Page 6 of Don’t Let Me Go
Aunt Rachel is sitting in the garage that doubles as her studio enjoying a glass of wine and the cool night breeze when I
pull into the driveway a little before ten.
I’m not used to being home so early. Especially on a Saturday. Back in Tally, games and after-parties usually kept me out
well past midnight. But those days are over. Now I’m a guy who goes to second-rate carnivals and chauffeurs his neighbor home
in time for curfew.
“Thanks for the ride,” Duy chirps as they hop out of my Jeep.
“No problem. Thanks again for inviting me out tonight.”
“Of course! Also, if you’re not doing anything tomorrow, we’re all going to Rink-O-Rama around noon.”
“Rink-O- what ?” I ask.
“Rink-O-Rama. It’s a skating rink. And on Sundays they do a whole Xanadu tribute and play Olivia Newton-John nonstop. It’s amazing . You have to join us.”
“Oh,” I say, not expecting to field another offer to hang quite so soon.
Tonight was fun. Mostly. But I’m not sure it’s something I want to repeat. My plan for getting through my senior year without
any more drama is to keep my head down and fly under the radar as much as possible until graduation. Somehow, I think that
might prove difficult if I keep spending time with Duy and their crew.
Besides, I’m not really in the market for new friends.
“Let me check with my aunt,” I hedge. “I think we have plans tomorrow.”
“Oh, really?” Duy pouts in disappointment. “Well, if anything changes, you know where to find me. Also, you have my number.”
I do. I actually have everyone’s number from tonight. Duy insisted on adding me to their group text before we left the carnival.
“Night, Miss Haines!” Duy calls to my aunt, giving her an enthusiastic wave as they stroll across the lawn to their own house.
“Night, Duy,” Aunt Rachel calls back. “Thanks again for the bánh xoai.”
“My pleasure!”
There’s a second lawn chair set up next to my aunt’s in the garage, so after grabbing a Coke out of the minifridge, I plop
down beside her.
“You have a good time tonight, kiddo?” she asks, setting aside the magazine she was skimming. She’s wearing her navy-blue
coveralls, and her brown hair is pulled up into a red bandanna, giving her a real Rosie the Riveter vibe. She must have been
sculpting earlier.
“Yeah. Carnival was fun.”
“See?” she crows, breaking into a wide grin. “I told you the world wouldn’t end if you left your room for one night.”
I can’t help smiling. Despite her tendency to exaggerate about anything and everything, Rachel has always been my favorite
aunt.
She’s almost ten years younger than my father, and because of that they’ve never been especially close. Even so, from the
moment I was born, Rachel and I just clicked. I think it’s because, in a family of overachievers and perfectionists, my aunt
is the one person I’m related to who thinks that you should be allowed to enjoy life and not spend every waking second trying
to conquer it.
That’s what my father does. Conquer.
When he was growing up, his one goal in life was to play for the NFL. He ate, slept, and breathed football. By all accounts, he was damn good at it too. Everyone was convinced he’d go pro. That is until a knee injury in college sidelined his dreams of glory.
Even then, he didn’t lose his drive. He just switched his focus, channeling all his energy into sports medicine and building
up the state’s most successful physical therapy and rehab center. Now when the Seminoles’ quarterback tears his ACL or the
Dolphins’ wide receiver dislocates his shoulder, they come to my father, and he gets them back on the gridiron. Because Dr.
Wyatt Haines is a man who gets results.
My mother isn’t much different, at least when it comes to ambition. She spent her teens and twenties dominating the pageant
circuit in the hopes of becoming Miss Florida and, ultimately, Miss America. She never managed to take home the big crown,
but she did eventually take home my dad, becoming Mrs. Holly Haines in the process. Now she runs a successful real estate
agency catering to footballers and other newly rich sports professionals looking to buy retirement homes for their parents
in the Florida panhandle.
Then there’s Aunt Rachel.
My father always says Aunt Rachel could’ve been a really successful artist if she’d had a bit more ambition and approached
her sculpting the way that he approached medicine. But world domination has never been Rachel’s thing. Sure, she might be
only an adjunct art professor at a community college who spends her weekends sculpting in her garage. But unlike my parents,
Aunt Rachel seems genuinely happy with the life she’s built for herself. She doesn’t need a trophy or an empire to prove her
worth to the world. Or to herself.
Is it any wonder I wanted to live with her after everything that went down in December?
“Did I hear Duy invite you to go skating tomorrow?” my aunt asks, finishing off the last of her wine.
“Yeah. He did— they did.”
“That was nice of them.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Did I also hear you say that you wouldn’t be able to go because you and I have some vague mystery plans that I am unaware
of?”
Shit . I was hoping Aunt Rachel didn’t hear that part. “Yeah, sorry. I shouldn’t have lied.”
“No, please, don’t apologize. I just wanted to make sure I hadn’t scheduled important bonding time with my nephew and then
forgotten. You know I’m a senile old crone who can barely remember what day it is.”
I roll my eyes. “You’re thirty-eight.”
“I’m thirty- four !” she barks, swatting my shoulder with her magazine.
“Ow! Okay! Sorry!”
“Thirty- eight .” She snorts. “You’re lucky you’re so good-looking, kiddo, because your manners are crap.”
For a second, I think I’m off the hook. Then Aunt Rachel fixes me with one of her sideways glances. “So what’s going on? Why
don’t you want to hang out with Duy? Did you not have a good time tonight?”
“It’s not that,” I say.
Despite my initial hesitation about going out, I am glad I went. After Riley and I met back up with his friends, we spent
the rest of the night hopping from ride to ride and playing games. Duy lost half an hour (and a ridiculous amount of money)
to a ring toss trying to win a giant purple octopus; Audrey managed to get banned from the bumper cars for “reckless driving”;
and Tala ate four funnel cakes, after which she complained of a stomachache that she insisted was completely unrelated.
It was a bizarre and ridiculous evening. But despite my current “situation,” I think I actually enjoyed myself. And that’s
the problem.
“Did you not get along with Duy?” my aunt presses when I continue to stare down at the bottle of Coke in my lap. “I know they’re a bit different from the kids you’re used to.”
“No, I like Duy and their friends. They were weird but interesting. Especially this one guy, Riley. He made me laugh. They
all did.”
“Okay?.?.?.?so you hung out with funny, interesting people and had a good time. I totally understand why you wouldn’t want
to do that again.”
“Come on, Aunt Rach. I’m only gonna be here in Orlando for, what, a year? There’s no point in making friends.”
“A year’s a long time to go it alone, kiddo.”
“I’ll survive.”
Aunt Rachel’s mouth twists into a frown. “So that’s the plan? You’re going to spend your senior year alone with no one for
company other than your insanely cool, vibrantly young, breathtakingly glamorous aunt?”
“I thought you were a senile crone?”
Aunt Rachel swats me with the magazine again.
“Ow!”
“Jackson, you can’t spend the rest of your life hiding in your room,” she says, her tone once more tinged with concern.
“That’s not what I’m doing,” I protest. Even though, yeah, that’s exactly what I’m doing.
My aunt shakes her head, then takes my chin in her hand and forces me to meet her dark brown eyes. “Look, kiddo, I know you’ve
had a rough couple of months, and I fully support your decision to move in with me and make a fresh start. But for the past
week, all I’ve seen you do is play video games and eat microwaved Hot Pockets. You can’t keep hiding from the world.”
“I’m not,” I insist. “I’m just?.?.?.?taking a pause.”
Aunt Rachel lets go of my face and sighs.
“Sometimes, Jackson, we stumble in life. And you can let that stumble define who you are and sabotage any chance of future happiness, or you can try to move past it and build a new life for yourself in a new city with new friends who are funny and smart and just the right amount of weird. I personally think the latter is the better option, but I will support you no matter what you do because you are my nephew and I love you and I just want to see you happy. You know you’re allowed to be happy, right? ”
I’m not sure that’s true, but I appreciate her saying it.
“I know,” I tell her. “I’ll try.”
Aunt Rachel nods and smiles. “That’s all any of us can do.”