The Wicked

earlier that day

I’m chomping my jaw like a cow in a fresh pasture of grass after a 10-day juice cleanse. The guy sitting to my left on my flight from Washington to North Carolina keeps looking at me out the corner of his eye, probably trying not to make it obvious that I’m bothering him, but he’s definitely wondering why I’m chewing my gum like it’s offended me and tapping my fingers on my knees.

Listen, I get it, they banned smoking on airplanes for good reason, the main one being that most of an aircraft is flammable as hell. I don’t want to be stuck in a metal tube on fire at 30,000 feet as much as the next girl, but if I don’t smoke a cigarette soon, I’m going to need to start pacing the aisles or something, which will probably make some people nervous.

This nicotine gum is doing absolutely nothing.

Likely because it isn’t the nicotine I’m craving – I mean, that’s probably part of it – but it’s the habit that I’m needing more than anything. It’s the weirdly likable sickly feeling that accompanies smoking a cigarette, the lightness to my head, and dissolution to my anxiety. I just want my vice, my go-to when I’m feeling like this. I can’t blame addiction on what I’m feeling right now, because I promised I would stop lying to myself a long time ago. I’m fucking anxious about moving home to Luxington.

After four years at the University of Washington, I’m heading home to the beach town I grew up in on the East Coast.

How I successfully managed to get onto the plane without six shots of Jack Daniels is a mystery, but my closest friend, Katie, told me it was too early to get shitfaced, even if I am riding a downward spiral.

My dad is sick – like, he’s sick-sick. Living-in-the-hospital-sick.

And I need to be there for however long he’s got left. So, over the last month, I’ve checked all the boxes on my moving to-do list. Find apartment, ship car, secure job, say goodbye to the Pacific Northwest, send everything I own in a truck.

My jaw starts to ache from the flavorless gum in my mouth, and the guy next to me is full-on staring now, turning his body and everything, so I make the executive decision to head for the bathroom.

I bought one of those bullshit e-cigarettes at the gas station this morning, which also isn’t allowed on airplanes, but fuck it, no one will find out.

I tap my best friend’s knee, pulling her attention and waving my hand. “Gotta pee.”

Katie has been sucked into some movie for the entire flight, probably trying to tune out the intensely negative energy I’m radiating in every direction.

She nods, twisting her knees to the side as I stand up to let me shimmy past her.

With my bag in hand, I try to look as normal as possible as I head toward the back of the plane, which is impossible when you’re trying to look normal, so I’m sure I look like I’ve got a secret.

I realize as I’m sliding into the tiny, unoccupied bathroom that I’ve been holding my breath and clenching every muscle in my body, so once I’m inside and the door is locked, I slump against the sink and exhale painfully.

Staring at myself in the mirror, I count to ten, my makeup-free face relaxing with every increasing number. When I reach ten, I put my purse in the sink and dig around for the little cardboard package that holds the e-cig.

Ripping it open, I examine the small silver cylinder, rolling it over in my hand a few times. I chose something called “Vanilla Sensation,” which sounded more appealing than the fruity flavors sharing the shelf with it. It seems simple enough, put the end in between my lips and suck – it’s a cigarette designed for teenagers so how complicated can it really be?

I press the plastic tip to my lips, leaning for the toilet with the idea that I can blow the smoke into the bowl, then flush it away. And I suck.

The sharp vaporized air or whatever they put in these things hits my throat and lungs like shards of razor blades, making me cough loud and hard. I try to aim for the toilet, but I’m in such a chaotic headspace that the smoke ends up filling the small bathroom.

“Fuck.” Waving my hands around the room in a panic, I continue to cough.

I spit into the toilet, sending my gum to its death as well as the bizarre taste of vanilla attacking my senses, then I flush.

Shaking my head, I laugh.

“This is pathetic.” I chuckle to myself.

I stare at the e-cig while I swallow down the lingering tickle in my throat, then try again. It doesn’t hurt as much this time, so I hit it for longer, which is a monumentally horrible idea because when I blow out the smoke, it completely fills the bathroom.

“Oh, fuck. Fuck, fuck.” I wave my hands around like mad, trying to push the smoke into the toilet, which is impossible, and end up sending the e-cig flying through the air until it hits the floor with a loud clang.

This was a stupid idea. That much is clear to me now.

“God, please don’t let the smoke alarm go off,” I pray under my breath, flushing the toilet before I reach around on the floor to pick up the e-cig.

Standing up straight, I toss the device back into my purse and place my hands on the edge of the sink to lean forward. I stare at myself in the mirror, fixating on my bloodshot and wild green eyes. When they start to well with tears, I want to smash my fist into the mirror.

Sucking oxygen into my lungs, I stand up straight and shake out my shoulders.

I can’t break down in this tiny, smelly, poorly lit airplane bathroom. I’ll let myself break down later, when I’m locked away in the comfort of my own home, after I see my parents for the first time this year and finally dip my toes into the cold of the Atlantic Ocean again.

The thought of the beach makes my lips tingle with a smile.

That’s the main thing I’m looking forward to outside of seeing my parents – the little strip of Luxington Beach I grew up on.

I haven’t tasted the ocean or rolled around in the sand for almost an entire year, and my soul feels fucking empty from the loss. It was the one constant I had growing up – the beach. No matter which corner of North Carolina the foster care system sent me to, I always found a way to the ocean. Even if it took me hours on the bus, or I had to steal money from my foster parents for a cab, I made it there.

When my parents adopted me, I thanked just about every god I could think of that they lived in Luxington and I could walk to the beach whenever I wanted.

Shaking my shoulders one last time, I grab my purse before I push the bathroom door open and go back to my seat.

Katie’s movie has ended, and she’s scrolling through her phone when I slide past her to buckle into my seat again. She lifts a perfectly manicured eyebrow at me in question, and I shake my head, smoothing my hands over jean-clad thighs.

“You good?” she asks. “You were in there for a while.”

“Fine,” I answer too quickly, digging around in my purse to get a piece of gum.

I’m popping it into my mouth when the captain’s loud, clear voice cuts through the atmosphere of the plane. “Passengers, please fasten your seatbelts for our final descent into Raleigh. Thank you for flying with us today.”

“Oh, thank you, Lord,” I mumble, getting Katie’s attention again.

“Excited?” Dropping her chin to her shoulder, she looks over at me. I meet her deep hazel eyes and shrug.

“More nervous than anything.” I take a deep breath. “Just glad you agreed to take the trip with me.”

I met Katie during freshman year – we lived in the same dorm at WU. She majored in interior design and minored in making bad decisions with me. It was the type of friendship that felt natural the moment we met; we’re similar in so many ways.

She’s got an eye for design, and can turn anything into personalized luxury. She puts her own vision and personal touch in everything she does, and it’s going to take her far.

Katie smiles up at me. “I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. Plus, I have one more week of freedom before I start my new job, and someone needs to help you decorate your new place.”

“Or, we can spend this time together making poor decisions like we used to.” I wiggle my eyebrows.

She laughs, lifting her head as the plane dips downwards. “We’re grown-ups now, Pen. No more acting like fools.”

I scoff. “Speak for yourself.”

She narrows her eyes playfully. “What’s your plan?”

“Going back to my former glory,” I say with a smirk. “Toxic girl energy only.”

She laughs, shaking her head dismissively.

The fire inside of me that I tried to stamp out in the last year has grown restless, and what better place to unleash it than my old stomping ground? Luxington taught me how to be wild, and I’m ready to have some fun again.

“For someone that just went through a breakup, you sure seem like you’ve moved on.”

I lie back on the headrest, turning my head to look at her. “I have. I’m moving 3,000 miles away. Am I supposed to stay up at night crying over my loss? That relationship was a sham.”

She hums between her lips, but doesn’t say anything else. I know what she’s thinking, though; it’s what everyone thinks – how can I, a woman, be so perfectly okay after losing such a gold star man like Daniel? Because we’re all supposed to be damsels in distress who need a man to be able to breathe.

Not me. Daniel and I were never serious. Even though we were together for so long, we both knew from the get-go it was never a forever type thing. It was satisfying, sure. But tying myself to a 6-foot finance major was never the long-term plan. He was my normal phase; I was his rebel phase. We were too different for it to work. He liked to cook pot roasts on Sundays, for fuck’s sake – the kind where all the vegetables taste amazing because they’ve been cooking with the meat. I’m not that girl. I’m a gin on the rocks, hit the fast-food joint at 2 a.m., flash my tits to the Uber driver to get a free ride type girl.

He was placating a part of me that felt like I was required to be in a conventional, safe, and boring relationship, and now that I’ve left that behind, and come to my senses, one thing has become very clear to me – there’s absolutely nothing wrong with the way I’m wired. I’m chaos and impulse and that’s okay. I can’t pretend I’m something I’m not anymore.

I’m young, I’ve got nice tits and a high tolerance to alcohol. I want to be that girl for a while.

Who knows, maybe in the future I’ll want to settle down and do boring shit like make pot roasts, but I’m fucking twenty-three. I want to act like it. I want to have orgasms so good that I black out and get so drunk off mixed drinks that I sleep on the beach.

“Plus, don’t you want to act crazy one last time before you become the biggest interior designer in the west?” I say to Katie, who turns to look at me again. “Remember the fun we used to have?”

She laughs, throwing her head back. “I remember waking up on a bench in the quad after a molly bender, getting kicked out of Chipotle for public intoxication, and having a run-in with chlamydia.”

I snort. “And you learned a very nice lesson about condoms.”

“I hate you.” She laughs.

I met my parents when I was fourteen. I had just started 8^th grade at Johnson Middle School and had just been kicked out of my thirteenth foster home in five years. I had given up on getting adopted, since the older you get, the less likely it is that anyone will want to adopt you. You’re damaged goods at that point, and I was just trying to get from day to day until I turned eighteen and I was free of the system.

I wasn’t like all the other kids in my school. I was the only one in my grade without a family, and it showed. I wore knockoff shoes, and my backpack was falling apart, because most of the foster parents I had had in my life cared more about their own families, only giving the foster kids the essentials when we really needed them.

I was moved into a group home after my last foster parents said I was an unmanageable child, which is code for too old to push around. The group home was all girls. There were four of us to a room and we slept on bunk beds that had seen better days.

“Penelope, you have an interview.”

An interview – that’s what the group home called meeting a potential family, like we were applying for a job or a scholarship, like it was something we actually wanted at this age. I wrapped my dark brown hair into a bun on top of my head, wiped the day-old eyeliner under my eyes, and made sure I was wearing a clean shirt. Even though I had lost all hope for a family, I still wanted to look good. I still had that teensy, tiny part inside of me that thought, what if this is it?

I followed the group mom into the dining room, where an older couple was sitting, their hands together on the table.

“Mr. and Mrs. Leyton,” the group mom greeted them, “this is Penelope.”

I had never seen a smile so warm and welcoming as the one that flashed back at me when I set my eyes on my mom for the first time. She looked like she belonged in heaven. She stood first, then my dad, and they took their turns holding their hands out for me to shake.

“It’s nice to meet you, Penelope,” my mom said, her smile still cutting across her face as she sat back down. “Why don’t you sit down with us?”

I nodded, suddenly feeling like something was attacking my nervous system as I pulled a chair out a few feet from them and sat.

She put her hand on her chest. “I’m Colette, and this is my husband, Stephen.”

“Nice to meet you,” I mumbled, looking at my hands where they were crossed over the tabletop. I’d been in so many of these interviews at this point, I had lost most of the excitement. They never chose me in the end, so what was the point?

“Where are you from, Penelope?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. Here, I guess.”

“You’ve been in Williston your whole life?” she questioned.

“No.” I shook my head. “I just got here. I was in Macon before this, Franklin before that, a few more places too.”

“Which one has been your favorite?”

I could tell she was trying to get me to warm up with questions that didn’t matter, but I played along. “Any of the places that were close to the beach.”

“We love the beach,” Stephen said, putting his arm over his wife’s shoulder and smiling. “We live in Luxington Beach, just on the Atlantic.”

“Really?” I met his gaze, feeling myself getting excited despite my wariness. It was working. They were making me warm up to them, even though I walked in wanting to just get it over with. His eyes were a deep blue, and I studied them, seeing my reflection in them from across the table.

“You’ll love Luxington Beach. The sand is white, and the water is always a nice temperature,” Colette added, smiling.

I swallowed hard. “Please don’t pretend you’re actually going to take me in. I know that I probably wasn’t what you were expecting.”

I tucked my hair behind my ear and looked at Colette in time to see her frown. “What do you mean, what we were expecting?”

“No one wants to adopt a teenager who’s already messed up from bouncing around the system. You guys seem really nice, but you don’t have to pretend.”

“Pretend?” Stephen questioned, but then he pressed his lips together for a minute before he spoke again. “I’m almost sixty years old, Penelope. We don’t have the energy to chase around an infant or change diapers. We just want a child to welcome into our family. Someone who we can call our own.”

Colette looked at her husband and smiled like he hung the stars in the sky, then looked back at me. “We never had children. We focused on our careers, and now we’re ready for a family. It’s unconventional, but that’s us.”

“Unconventional,” Stephen echoed.

I started to look at this like something that could be real, so I sat back in my chair and leveled them with a look. “What do you do for a living?”

Stephen leaned back in his chair as well. “We’re both doctors.”

“What kind of doctors?” I asked.

“I’m a cardiovascular surgeon, and Colette is a neurosurgeon.”

My brows raised, impressed. “Wow.”

Colette smiled. “We met in med school – Johns Hopkins – but did our residencies in different parts of the country, me in New York and Stephen at Cleveland Clinic. It wasn’t until we both accepted positions here in North Carolina that we spoke again.”

Stephen chuckled. “Like fate.”

“Why North Carolina? Why not somewhere better?” I asked.

“I’m from here,” Colette answered. “And I always thought Stephen was still hung up on me and followed me here.”

They both laughed, and I let myself giggle as well. Stephen raised his hands a bit. “I didn’t. Raleigh was updating their surgery wing and offered me a position. Colette being there was just an added bonus.”

“You guys seem really lucky,” I said, feeling a little sad. “Are you sure you want to adopt a teenager to come and mess up your life?”

“Yes,” Colette said without missing a beat. “We could use a new challenge. We’ll be retiring soon, that’s why we moved back to Luxington, and our home feels too empty.”

I nodded, not sure how to respond. I could feel myself making the room fill with awkwardness, but Stephen sat forward again just as I was about to get up and excuse myself.

“What do you like to do, Penelope?”

I thought over his question for a moment, then settled on the answer that felt the easiest. “I don’t know, really. I like school. I think I want to be a teacher when I grow up. I’ve always felt like teachers understood me better than my classmates.”

“Why is that?” Colette asked.

I shrugged. “It’s not easy making friends as the weird kid who lives in a foster home. I usually just stick to myself, I guess.”

“Maybe you’re just too mature for them,” Colette suggested.

“Maybe.” I shrugged again, feeling exposed.

“So, what do you say, Penelope? Do you want to become a part of our family?” Stephen asked, making my head snap up in surprise. I didn’t expect this today – or ever, really – and it didn’t feel real. But as I moved my gaze between them, their positive and loving energy almost spread across the room into me, giving me the confidence to answer.

“I think I do, yeah,” I said quietly. “Only if you want me.”

Colette leaned across the table, reaching a hand out to me and resting it atop one of my own. Her skin was soft and warm, and I didn’t feel like pulling away, which was a good sign. “Let’s get you home, then.”

I didn’t know how much of a home they would provide for me. For the first time in my life I had somewhere that was mine, somewhere that I could be myself, somewhere I felt safe.

I think that’s the most beautiful thing about being adopted at an older age, the fact that for so much of my life I felt unsafe, not cared for and tossed aside, and I was suddenly taught how to accept love and give it back.

Luxington became home. Luxington taught me how to be a real person, and for the first time, I had a family. I met cousins and grandparents, family friends, and local people who grew to recognize me as Colette and Stephen’s daughter. It was weird, but it was exactly what I needed and wanted all along.

Mom and dad and daughter, we grew to be best friends. They taught me to laugh, to love, to drive, to surf, and to breathe for the first fucking time.

I went to the same school for longer than a year, which I had never done before. I made friends that lasted, and I found favorite places I became a regular at.

I had money. I had new clothes, a cell phone, trinkets, and personal items to decorate my own room.

I had people who held me accountable for my actions, people who boosted me up when I needed it, who gave me endless amounts of comfort and love. I stopped wondering why my birth parents had gotten rid of me, stopped giving a shit about them. I didn’t need them or whatever answers they could give me. I had parents, Colette and Stephen Leyton, and they were all I needed.