Sinners as Saints

All the love Odie had left in her was for her son. The only reason she got up anymore was for him.

She woke him up the same time everyday. She worked at Target full time. From six am to six pm, she worked and saved, worked and saved. Odie had no idea what exactly for. College, hopefully.

It was July 7th. Five o'clock came awful early, but luckily, Odie got Sully up with little problem. He slept in a Sully onesie, a little fuzzy thing that made him look like Sully from Monsters, Inc. He always had an obsession with that name, James Sullivan.

July 7th, 2017. He'd just turned three.

"Ma," Sully said.

"Yeah, baby?" She answered. Odie put pots and pans for him to play on the kitchen floor. He sat in his high chair. Strange enough was that he wasn't his usual rambunctious self.

Sully munched on his cherries. His mouth looked like an open wound. "I wanna go home," he whispered. "Can we go soon?"

Odie watched him out of the corner of her eye as she put bananas, strawberries, and almond milk into the blender for her morning smoothie. "We're home, baby. What do you mean?"

Sully shook his head. "No - I m-miss... I miss Syn, and Shads, and V-genz, a-and -"

Odie put the blender on high and timed it for thirty seconds. She hid her nerves.

Sure, she was a fan of Avenged Sevenfold. Sully's namesake belonged to the band, once upon a time. "Syn, and Shads, and V-genz," she echoed. She picked him up and bounced him on her hip.

"And Short Shit," Sully cried.

Odie gasped, cackling with her mouth covered.

Then it set in, what he'd said.

"What?" She started. "Where did you hear that?"

Odie had listened to Avenged all the time in her beater with Sully in the back seat. Never once had she told them who they were or why he was even named the way he was.

Sully rolled his eyes. "Mama." Under pale eyebrows, he leered at her. "I know them. I miss them."

"Who?" She repeated. Dumbstruck.

"Shads, Syn, V-genz, Christ," he listed, counting their names off on his little fingers. There was a clear, burning loneliness in his features as he laid a little hand on her chest. "Huningon Beash."

Odie's brain went dead. She continued to bounce him, scrutinizing his features. "I'm gonna call in today," she whispered. "I think... I think I need to figure a few things out."

"Are we going?" His eyes were bright. Infinitely alive at the thought.

"We'll see," Odie answered.

She didn't make enough at Target to take him where he wanted to go. She didn't know what she was going to do. If she would even entertain the idea. Odie had never driven that far. She'd never even lived outside of Missouri.

"C'mon, ma," Sully pleaded.

Odie smoothed down the teal and baby blue faux fire that lined his horned hood. "We'll see," she repeated. "It'll take a while, though."

Oh, man. Oh god.

She was going to have to call her old manager at Whispers, a strip club where she worked when Sully was a lot smaller.

Odie had always wanted to see California... And maybe that was the kind of change she needed.