The Snowball Effect

  The Snowball Effect

  Holly Nicole Hoxter

  For my mother and father.

  You gave me life, confidence, a sense of humor,

  and everything else I ever needed or asked for.

  I have been incredibly lucky.

  Contents

  1

  The First Day of the Rest of My Life

  2

  Lainey St. Somebody

  3

  The Funeral

  4

  Returning to My Regularly Scheduled Life

  5

  How We Ended up with Collin

  6

  These are the People I Call My Friends

  7

  The Snow Globe

  8

  The Dream and What It Doesn’t Mean

  9

  Dumpster Diving

  10

  On the Verge

  11

  Fortuity and Adventure

  12

  King Collin

  13

  The Incident

  14

  Books of Clichés

  15

  Hamburgers and Snowballs

  16

  Revenge

  17

  An Unexpected Arrival

  18

  An Unexpected Departure

  19

  A Fun Family Vacation

  20

  The Lainey Pike Whirlwind Reconciliation Tour

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  1

  THE FIRST DAY OF THE REST OF MY LIFE

  I wouldn’t say I’d been worried about Mom, but I’d known for a while that things were bad. She still cried every day about Carl, my stepfather who’d been dead since January when he drove his stupid Kawasaki off the side of the highway.

  When our neighbor, Mabel, called me at work three days after my high school graduation, my first thought was: Oh no. She’d called my cell phone first, and I’d let it go straight to voice mail. When she called back two minutes later on the kiosk phone, I knew something was wrong. I’d never given Mabel the number for Perfume World.

  “Sweetheart,” Mabel said, “do you think you could meet me at my church after you get off work?”

  I should have said, Sure, why? And maybe she would have told me that she wanted help sticking address labels to the newsletters, or her car had a flat and she needed a ride home. But I didn’t ask. She’d looked up Perfume World in the phone book. Something had to be wrong.

  “Uh,” I said to Mabel. “Sure.”

  “Just come straight here, all right? I need to talk to you about some things.”

  When someone wants to talk to you in person instead of over the phone, your mind immediately goes to the worst possible scenario. I guess it’s some sort of coping mechanism—if you’re expecting the worst possible thing, then whatever it really is won’t seem that bad. My mind went straight to Mom.

  I told Mabel what time I got off work. She reminded me again to go straight to her church. She hadn’t said anything reassuring like “nothing’s wrong” or “don’t worry,” and Mabel loved to say stuff like that, even when the situation didn’t call for it.

  Mom’s hurt, I thought.

  No, Mabel could have told me that over the phone. She was dead. Definitely dead.

  Or maybe it was Collin?

  No, Mom would have called if something happened to Collin.

  Maybe it was Mom and Collin. There could have been a car accident or a carbon monoxide leak.

  Then I thought about the mothers who made the news for drowning all their children in the bathtub before they killed themselves. Mom had three kids, but of course she would have killed only Collin. My older sister was long gone, and there’s no way Mom could hold me underwater.

  When had I seen Mom last? It hadn’t been that morning. She’d still been in bed when I got up for work, even with Collin in his room, right next to hers, shrieking and playing the drums. They weren’t actual drums, just a bunch of boxes and crates that he’d set up in a circle and banged on with sticks. It must have been the night before. I tried to think if anything unusual had happened, but I couldn’t remember. She’d probably just sat in the recliner after dinner and cried while she pretended to watch TV.

  When Katie got to the kiosk to work the afternoon shift, I grabbed my purse and ran to my car.

  There’s a church every few blocks in Corben, and Mabel’s church wasn’t far from our house. Their congregation was so small that I’d probably met everyone even though I’d only been to two Basket Bingo nights and one spaghetti dinner. I recognized the pastor, who was standing outside with Mabel, even though he was dressed in shorts and a T-shirt. He was a little younger than Mabel, kind of handsome, but not so handsome that you had guilty thoughts about him. As I sat there in the car, I wondered how I could ponder the pastor’s good looks when I knew that as soon as I got out and walked over to him, he would tell me that my mother was dead.

  I got out of the Grand Am and walked up to the church.

  “Hi, sweetheart,” Mabel said. She took my hand. “Let’s go inside.”

  We walked down the stairs to the basement and sat at one of the long folding tables. It felt strange to be there without the entire congregation, with no crepe-paper streamers hanging up everywhere. I’d always thought the streamers looked cheesy, but without them the basement just looked old and sad.

  Mabel sat beside me, and her pastor sat across from us. Mabel took my hand, but before she could say anything she started crying.

  “Is it Mom?” I asked. And I waited for her to tell me no, it wasn’t Mom. It wasn’t Collin. It was…I don’t even know, but it wasn’t Mom or Collin.

  Mabel nodded. She squeezed her eyes shut and tears pooled at the corners.

  Yes. Yes, it’s Mom.

  I looked at the pastor. “She’s dead?”

  He reached across the table. I gave him my free hand.

  “Your mother took Collin to Mabel’s house this morning and asked her to watch him for a few hours,” the pastor said. He held my hand tightly. I stared at his hairy knuckles.

  “She gave me money for ice cream,” Mabel added. “And we went to Cold Stone. You know how excited he gets.”

  I nodded.

  “After she left Collin with Mabel, your mother called Officer Callahan.”

  I had to think about it before I could place the name. Mabel had nicknamed him Officer Sexpot. He was a big burly guy, nice enough but not real attractive, and she’d thought he wanted to put the moves on Mom. He came over a lot after the accident, mostly because Mom called him and asked him to.

  “When Officer Callahan arrived at the house, he let himself in, as your mother requested. And he found her…her body.”

  “What happened?” I asked. Do not tell me she did this on purpose. I said a silent prayer to God for an unfortunate accident. Carbon monoxide leak. Grease fire. Fall down the stairs.

  Mabel wiped her eyes. “I’m sorry, Lainey. She hung herself. Down there in the basement. Officer Callahan found her in front of the washer and dryer.”

  Mabel let go of my hand and blew her nose. “It’s just terrible. I can hardly believe it.” I couldn’t look at her face, so I looked down at her dress. Yellow with lots of big pink flowers. Mabel owned about ten million different flowery dresses. She squeezed my hand. I could feel the pastor’s hand on my shoulder.

  “We’ll get through this,” he said. “I know it may seem impossible right now, but we will.” I glanced up at him. He frowned and looked all distraught, like he could actually be seriously devastated over my mother’s death after meeting her three times in his whole life
.

  “It’s not like this is a big surprise,” I finally said.

  Mabel nodded. “She never got over losing Carl, did she?”

  I’d never understood how Mabel could be sympathetic to Mom’s pathetic reaction to Carl’s death. Mabel had lost her husband too. She had been with him for over thirty years before he got cancer and died. They didn’t have any children or even a goldfish, so she lived all alone in the house where they’d lived together. I couldn’t imagine how tough that had to be. But she didn’t give up and hang herself in the basement.

  “Mabel and I thought you might like to stay with your father,” the pastor suggested. “At least for a few days until the investigation is over.”

  “Investigation?” I looked at Mabel.

  Mabel shook her head. “It probably won’t be anything for you to worry about. Officer Callahan said he’ll try to take care of it quickly. He knew your mother, and he took my statement, and they certainly don’t suspect foul play, so there doesn’t seem to be much to investigate. It may even already be over for all I know. We just thought it might be easier if you go stay with your father for a bit. We’ve already called and talked to him. He said you can just come on over.”

  I shook my head. “I can’t stay with my dad.”

  She and the pastor just stared at each other. I waited and held my breath, knowing there was a chance that they could make me go. I was almost eighteen, but “almost” might not matter. “I’ll go stay with Kara,” I said.

  The pastor glanced at Mabel and then back to me. “She’s a friend of yours?” he asked.

  “My best friend. She has a…real stable family, you know? Like, her parents—they’re great.”

  Mabel nodded. “Do you want me to call Kara’s parents and explain…what happened?”

  I nodded. The pastor pulled a pen out of his shirt pocket and I wrote down Kara’s number on the back of one of the church’s newsletters.

  “And what about Riley?” Mabel asked. I wrote down his number too and then passed the newsletter to Mabel.

  “I’d be happy to give you a ride,” she said.

  I shook my head. “That’s okay.”

  “You’ll be all right getting to Kara’s?”

  I nodded. I was so ready to get out of the church basement. I hugged Mabel, shook the pastor’s hand, and ran out to my car.

  I got in and turned the key in the ignition. Nothing. I sighed and climbed back out. I opened the hood and jiggled the wires to the battery. I tried it again. Nothing. Jiggled the wires. Tried it again. The car started. Thank God. One more try and they would have come running out of the church to rescue me.

  As I pulled out of the church parking lot, I realized I hadn’t even asked about Collin. I thought about turning back, but I couldn’t stand to face them again. He’d probably been playing somewhere else in the church with one of Mabel’s church friends. Maybe I should have wanted to be with him, but I knew Mabel would take care of him better than I could.

  I’d spent most of my life as an only child. Mom and Carl didn’t adopt Collin until I was sixteen, and my older sister from Mom’s first marriage moved to Colorado with her dad when I was practically a baby. Maybe that wasn’t much of an excuse, but it’s why I didn’t go back inside and find Collin, or ask if Mabel had figured out how to get in touch with my sister. It just didn’t seem like the thing to do. So I drove the Grand Am through the streets of Corben, alone. Sure, it felt selfish, but it also felt right.

  We’d had pamphlets and books on death and bereavement sitting around the house all year, so I knew that the first stage of grief was denial. It wasn’t necessarily actual denial, like when you lied and said you didn’t do something. It was more a feeling like How can this be happening? You couldn’t wrap your mind around it. It shouldn’t surprise me, though. Mom had all but announced she would kill herself. But it still felt surreal. I felt numb. And terribly unlucky. Everyone was leaving me.

  Carl had been first, in January, which I wouldn’t have considered a huge loss to humanity in general, but it had certainly been a crushing blow in Mom’s world. She checked herself into the psych ward at Bayview for two weeks while Collin stayed with Mabel and I stayed with Kara. When she came home, things weren’t much better, so Grandma Elaine came up from Florida. Grandma Elaine was Dad’s mom, but she’d always thought of Mom like a daughter.

  I loved when Grandma Elaine visited, because she was the one person in our family who didn’t fill me with disgust. I was her only granddaughter, and she liked me the best, too. I was even named after her, sort of. My dad wanted to call me Elaine, but my mom was dead set on Tiffany. Mom and Grandma Elaine both liked to watch this stupid soap opera, Heartstrings, so one day Grandma Elaine said, “Why don’t we name her after that beautiful Lainey St. James?” And that’s what they did.

  We lived with Grandma Elaine until I was a few months old, and then Mom and Dad got their own apartment. They didn’t stay together very long after that. Dad moved away, and Mom and I moved back in with Grandma Elaine. We lived there until I was about seven. When we lived with Grandma Elaine, we shared a bedroom and we ate real meals, and during the summer we watched Heartstrings every day at one P.M. Then my aunt Liz in Florida got pregnant and wanted Grandma Elaine to move down there. Grandma Elaine tried to convince Mom to come with her, but Mom said no even though we didn’t have anything keeping us in Corben. Sometimes when Mom was in one of her moods, she’d say that we were going to move and be with Grandma and I’d get excited, but then she’d find a new boyfriend or a new job or a new hobby, and we’d stay.

  Grandma Elaine was already sick when she came back to take care of Mom. She’d gotten over lung cancer the year before, plus had a heart attack, but she came anyway and treated Mom like she was a little kid with the flu, making her favorite foods and letting her do nothing but watch TV all day. But Grandma Elaine kept getting sicker and sicker, and Mom wasn’t getting any better. Grandma Elaine finally gave up and went back to Florida so Aunt Liz could take care of her.

  On the day before she left, Grandma Elaine and I made a big dinner together and Mom cried all through it saying she didn’t know what she was going to do. I didn’t know what I was going to do either, but I didn’t cry about it.

  I drove Grandma Elaine to the airport the next morning. The Grand Am always took forever to heat up, so even after we were halfway to the airport, it was still freezing cold. We both wore our hats and gloves and scarves. I could see my breath.

  “I bet you’re happy to be going back to Florida,” I said with my teeth practically chattering.

  She reached over and patted my leg. “I won’t miss the cold, that’s for sure.”

  “I wish you could stay,” I said. “I would take care of you.”

  “I know you would, sweetheart. But you have plenty here to take care of already.”

  And then she started coughing. She leaned forward, and I knew the routine. I pounded on her back until the coughing stopped.

  “You all right?” I asked. I rubbed her back.

  She nodded. “That’s good. Thanks, honey.”

  I drove along and kept one eye on Grandma Elaine.

  “Lainey, you have to promise you’ll look after your mother for me,” she said.

  I nodded, but I must have looked really unsure, because Grandma Elaine added, “She needs you.”

  “I know.”

  “She won’t get through this without a lot of help.”

  “I didn’t even like Carl,” I blurted out. “And I don’t know what to do when she cries. I don’t know what to say to her. I just sit there and look stupid.”

  Grandma Elaine nodded. “You just need to be there. Hold her hand. Tell her it’ll be okay.”

  I shrugged. “I’ll try.”

  “I know you will. And I know you’ll look after poor little Collin, too. That boy needs a lot of love.”

  A few days after she got back to Florida, she had a stroke and died. Obviously I was glad I’d gotten to spend so much time wit
h her before it happened, but who knows how much longer she would have lived if she’d stayed home in Orlando resting and taking care of herself instead of flying to freezing cold Baltimore and taking care of my crazy mother.

  Mom got worse after we found out about Grandma Elaine, but it’s hard to say if that had anything to do with it. She’d mostly stopped talking to us, so I assumed that she was just still upset over Carl.

  I know he was her husband and all, but Mom acted like she didn’t have a kid to take care of. Two if you counted me, which I didn’t. Her behavior would have been typical of Old Mom, the mom who raised me, who was paranoid and scared and mopey. New Mom, Collin’s Mom, just didn’t act like that. New Mom had it together. But after Carl and Grandma Elaine died, she’d just sit in Carl’s old recliner and cry. I tried telling her it would be okay, but anything I said just made her cry harder.

  Fortunately Mabel started coming over all the time to cook for us and talk to Mom. With Carl dead, she and Mom finally had something in common. Before, she’d invite Mom to her Tupperware parties or Basket Bingo night at her church, but Mom always had an excuse not to go (she didn’t want to leave Collin with Carl). But a few months after he died, Mom gave up on excuses and let Mabel drag her anywhere.

  Mabel thought she would save her. I could have told her that was a waste of time.

  I didn’t want to drive straight to Kara’s house. That would have taken about two minutes, and I wanted Mabel to have plenty of time to call and talk to Kara’s mom. Instead I went driving around Corben.

  I’d lived in Corben my whole life, and it wasn’t awful but it wasn’t the greatest place to live, either. In Corben, the coolest place to go on the weekend was the flea market. You could buy anything there—porn, NASCAR memorabilia, bunny rabbits, groceries, furniture. Kids could bring in their report cards and get free BBs for their BB gun for every A they got. I think that says everything you need to know about Corben.