the habit of being

I came home and threw up and fell asleep and then James was here again and we were sitting on the bed (just one bed in here again, and turned the old way) and he was going to kiss me, when a raggedy girl came running through our apartment door, looking for a place to stay. She was a hitch-hiker, like we used to be, and of course we said she could sleep here. For some reason she kept trying to steal my things and I’d have to talk her out of it, and it was very nerve-wracking because they were things that were heirlooms and I really didn’t want to lose them. James would see me talking to her and walk away skulking because he was jealous. (He thought he should be the one she wanted to talk to; he was the one who glorified traveling.) She took a notebook that was my mother’s and I had to follow her outside to make her give it back, but she did, and she hugged me and I gave her my email address and she went away. James just stood there watching from the gate.

. . .

It was late at night, and I needed to go from my great-grandmother’s house in Augusta to my parents’ house in Statesboro. For some reason, I was getting a ride with my roommate and her family. We were on the way there when I realized I had left my cell phone plugged into the charger at my great-grandmother’s. We had to turn back and everyone was very upset with me about it. It wound up taking an hour to get back. When we got there, I realized my phone had been in my bag the whole time. I decided to call my parents and see if my mom could just pick me up the next day when she came up to visit her mother (my grandmother, who recently died). I called and Ray answered in a voice I’ve only ever heard him use once (the first time I talked to him, seven months after I ran away), and I asked if Mom was there and he said “No, she isn’t.” I asked where she was and he said “I don’t know. Probably Mexico.” Before I woke up it was revealed that she just hadn’t come home that day, and had a sawed-off shotgun with her.