A woman knocked on the door of the private little cave where doctor's would deliver devastating news, and Madison Sinclair's uncle opened the door to see some strange woman standing there – a woman that neither him nor her mother would ever be caught dead with.
Even Madison didn't like her look, she looked like a wannabe emo kid, and emos were the biggest wannabes for punk, goth and scene. Being a wannabe emo was just sad and pathetic, but when she opened her mouth, she wasn't just sad and pathetic, she was nasty and horrible despite her nutmeg and cinnamon perfume that spiced the stale and cold hospital air.
The atmosphere in the room suddenly became artic. "Hi, I have Kaiden's belongings," she said.
Maddi's mother's breathing was now a tortured panting. "Who are you?" said Julie. Her mother was wearing old jeans, which had once been tight but now sagged in weird places, and a black t-shirt advertising a Disneyland attraction.
"I'm Kristie."
"And how did my brother know you?" growled Maddi's uncle with damp and glistening eyes behind his glasses.
"He was my…connection."
"Connection?" Madison rolled her black ringed eyes, her uncle wasn't exactly "cool" when it came to street terms such as connection, and she knew exactly what that connection was. Her uncle looked at her mother; her mother was a lot smarter than anyone on her father's side of the family. "Connection to what?"
"Drugs!" sobbed her mother.
"No!" cried Maddi. "Dad never touched that shit! He warned me to stay away from that shit!"
"Maddi! Your dad was a drug addict," sniffled her mother. "Your uncle, here, found baggies of white powder in his truck."
She backed away, no, no, no, that was just not true! The room she stood in seemed to be filled with wicked and evil shadows, an unheard truth she was coming face to face with. Her father didn't do drugs, he didn't smoke, he didn't snort, and he didn't inject. Maddi felt the room's fluorescent lights glaring down on her, suddenly too bright.
"There were track marks between his toes," said her uncle.
Her aunt and uncle came to a skidded stop at the private room, the hospital wasn't too horribly far from their house where her mother had gotten the call. Madison Sinclair had stopped crying and just stood there, wishing for everything to just stop, too much was happening in a short amount of time and Madison was starting to feel overwhelmed.
What was the next move? Where did they all go from here? Ugh! This whole thing was so frustrating! She loved thinking she was older than she was, but she hoped that an adult would know what to do.
Why did her dad have to do this big old screw you to them? What had they done to deserve this? Maddi exhaled foul air from her earlier eaten chili dog as she slumped against the wall of the room.
Her slick-looking weasel of an uncle went to aid his sister, Madison's mother, in her time of need. Her mother ran to the bathroom after clamping her hand to her mouth and made a mad dash to the toilet.
"Take Maddi to our house," said her uncle to his wife, waving them off, too busy dealing with his sister. They could hear Julie heaving into the toilet beyond the door.
"Come on, why don't you hang out with your super cool aunt and your cousins?" asked her aunt Patricia. Maddi said nothing, only gazed at the bathroom door. "Your mother is fine, I'm sure vomiting is a natural response to…all of this."
"Can I at least call my friend?" asked Maddi, speaking of none other than a friend known as Kylie; their friendship was odd, as Kylie was a tight laced Mormon girl and Maddi had white powder decorating the rims of her nostrils like the rim of a margarita glass.
Patricia wrapped her in a hug. "You can call as many people as you want to, okay?" Maddi wanted to agree but she was being suffocated by her aunt's large breasts. "If you need me to talk to anyone of them, I will, okay?"
She let go of her niece. "Thank you," gasped Maddi, drinking in that cool hospital air.
"I'm sorry," whimpered her aunt before she cupped her niece's thin face into her hand. "I couldn't imagine the fear that Mary would feel if we lost James."
Mary was the name of her cousin who was three years younger than Maddi, making her eleven years old – they used to be super close with one another, but ever since Maddi started dressing in black and going to rock shows, they've been getting further and further apart.
"It'd literally kill her," she said, she hated saying something harsh to her aunt, but it was the truth, and if her aunt was sore over her words, she could say the death of her father conked her head hard enough to drive logic out the window.
Mary loved her father, and while Maddi didn't exactly love her father for various reasons, there was a very real pain; and she knew for Mary it'd only be magnified. Maddi took one last look in the room, where her uncle was wagging back and forth, on the phone with his mother – the mother of a dead son.
Madison allowed her aunt to take her hand and lead her out of the hospital, she said nothing more about the events, the wind had been knocked clean out of her chest, the day had finally sunk in, and her eyes went wide and dark; and the worst part was that the person she never wanted to blame was at fault.
True.
Maddi's dad wasn't the best person in the world, for Christ's sake, he slept with her! But to keep her hushed about all the nasty shit he had done, he gave her whatever she wanted. Madison was never told no. Maddi' felt all shivery and her stomach ached. She wanted to let out a shriek of terror.
Madison Sinclair didn't even wince upon returning to the outside world, her father may have been a monster, but her whole world had changed within the blink of an eye, what had started out as a perfect day at Disneyland had turned into a nightmare.
Madison and her mother were homeless, jobless, and had nowhere to go. Madison felt so alone and that loneliness was heavy and it hurt, this whole day was a hellish rush combining mind-warping good times had by all at Disneyland with the bruising punishment of the loss of a parent.
But Maddi knew that no one else could ever carry that heaviness for her, no matter how much they wanted to. They got into the SUV, Maddi and her aunt sitting up front, an odd purple dusk was already painted upon the horizon.
"Did you need to make some calls, still?" asked her aunt, starting the car. "I won't play the radio."
Maddi dialed her friend Kylie, her best friend wasn't allowed to give out her phone number, so this was the best she could do – Kylie hung out with the both of them, Kylie would tell her best friend. The girl known only as Kylie picked up the phone. "Maddi?" she asked, a little shocked as Maddi normally would send a message on AOL rather than a phone call.