work off and the roads would be crappy,” Dad said.

We all ignored him.

Jones grinned. ”Do you want to help flush ice cubes down the toilet?”

I pretended to read my book. ”No.”

Rain tapped on the roof. It would freeze, make deathtraps of the roads. Since the area was so friggin rural, nobody would salt away the ice.

I set my book down. The ending was such a cliffhanger.

It was about this woman named Sandra. Some dude followed her home, so she killed him and went to prison. Life without parole. That sounded awful, especially because she had a kid. He was a ward of the state. She escaped from jail at the end, but they found her. What happened next? The acknowledgments page, that’s what.

I used books a lot, for an escape from everyday life. Dad had alcohol and sports. Grandma Florie had shopping. Aunt Lamia had Facebook. Grandma Madge (short for Majesty-what were her parents thinking? It was so grandiose!) baked. Jed got baked. So did Dad, but he was way more secretive about it. Ambrozia played video games. Et cetera, et cetera.

Things had been okay. They weren’t as perfect as Dad thought they were, though.

My mom probably hated my dad.

...****************...

Bzzzt! A text. What time was it? I fumbled around for my phone. 5:35 AM. I should have gotten out of bed already. I wanted more sleep. Why couldn’t school start later?

I secretly enjoyed the fact that school started at seven-thirty. It felt like something out of a movie. Also, it made the amount of sleep I did get seem special. Scarcity increases demand. Learned that in econ class!

The text read like this:

Dad: Snowday

Me: Yesss

And then I fell asleep.

...****************...

”Mellie! It’s 6:55! Wake up! It’s 6:55!” Jones paced our room, panicked. School would be starting in less than an hour. If we had had school, that is.

”You check texts?” I was too groggy to form coherent sentences.

”Is it a snow day?”

”Yeah.”

They calmed down. “I knew those ice cubes would work. Gonna go make some coffee.”

”Okay.”

I fell back asleep.

Four hours later. I felt okay. Amazing what a few extra hours of rest could do. The coffee tasted gross. Probably because it was half tapwater. Look. I wanted coffee immediately, none of this “waiting for it to cool” stuff. And milk was just plain gross. So water it was.

In the evening, I put on my coat and shoes.

Dad puttered about the kitchen. “Are you taking the trash out?”

”Yih.”

”Thanks.”

Outside, the wind slapped me in the face. Snow got in my shoes. The garbage can lay on its side. The wind the night before must have been monstrous. I put it right.

I thought about the previous night’s dream. It troubled me. It had been much too violent. Did psychopaths dream about hurting people? In the dream I had been disappointed when the person turned out to be unaffected by stabbing. Was that wrong? Wait. Ugh! Dreams were fake, not real. It didn’t matter what I dreamed about at all. Nobody would even know, not unless I told them. And I wouldn’t tell anyone, except in the case that someone else described their dreams. Look at me, using social skills!

I had learned through books that it’s annoying when people talk excessively about their own dreams.

My boots left snow on the mat. Dad stirred something on the stove.

”Did you freeze out there?”

”Uh, yeah.”

Upstairs, I settled in for another few hours of Minecraft.

Grandma Florie used to take me to this park next to an ice cream shop. Sure, it was in a touristy hick town where they thought molasses cured cancer, but that was just a background detail. It didn’t really matter. And that ice cream was so damn good.

...****************...

I ran downstairs the next morning.

”Daddy, I want breakfast,” Tallie whined.

He put on his hat. ”Don’t worry, Joan will be down here any minute.”

Stupid. He usually relied on Jones to wake him up and get the little ones ready for the day. Jones, the thirteen-year-old! It shouldn’t be their responsibility.

I could have lessened the amount of work they had to do by making Pop-Tarts for the little ones. Did I? No. I did the irresponsible thing and double-checked my bag.

...****************...

I unzipped my coat. “How was, your two weeks?” I always said that to Mom. It was a greeting.

”It was good, but I missed you guys.”

”We missed you too.”

”Dad still hasn’t bought beds for Tallie and Elle,” Jones interjected. Now Mom was paying attention to them.

Mom frowned. ”His last name sounds like the word phlegm.”

”He’s such a terrible person.”

”Even though I’m not with your dad anymore, I still want you guys to have a healthy relationship with him. I don’t hate your dad.” My mom seemed to be repeating something she had read somewhere.

Jones was animated. ”It would be fair for you to hate him, with how he treated you.”

” I don’t hate him. I just..don’t think about him.”

I jumped back into the conversation. ” I feel bad for Tallie and Elle. They’ve had violent people around them since they were born.” I felt crappy. It was sort of an exaggeration.

”I mean, hasn’t it been like that for you guys, too?” Mom asked.

”Yeah,” Jones sighed. Wait, were they actually taking this seriously? No way! I thought the three of us were just gossiping.

Oh well. I trudged upstairs to throw my bag on the bedroom floor.

...****************...

Sunday morning, Jed made pancakes.

”So, are my pancakes any good?”

Jones nodded. ”They’re way better than Dad’s. His are like this big,” they said while making a small circle with their hands. “And they’re not thick at all.”

Personally, I liked Dad’s pancakes. They were made of this mix that was labeled “power cakes”. They had nine grams of protein. Also he made the syrup himself. I stayed silent. We regularly trashed on Dad. Sometimes when Jordyn acted out, Grandma Florie threatened to send him over to live with us in Shepherdville. I didn’t get it. Things really weren’t all that bad. Were they?

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