Reid: The Background

Hey everyone! This post is unfortunately NOT a bonus, but is in lieu of Saturday's post. It's going up early because it's my birthday tomorrow and I'm taking off for a four day weekend! Scheduling posts hasn't been working for me, and I don't want to risk the possibility of not getting a post up for the week. I'm working on two other posts and will get one up early/mid-week so you don't have a week and a half between posts.

Now, on to the good stuff. I've been playing with the possibility of doing a post from Reid's POV for a while, but had planned on waiting until further in the story. However, I thought it was about time we shed some light on this perplexing guy. I LOVED writing this post and immediately started another one! I have a plan for a few Reid posts that would eventually link up with Allie's story. However, I'd like to give you guys a choice here. Would you rather have all of the Reid posts in a row before switching back to Allie, or have the Reid posts alternate with Allie posts? Majority rules! Let me know in the comments! 

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I've always been a fade into the background  kind of guy. People often assume that I'm shy, or insecure, but that's not it. It's a survival instinct. Growing up in my house, fading into the background was the only way to avoid upsetting the very delicate knife-edge balance we lived upon everyday.

I'm not sure if there was a time when we were a normal happy family, but if there was, I don't remember it. What I do remember is my dad ushering me outside, or into my room, or even into the basement so that my very presence wouldn't set my mom off. But no matter how quiet or how good I was, it was never enough. Something would always set her off, whether it was my Legos clicking together, or the squeak of my new shoes on the linoleum, or the just the sound of my voice.

I learned early on that my mom was really three people. On her up days, she was super mom, making my favourite lunches, picking me up from school, taking me for ice cream. Then, in a flash, one wrong move, one wrong question, and she would turn into Medusa, screaming, throwing things, eyes popping, veins bulging. And when that fiery rage burned out, there was the zombie who stayed in bed for days with the lights off, the bedroom door locked.

My dad and I didn't live with her but around her, constantly tiptoeing in circles, waiting to make a wrong move that would cause the whole house of cards to collapse. There was no reprieve, because even on the best and brightest days, the shadows of the next meltdown were always lurking just out of sight.

But I wasn't resentful or angry about it. This was just how we lived, and for many years it never even occurred to me that other people were living any other way.

It was at Jay's house that I first realized that other moms weren't like mine. I was in the fourth grade, and Jay and I would often  ride our bikes to the park after school. We usually ended up at his place, where his mom would have a snack on the table and at least one of his three siblings would be running around the house. His mom was always sweet to me, but hey, my mom was sweet sometimes too. I just assumed I kept catching his mom on her good days.

Jay and I were joking around at the kitchen table when he gave me a joking shove. My elbow knocked into my glass of milk, sending it flying. I froze, horrified, as the milk arced across the kitchen, splattering the floor and cabinets. I braced myself for the explosion that I knew was coming.

But it never came. Jay's mom simply sighed, laughed, and handed us a roll of paper towels. "Never a dull moment with you, kiddo," she said to Jay with a resigned smile. She ruffled my hair as she passed by, grabbing a rag to wipe down the cabinets.

I was stunned. I remember going home that night, walking right past my mom's locked bedroom door (she was in zombie mode), and climbing into my bed. I covered my mouth with my pillow so that my crying wouldn't disturb her.

After that, I basically lived at Jay's. I loved his crazy, bustling  house packed with kids and pets, where someone was always making a mess or breaking something, and no one ever so much as batted an eye about it. It was the only time that I got to truly relax and be a kid. Compared to his house, mine was a mausoleum with its eerie, lifeless quiet.

When I was ten, my mom threw a vase against a wall right beside my head during one of her meltdowns. It shattered, and a shard flew into my face, slashing through my eyebrow. The pain was blinding, blood was running into my eye, but what I remember most vividly is my mom screaming. Shrieking at me and my dad, wildly, maniacally. And how those screams turned into wracking, keening sobs as she collapsed onto the kitchen floor. I ran into the bathroom and unrolled all of the toilet paper to try and stop the bleeding, while my dad tried to coax my mom up off the floor.

That night, my dad took me to the hospital and held my hand as the doctor stitched up my eyebrow. We told them that I'd knocked the vase into the wall by accident when I was skateboarding in the house. I picked up on the irony even then.

When we got back, my dad told me to wait in the car. Ten minutes later, he came back out with two duffel bags in his hands. My mom stood at the door and watched through the screen as we backed out of the driveway. Her face was flat, not even a flicker of emotion as she watched us back out and drive away. Zombie mom.

We stayed with my grandparents for three weeks. It was awesome. There was always food in the fridge, always someone to play with or talk to. It was like I had been holding my breath for ten years, and now I could finally relax and just be. My dad and I got to spend so much time together, too. We played catch, went to the park, and even took a weekend trip to the lake together.

I worried about my mom, but I knew my dad was checking on her every night after I went to sleep. I would lay in my dad's childhood bedroom, watching his headlights dance across the walls as he reversed out of the driveway. Nobody ever told me that he was going to see my mom, but I knew. There was no way he could just abandon her on her own. She needed us. I wondered if she was missing me, but I never asked. Maybe I was worried that even the mention of her would bring the shadows back into our lives.

Then one day, my grandpa picked me up from school, and when we got to the house, my dad's car was already in the driveway. I jumped out of the car, thrilled about this unexpected surprise. I flung the front door open and ran into the living room, but stopped short when I saw that my mom was sitting next to him on the couch.

She smiled and held out her arms to me, and after a moment's hesitation, I ran into them. But even as I nestled into her hug, I could tell something was wrong. My dad's smile had a tired, forced look to it, and my grandma's mouth was pinched shut.

Dad and I packed up our bags, and the three of us went back home. That night, my mom made pizza and let me make a silly face out of the toppings. The three of us snuggled up on the couch together and watched Home Alone, my favourite movie. She laughed at all of my impressions of the funny parts and even chimed in on, "Keep the change, ya filthy animal!" At bedtime, she tucked me in and kissed me goodnight, and I let her, even though I had outgrown that baby stuff already.

Three days later, she called me a worthless fucking idiot and locked me out of the house until it got dark because I walked on the floor in muddy shoes. Rookie mistake. I cursed myself over and over, shivering on the back step in my t-shirt, waiting for my dad to come home. Those few weeks at my grandparents' had made me careless. Luckily, I soon fell back into my old routine. Tiptoeing around. Holding my breath. Fading into the background.

Which was a very good thing, because seven months later, my sister Marley was born.