3 REMNANTS
SHORT STORY
Katy Schultz | 3rd Place
M
y Dairy Queen uniform, now a size too small, clung to my belly. A crease cut into the soft fesh where the waistband of my pants was too tight. I pulled the hem of my shirt, but the cheap polyester clung, damp with sweat. I was tired, my feet hurt, and I just wanted my bus to arrive so this day could end. I took a sip of Diet Coke and set the cup next to the bag containing my cheeseburger and fries. I was sick of cheeseburgers, but they were free, and it was not like Gram was going to make me dinner. It had taken all summer, but I’d almost saved the thousand dollars that I needed for frst and last month’s rent on an apartment in Portland that would get me out of Newport. Once there, I’d get a better job and start saving for college. A family of tourists carrying chairs, sand toys, and a squawking toddler walked between me and the street toward the sea wall. The father wore a loud Hawaiian shirt unbuttoned, his pale belly protruding over the top of his khaki cargo shorts. A teenager wearing cutof jeans and a black Metallica t-shirt walked behind them. “I don’t want to go to the beach. It’s so boring,” he complained, not looking up from his phone. The bus appeared around the corner, just as I saw my mother, walking on the street between parked cars and the slow-moving trafc. I watched as Destiny slowly shufed closer, speaking to someone that no one else could see, gesturing with her hands in what looked like an involved conversation. As she stepped between two parked cars and onto the sidewalk, the man in the Hawaiian shirt put a protective arm around his wife and moved to the side, giving my mother a wide berth. Destiny stepped toward me to avoid the oblivious teenager, who still hadn’t looked up from his phone. I pressed my back to the bus stop, but with nowhere to go, we froze and stared at each other for a long moment. Pain and abandonment echoed in the space between us. The bus’s air brakes drew my attention, and I thrust my bag of food into her arms as I stepped past her and onto the bus. I stared straight ahead and refused to cry as the bus slowly made its way down Main Street. I hated her. I hated that my crazy mother lived here and that I was trapped here, our lives still entwined. I hated that everyone gave up on Destiny. Gram and Aunt Linda had quit trying to help her. They had given up on their own daughter and sister, and barely tolerated me. Destiny had escaped this town when she was eighteen, but returned pregnant with me at twenty. She left me with Gram before I was a year old, but selfessly bestowed two virtues: a fear that I would inherit her schizophrenia, and her frst name. I didn’t want either. The size of Newport all but guaranteed everyone knew of the crazy lady named Destiny. When I was in second grade, Todd Jenkins, who was in the 5th grade, made the connection and told everyone at school that she was my mother. They were cruel in ways that only kids could be. They pulled on my braid and teased me until I cried. I don’t know when the mental illness took hold of her. I want to believe that she didn’t
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