Time Wasted

What the hell am I doing? Why do I feel like a freaking criminal? Can I be legally punished for this?

That first question scares me the most. No harm has yet come to anyone from me working illegally, and I haven't robbed any banks to pay rent. I am 13 years old, playing sick from school, and using a fake ID to help emancipate myself. I've lied more in the past 2 months than some people lie in their life, but honestly I'm scared out of my mind. I work 60 hours a week in horrible jobs and split rent with someone a decade older, and when I do go to school I dodge questions like glass. Constantly I am tired, and cold, hungry and miserable. All this and more begs the question. What the hell am I doing?

It's well past 11 at night as I step on the trolley and slip into a seat. The car is virtually deserted and I slip into a shallow sleep.

"Wake up" I have my mother by the shoulder and I'm trying without much success to break her from a pill induced slumber on our dinner table. She swears at me, slurred profanities into her arm, before propping herself up to look at the stranger in her kitchen.

"You can't sleep here, Liz. Go to your room, please?"

"I can sleep wherever the fuck I feel like it, this is my house."

I bite back about a million responses so hard I taste copper. My little sister has eaten dinner in her room for the past 3 nights, and doesn't know why 'mommy' is so 'tired' all the time.

My mother has fallen back into a pharmaceutical wasteland. How convenient and painless that must be. I'm thinking of a 6 year old who lives in her bedroom and an after school program as I grab the emaciated thing in front of me and attempt to carry her to her bedroom, but my plan is foiled when a hand of sharp nails rakes my cheek with shocking sobriety. Somehow I'm the one to end up off my feet; I scramble back on them in time to take two ragged steps back from my mother, who is now beside her chair again and looking at me like something terrifying. Steroid ridden with animal-hatred and bitter fires in bloodshot eyes, this woman is more monstrous than maternal.

"What the fuck did I just say?" She demands through her teeth. Before I can answer a word she goes on to bring up my father, who I can't stand to hear another word about.

"Are you kidding me Liz? Really? Him? You have a 6 year old daughter who needs a mom, and all she gets is some pill junkie who can't put down the fucking bottle. Get over him. You'd be mad if he came back, you're mad that he's not. You're a wreck and it's YOU!"

I was oblivious to the bloody gashes in the side of my face, to the fact that we were both screaming. Everything was perfectly clear though, crisp and lucid as she wrapped the neck of an Absolut bottle in her hand. It flew through the air and shattered so close behind me I could feel flecks of glass in my ear. I ducked forward to avoid that razored rain, and suddenly I was lurching into the back of seat B12.

The underground station at the local university was like a cold box of shadowy stone and graffiti murals. I climbed 3 flights of stairs to get to the ground level of the campus, where I had to trek along half a mile of rolling grass and several blocks to the apartment building where a friend of a friend lived. He must've owed a favor or something to said friend, because he had taken me in dubiously as a roommate for the 2 bedroom apartment at 600 a month. He wasn't the only one though, who was a little perplexed by the situation.

"Yeah, he's still looking for a new roommate. The last one transferred to another out of state U."

He? I chewed my lip, hoping I had misheard my friend.

"Aren't you a tad young to be moving out?" She went on.

"Well I'm kind of in a tough spot, Chelsea. Can you introduce us tomorrow?" I could practically hear the pages of a social calendar being turned.

"Are you busy at 4 tomorrow? I'll take you to his place to meet him, so you can see the apartment."

"Thanks, sounds perfect." I breathed one tiny sigh of relief.

The next 2 months had been a series of tiny sighs. Tiny sighs and big, big gasps of air as I hit cold water. I met my roommate. I didn't like the fact that he was a guy, but he was indifferent really and uninterested, and that made him perfect. The first time I met him a perky blond was darting around the kitchen helping herself to coffee before she left, and the way he watched her leave said things that put my mind to a little ease.

I bought a fake ID. Yes, a fake ID. There were no trench coats or mafia involved, I knew a guy in my high school who was building his college fund in advance. As though these things were made from magic, one appeared in my locker the next day. The day after that my locker was cleared out. Textbooks lined my bedroom floor like wounded children waiting to be tended to. I tried in school, I really did, but it was hard to do well when you only went twice a week and couldn't keep your eyes open for more than an hour or two at home. I worked like a mad woman, taking overtime and doing anything I could to keep up between work and work. Stress and stress. I got thinner and was tired all the time. My high school counselor, who had evidently seen something for weeks, decided one day in her office to use my progress report for a conversation starter. It was a bad one.

"So you wanna tell me what's going on in math?" All things considered as of late, going from straight A's to a B minus in Geometry seemed not the end of the world.

I shrugged. Wrong answer. This wasn't like me, or my counselor. She was a tough old Brasilian woman who probably ate trouble students with her toast and coffee in the mornings. If she wanted an answer usually she'd rip it out of me like a second spleen. But I was quiet. Normally I was anything but. I was stubborn and sarcastic and opinionated, and as she had titled me, 'the smartest delinquent' she knew for a long list of charges.

She could tell something was wrong. I could tell she could tell. Deep down she had a good and human side, and I think right about that moment I sat squirming in an office chair, it was trying to reach for mine.

"You wanna talk about it?"

"Well..." I took a deep breath.

"It's mostly shapes and colors, but you get the idea."

"Not that, smartass"

"Speaking of asses, mine's asleep."

I stopped at the door, needing back my pass to return to the class I'd been pulled from.

Moments were marked by an agonizingly loud cat clock on the wall as this woman was either scouring my soul or contemplating how fast she could nail me with a rubber eraser. Finally she resigned. Her hand dashed across the back of the pass before being shoved back to me.

"Be sure to hand that back to Mrs. Lanz!" She instructed. I was halfway out the door, then in the next hallway, when for just a second I unfolded that pass and read the fresh scribble that made my stomach knot.

'Rachel is to be excused twice a week during your class on Mondays and Fridays for compulsory sessions.'

Damn. The woman definitely knew something was going on. It wasn't just geometry, either. My impeccable, cumulative 4.25 was now on it's way south of 4, and absences had become my new thing. For once in my life, my mother's parental negligence was a huge help; the principal had been hung up on twice when he tried to call her in regards to her MIA daughter, and when those were mistaken as mistakes, he got an earful of 4 letter words on that third call. Either my mom ripped the plug out of the wall, or he stopped trying.

---

I felt like some victor on a mountaintop, unlocking the front door and walking into that little apartment. My consolation prize? A mattress that welcomed me to sleep. 4 blissful hours of it. I dreamt though of troubling things, like my sister and how worried I was over her. My mother left her alone and just let her be, but now that I was gone I worried myself sick over certain things. That night I firmly decided tomorrow was a day I'd put 2 toes in that dreaded house for her.

Thursday came hard and loud, like the alarm clock radio screaming in my ear. I couldn't shut that thing up fast enough, but when it came to getting out of bed I was soooo slow. I worked from 5 to 1 at one job, and 2 to 5 at the other. My temple was throbbing and begged for relief, but at the end of the day I took the bus to where my mother lived and found my sister was faring well. Maybe this would turn out ok? I hugged her and we sat in the backyard for a couple of hours talking, mostly about school and what I wanted her to do.

"Now when mommy's sleeping I want you to be extra quiet ok? I want you to stay in your room and do your homework ok? Be a good girl and keep the door locked like I showed you, and call me if you need help on your homework. Or if you need anything. Ok?" My sister nodded and looked like she might've been a little overwhelmed. I gave her another hug and kissed the top of her head. "I still want you in bed by 8."

Finally we went to her room where a long sheet of drawing paper lined the carpet. I spent just another few minutes picking up crayon bits and straightening out bedsheets before handing her 50 dollars for lunch and stocking the kitchen with about a month's worth of easy food.

Eventually it got late, and I had to get going. I swallowed a lump and stole one more hug, suddenly afraid to let go. The door between us didn't make it any easier. I jiggled the handle, just to make sure she'd locked it, and not 3 steps later it jiggled from the other side. I thought my chest was going to split open with hurt. Every ounce of strength in my body went to not ripping open that door and taking my baby sister out. I had heard too many horror stories from foster homes, and at least so far she was somewhere where she was unharmed and I could keep an eye on her. Still, I cried all the way out the front door and all the way home. I cried in my room until it was a stabbing agony to breathe, and I fell asleep. I had wanted my sister to be able to eat dinner out of her room for one night. Now she was eating there every night. It might sound like a stupid thing do over all that, but I cried.