AllFreeNovel
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Come home. Shower.
Take the Polaroid.
If it is a school day, get ready for school. Make your lunch. Eat breakfast.
Go to school for Power Hour before first period. Catch up on your work.
Go to class. Text your mother at lunch.
Go to class.
Your mother picks you up.
Come home. Clean your room.
Do homework. Make dinner. Clean up.
Go to group.
Come home.
Journal for twenty minutes.
Read, listen to music, watch TV.
Go to bed.
Repeat as needed.
Your friends can come over if your mother is home.
You can go out with your friends if a parent comes along.
If your mother wishes, at any time, she can give you an at-home test.
If you fail this test, you go back to rehab.
In time, certain parameters can be lifted after discussion with your group leader and your parents.
“That’s a lot of rules,” I say.
My mother shrugs.
“It’s what we have to try. There are friends in there, and things to do. You have Dawn. And Amber. I don’t understand the Polaroid thing, exactly, though.”
“I’ll tell you about it sometime,” I say.
You Can Start Over as Many Times as It Takes.
The shed in ourbackyard is cluttered, and the ceiling is quilted with webs. Old bicycles, gardening equipment, roller skates, boxes and boxes and boxes labeledMom,as in Laurel. My mother’s mother. I put my backpack on the ground.
I wedge myself between dusty suitcases to reach Grandma’s dented green trunk.
I lift out cartons of unused film, albums of black-and-white images, notebooks in Laurel’s messy handwriting. She told me once she always took notes about what she wanted to portray before she would do a shoot, like she was drafting a story before bringing it to life.
At the bottom of the trunk, I found it, wrapped in a thick blue wool blanket. Her large-format 8x10"camera. It’s heavy in my hands, boxy and big. I’m going to learn to use it someday. I think Laurel would like that.
But for now, I put it away.
