My alarm clock woke me up early on Monday, and I groaned as I rolled over in bed to grab my phone and shut off the annoying sound. I knew better than to roll back into bed. I’d made the same mistake plenty of times before, and ended up being late to school. So I forced myself to sit up and blinked my eyes a few times, then went to take a shower.

Ten minutes later, I was feeling more awake, and I had a towel wrapped around my waist, another thrown over my shoulder that I used to dry out my hair.

“What to wear, what to wear…” I muttered to myself as I went through my closet. I picked a pair of jeans that looked surprisingly clean. I hadn't seen my mom the entire weekend, but she must have done some of my laundry at some point. Then I pulled out a dark, long-sleeved t-shirt, and a jacket to go over it.

Once I got dressed, I walked down the stairs and to the kitchen. Mom was there, for once, already dressed up for work and making breakfast. She looked up as I walked in and smiled at me.

“Hey there, Kev. I was just about to come check if you were awake, don’t want you to be late for school.”

I stood frozen at the doorstep, almost surprised to see her there and to make time to cook something up. I’d figured I’d be eating leftovers.

“Hey, Mom,” I said slowly, moving over to the counter. “I’m surprised to see you home.”

She gave me a rueful look. “Yeah. I know I haven’t been around lately, but how could I ever forget my baby?”

I grimaced. “Mom, please don’t call me baby.”

She laughed, then sighed. “Still, I feel kind of guilty; I’ve been letting you eat leftovers for too long.”

I just shrugged. I was pretty used to it. I sat at the counter, and immediately noticed the bills folded on top of it.

“Mom is this…?”

“That’s your money for school,” she said as she glanced at me over her shoulder. “It should be enough for lunch, right?”

I arched my eyebrows at what was more than thirty dollars. Lunch didn’t cost nearly that much. She must be feeling guilty to let me off with so much.

“Thanks, Mom,” I said. “I’ll go put this in my wallet.”

“I’ll call you when I have breakfast ready!” she called to me as I left the kitchen.

I usually just tossed my bag somewhere in the living room when I got home from school and left it there, and it was still on the couch where I’d left it on Friday. I pulled out my wallet to see how much I had, and I stuffed in the extra bills, a feeling of satisfaction in my chest.

After school, maybe Stacey and I can do something together. Then later...

I sighed. Later, it would probably be leftovers for me. I just thought it would be too convenient that Mom was here late, and she'd also be back early enough to make dinner. I would have loved to go to Rod and Stacey’s place for dinner. They’d had me over every so often, and their parents probably wouldn’t mind.

But I’d been going a lot less lately. Since around the time Stacey and I started fucking, because it was a way bigger secret than the dating. Not that it was something I would tell them anyway, even if we did decide to tell them we were dating. I wasn’t even sure what I would tell Rod when he asked because he definitely would.

I was about to go back into the kitchen when my phone vibrated in my pocket. I pulled it out and saw I had a message from Stacey. It wasn’t anything unusual, so I unlocked the screen and went to the messaging app. Her message made me freeze, though.

“Can we go to school late? I want to talk. There’s something weird going on at my house.”

I read the message over and over, and as I stood there in the middle of my living room, my mind came up with all sorts of things that she could mean. There was one that worried me the most.

Did her family find out? Are we in trouble?

Quickly, I sent a message back. “Do you know what it is?”

“No idea. Rod was arguing with Dad and Mom was acting like it didn’t matter. No one will tell me anything!”

I sat down on the couch, suddenly feeling like my legs couldn’t hold me up anymore.

“What about you?”

I frowned at the message. “What about me?”

“How’re things at your house?”

Immediately, I went to write ‘the usual,’ when I paused. Could I say everything had been usual? Yeah, I wasn’t used to seeing my mom often, enough that seeing her this morning was surprising. And even when I didn’t see her often, she at least called to check in on me. She’d always had this habit when she came in after I was asleep, she looked in on my bedroom to be sure I was home and sleeping all right. She still did that.

I'd spent a night over at Stacey’s house, and Mom hadn't asked a thing about it. In fact, besides the post-it notes telling me where what I needed in the house was, I hadn't seen or talked to my mom for more than a few minutes in a while, and then it was only about trivial matters. Like, Friday she’d told me what was going on at work, I’d told her school was pretty okay, and that was it. She was the one usually insistent on us keeping in communication, and now that I thought about it…

“Things are a bit weird here, too.”

I wrote the message and pressed send, wondering if my mom had an agenda for wanting to talk to me this morning. And why was Stacey asking about this, anyway?

“Can you come over here soon?” I messaged. “After my mom is out of the house, that is.”

Her reply came almost immediately. “Sure. Waiting for Rod to go first, too. He’s not in the best of moods.”

That was pretty rare for Rod, so whatever was going on, must be something really serious.

“Kevin!” Mom called. “Breakfast is ready, come and get it!”

Slowly, I got up and walked over to the kitchen. Mom was humming happily as she served two plates on the counter. I took a seat and ate my food slowly. Mom got out her phone and acted busy on it as she dug into her plate.

I thought about asking if something was wrong, but thought better of it. I didn’t pry a lot into her private life, and she did the same for me, was pretty much how things had worked in my house for a while. We were still family, and that was all that mattered.

My dad died when I was pretty young, with just left the two of us. It had happened while I was in school, and my mom came to pick me up. Dad was alone in the house, and he suffered a heart attack. We got back to find him passed out on the floor, phone not too far from his outstretched hand.

I could still remember how much my mom had screamed, and how I’d wondered why my dad wouldn’t wake up no matter how I shook him. Mom had called for the ambulance, crying frantically.

Because we’d left the door wide open, and Rod’s mom had picked him and his sister up and gotten them home at around the same time, she heard. Her husband was at the house for some time off.

When she saw what had happened, she dragged me to her home and put me in the same room with Rod. I’d stayed there the whole night, and didn’t get out even after I heard the ambulance come and go. I knew it took my dad with it, but I didn’t know until the next day that he died while undergoing treatment at the hospital.

Even though they hadn't talked much before, after that, Paul and Carol practically helped my mom raise me. Rod, even back then, was a pretty cool guy, and he somehow knew what I needed after just losing my dad. And so, he grew up to be my best friend, and our families grew close.

When was the last time Mom even asked me about the neighbors?

She was hardly around and talking to me, so I knew there was no way she was talking to them. Some of the times I went over there for dinner before, Mom would be invited along, and it would be like one big happy family. That had stopped long before I stopped having dinner over so often.

She wasn’t saying anything, even though she seemed to be getting extra busy at work lately. I never asked about her job, since the only reason she had to get one was that Dad died so suddenly and she’d been a stay at home mom. She worked for my sake more than anything.

“I need to get going now,” Mom said suddenly. “I don’t want to be late to work.”

I looked up, feeling very confused. She hadn't said anything, and already she was ready to leave?

“It’s fine, Mom. I’ll see you later,” I said distractedly.

But she didn’t move yet.

After a few seconds, she spoke. “Look, honey. I know I haven’t been around often. And we haven’t gone to visit the neighbors in a while.”

I shrugged my shoulders, internally wondering if this was it, what she wanted to talk about. “I see them all the time. In fact, I was there Saturday and early Sunday.”

She nodded, looking distracted. “I’ve meant to go over, but the situation is a little…”

I frowned, watching as she looked down at the table and grabbed the salt shaker to start playing with it in her hands. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say my mom looked almost… embarrassed.

“What situation are you talking about, Mom?”

She smiled uneasily as she met my gaze. “Has Rod said anything to you? Anything at all about what’s going on at home?”

Warning bells immediately rang in my mind. I hadn't talked to Rod, but something was up at his house. And according to Stacey, he and his dad had a falling out yesterday. Did my mom know something about it?

“He didn’t say anything,” I told her because it was true. He hadn't said much to me.

“Oh,” she murmured, looking down again. A second later, she put the salt shaker down and aimed a smile at me. I knew my mom well enough to be able to tell just how fake it was. “That’s all right, then. I have to get going, but we’ll talk after I get back?”

She picked up her handbag that she had on the counter.

“So, I’ll get to see you tonight?”

She shrugged. “Might, might not. I have this project that’s…been taking way too long to complete.”

“Another difficult to sell the house?” I guessed. Mom worked as a realtor, so there weren’t that many possibilities, to begin with.

Mom nodded. “Yeah. Only, it’s not horrible like the last one. It’s this huge, million dollar monstrosity that no one can afford, so finding buyers is a bit…” she sighed. But then she brightened in the next second. “There’s a ray of hope, though. I might have a buyer.” She rounded the counter, and I leaned over so she could peck my cheek. “I’ll see you later, honey,” she said, waving at me over her shoulder as she all but ran out of the house.

She stalled for a bit at the door to get her coat, and I waited for her to leave, already texting Stacey to come over.

Once she was gone, I went to stand at the door. The moment I heard a knock, I pulled the door open, and Stacey was there.