You Found Me Read online

  Lonely No More blared out the speakers. I only have two Rob Thomas songs, that one and Smooth, which he did with Santana. Santana is an amazing guitarist, definitely one of the best. I know he's in the list of top guitarist somewhere, but I think Eric Clapton would rank at number one.

  I would usually sing as loud as possible, but I wasn't in the mood this morning. I wanted to just make it through the day. One of my favorite sayings used to be “tomorrow's just another day” but ever since what happened, I couldn't bring myself to say it or anything like it. Tomorrow was much more important than we made it out to be.

  Life hung by a single thread, like those from the cartoon shows. You see someone's pants rip slowly until there's one thread left, keeping them from falling off the edge of wherever. That's where I was at the moment. Hanging. The possibility of falling into eternity just at the snap of a thread. It crushed me in a way I wasn't used to. I wanted to tell Dr. O'Nassis, but I wasn't about to give him the pleasure of knowing something like that. I wasn't going to open up to him. He can't help me. Not now, anyway. There's just too much going on with me. I'm beyond salvation.

  Traffic wasn't as bad as it usually was in the morning. Most of the time, I-565 was a dangerous road. Everyone speeding and dodging their way towards their destination, wherever that may be. Mine was work. When I first started, I mostly worked nights. I only went to school two days a week. This was my first year and it was killing, to be honest. I enjoyed working, but working and school was harder than you'd think. Now, with Mom's death joining forces, I felt like I was reaching the end of my rope. A rope slowly burning from the end up.

  My birthday was coming closer and closer. I was right around the corner. I would be nineteen, a rather odd age. In Alabama, that was the legal age of adulthood. You could buy cigarettes and do all sorts of other stuff that was rather meaningless to me. I never went anywhere I didn't wanna go, which is usually how it is.

  This year had gone fairly well. English was evil, which was rather disappointing since it was by far my favorite subject. My friends tried to help me with my math skills but they were failing to do so, which is probably what would've happened to me had I taken the class.

  I passed several cars and swung from one lane into the next, over two, and got in the turn lane. Memorial Parkway was a dangerous in the mornings as well. People in Alabama cannot drive; I don't care what they claim.

  I got off the Parkway and sat at the red light. My music had changed songs three or four times and I wasn't really interested in it at the moment. I could see the bookstore from where I was. The outside was rather beaten up. It had been there for quite some time. It survived numerous renovations and avoided almost as many. The place needed another one. Several of the letters were out and in need of replacement. Despite all of this, there was something about the outside that seemed to go with the store, as if it had been designed with a bookstore in mind.

  The light changed and I turned with it. I went under the overpass and glanced around. This was one of the poorest parts of Huntsville, with people sleeping, begging, and trying to live in the strangest of places. Usually you could spot two or three sleeping under this particular overpass. They came into work all the time, asking for food, money, or whatever else they figured they could get away with. There were all sorts of stories about the homeless asking for things in unusual ways.

  My favorite was when a guy had been trespassed for asking for money. When a person is “trespassed”, they are banned from the store for a certain amount of time. About three months later, he came back in and walked around handing a note to people that asked for money. He went from person to person, handing them the note and never saying a word. Though I felt sorry for him, I thought it was a rather creative way of asking.

  There was no one waiting in our parking lot this morning. Wherever they were, they were leaving us alone for now. I pulled in my parking spot and sat there for a few moments. I was five minutes early and was using it wisely. Most of the time the managers arrived the same time I did, but apparently an alarm had forgotten to go off or the snooze button hit one too many times.

  I loved opening almost as much as I hated closing. When you close, locking the doors at eleven was only the beginning. Usually we didn't get out of there until one or two in the morning. While this was annoying, it was also part of the job. I was glad I was opening now and really wanted it to stay that way. High hopes that I'm sure will be destroyed. When I saw the manager's car, I got out and walked towards the door, waiting for her to unlock it so our day could begin.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The airport was larger than Rob had expected. He was seventeen at the time, flying to New York to meet up with his Dad to stay with him and Mom for a week or so. They had the whole trip planned out, almost to where they would eat and what days they would eat there. Rob liked organization to an extent. When you start getting crazy about little things that don't matter, it gets annoying and loses its purpose.

  He was looking at shot glasses in a small gift shop. It was a hobby he'd taken up on a whim. He enjoyed collecting the glasses, searching for all kinds. He'd been cheated on eBay when a user withheld a glass and her review until he finally called her and told her he hadn't received it yet. This worked and he received his glass. From then on, he swore he would never buy a shot glass unless he was standing there with it in his hand.

  The gift shop had a wide selection. One looked as if a $100 bill had been wrapped inside of it. Another had the image of a globe. There was even one that had the printing of an 8-ball on it (one of the most bizarre ones he'd ever seen). Rob walked around the room looking at the different glasses. This gift shop sold only shot glasses. Rob picked up the globe and $100 ones.

  “I'd like these two,” he told the cashier.

  “Anything else for you, sir?” Rob liked being referred to as “sir.” It made him feel special and important.

  “No, ma'am.”

  “$11.34.” The price caught Rob off guard. That was a lot for two shot glasses. Mom had told him the prices would be high, but it wasn't like he had a choice. He placed a twenty down and took his change. He smiled and walked away with the new additions to his collection.

  He looked around the terminal for a place to eat. There were three terminals. A, B and C. When they landed, the flight attendant told them Terminal A had the best selection of food, but his mother ate at C, the terminal the plane landed and where the next one would take off. They had roughly an hour and a half before they would have to leave. Rob looked around B. Any type of food he could think of was there. Southern, Western, Chinese, Korean, Cajun, American, Italian. There was even some of the weird ones he couldn't really classify but knew what they served, such as the ones where the workers constantly offered samples.

  Rob stood there trying to decide. He was hungry and wanted food. He had a long, drawn out thinking process that drove some crazy but helped him when tough decisions came along.

  He didn't want anything spicy. He didn't want anything green. He didn't really want chicken, which left burgers and pizza. After a few seconds, he opted for pizza. McDonald's was packed and it wasn't one of his favorite restaurants in the first place. He walked over to Sbarro and ordered a slice of pizza and a Dr. Pepper. The slices were always large, as if they'd made a pizza and cut it into fourths. Their pizza was always hot, fresh, and delicious, which meant he'd have to give it a moment to cool off before diving in. He sat down and pondered about his summer and what all was going on. The list was long and “vicious”, to put it into perspective.

  First, they were going to New York. He was excited about the trip. This wasn't his first time to fly. He'd gone on a mission trip when he was younger in which he had to fly. It was a life altering experience. He saw things he'd never expected to see and experienced things he didn't realize existed. Poor people just trying to make a living. Houses that were infested with bugs and flies. For two weeks, he and the rest of the men built wire doors and windows, placing them in the sad houses.
The women and young ladies held backyard bible studies and witnessed too many of the children and parents while the work was being done.

  The purpose of the wire doors and windows was to help keep the bugs out. Both had screen placed in them, the holes too small for most large insects, including flies, to get inside the house, which helped improve the people's living conditions.

  This year, he didn't have a mission trip to go on. There was New York, a High School choir trip, and a possible trip to Florida with his friends. They hadn't decided where they were gonna go, but knew they wanted to get out of Alabama. Alabama was not very high on their list of things to take pride in. The state had a lot of corruption and troubles deep inside their economy. “It was a good place to be from,” his dad had always said.

  The choir trip was going to be a few weeks after he got back from New York. They were gonna tour a few places in Alabama, then travel to Bangor, Maine to perform. He loved to sing, one of his favorite pastimes. He could listen to a song and sing along with it at the top of his lungs. He refused to sing songs with profanity. They never appealed to him before, but he'd come to detest them when so many number one hits had no swearing at all.

  Uncle Kracker was the perfect example. The man had two top ten hits from two different CDs. Neither hit had any profanity, while the CDs had an Explicit Content sticker on the covers. Most of his songs had the f-word in them. These two didn't and became hits. Rob could see the connection and couldn't understand why no one else seemed to notice.

  His phone vibrated and made him jump. He was finished with his food and drinking the last of the Dr. Pepper. He wiped his hands on his jeans and pulled his phone out. Mom it read.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Hey, where are you?”

  “In the other terminal eating.”

  “Still?”

  “Yeah? Our flight is still a ways away.”

  “Would you mind coming back as soon as you finish? I just want to make sure we make it in time.” Rob didn't care.

  “Okay. I'm almost done with lunch. Meet you at the bus...station...thingy.”

  “Sure. Love you.”

  “Love you too.” The terminals were all connected by shuttles that carried you across a large, paved pasture. There was some technical name for the stations, but Rob and his mother couldn't think of it and he didn't care anyways.

  The drink disappeared and he threw his garbage away. He checked his table to make sure he hadn't left anything just lying there. His shot glasses were sitting in their bag on the table. He was glad he'd checked. He grabbed the bag and made his way to the shuttle station.

  There were a lot of people there today, all of them heading in different directions and doing different things. The three terminals housed a lot of destinations, both coming and going. Rob was fascinated that the places didn't run into each other with each take-off and landing. He wondered how so many traveled all the time. How could so many people, none knowing the other, travel so much and Rob still feel like nothing was being done in the world?

  He got on the shuttle when it arrived. The shuttles moved quickly between each terminal, running between thirty and forty miles an hour. There wasn't much space between the two, or it just seemed that way at this speed. The shuttles were different than subways or trains. They were buses, having no set track for them to travel on. They had certain paths they were supposed to follow, but nothing like a train or subway, which guides them directly.

  They stopped at Terminal A and Rob and half the group got off. Rob looked around. The station looked the same as the one they'd just left. In fact, if they hadn't said where he was, Rob would have never noticed they left. They were identical, minus the personnel. He walked into the terminal. He didn't see Mom anywhere. She'd probably wandered off somewhere else. She had a nasty habit of that. Between that and talking, it amazed Rob she ever got anything done. Then he heard it.

  Ahem.

  It was her, no doubt about that. Growing up, whenever Rob was in trouble, his mother would clear her throat. He would instinctively turn towards wherever she was and acknowledge what he'd done. Sometimes, when she cleared it for a genuine reason, he would turn around to see what he'd done. She later told him it was because he was guilty.

  He walked into Borders where she was holding some random Christian Fiction book. She loved reading those kinds of books. Lori Wick, Karen Kingsbury, Beverly Lewis and several others topped her list. She had some books she'd destroyed after reading them so many times. Over and over again, carrying them everywhere she went.

  “Boo,” he said. She gave a humorous yelp.

  “What was that for?” she laughed.

  “I dunno. Seemed like a good idea.”

  “Yeah, uh-huh, sure. What's up?”

  “You asked me to meet you so we could get ready.”

  “I asked you to. You didn't have to.” Rob rolled his eyes. This was nothing new, but he let it go.

  “Har har. Anyway, what you doing?”

  “Was looking at books. Trying to remember which ones I have and which I don't.”

  “That's gotta be hard. Having close to three or four millions of books.”

  “I know. So annoying.” She saw his bag. “What did you find?”

  “Oh. More shot glasses. Trying not to spend too much since there's gonna be a lot in New York.”

  “Good thinking.” They walked around the store a little longer.

  ------

  They sat in the concourse and waited on their section to be called. They were in seats right next to each other, though they had ended up in two different sections. She would be called first, followed by him. They had just started the boarding process, with First Class and any passengers needing assistance first.

  “I hope Dad is doing well.”

  “I'm sure he is. He sounded really homesick, though.”

  “I bet. He's been gone a good while. Can't wait to see him.” “Yeah,” she said teasingly, “me either.” Rob rolled his eyes. “I have no doubt.” He smiled.

  Chapter Fifteen

  This was annoying. I hated sitting in a chair with someone expecting me to just spill my guts to him. I wasn't about to say anything to Dr. O'Nassis. He didn't want us to be “buddies”; he just wanted me to be honest with him about what I was doing and what was going on in my life. I didn't want to tell him anything. It didn't make sense. I know what's going on in my life so why should I tell him anything? He claimed it would help me, but I can't see how. My life is full of a lot of emotions, so I know it's a lot worse than most people's, but it's also a lot better than others, so this is kind of pointless, right? He didn't agree with me.

  “No, Rob, it's not pointless. If you don't deal with these emotions in a safe and constructive way they will start to consume you, causing bad things to happen.” Bad things? I laughed on the inside. “Do you understand what I'm saying?”

  “Sure” was all I said. Big mistake.

  “Rob,” he said before sighing. “You must work with me. If you're just here to be here than you can go ahead and leave. I'll tell your Dad that you don't want to do this and that will be the end of it.”

  “Oh sure. That'll be the end of it for you, but not me. Listen, you don't live with my Dad. The moment I stop coming to this is the same moment my life gets worse. I'm not gonna go home day in and day out, listening to my Dad lecture me on what I'm supposed to do and not do. I did that enough with Mom. Everything I did didn't feel like it was enough when I told her. 'Well you could've done this' or 'why didn't you do that?' was all she ever gave me. Do you really think I'm about to let my Dad do that to me?”

  “Why not? You're used to it, right?”

  “Maybe I am used to it...was used to it...which is why I don't want it anymore.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I just don't! I put up with her more than enough and I won't do it again, do you hear me? I WON'T!” I was rather amazed at how he'd provoked me. I didn't wanna say any of that. I also didn't wanna go home and pu
t up with Dad. I didn't know what to do. This was all new to me, which was hard to admit. I was sitting there admitting to thing I didn't wanna admit to.

  “Anything else?” I didn't realize it, but I'd been rather quiet for a moment. I just shook my head. “I know there's something you're not telling me.”

  “Why would you think that?”

  “Don't know. Should I think that?” “No, you shouldn't.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because you shouldn't. There's nothing going on and I'm not lying.”

  “Don't believe you.”

  “Well, that's not my problem.”

  “But if it's true then it actually is your problem.”

  “Well, it's not so there.” And that ended that. We were quiet, just sitting there. I'm sure if I'd enlightened him about what was going on in my life, he wouldn't have been happy and would've made sure a few things changed. He wasn't my friend anymore that was for sure. Not on my part, but more or less on his. He wasn't going to cut me any slack.

  “Rob,” he said. “Have you confronted your mother?” I had a confused look on my face.

  “How can I confront her?”

  “I'm sure you know how. When was the last time you went to her grave?” I tried to just shrug it off. He didn't accept that. “That's not an answer, Rob. When was the last time you went to her grave?”

  “I guess her funeral. Why should I go anyway?”

  “Because it's necessary. I'm sure she misses you talking to her.”

  “She can't miss me,” I said, annoyed as can be. “If she's in heaven, she'd be happy and content. I doubt missing someone counts as 'happy' or 'content.'”

  “'If'?” (I didn't realize I'd said that.)

  “Yeah, if.” I tried to recover. “I mean, none of us really know, right? Anything is possible.” He raised an eyebrow to me, which clearly said you have GOT to be kidding. “Okay, look. I don't know if she's going to heaven or not and, to be honest, I highly doubt it. If she was going to heaven then there is seriously something screwed up with how eternity works because I couldn't handle being in the same place as her forever.”