Year Three
Her face was a mask of stubborn pride, but it couldn’t hide the raw wound of neglect in her eyes. “Betty said she wouldn’t mind living with me,” she said, her voice trembling. “I’ve waited for three years. Why haven’t you come to get me?”
My father, a man I’d only ever known as strict and severe, felt his eyes well up with tears.
My brother, Ethan, shoved past me, his shoulder knocking into mine, and wrapped the girl in a fierce hug. “Sherry! I’ll never let anyone bully you again.”
They gathered around her, a flood of repressed emotion finally finding its release. My father told me to give Sherry her room back. My brother told me to stop being difficult and booked me a spot on a youth travel tour.
And then, they completely forgot their promise to pick me up.
While I was trapped by a landslide, they were celebrating Sherry’s birthday.
After I was rescued, one of the emergency workers handed me a phone. “You should call your family,” he said gently.
I shook my head, looking him in the eye. “Sir, could I possibly borrow two hundred and eight dollars?”
1
The rescuer, a kind-faced man in his forties, blinked. “Two hundred and eight?”
I ticked off the numbers on my fingers for him. “The bus from here to the train station is three dollars. The train ticket is a hundred and ninety-five. And the bus from the station to my town is another ten. It adds up to exactly two hundred and eight.”
A complicated expression crossed his face. “Kid, you don’t live in Northwood? After something this serious, you should wait for your family to come get you.”
“I’m an adult, sir,” I said softly. “I can decide which home I want to go back to.”
What I didn’t say was that some families, you could wait for forever, and they’d never come.
After splitting from the tour group yesterday, I’d waited on the mountain until I fell asleep. A sudden drop in temperature woke me to a dark, rain-lashed sky. My phone was on its last one percent of battery when I managed to call my brother.
“Betty?”
“Are you…” almost here?
“Oh! Dad and I were celebrating Sherry’s birthday this afternoon. The AC must have been too low or something because she’s running a fever now. We’re on our way to the hospital with her. Right, you were coming home today, weren’t you?”
“Yes, but…”
“You’ll have to get back on your own, okay?”
Beep. Beep. Beep.
The line went dead. The phone was off.
The doors to the few small shops on the summit were locked tight. There was nowhere to charge it. Too scared to navigate the treacherous mountain path without a guide, I huddled under the flimsy cover of a vendor’s stall. The wind howled, and the darkness felt alive.
Would they even notice I hadn’t come home? And if they did, would they worry about me the way they worried about Sherry?
I knew the answer. Of course not.
Just as they’d forgotten that today was supposed to be my birthday, not Sherry’s.
But it was okay. It didn’t matter.
I wrapped my arms around myself, patting my own shoulder. Just go to sleep, I told myself. If you’re asleep, you won’t be scared.
When morning finally came, I caught the first bus down the mountain. The bus was nearly empty.
No one expected the landslide.
…
But there was no need to explain all this. I didn’t care anymore, but telling the story would only make others pity me.
The rescue team couldn’t change my mind, but they insisted on giving me a ride to the train station. On the way, the kind rescuer sighed, “Just a bit of bad luck. If you’d come down yesterday, you would have missed the whole thing.”
Another worker chuckled. “What are you talking about? She survived a landslide without a scratch. That’s not bad luck, that’s a damn miracle!”
I listened with a small smile, nodding in agreement. In the end, they transferred me five hundred dollars. I thanked them profusely, saving the sender’s information in my phone. I would pay them back.
My phone, now charged, buzzed to life as I stepped into the station. A new message. I opened it. A voice note from my brother, Ethan.
“Betty, the housekeeper just called and said you’re not back yet? You didn’t come straight home last night? Dad and I have been at the hospital with Sherry. She still has a fever. You know how she’s always been so delicate, sick all the time since she was a little girl…”
Sherry. The name my biological family had given their adoptive daughter.
I didn’t listen to the rest. I converted the 48-second message to text. Almost every word was about Sherry.
My thumb hovered over the screen, unsure how to reply.
These moments had been the backdrop of the last three years. At the dinner table, they’d mention how Sherry loved this or that dish. Seeing a pretty dress in a shop window, they’d wonder if Sherry had anything like it. Every holiday we spent together felt like a formality, a duty they had to perform before they could leave with sighs of relief to celebrate with their other daughter.
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