The Last Traveler

CHAPTER 2

Once Pax reached the office, her anger had subsided and was replaced with humiliation. Tears burned her eyes, but she shook it off quickly as she opened the door. She steeled herself for another meeting with Mrs. Schriber, the too-cheery guidance counselor. She loved to wear fifties-style cat eyeglasses and lots of polka dots. The administration never knew what to do with Pax’s outbursts, so they deferred to Mrs. Schriber, whose approach typically involved a lot of positive affirmation and guided meditations. Her boots squeaked against the freshly mopped floors as she approached the secretary’s desk.

Mrs. Wiles, the secretary, was a petite old woman with withered fingers and nails on the end that she always painted fire-engine red and kept long and filed to a fine point. Pax hated the sound of those pointy claws clicking against the keyboard. The woman barely looked up when Pax entered the room. She continued to click away as she mumbled, “Conference room. They’re ready for you.”

Pax paused. “They? I’m not going to see Mrs. Schriber?”

“She’s there too,” Mrs. Wiley responded as she shoveled a handful of potato chips into her mouth with one hand and continued to peck at the keyboard with the other.

“Well, then who—”

Mrs. Wiles cut her off with a heavy sigh and pulled her reading glasses off her face. “Look,” she said between crunches of potato chips. “I’m not a teacher, which means I don’t get paid to sit here and answer your questions all day.” She jerked her thumb to point to the room behind her.

Pax stuffed her hands into her pockets and made her way to the conference room. When she rounded the corner and entered the doorway, she stopped dead in her tracks. There at the long mahogany table sat three of her least-favorite teachers: Mrs. Knox, the math teacher; Mr. Patrick, her history teacher; and of course Mrs. Schriber, the guidance counselor. Seated at the head of the table was Principal Victor Graves: her father.

“Ah, Ms. Graves! So glad you could join us!” Mrs. Schriber waved her over to the seat across from her.

She tried to obey, but her knees locked and her feet stayed glued to the floor. She rubbed her hands against her old jeans to wipe the sweat from her palms. “Hey,” she said quietly.

“Please sit, Paxton,” her father prompted again through his wide smile. Principal Graves was a polished man. He always wore a suit and slicked his dark brown hair back with an absurd amount of product, which made it so stiff it looked painted on his head. He spoke with an air of charm and oozed charisma that seemed to impress the parents but always felt cold and empty. Her father was a transplant to the Golden Valley community. Originally from Alabama, he moved to Ohio before she was born, working tirelessly to erase the stigma that their family was nothing but backwoods hicks. He enunciated every syllable, and always wore a big smile and an expensive suit, desperate to gain the favor of the Golden Valley elite. He had succeeded too, and was up for a seat on the school board this year, a fact that Pax was constantly reminded of when she screwed up. She glanced at him again, noting that his usual painted-on smile looked tight and forced.

“Paxton,” he prompted again.

She hadn’t realized she was still standing at the doorway, staring at them. “Sir?” she swallowed.

“Sit,” he said firmly.

She nodded and moved so quickly that she stumbled over her feet, causing her to practically collapse into the rolling chair and collide with his. “Sorry,” she mumbled.

He ran a hand over his hair and cleared his throat. Annoyance flashed across his face for a split second, but he quickly recovered. “Now, Pax, do you know why you are here?”

She shifted in her seat. “Because I fell asleep in class again?” she offered quietly.

“What was that?”

She looked into her father’s penetrating glare. “I said . . . because I fell asleep.”

“Your teachers called this meeting with me out of concern for you,” he explained.

“Oh—”

Mr. Patrick spoke up from the corner of the room. “Your episodes are becoming a problem to the other students, Ms. Graves, and we are at a loss. That is why we decided to pull your father in on this one.”

Shame and frustration burned in her stomach, slowly making its way through her body. Episodes. She inwardly rolled her eyes at the word the adults had come up with to refer to her dreams. Of course, Pax didn’t know what to call them either, but “episodes” made it sound like she was having some kind of fit. This was not the first conference she had been called to about her episodes. They always ended the same way, with everyone agreeing that Pax was the problem and there was no solution.

“All right then, team . . . how can I help?” Her father flashed a grin that didn’t quite meet his eyes.

The teachers shifted nervously in their seats, exchanging glances with one another, each silently begging someone to take the reins. Mrs. Schriber finally jumped in.

“Well, you know, Principal Graves, I have had several meetings with Pax myself, and we’ve tried lots of interventions and coping strategies, but nothing seems to be working. And I know . . . things have been hard since her mother—”

Principal Graves cut her off suddenly. “Yes, well, I am aware that has caused quite a strain on her, but that was a long time ago. Let’s not rehash old issues. What can we do to move forward? I would love to hear some solutions.”

Mrs. Schriber hesitated, less confident now. “I think it would be great for Pax to see a therapist. And perhaps she could be homeschooled for the rest of her junior year.” Her voice came up at the end as if it were a question.

Pax’s heart sank. She looked over at her father. He readjusted his red silk tie and smoothed down his shirt. Then he smiled as he fixed his eyes on her and his voice came out cool and even. It sent shivers down her spine. “That won’t be necessary. Will it, Pax?”

Her heart clenched. She lifted the corner of her lips into a halfhearted smile. “No, I think I’m just . . . having a hard time.”

“I’ll take care of it,” he offered as his hand clasped onto her shoulder.

Mrs. Schriber and the other teachers smiled in relief. “That is so good to hear.”

The group droned on, but all Pax could hear was the soft echo of her father’s voice: I’ll take care of it. Her heartbeat sputtered and her breath quickened. She felt lightheaded, and the air suddenly felt thinner. She stood suddenly and snapped, “Are we done?” She hadn’t meant to bark it at them, but she had to get out of there.

“Paxton,” her father warned.

“Sorry.” She took a deep breath

Her father’s jaw tightened. “I suppose.”

She nodded curtly. “Thank you. I’ll see you at home,” she managed to choke out as she spun on her heels and sped out of the main office. Her chest felt tight and heavy, and her breath was coming out in erratic bursts. School had ended about twenty minutes ago and the halls were now empty of students, a fact Pax was immediately thankful for as the flood of tears she had been holding back spilled over her cheeks. She slammed through the double doors at the school’s entrance, ran down the concrete steps, and took a left away from the parking lot where her father’s car was parked. She knew she would have to see him eventually, but when her mind replayed the last thing he had said—I’ll take care of it—her whole body screamed at her to run. He needed time to cool off, and so did she. She leaned against the cold red brick at the corner of the school and inhaled a sharp breath, letting the air sting her lungs. She held it until her vision grew spotty, then exhaled heavily. She did this several more times, and when her panic subsided, she decided to take the long way home.

The wind blew harshly across her face, drying the tears streaming down her cheeks as she walked. She shivered. The sky was murky and gray, and the ground was still mushy from the last rain. It was the kind of day that she would often find herself wishing to be back in her dreams. Even though they always ended with her screaming in a heap on the floor, there was something about that beach. The way the emerald waters rolled onto the shoreline and stretched to kiss the horizon streaked with ribbons of orange and pink. But most of all, it felt so real. Like her own private paradise away from her father, from her classmates, from Golden Valley. Sadly, the bliss only lasted for a second before it gave over to sheer terror. But she wished she could somehow find a way to live in that bliss forever. She had wanted to escape her life for as long as she could remember, or at least as long as her mother had been gone.

Pax remembered being five years old and waking up one morning to the sound of sirens outside their house. Her mom had gone missing in the night, but her car was still in the driveway, her clothes were still in her dresser, and no one had seen or heard from her. She remembered the look on her father’s face. It was the only time in her life she had ever seen him afraid. The days and weeks following her mom’s disappearance were agony. She spent most of her days staring out of windows, waiting for her mom to come walking up the driveway. Her father had given up so easily after the police declared her mother’s disappearance a cold case. He locked every remnant of her memory away, and his humanity with it. Pax, however, remained hopeful even after days, and then weeks, and then months. But as the months turned into one year, and then five, her hope became suffocated by the burden of her grief. It had been nearly ten years now, and the hope she once held was snuffed out, now only a pile of ash without so much as an ember.

She used to daydream about her mom coming back and taking her somewhere where it would be just them and they could be happy. She got used to living in her daydreams before the dreams had ever started. Pax’s grandmother used to tell her, “Girl, your feet are on the floor, but your head is in the sky.” That was a nice way of putting it. For some reason, her life had never been able to hold her attention. Even on her best day, she was only half present.

She wandered slowly up and down the sidewalk of the Golden Valley suburbs, watching packs of women in different shades of Spandex leggings jog around the block, laughing together with their fluffy little dogs. She took her time, stopping to look at the multistory McMansions that lined each side of the street. By the time she came to a stop just outside her house, the sky was growing dark. The modest two-bedroom home sat just off the curb. It used to belong to Pax’s grandmother, but she passed away two years after her mother’s disappearance and left the home to Pax’s father.

“Welcome home,” Pax muttered sarcastically. It was all she could do to keep herself from going into a panic. She didn’t know what was waiting for her on the other side of that door, but she knew she’d have to face it eventually. She set her lips in a straight line to keep her teeth from chattering. Her moist palm twisted the doorknob. As the door opened, nobody was there despite the pale light in the kitchen. It was eerily quiet. Maybe he wasn’t home yet. Her father usually worked for an hour or so after the school day ended, and they didn’t live far, so she would often decide to walk home. Today she had taken the long way and stayed out later than necessary in hopes that it would give him time to calm down before they saw each other again. She quietly shut the door and prepared to tiptoe through the kitchen.

“Did you think you could sneak past me?” his voice sounded from the living room..

Pax’s head whipped over her shoulder. “No, sir,” she said quietly. He was sitting in his recliner, a glass of bourbon in hand. His charming principal-of-the-year persona was long gone and replaced with the cold, hollow version of himself that he only showed to her. It was always so confusing to Pax how he could just turn it on and off like that. When she was younger, she used to think his evil twin had replaced him when he came home. But this was the real him. The charismatic leader was just a facade he put on to convince the rest of the world that he hadn’t become an empty shell of a person after her mom skipped out on them all those years ago.

He took a long, slow sip from his glass. “That’s good. You know you can’t get anything past me.”

She nodded.

He leaned back and took another sip. “Do you think it’s fun embarrassing me? Hm?” he prompted.

“No, that’s not—I don’t know what’s happening.” They had never talked about her episodes in much detail. Her father preferred to ignore them and pretend they weren’t happening, most of the time. But when they did talk about it, he approached the whole thing as if she was just a misbehaved child acting out for attention. Which usually meant punishment.

She frantically searched for an answer that would placate him. “I’ve been trying, Dad, I really don’t know what to do—”

He stood from his chair and held up a hand, signaling for her to stop. He stalked forward until he was standing over her. “No. I’ll tell you what you’re going to do.”

She nodded as he brought his face so close to hers that she could smell the liquor on his breath.

His tone came out in a soft cadence that chilled her bones. “You’re going to stop these outbursts, or I will make sure you stop.”

“Dad.” She let out a breath in a shudder as a cry climbed up her throat. “I can’t help it. I don’t know how to stop it, I swear—” Her breath stopped short as her father’s hand made contact with her cheek. A stinging shock surged down the left side of her face. She let out one hard gasp, then held her breath. She willed her tears to stop. She would not give him the satisfaction of seeing her cry. She steeled her jaw as he dug his hand into her bicep.

“I don’t think you understood me. I said you will stop. Understood?”

She nodded. “Yes.”

“Yes, what?” he growled.

“Yes, sir.”

He released his grip and smiled. “That’s my girl. You know, I really don’t want to be this way. Things are just so much nicer when we can get along.”

Pax hugged her arms and nodded.

He sighed. “Well, I’m going out for a while. Do your homework, all right?”

“Okay,” she whispered.

He opened the front door, then stopped and turned to her once more. “Oh, and Paxton? Don’t go anywhere.”

Pax placed her hand over her cheek and leaned back against the wall. She let her tears flow down her cheeks. This wasn’t the first time her father had lashed out at her in anger, but it never stopped surprising her how scary he could be when he was like that.

As a child, she often wondered what she’d done to make him so angry. Now she knew it had to have been one simple reason: she was her mother’s child. The woman had abandoned him and left him with the burden of raising their child. She could see the resentment in his eyes every time he looked at her. She didn’t see much of herself in her father. Truthfully, they didn’t even look alike. Her dad was a handsome man. She had heard the other girls at school say so on numerous occasions when they giggled and whispered about him in the halls. His high cheek bones, sharp, square jawline, and sparkling blue eyes invited people in and made them want to trust him. Pax was tall, like him, but that was where the similarities ended. While he was all chiseled and angular, her features were soft and childlike. She had a round face, and wide, innocent eyes that sat too far apart for her liking, and were almost comically out of proportion with her little doll lips.

Pax’s dad often told her she was just like her mother, especially when Pax had done something to make him upset. She didn’t know if he said it just to hurt her, or because it was true.

Pax slowly slid down the wall to the floor and gathered her knees to her chest. She rested her head against her folded arms, and suddenly she was exhausted as if she hadn’t slept in days. Her eyelids grew heavy, and her head bobbed up and down. She knew what was coming, but she was too tired to fight it. She let her muscles sink against the wall, and then she was falling.