I'll Be Here

I’ve spent hours stalking his profile page, waiting for some sort of update, refreshing my computer screen so often that it’s become a weird sort of tick.  How sad is that?
                I am killing myself.    
    My friends think I should just go to prom stag but I don’t want to.  I want to be here.  Well, not here here , on all fours in the dirt with a three-pronged gardening rake in my right hand and an assignment to “decimate the weed population.”  What I mean is that I want to be alone—away from society.  I’m not fit for human companionship.  My family puts up with it because they are legally bound to me for another twenty days until my eighteenth birthday.  And then they’ll probably hand me a sack on a stick and tell me to get the hell out of town. 
    I’m miserable but the thing is that I want to be miserable.  It’s kind of nice.  Like a comfortable sweater that you put on around the house because it feels so good but wouldn’t want to be caught dead wearing it in public.
                “Did you get the northwest corner yet?
                I look up, blinking away a drop of salty sweat.  “Ummm…. which way is northwest?”
                Mom is kneeling beside me.  Her wide brimmed hat is bright green like a ginormous scoop of pistachio ice cream haloed around her face.  She points.
                “Then, yes, I did that corner and I’m working my way in this direction towards the house.”  My head sweeps the space. 
                She nods and then she’s talking about trimming azaleas and whether or not this is the right light for zinnia and about planting milkweed to lure in butterflies.  She turns to me smiling, and then the smile disappears. 
    “Willow.”  She says my name.  Just my name. 
                “Julie,” I say back with what my mother would call “a tone.” 
                I dislike the way that she’s looking at me.  I dislike the way that she turns back to the earth without another word but with this pursed up look on her face like I’ve intentionally hurt her.  I dislike the feeling it unlodges in my stomach. 
                I hold my breath waiting for her to say something, but she doesn’t.  That would be too easy. 
    “What.” I speak to the silence.  It should have a question mark attached to it, but the word comes out of my mouth hard and wrong.
                Mom stops working.  She sits back on her heels and looks at me from under the shade of the hat.  Her garden tool catches a sparkle of sunshine and throws it back at me. 
    “You must hate me,” she says, rolling back even farther on her feet.  I think that she’ll stand up but she remains down in a crouch, her gloved fingers grazing the dirt. 
                I’m stupefied.  Numb really. 
                I don’t know how to respond.  My first impulse is to get up and run away, but I don’t move.  I just go on kneeling in the moist dirt, my right hand wrapped around the rubberized handle of the hand rake. 
                “Well, you must,” she continues as if I’ve spoken, lifting her face up toward the sky so that the shadows fall away from her features.  Her eyes are wet. 
    “Why else would you shut me out and treat me like an annoying gnat buzzing around your head?  Should I have just died two years ago?  Is that it?  Would that have made you happy?” 
                The words are daggers thrown at me from close proximity.  They land in the dirt all around, caging me in.  For a few moments, I stare down at my hands, my feet.  I concentrate on the upturned earth and in particular a smallish earth worm blindly trying to burrow a tunnel back to safety. 
                “Look at me, Willow.” 
    Slowly, I meet my mother’s measuring gaze.  I hate that she’s crying over me.  I hate that I can’t talk to her anymore.  I hate the tears that are slowly slipping down my cheeks right now.  But I don’t hate her.      
    “I don’t hate you,” I say, shaking my head.  
                Mom wipes underneath her eyes and turns away to where Aaron and Jake have abandoned their duties and are throwing a ball back and forth instead. 
    I want my mother to turn back to me so that I can see her face. 
    I want to know what she’s thinking.
                I want to say, I’m