Аманда Хокинг: Switched

After school, Matt picked me up, but he was in a distinctly sour mood.

I thought about asking him what was up, but he usually told me things when he was ready. When we got home, he was all about slamming doors and throwing things around. Naturally, I followed suit and threw down my bookbag and kicked off my shoes. One of them hit the cupboard with a heavy bang, and he looked at me funny.

“What? Aren’t we all mad about something?” I asked in response to his expression. He just shook his head and walked into the living room. Sighing, I went after him. “What?”

I don’t even know if the living room could really be considered

“decorated.” There was a couch and two matching chairs from somebody’s expensive shabby chic collection, and an antique coffee table in the center of the room. A few cardboard boxes were stacked behind the couch, holding all of Maggie’s knick knacks and family photos which we never, ever put up. A few books were scattered across the coffee table, mostly Matt’s architecture books and a few of Maggie’s choices, which were things by Nicholas Sparks or had Oprah’s stamp of approval. The books were supposed to go on a built-in book shelf on either side of the fire place, but nobody ever got around to putting them away. Whenever we moved somewhere new, Maggie would quickly paint all the rooms, and that was the end of her decorating. Matt picked up one of his books and flopped heavily on the couch, preparing to ignore me by looking at famous buildings in Rome.

“Where’s Maggie?” I had noticed an unfamiliar silence, without any sounds of music upstairs or Maggie harassing us about our lives. Matt grunted and angrily flipped the page. “Oh. Is that what this is about?”

“It’s not about anything,” Matt replied curtly.

“She’s there, isn’t she?” I sat down in the chair next to him, and he just shook his head, refusing to even talk about it. “It really doesn’t bother me, Matt.”

“She promised she’d be back by now,” Matt muttered.

“It’s like a two hour drive. How did you expect her to be back by now?”

“She said she’d make sure you wouldn’t find out!” Matt had softened a little and warily looked at me out of the corner of his eye. He incorrectly assumed that I was more sensitive than I really was and always made a big show of protecting me from things that I didn’t need protection from.

“You know, if you didn’t have this attitude, I wouldn’t have even know she was there,” I pointed out gently. He furrowed his brow and shook his head again.

“You’re right. I’m sorry,” Matt sighed and rested his head on the back of the couch. “I didn’t want her to go. I don’t know why I agree to let her do this stuff.”

“You let her?” I laughed a little and leaned back in the chair, pulling my knees up to my chest. “She’s 36 years old and she’s your guardian! You don’t let her do anything.”

Matt humphed and went back to pretending to read his book. Maggie was technically both of our guardians, but Matt had probably done more

“guardianing” than anyone else. He was disturbingly mature for his age, especially when he had been a teenager. Most nights, he’d skip parties and dates to stay home and try to get me to do some homework. Of course, this was almost entirely my fault since I never responded to anybody else’s attempts at help.

“I don’t know why this bothers you so much,” I said when Matt seemed content to stew in silence. Sometimes I’d let him, but other times I couldn’t help but poke and prod him. “It doesn’t even bother me.”

“It should!” Matt looked at me seriously, and it could still surprise me how much hurt he was carrying around after all these years.

“Hello, hello!” Maggie chirped, coming in the door side into the kitchen. Matt glowered down at the book, getting angrier at the happy sound of her voice. “Anybody home?”

“Living room!” I told her.

Maggie walked into the living room, her big canvas bag hanging off her arm, and she pushed her oversized sunglasses up on her head. She looked like she had spent the day at the beach, and I imagined that’s what she had planned for her cover story. I’m sure she could sense the tension in the room, but she had expected that from Matt no matter when she returned, so she smiled brightly at me, trying to play it off as a cheery afternoon.

“I heard you were visiting Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane,” I smiled at her, referencing the nuthouse from Batman.

“Oh, she’s not like that,” Maggie replied, sounding deflated. Her smile instantly disappeared, and she dropped any pretense of being happy. Matt scoffed loudly at Maggie’s minor defense of our mother, but she ignored him.

“I don’t know why you always do this. You freak out on me, insisting that Wendy can’t know where I’m at, but then you always tell her, and you’re way more upset by it than she is!”

“Because you shouldn’t be seeing her!” Matt shouted fiercely and tossed his book down on the table. He rarely raised his voice in anger, so when he did, it was kind of a stunning thing.

“Matt, I’ve gone over this with you a thousand times.” Maggie rubbed her forehead and looked down at the floor. “She is sick, and she is family.”

“She is your ex-sister-in-law!” Matt growled, not for the first time.

Maggie was our father’s only sister, and with Dad dead, Matt was always quick to point out that she had no real relationship with our mother.

“We don’t abandon family!” Maggie retorted vehemently.

“She is not family!” Matt bellowed and got to his feet. There were only two things they ever argued about: me and Mom. I suppose those were only two things in life that Matt was really passionate about, for entirely different reasons. “Once you try to kill someone in the family, you’re out!”

“She is sick, Matt!” Maggie was almost pleading with him to understand, but it was completely pointless.

We had heard every clinical diagnosis of Mom, every attempt at explaining her psychotic break. Doctors rationally and repeatedly explained to me how none of this was my fault, although to be honest, I don’t think I’ll ever fully believe that. I do not think I did that anything merited a murder attempt, but I’m pretty sure that if I hadn’t been such a brat growing up, I wouldn’t have drove her to it.

At any rate, nothing had ever satisfied Matt. For some reason, I had never been that curious about why Mom did it. I’ve been curious about her, wondering what life was like for Matt and everyone else that lived with her. But as for her motives, they never seemed that relevant or that blurred. She was fragile, and I was volatile. She was on the edge, and I pushed her. Maybe Matt’s problem was that he refused to believe that I had any part of what happened, so he was left with only half a story, and that was never good enough for him.

“You were there, Maggie! You saw her!” His voice had that quavering edge to it. He didn’t cry, not ever, but his pain was always so transparent. “You saw what she was like and what she tried to do! You of all people know what she’s really like!”

“Yes, Matt, I was there! I saw how crazy she was!” Maggie looked at him incredulously.

“We’re making a new start here!” I interjected, and Matt looked down at the coffee table. I had a feeling he’d momentarily forgotten I was there, and he was ashamed that he had brought up anything about Mom. “Maybe we should… Maybe Mom should stay in the past.”

Truth be told, I didn’t care one way or another if Maggie saw Mom.

She could visit her every day, and it wouldn’t bother me at all. I had never felt any connection to that woman, not before she tried to kill me and certainly not after. I’d have felt about the same if Maggie drove to visit Jeffery Dahmer or something. What bothered me was how upset Matt got.