TUESDAY TALES - SQUASH

 

Welcome to Tuesday Tales. I'm back with a brand new story -- young adult for me this time. It's called "Skit the Scout and Me." Find it here, then go and read the other wonderful Tuesday Tales entries. Find them HERE!

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I’m squashed in the backseat of my new stepfather’s Mercedes with my mother’s vanity case and extra suitcase. I’m Sasha Hollister, fifteen, practically an orphan since my father died. My mother roped in a rich, new husband and they are off to Europe for three months over the summer.

Why am I smashed into the backseat? Because they are dumping me upstate to live with my grandparents while they sail away on a disgusting luxury ship. While they are eating caviar, I’ll be knee-deep in cow shit, working my fingers to the bone on Grandma and Grandpa’s farm, while all my friends will be making big bucks babysitting, taking little kids to the beach, eating ice cream, and hanging out. Ugh.

I told my mother I didn’t want to go. I begged them not to go, but they didn’t care. They booked the trip without asking me.

“Charles has been counting on this. He’s been working night and day on a merger,” she said. A merger or something.

And what about me? I’ve been sweating my brains out in school all year. Daddy’s been gone – it’ll be four years next month. Charles. Pompous Charles with his oily smile and big bank account. He’ll never be the man my father was. Only a schoolteacher? So much more. He was blown away by a drunk driver on his way home from his part-time job tutoring. Here one minute and gone the next. I know Charles wants me to get over it. But he’ll never be my father-not really. I miss Daddy every day.

Mom leans over from the front seat.

“We’re almost there. Are you excited?”

I stick out my tongue.

“Grandma always said to be careful or your face will freeze like that,” she said, then faced front.

    Excited? I’m dreading it. Not that I’d nominate my mother for mother-of-the-year. But 

she’s better than nothing. My grandparents? I don’t even remember them much. Last time 

we went to visit was Thanksgiving eight years ago, I think. They got into a fight with 

mother, and they didn’t speak for a long time.  I know they can’t possibly want me there all 

summer.

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