Chapter Seventeen
Ashley
I wasn’t really sure what I was supposed to be doing. There was a lot going on and I felt as though I was caught in the middle of it. After his cryptic message, Tyler had left the room and closed the door behind him.
Although I knew that I shouldn’t be, part of me was intrigued by what he was saying.
Still, instead of trying to have a conversation with him, I decided that it would be better to just sit in down and focus on other things, besides the curiosity that the meathead had piqued.
However, no matter how hard I tried, I knew that it wasn’t just my curiosity that had risen through the comments that he made. He had also, probably unwillingly, hit a nerve. For as much as I hated to admit it, there was a time where he was right. That time had long since passed now, but there was a good portion of my life where I always wanted to see the best in people. I would be the one to give the underdog a chance and try to find decency where others could not.
Growing up, this caused me to get hurt a lot, but I was never dissuaded. My mother and I were a lot alike in that regard, which was probably why she stayed with my father for as long as she did. It never really worked out for her either, but it was still an ideal that I held close to my heart. It was something that I admired about my mother and tried to emulate in my everyday life.
Yet, once my mother died and my life took a spiraling turn for the worst, that part of me was finally beaten down until it was just a shadow of my former self.
Much like many of my other more desirable traits, they lessened significantly or failed completely when my mother passed away and I was unable to get them back; that is, until I went to college.
Until then, I felt as though I was living in a storming, tremulous cloud. I was insecure and afraid. My life as I knew it was failing me and all I could do was sit back and watch as it was destroyed.
I no longer had my mother and my father seemed to steadily coil toward insanity. He claimed that I was all he had, but the feeling was not mutual. Soon after my mother died, my father became so distant that I honestly began to believe I had lost him as well.
Guilt ate him alive and the more I stayed in this house, the more I realized that it wasn’t so much that he was spineless, in the traditional sense. I began to believe that he was just trying to please his new family so much that he completely forgot about the family that he had left from my mother.
I knew that deep down, my father loved me. That wasn’t really the issue that I was having. Rather, it was the fact that the manner of love was not the same. He didn’t care about me anymore. He was too busy trying to relive his life and get it right, that he didn’t bother to fix what was still broken.
However, that wasn’t my stepmother’s fault, or even, as much as I would like to blame him for everything wrong in the world, I couldn’t even in good conscious blame Tyler.
I noticed this not long after my mother died and although his oddity and singularity had changed in form, it still manifested in a way that made me feel the same.
I hadn’t just lost my mother that day. I might not have known it, but I had also lost my father too, and that was what changed me.
After trying to find not only the best in my father, but also the man that I remembered when he was around, to absolutely no avail, I began to grow bitter. Every time my father hurt me, I stopped caring just a little more and now, seeing him with his new family, completely disregarding me because I didn’t want to completely accept them as flesh and blood like my father had, had snuffed out the light of forgiveness for good.
When I realized this, I became increasingly angry. I couldn’t help but feel the sense of aggravation and hardship that attached itself to me. I not only hated that Tyler was right, I also hated that I had completely given up my otherwise unwavering compassion. It was just too painful to always look for the good.
Even if I found it, the pain I had endured to fight through all of the darkness inside the person had inevitably left a stain on my heart and I knew that I just couldn’t take it anymore.
So, once he left, I got up, after a moment to ensure that he was gone, locked the door, went back to my bed, lay down and went to sleep, hoping that when I woke up, I would be back in my dorm room and this would all be a bad dream.
Unfortunately, I awoke the next morning in basically the same position which I had fallen asleep the day before.
As soon as I opened my eyes, I felt a pain in my head and aching muscles from the way I was sleeping. I didn’t feel hungover anymore, but I certainly didn’t feel that good.
I was unbelievably thirsty and could not help but notice that a good portion of my pain was coming from the fact that I was starving.
After all, I hadn’t eaten or drank anything the day before. I was probably very dehydrated as well and in the summer heat, that was basically the last thing that I wanted to be.
So I was forced to get up and go downstairs, just as my stepmother was serving breakfast to everyone.
Oh joy, I thought as my eyelids drooped into an unhappy expression.
“There you are, Ashley,” my father said, smiling at me. It was strange, because this was literally the first thing he had said to me in a week. Maybe he forgot to take his medication and momentarily forgot that I was the cause of all his troubles. I thought to myself sardonically, but what I said was, “Good morning, Dad.” I then looked over at Theresa and said good morning to her as well, before turning my attention to Tyler and nodding my head.
I still didn’t care to say very much to him and with the mood that I was in, I dared anyone to ask me why.
However, my foul mood was curbed for the moment by the smell of food. I made my way over to the table and sat down, trying not to think about everything that this room and this table represented to me.
I smiled at everyone before I grabbed the coffee and a plate. Through my hunger, I was blinded. All I saw was bacon, eggs and toast and I didn’t stop seeing it until I had almost finished my second helping.
“Wow, Ashley,” my father commented, “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you hadn’t eaten in a day…”
At his particular choice of words, I tried not to laugh. Joke’s on you, Dad, I thought, you don’t know better. You don’t care to know better…bacon!
Even though I tried, it was hard to be angry or hateful when your body just continued to demand food.
“It’s delicious,” I told Theresa after my third helping. “Thank you.”
Theresa smiled at me in a caring way, even though I seriously doubted that she meant it, before she answered, “I aim to please. Are you alright, though?”
“Yes, I’m fine,” I said, more as a knee-jerk reaction than with any degree of honesty.
“That’s great!” my father exclaimed, before he said, “Because today, we are going to go on a family outing!”
Instantly and probably graciously, I lost my appetite and I could tell from the look that Tyler shot me from across the table that he felt similarly about the idea.
At least the two of us can agree on something… I thought, even though I really had wished it wasn’t that.
Besides the look we shared with one another, no one else spoke again for a long time. No one asked where we were going, or showed any interest at all. The reaction around the table was strange. Even my father and stepmother kept eating. I glanced between one and then the other, trying to figure out what was going on, but eventually, as the reverberation of my father’s words fell away, I wondered if I had just imagined he had spoken.
With this thought, the air grew strangely eerie.
This house is like living in the Twilight Zone, I thought to myself before I shrugged it off and continued to eat my meal, happy that I wasn’t pressed to comment.