The Rules of Life

I couldn’t tell if this is real or not. The image was swimming in and out of focus and I didn’t want to be here, didn’t want to look at this person who may or may not be my mother. So I shoved myself away from her and tried to stand up. But the floor was moving like water and I was wobbling. I pitched forward and waited for myself to fall. But I wasn’t falling. I was suspended in air, just floating there like fuzz sometimes just hangs in front of your face until you try to grasp at it and then it just flies away. I squirmed a little bit, wanting to fall and just get this over with.

“Kinley, stop,” a voice said. It was firm and familiar and I remembered where I was and felt hands gripping my arms, keeping me upright. I gripped the floor with my feet and stood up, clutching Matt’s arm to keep from flopping around. The porch light was way too bright and it hurt my eyes. I squinted at him, but he wasn’t very easily seen. Bad angle.

Somewhere in my muddled brain, I think it connected. My mom. Matt. At Matt’s house. I yanked myself out of Matt’s grip which turned out to be bad since my balance wasn’t all that great. I flailed my arms around a lot but didn’t fall. Thank fucking god. “You!” I said, pointing my finger at Matt. At least, I think it was Matt. There was a few of him standing there, giving me the look that I’d grown to hate with a fucking passion. I wobbled a bit more, feeling increasingly more like I was on a boat in the ocean in the middle of a fucking hurricane.

“Are you drunk?” It was the woman. The one who was probably my mother but could be some lady who looked like her. “Is she drunk?” Now she was talking to Matt.

“I’m right fucking here, bitch,” I said. I hoped it wasn’t my mom. Actually, screw that. I hoped it was. She should see what she did to me.

Matt sighed. It was a pretty loud one, too. I closed my eyes and fisted at them. Everything still felt wobbly, even in the dark. “What kind of language is this? Who is this?” Oh. So maybe it wasn’t my mom. Oops. Well, what-fucking-ever. She could screw herself because she was screwing Matt and I wasn’t screwing Matt and for the love of god, make the world just stop! I clutched my cheeks, my fingernails digging into the soft skin that I’d gotten from my mom who wasn’t here.

“Just make it stop!” I screeched. Warm arms encircled my shoulders but they felt all wrong. They were prickly and I thrashed against them. “No! Don’t let it take me!” I opened my eyes but it wasn’t any better. The world was dripping in sludge and little red eyes were buried deep within the mess. “No, no, no! Make it stop!” I fought against the prickly arms and it didn’t even occur to me that the world had shifted and my feet weren’t on the ground anymore. I arched my back to get out of the monster’s grip and screamed.

In a faraway place, a woman was crying, and in a frantic voice she said, “What do we do? Matt, what do we do? Oh god, what have I done?” And somewhere in my brain, I was comforted because it sounded like my mom and if she was here, then the past few years have only been a dream and she never really left us. This is just one big nightmare. But why would she be calling Matt’s name? Why not Dad’s? I opened my eyes again and found that the sludge was gone but everything was way too shiny, way too vibrant. Matt had laid me down on a big fluffy bed and that meant I wasn’t home. He sat beside me, stroking my hair. His touch felt like silk and sleep tugged heavily on my eyelids. Maybe if I slept, all this bad stuff would go away. Yes, that’s what would happen.

“Kinley? Can you hear me?” This voice… my mother’s voice. I looked at her and tried to focus through all the rainbow birds that fluttered around the room. Her blonde hair, hair that I’d inherited, looked like a halo in the shiny haze. She was beautiful. Delicate. Elegant. I’d always wanted to look like her. But I was too rough around the edges. Even being pretty didn’t compensate for my fuck you attitude. I didn’t want to look at her anymore. So I closed my eyes and counted to a million. I drifted off somewhere around two-thousand.

-

The morning after always sucked horse balls. My head pounded painfully and everything last night was a big blur. My blood thrummed. It wanted more already. Fuck Travis. Fuck all of them. I opened my eyes slowly. My guard was down and I couldn’t stop the smile from spreading across my face. Matt was snoozing quietly in a chair that obviously didn’t go with this room. It looked like a dining chair, dark wood, and not at all like the white paneled room. Speaking of which, where the fuck was I?

I sat up slowly and squinted against the sunlight. It poured through the window and the clock said it was well into the day. One o’clock. Fuck. I rubbed at my eyes and began to sort through my memories. I’d gone to that party and gotten high. And it had been fucking laced. That was the last lucid thought I could remember. I got up and padded across the room to the window. It was chilly and my hot girl outfit was gone. Instead, I was dressed in some frilly nightgown that I’d never be caught dead in. But here I was.

“Holy shit,” I murmured. Travis’s car had jumped the curb and was about a foot away from crashing into a giant tree. In the back of my mind, I remembered getting into his car and the trees jumping in front of me. Where had I been going? Thank god I hadn’t died. I ran my fingers through my hair and looked around at the other houses, trying to get a feel for where I was. It looked semi-familiar and I realized that I’d probably ran past here several times. But that didn’t help me; I ran everywhere. I turned and looked back at Matt and it hit me. “God, Kinley, are you retarded?” I was at Matt’s house. Duh. I remembered that, too. And I remembered… “Holy shit!” Matt startled awake and jumped to his feet.

“Kinley, you’re up,” he said, wiping at his eyes.

“Damn right.” I was pissed.

He squinted at me. “Are you okay?”

“No! No, I am not fucking okay.” I got right up close to him and jabbed my finger against his chest. He took a step back, looking surprised and just the tiniest bit confused. “You! You motherfucker! Literally!” I pressed my palms against chest and shoved with all my might. He wasn’t expecting it. Matt stumbled backwards and his back hit the wall. A few pictures fell with a crash to the floor. “How could you?! What, does it get you off to fuck someone and then try to get with their daughter? What kind of fucking sick person are you?”

“McKinley, calm down,” Matt said evenly. How could he be so blasé about this?! This was a big fucking deal!

“Do not tell me to calm down! You fucked my mother!”

“McKinley, please.” This wasn’t Matt. It was my mom. She stood in the doorway, wringing her hands and looking guilty. “It wasn’t his fault. He didn’t know I was your mother.”

She was here. She was really here. My mom was here. She was standing here, in front of me, in the same room as Matt, who I was in love with, and who she was probably in love with. I looked back and forth between them, shaking from confusion and from hurt. My mouth couldn’t form any words and I wanted to cry. I never wanted to cry. But goddammit, all this fucking drama had turned me into a goddamn waterfall. I took a step away from the both of them, towards the window, towards air. This room was way too small for all of us, for all this. Matt took a step closer and I nearly screamed at him, “Don’t!” He looked so hurt, too. But good. Good! He’d been… he’d been… oh god. I couldn’t stop myself. I threw up on the floor.

I was shaking. “Kinley, baby, come here,” Mom said.

“No!” I screamed at her. I clutched my middle and breathed in and out, in and out. “You left us! You left us and you come back and you… you date my teacher!” I didn’t know what Matt was to me but he was my teacher. I looked at Matt. “How could you not know? How could you not know?!”

“I didn’t… at first,” he said.

I felt sick again. “At first?”

“I was using my maiden name,” she said. “And I stopped going by Alexandra and just went by Alex. Alex Flannigan. I came back to see you, Kinley, really, I did. But I just couldn’t figure out how. And then I met Matthew and…” She looked at him. It wasn’t really adoringly but you could tell how much she cared for him. And Matthew… God, she even had a gross pet name for him. I shook my head. To his credit, Matt didn’t meet my mom’s gaze. He stared at me the whole time. I couldn’t decide whether that made me happy or if it just pissed me off even more.

“When you started avoiding me,” Matt said, “I looked in your file.” He looked a little guilty. “Your parents’ names were in there, along with your mother’s maiden name. I confronted Alex about it and she confessed.”

“But you kissed me anyway.” It slipped out before I could stop it. But it was true. He’d kissed me even though he was dating my mother and he knew it. Of course, it didn’t look like my mom knew it. She looked at him with wide-eyes.

“You guys… were involved?” she asked dumbly. “I just thought she was upset because you were dating me. I didn’t know…” She looked stricken. Good. Serves you right, Mother.

Matt sighed. “Looks like you fucked up big time, Mr. Hardacker,” I said scathingly. He looked at me a long time and then looked at my mom. But I was so over this. If they were going to have a lover’s quarrel, I was going to be long gone. I had to go see Travis anyways. If I was mad at Matt, then I was seething at Travis. That fucker had gone and ruined my life again and I was going to make him pay this time. And I was going to get it over with now. I stood up and stepped over my mess. To my dismay, my knees still shook ever so slightly. But the glare in my eyes was as sharp as ever and I doubted anyone noticed my nerves.

“Where are you going?” Matt asked. Mom looked like she was about to cry but I couldn’t muster up any sympathy for her. I’d raised my guard and I was done with all this. After I finished with Travis, I was going to leave. I’d steal money from Paul and leave him a nice long note on where he could find Mom. In the arms of my almost-lover. Then I’d hitchhike the fuck out of this place. Everyone else could clean up the mess but I was through.

I looked Matt in the eyes. “None of your goddamn business.” I kept walking. Mom stared at me with this funny look on her face. I was about to walk passed her but she reached out and grabbed my arm. She did it so fast that I didn’t have time to twist away from her grip.

“Who are you? I don’t even recognize you anymore,” she breathed. Her pretty eyes, not blue, but still pretty, searched my face.

I yanked my arm out of her grip. “This is the person you made me,” I said coldly, “when you left.” I looked her up and down. “You’re not my mother.” And then I left.