Title Pending

When I heard the news from my mother, I thought I was being pranked, as she would suddenly tell me that everything she said was a lie. So when she called me and said, “Shea, I know this is going to be hard to hear, but you need to come home. Your grandmother has passed away.” I was shocked and stared at my wall for longer than a minute. My mother then asked me, “Shea, are you still there?” I began to stammer into my phone, hoping that this was a dream or some elaborate prank. My grandma was my mentor; she raised me while my parents worked when I was struggling. She would always be there for me. I was closer to her than anyone else in my family, but even still, how had I not known? “How did it happen?” I asked, trying not to fall apart, not truly wanting an answer, knowing no matter what she said, it would not make it any easier. And what made it even worse is she said they don’t know. I must have blacked out then and began to cry because it was three hours later, and I was slamming my suitcase into my car for the 6-hour drive. I emailed all my teachers, telling them I would be gone and that I would make up for anything I missed. My best friend, Jen, had called me 15 times, and my phone started ringing again. “Shea, what the f**k is going on?” hearing the voice snaps me out of my fugue state, as tears start to slowly run down my face, and I begin to quietly cry into the phone, explaining to her what happened and where I’m going. She pulled her car up to my driveway soon after that and looked at me with the most caring eyes I’ve seen. I don’t know if it was out of pity, but she was there, and that’s all that mattered to me. I slammed into her, crushing her tightly, tears marking her shoulders. Her eyes shone with sadness that made the already blue coloring look like an ocean. She was clearly holding something in as I cried onto her, my reddish-brown hair a mess and looking like a bird had been living in it. She was the first one to say something: “Do you need me to come with you, Shea?” I try my best to explain that I can’t ask her to do that and it’s not fair, but she wasn’t taking no for an answer. She begins to shove me to my car and into the passenger seat, saying, “I’m driving until you are clear-headed enough to drive.” This makes me cry even more as I try my best to grieve and process what happened. About 30 minutes into the drive, the tears running down my face drive me to sleep, my mind filled with the memory of her. When I got my first bike, when I got the lead role in the musical, and she was the first one to show up and yelled and clapped the loudest when I was on stage, when I came out, she was the only one who understood me. It hurt so much knowing she was gone, and I hadn’t even heard from my father. She was always distant; he probably didn’t want to deal with my crying, so he pawned it off on my mother. I must have been more tired than I thought because I slept for nearly 5 hours of the 6-hour drive. I look over at Jen and smile, “Thank you, Jen. You didn’t need to do this.” She looked over quickly before focusing on the road. “Well, what kind of friend would I be if I let you suffer at home alone?” I just nod my head and begin to think about everything I’m going to need to do. An hour passes before the blink of an eye. We are at my mother’s house. As Jen turns the engine off, I take a deep breath and begin to steel my nerves as I walk up to the door, my eyes still red and puffy, and the weight on them making it look like I’m a zombie. My mom answers the door, looking the same as she always does: perfect nails, hair, and makeup dress with not a string out of place, while I look like a yard fight went bad. She invited both Jen and me inside and began to act like nothing was wrong. “Mom, where is Dad? He hasn’t even bothered to text or call to say anything to me.” My mom froze, her normally perfect face for a split instant of pure, unstoppable fear. “Oh, he is probably just in his study working on god knows what. You know that time escapes him.” I catch onto the look and index it for later as she starts to explain that they found my grandma dead outside holding a baseball bat, no signs of a struggle, a few bug bites on her legs, one of which seemed to be at the first step of forming a scab with some puss leaking, and the death was ruled as by natural causes. My mother looked sickly and then she turned to lead both Jen and me towards the guest room saying that she will fill me in on more details soon as she shuts the door. My emotions flooding back to me the most prominent one being anger at my father for not being here. “Should we go try to see your father?” Jen asked, clearly sad for me, knowing exactly what I’m getting upset about. “Yeah, I’ll be the bigger person,” I respond as we begin to walk to my father’s study. Knocking politely, nothing but the soft hum of an old lightbulb responds. I knock again, nothing, and then I finally just open the door. To my surprise, he isn’t in the room. The light is on and the random papers and books he had are left scattered around the table. I walk into the study looking at what the books and paper say, seeing a lot of books about worms and other creepy things. The most prominent one is the book that seems to be called “The true story untold: Ryan Wright and his unbelievable adventures in the lowest, deepest parts of the planet: fact or fiction, you decide.” What I do decide is that the title of that book is too long for its own good and probably bunk, but it’s open to a picture of what seems to be a giant worm sliding through a tunnel and it’s circled over and over again with “stop?” written on it almost obsessively. “Jen, this is weird, right? I’m not crazy. This is real?” She just looks at the book with slight disdain “he is probably just coping with the loss of his mother in a weird way, but yes it seems to be real”