Life On Hold Read online

  LIFE ON HOLD

  Karen McQuestion

  LIFE ON HOLD

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Text copyright ©2010 Karen McQuestion

  All rights reserved

  This book was self published, in a slightly different form, in 2009.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by AmazonEncore

  P.O. Box 400818

  Las Vegas, NV 89140

  ISBN: 978-1-935597-27-8

  For my daughter, Maria who insists that teenagers’ bonfires

  aren’t at all the way I imagine them to be

  Acknowledgments

  Terry Goodman always gets top billing when it comes to my gratitude. He once sent me an e-mail that changed my life for the better, and I’ll never forget it. He’s smart, funny, and diplomatic, and I feel fortunate to work with him.

  Sarah Tomashek has incredible people skills and great marketing strategies, and I’ve benefitted from both. I’m lucky to have her on my side.

  This is my fifth book with AmazonEncore, and I couldn’t be happier. Thanks to Sarah Gelman, Victoria Griffith, Jessica R. Smith, Jennifer Williams, and the behind-the-scenes team for their hard work on my behalf.

  I am indebted to foreign rights agent Taryn Fagerness for her diligence and enthusiasm.

  The following people gave me helpful feedback on the book in its earliest form: Cherie Bussert, Jessica Coats, Kathleen Coats, Vickie Coats, Kay Ehlers, Geri Erickson, Shawnee Griffin, Alice L. Kent, Felicity Librie, Maria McQuestion, Jeannée Sacken, Shelly Tenwinkel, and Robert Vaughan. Thanks to all! I really appreciate it.

  Thank you to the Hartland Public Library for providing me with a comfortable writing chair and a stress-free environment.

  I’ve been remiss in the past for not mentioning the ones who started me off on my publishing journey. I’d like to thank the Kindle readers, especially the ones on the Amazon message boards and Kindleboards.com. My good fortune is directly connected to their willingness to give an unknown author a chance back when I first self-published my books on Kindle. Their reviews and recommendations led me to where I am today. Believe me when I say I’m truly grateful.

  My family means the world to me. I am blessed to be the mother of Jack, Maria, and Charlie. They are good people, and oh so smart. Plus, they make me laugh on a regular basis.

  And saving the best for last: thank you to my husband, Greg, for everything.

  Contents

  Chapter 1 Paranoid Girl

  Chapter 2 New Girl

  Chapter 3 Watch Your Step

  Chapter 4 Message from the Smedster

  Chapter 5 The Rae Maddox Integration Program

  Chapter 6 Relatively Rude

  Chapter 7 Flight Risk

  Chapter 8 Gina, Interrupted

  Chapter 9 Unlawful Entry

  Chapter 10 Lifestyles of the Rich and Obnoxious

  Chapter 11 Too Late Now

  Chapter 12 Black and White and Read All Over

  Chapter 13 And Then Again, Maybe Not

  Chapter 14 Tell Me a Secret

  Chapter 15 Party Crashers

  Chapter 16 Allison Crashing

  Chapter 17 Just in the Nick of Time

  Chapter 18 Kylie in Waiting

  Chapter 19 Morning Has Broken

  Chapter 20 Monday, Monday, Can’t Trust That Day

  Chapter 21 It’s Not Always What You Expect

  Chapter 22 All in Your Head

  Chapter 23 Calling in Reinforcements

  Chapter 24 Snooty 64

  Chapter 25 Now What?

  Chapter 26 Turn and Face the Strain

  Chapter 27 Rebel With a Cause

  Chapter 28 Saturday Road Trip

  Chapter 29 Change of View

  Chapter 30 Big Problem, Hot Cop

  Chapter 31 Tell Me What You Really Think

  Chapter 32 Again, A Road Trip

  Chapter 33 You Can Never Go Home Again

  Chapter 34 First to Aid, Last to Leave

  Chapter 35 Bad News Travels Like Wildfire

  Chapter 36 Father’s Day

  Chapter 37 The Real Rae Maddox Integration Program

  Chapter 38 Star Light, Star Bright

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  Paranoid Girl

  At the end of a long, hard day, all I wanted was to go home. It sounds easy enough, and it would have been, if not for Dorothy, the most annoying crossing guard on the planet. She was really there for the younger kids, but she insisted on helping everyone across the street, holding up her sign even if there weren’t any cars in sight. She prided herself on knowing everyone’s name, and I was a problem for her because I wouldn’t tell her mine.

  The first time Dorothy asked my name, she caught me on a bad day. I smiled and said I preferred to be anonymous. The way I saw it, she didn’t need to know—I was a sophomore in high school, not a third grader. When she brought it up again the next day, I told her I was pleading the Fifth, which seemed to confuse her. She tried to guess. Amanda? Stephanie? For days she greeted me with different names. Rachel? Krista? It got old real fast. Later she tried compliments, telling me that a pretty girl like me should wear bright colors and not just black all the time. Occasionally she offered me candy, saying we were celebrating Happy Thursday or some crap like that. After a while I wanted to tell her my name, just to put an end to the game, but it seemed awkward to just say it, like I’d been holding out for nothing. By the end of September, I started going around her intersection. It seemed to be the only way out.

  Avoiding the crossing guard’s intersection made my walk a little longer and meant I went right by the kids’ insane asylum. Technically it was called the Mental Health Unit for Children and Adolescents, MHUCA for short, but I always liked to think of it as Mother HUCA. It was a huge red building, flat on every side including the roof so it looked like an enormous brick. The patio in the back of the building, which is what I passed, was a squarish piece of concrete surrounded by scraggly looking grass, all of it closed in by a chain-link fence.

  My walk home came at the same time as some kind of break the crazy kids got. Every time I went past they were there—a dozen or so skeezy kids my age, clustered by the back door like smokers outside of a mall. At first I thought they were smoking. They had that hungry, antsy look like they desperately needed something. They stared at the ground even as they talked amongst themselves. I noticed the girl with the long, dark hair right away because she always stood about ten feet away from them, like she was making a statement. I’m not part of that group, was my take on it. She fidgeted and kept looking back and forth, like she was afraid someone was going to catch her doing something wrong. Paranoid Girl, I named her.

  One day I found myself slowing down to watch. I wondered what these kids had done to get committed to a residential treatment center. I scanned their faces looking for clues, but you couldn’t tell by sight what their problems were. Just as well, I guess.

  I knew I shouldn’t stare, but they fascinated me. I paused and put my backpack on the ground, pretending to look for something inside the front compartment. At school I’d stopped using my locker because it was nowhere near my classes, and now I had to carry my books with me all the time. One time, just for the hell of it, I weighed my backpack on my bathroom scale. Thirty-one pounds. Thirty-one pounds of boring-ass textbooks wrecking my back.

  Paranoid Girl saw me stop and got a panicked look on her face. She
glanced nervously at the building and back at me, like she was a spy in a movie and I was about to give away her identity. She held out a hand and shooed me away, actually shooed me away, like she had some kind of control over a stranger on the sidewalk twenty feet away.

  I pointed to myself in an exaggerated gesture. Who, me? She nodded yes and made that little gesture again, her hand a swinging door, and then she looked nervously at the group of crazy kids still hunched over in their football huddle.

  I wasn’t in the mood to follow orders from a stranger behind a fence. Just to make a point, I waved at Paranoid Girl, a big straight-arm wave, like I was trying to get her attention from across a parking lot. Mentally I sent her a message: See? I’m not going anywhere until I feel like it.

  She shook her head no and jabbed a thumb toward the group of crazy kids. Seeing her expression made me wonder what was up. She looked so worried.

  If I could have given Paranoid Girl some advice, I would have told her to just let it go. Just do whatever it takes to get through the day—that was how I played it, and it worked for me. I got my work done at school and kept a low profile out in the world. Mostly, I waited for it to be over. I actually had a notebook where I diagramed a calendar of the next two and a quarter years. A countdown to my eighteenth birthday and freedom. At the end of each day I took a Sharpie marker and X-ed off that day’s square. It gave me a sense of satisfaction to think I was another day closer.

  I waved to Paranoid Girl again, mentally sending out my attitude. Just let it all go, I thought. Whatever it is, it’s not worth it. She shook her head, and her whole body shuddered. She didn’t seem to get it.

  I zipped up my backpack and gave her a smile. It was then that the group of skeezy kids noticed me. They lifted their heads like dogs smelling meat, and one of the boys, a big hulk in a camo jacket, yelled, “Hey, what are you looking at?” As if on cue, they all left their spot by the back door and started moving toward me. As they picked up speed, they started yelling. “You have a staring problem?” a girl in dreadlocks called out, her arm thrust in an accusatory point. Another guy yelled, “Get lost, bitch.”

  It happened so fast, really fast, and I frantically zipped my backpack shut and hoisted it over my shoulder. They were heading straight for me, running now. They didn’t slow down when they got to the fence, just slammed into it. Bam. The fence had some give to it and stretched a little in my direction. The kids in back smashed against the ones in front. Their faces contorted against the chain-link, and they started screaming profanities that, just for the record, did not describe me. My flight reflex kicked in as they hit the fence, and I took off—not running, because of the backpack, but walking as fast as I could. When I got to the corner, I looked behind me to see them all wandering back to the building. Paranoid Girl, still in her same spot, caught my eye and raised her hands, palms up, and shrugged—I tried to tell you.

  Chapter 2

  New Girl

  “Hi, I’m Rae. I’m new here.”

  I’ve said those words more times than I can count. My mom and I move a lot, and this is my usual introduction at school and in the neighborhood. After I’ve said it, I know someone will take pity and show me around, usually one of those girls who likes to take charge of situations. I adapt well, so I fit in anywhere, but I don’t dig in too deep because we never stay longer than a year or so.

  If I’ve learned anything it’s to not get too attached. Maybe that’s why I didn’t want to tell the crossing guard my name. Leaving is painful, and the more people there are to miss, the worse it is. One time in particular I did get too attached. It was in middle school when this girl, Chelsea, tried to give me half of her necklace—one of those ones that look like half a heart with the word “Best” on one half and “Friend” on the other. I told her my mother wouldn’t let me keep it, which was a lie because Gina never stopped me from doing anything.

  Even though I didn’t take the necklace, Chelsea and I got to be close. So close that I told her everything—how I didn’t know my own father’s name and that Gina used to smoke pot and how I felt about moving all the time, which is that I hated it, but I went along with it. I told Chels about the one time I strongly objected, when my mother had a meltdown, crying and carrying on about everything she gave up in life by having me as a teenager. It was hard to raise a baby by herself, but she did it, is what Mom said. She stayed up nights with a crying baby while her friends were out partying and she didn’t complain. She sacrificed a lot, and that was fine, but wasn’t she entitled to live her life and do what she wanted now that I was older and things were easier? By this point I started feeling really guilty.

  The conversation had shifted from there. Mom said, “And don’t we have fun together? Aren’t we closer than most mothers and daughters?” I had to admit we were. Then she went on about how the new place would be so much better: a fresh start, an adventure. And she said I shouldn’t let fear of new places hold me back, that change was a good thing. By the time she finished campaigning I felt really bad for standing in her way, and I cracked. I said okay to the move, even though I didn’t want to go.

  Chelsea was the only person I ever told all my secrets to, and when my mom and I moved five hundred miles away from her, I felt like my heart was torn out of me. We tried to stay in touch with phone calls and IM-ing, but it wasn’t the same. And after that I heard from Chelsea’s new best friend (she didn’t even like this girl when I lived there) that Chelsea told her all about me not having a father on my birth certificate, something she swore she would never ever tell. So much for promises. Ever since then I’ve had a no-best-friends policy, and I’ve stuck to it. My mom is number one on my cell phone speed dial, sadly enough. I’m not on MySpace of Facebook, but if I were I’d have a problem picking someone for my number-one space. Best friends are for other people.

  So I don’t have best friends. What I have are people—not really good friends, but a notch up from acquaintances. Here at Whitman High School I have two people, a funny Japanese guy named Mason Mihashi, and Kylie Johnson, an undersized girl. And I mean seriously undersized. I’m on the short side and Mason’s not much taller, but she’s technically a midget or dwarf or something. I never really asked. The victim of a malfunctioning pituitary gland, I heard her say once.

  Everybody’s got something.

  Mason, Kylie, and I eat lunch together, say hi in the halls, and once in a while see a movie or go to a football game. Two people. That’s really all I need. At some of my schools I didn’t even have that. And Mason and Kylie are good. Better than most, I’d say. Mason has a wicked sense of humor, and Kylie gets people faster than me even. She can read them instantly. I think she has a future as a psychiatrist or a parole officer. Nothing gets past her.

  My mother thinks I make friends easily, but that’s not true. What I actually do is connect with other kids who aren’t in a group either. The loose ends. At Glenview High School my people were named Elizabeth and Latonya. Before that, at Washington Heights High, I had Russ. Just Russ. He was pretty cool with his “stick it to the man” attitude and counterculture views, but kind of depressed most of the time.

  I tried to keep a diary once to list all the places we’d lived and all the “friends” I’ve had, but I didn’t stay with it, and then it got lost in one of our moves. So now I just have the notebook I mentioned before, the one where I keep track of the countdown to my eighteenth birthday. I hate not having a say in my own life. Sometimes my mom acts like she’s giving me choices, but she’s really not. There’s not much I can do about it.

  In this same notebook I also put information about my dad, the mystery man I know nothing about. Every time my mom mentions something about him I write it down. Most of it isn’t true—I know because she keeps contradicting herself. I write it all down anyway because you never know. There might be a seed of truth in there somewhere. Mom says when I’m an adult she’ll tell me the whole story, and she’s pretty firm on that timeline. Another reason to look forward to my eighteent
h birthday.

  Chapter 3

  Watch Your Step

  One school day in October, as I sat down to eat lunch with Mason and Kylie, I heard the usual roar of Blake Daly arriving. He does this thing when he walks in the door of the cafeteria—he calls out something like “Booya!” or “Incoming!” and all of the Blake Juniors and other wannabes who are already sitting at his table (he comes in late just so he can make an entrance) yell it back like it’s a tribal war chant instead of some made-up bullshit from an attention-seeking jock. Today Blake yelled out, “Oh yeah,” and predictably, his band of groupies bellowed, “Oh yeah!” like they were at a rock concert or something. Besides being annoying, this whole routine is incredibly unfair. If anyone else did it, they’d get a detention for being disruptive, but not Blake. Obviously the rules don’t apply to everyone.