This Journal Belongs to Ratchet (14 page)

(Rough Draft)

My dad
tries to make
wants
people to care about global warming. I think it would be easier if he just tried to
to get
convince
people to care about trees.

Too much carbon dioxide is the biggest cause of global warming. Cutting down trees
puts
is what puts too much
carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Since we can't
see
carbon dioxide or
feel
the global warming, nobody notices it's happening.

But if you go to the park on a hot day and you want to cool off, what do you look for? A tree.
Because s
S
tanding in the shade is the best way to cool off. If we cut down the trees, the shade will be gone. People will notice that.

If we
level
destroy
Moss Tree Park just so we can have another strip mall, we'll be losing something we can never get back
—
lots and lots of trees.

Sometimes w
W
hen you lose something you can never get back, you aren't ever the same person again. If we lose Moss Tree Park, our neighborhood will never be the same. We'd be losing something REALLY important. Something we
can
will
NEVER get back. And THAT'S a big deal
.
!

Don't think about global warming. Think about the trees. Moss Tree Park should be saved
.
!

(If Dad read this, I'd get an A plus for sure.)

Today I came back from riding my bike to the drugstore. (We ran out of toilet paper. That's the kind of thing a mom would make sure DIDN'T happen, but the kind of thing Dad
never
pays attention to.) Guess who was in the garage talking to Dad when I got back? Hunter. He barely even noticed me when I parked my bike against the wall. I hadn't seen him in a couple of days and then he came around to see Dad? What was up with that?

You would've thought he was trying to brownnose Dad the way he was listening to him go on and on about Moss Tree Park. I love parks as much as the next guy, but there are other things to talk about. It made me want to go inside and rip up my persuasive essay. I was sick of hearing about trees and parks. Maybe I should write about shopping malls instead.

I wasn't going to stand around being ignored by both Dad and Hunter. I took my bag of toilet paper and walked toward the kitchen door. But then I noticed a blue and white striped gift bag hanging on the doorknob.

I asked what it was, and I saw Hunter looking at me out of the corner of his eye. I looked inside. A homemade CD. The title was written on the cover in big black letters with one of those fat permanent markers.

Hunter and I looked at each other and smiled like we shared the biggest inside joke of the century. Dad kept talking about trees and carbon dioxide, but Hunter wasn't paying attention to him anymore. Hunter walked toward me.

“Thanks. I couldn't've passed without you. I mean without your songs,” he said.

I felt like a balloon full of friendship helium ready to float up, up, and away.

That night in my room

Alone

Listening to Hunter's voice

Sing,

I feel something

Changing.

I had written the songs for

Hunter,

He had made the CD for

Me,

And I finally knew we were

Friends.

Having a friend like

Hunter,

Having a friend at

All,

Is really a nice

Change.

Yesterday I felt like I was flying in the clouds full of friendship helium, but today I feel like a big old truck tire. One that's blown apart on the highway so bad that even Dad can't fix it.

I finally read the letters. The ones from the mystery box. I was excited thinking they might be letters Mom wrote to me. But they weren't. Both letters were written to Dad. The first one was from someone named Sandy who must've been Mom's friend. The letter was short, telling Dad how sorry she was that Mom had died. It had been a car accident. I had always known that. Along with the letter from Sandy was the clipping from the obituary section of the paper. I wondered why Sandy had sent it to Dad. Wouldn't Dad have saved his own copy? And I was surprised that mine and Dad's names weren't mentioned in the newspaper.

But that wasn't the letter that blew my tires to kingdom come. The other letter was written a year earlier.

It was from Mom.

To Dad.

About her leaving.

Leaving Dad.

Leaving me.

Mom left us?

How come I didn't remember that?

Mom wrote that she didn't love Dad anymore. She was tired of living in broken-down houses. She was tired of him working all the time and not making enough money. She was tired of him talking about the Good Lord all the time and spending every minute of every day thinking about “saving the world.”

It was funny because those were all the things
I
was tired of. But I hadn't
ever
once thought of leaving Dad.

The question without an answer just got answered.

Why would Dad not want me to see what was in the box?

Turns out Dad had a really good reason
—
one I never could've imagined.

Now I have another question without an answer:

If I couldn't even imagine the truth, I wonder if that means what I thought was the truth was really only imagined?

How does a mom

Leave?

How does she

Live

After she's

Left?

How does her

Heart

Not break?

How does she

Write

A letter

Instead of

Staying

To be

A mom?

Ratchet's Response:

What could a mom who left

Teach me to think

Except that

I wasn't worth sticking around for.

What could a mom who left

Advise me to do

Except to

Quit when things don't go my way.

What could a mom who left

Inspire me to become

Except

A girl who's so empty of good things

She knows she won't

Ever be able to become

Anything.

Hunter came over today. Dad just let him in the house without me even knowing it. I was in my room listening to his CD and singing at the top of my lungs when he showed up at my bedroom door. I finally have a real friend and then he sees me doing something embarrassing like singing into a hairbrush. Good thing Hunter thought it was funny.

Hunter had never been inside my house before. Thankfully Dad had finished a lot of work on the inside already. Even so, Hunter's house was a lot nicer than ours. But after all, he did have a real mom to make it a home. I not only had a dead mother, I had one who had left us.

Hunter and I talked about the plans for his go-cart for a while. He said his dad would probably never get around to rebuilding a car with him, so he wanted to make his go-cart look like a '57 Chevy.

Later I went to the kitchen to get us a snack. When I came back to my room, Hunter was reading the rough draft of my persuasive essay. I wished he'd at least picked up the final copy. I wasn't used to people reading my stuff. I wanted to grab it away from him, but before I could do anything, Hunter said, “This is really good, Ratchet! You should send it in for the newspaper's essay contest.”

I was
supposed
to read the newspaper every day as part of my social studies work, but I hadn't picked up a newspaper in weeks. I didn't know anything about an essay contest.

“The winner gets their essay published in the paper. They also get fifty dollars,” Hunter explained.

I told him I didn't know. “It's just an assignment I have to turn in. It's not really good enough to win anything.”

“I think it is!” said Hunter. “Besides, how do you know if it's good enough unless you send it in?”

I told him I'd think about it, but I knew I'd never send it in. A persuasive essay about a park that was going to be history didn't seem like a winner to me, so what would be the point?

Ever since I'd read the letter from Mom, the guilt about being mad at Dad weighed more than the car that was on top of the jack that slipped and crushed his thumb.

He didn't want to talk about the mystery box. And now I knew why. He didn't want me to know about Mom leaving. Better if I just think she's dead.

Maybe he didn't want me to feel bad about her not taking me with her.

Why didn't she? The letter said she didn't love Dad anymore, but I don't know what she thought about me. She didn't even mention my name.

The Mom I remember would never leave. Especially her daughter. But maybe that means I don't really remember her at all.

It's hard for me to have a dad like Dad.

But it's harder for me to know that my mom was like Mom.

I wish I never knew.

Hunter called me and told me to come over. Said he had something to show me. Something for his '57 Chevy. But when I got there he wasn't home. His mom told me he'd be right back. He had just gone to run some homework over to a friend's house. I hoped it wasn't Evan's.

Hunter's Mom poured me some iced tea and sat with me at the table while I waited for Hunter to come home. As usual she looked like the “after photo” on one of those makeover shows: Her hair in its neat ponytail. Faded light blue jeans. V-neck T-shirt with polka-dot hearts on it. I sat looking like the “before photo,” wishing there was a way to will myself to look just like her.

She talked about how glad she was that Hunter and I had become friends. She thanked me for helping him study for the go-cart test. And then she told me I had the prettiest blue eyes she'd ever seen. That's when it happened. Maybe it was an allergic reaction to all the attention and compliments or something, but I started bawling my eyes out.

Every tear was a wish
—

I wished I'd never gotten mad at Dad.

I wished the jack had never slipped.

I wished my mom hadn't left.

I wished she'd loved us more.

I wished I could've stopped her from going.

I wished she hadn't hurt Dad.

I wished I'd never opened the mystery box.

I wished Hunter's mom was
my
mom.

I couldn't stop the tears or the wishes.

“Honey, what's wrong? What is it?” Hunter's mom hugged me while I cried, but that only made me wish for one more thing
—
that it hadn't been so long since someone had hugged me.

Hunter walked in. I needed to explain why I was crying. But if Dad didn't want
me
to know what was in the mystery box, I knew he wouldn't want anybody else to know either. So I did what Dad would've done. I stretched the truth. I told them I was crying about Moss Tree Park. It was the only thing I could think of, and thankfully they believed me. Hunter told me not to worry. He said if anyone could save the park it was my dad.

I wished I would've let Dad save me from knowing that my mom must've never really loved me.