My Sins

It’s a sunny and bright morning, I woke up in my lone apartment. It has been fourteen years since my father’s crimes. Seven years since I packed everything I could fit in a backpack and bought a bus ticket from California to Pennsylvania on my eighteenth birthday. I needed a new beginning. I even changed my last name from Loone to Lee. I needed to try and be happy away from my mother and my sister like our. My sister, Dana, and I still talk occasionally. My cell phone rings, and I begrudgingly roll over to answer it.

I do not even look at the caller id before I click the answer button and bring it to my ear.

“Happy Birthday!” Dana yells at me through the phone. “Thank you, thank you,” I grumble at her. I hear her exhale of smoke, followed by a long drag. “what’s the plan today little brother?” She askes casually. I hadn’t really thought about it. Birthdays stopped being important to me when my mother stopped celebrating it. “I’m working tonight,” I lied. “

“That’s too bad.” “Yea,” I agreed. Its not the first time I lied to Dana. No sense in worrying her needlessly if I can help it. “How’s Mom?” I ask, quick to change the subject. If Dana notices, she does not acknowledge it. “You know mom, “She says gently. “She’s gotten big into painting. She made the basement into a art studio.” “

“She any good?” “No, not at all. Its god awful but it keeps her happy,” Dana says. I can’t really imagine it, mom was never creative. “I got to go Dana, “I say, eager to end the conversation.

“Okay Eric. Happy 25th birthday,” She said. “Thanks. Bye Dana”