Celia I walked to the mailbox outside of the little campsite that had grown over the last couple of decades. This is where my family lived, where I’d grown up. And in that mailbox, there should be a letter. A letter that would bring us all hope. Hope that we would one day get out of this dry little patch of the Iowa countryside and into something better.

I glanced back at the collection of small trailers, all older than most of the inhabitants inside of them. This is what my family had been reduced to.

It was all because of my dad. If that letter held the news I hoped for, I could help to make it all right again, for all of us.

Not that it was really my dad’s fault, what happened. He’d been the unlucky child to inherit the gene for Huntington’s Disease that his dad passed to him. Out of two sisters and three brothers, my dad was the only one to lose the game of Russian Roulette his parents had unwittingly played.

He and my granddad became ill at the same time. That’s when the family found out about the illness that would take both of them from us when I was five years old.

My dad was thirty-one when he and my mom had me. Well into the range when the disease starts to show up. His first symptoms were uncontrolled movements, tics, and jerks that confused us all. When my granddad developed the same symptoms, they went to the doctor.

Over the next few years, the terrible disease brought impairments that affected both men horribly. My granddad’s gait became unbalanced, and his eyes would move involuntarily. Dad lost the ability to speak or swallow. He died from pneumonia eventually, and I think my granddad died of a broken heart. He’d given his son the awful disease, although he hadn’t done it on purpose.

My granddad had been adopted. He hadn’t known his genetic history when he married and had children. Like a good dad, however, he felt the full weight of the burden he’d passed on.

The family had pooled their funds together, to try to find treatment for my granddad and dad. It had bankrupted them all because there was no cure for the disease. Each of my dad’s siblings had taken on the burden of caring not only for their dad but for their brother too. We stuck together like that.

When the disease was discovered, I was tested for the gene that caused the gruesome death that all people with the disease faced. I was lucky. I dodged that bullet and didn’t carry the gene. I didn’t know it at the time, but I learned about it when I got a little older.

We lost two family members that year, but all I can remember is dad went away, and we all moved into these old trailers my granddad had kept on some property he owned.

He’d worked hard all his life, and he took over the business my Nan’s dad had passed on to her when he died. They’d had to sell the trailer park when my granddad became ill, and the houses were all mortgaged. This property was some my granddad bought to put the old trailers on. They were too old for him to rent out anymore, but he didn’t have anything he could do with them, so he’d parked them up here. The family all moved in not long after my granddad’s funeral, and we were still here, after 13 years.

Now, I had a chance to make it all right. To make it better. And to get us out of here. If only that mailbox held the right letter. I’d worked hard throughout my high school education, and I’d stayed focused on my goals. I’d earned enough scholarships that most of my education would be paid for. Not all of it, but most. I’d have to make up the rest somehow when I graduate next month.

I’d waited a long time for this letter, and it was finally time. It was the fifth day of April, surely that had been long enough for the letter to have come from New York.

I heard the squeak of a rusted swing that hung from the only tree on the property. The family had planted plenty, but the darned things just wouldn’t grow out here. We couldn’t even get grass to grow on the property, so everything was always dusty, no matter how many times you might swipe a cloth over things. I glanced back again, at the six trailers that were faded to a light shade of the color that had once been bright.

My Nan’s trailer was pink now. Uncle Mark’s was a light beige. Uncle Allan’s was almost mint green, while Aunt Irene’s was a light blue. Aunt Jenna and my momma’s trailers were almost completely white, but there was a hint of the light gray they used to be.

They all worked and they all did their best in the down-graded life they’d found themselves in. It had taken a long time to pay off the medical bills and the funeral bills. The last bill for Dad’s medical care would be paid off this summer. Then the rest would be used to send me off to school.

I opened the flap on the gunmetal gray mailbox and looked inside. There was a large stack of letters, but there on top, was the one I’d waited so long for. Ernie, our mailman, knew I’d been waiting on it and he’d put it there on top for me.

I didn’t do that whole movie thing, where people stare at the letter, anxious about what was inside. I didn’t carry it in the house to share the news with the family. Nope, I opened that sucker up, skimmed the lines for the word I wanted to see and fell to the ground.

“You have been accepted…”

That was all I needed to see. I’d been accepted, and relief flooded through me as tears of joy began to run down my face. I could finally do something that would help us all. I was going to NYU. I was going to study pre-med, and if it all worked out, I’d get a master’s degree in neuroscience. I’d be able to lift my family out of this poverty, and into a new life. A life where I might be able to find a cure for the disease that had caused us all this misery.

Celia

It was my last night in the trailer that I’d called home for far too long. I didn’t celebrate, not the way most kids my age would. There were no parties, no tearful goodbyes planned. Just me, on my own, the same as always. Nothing new really.

I spent most nights at home like this. I fantasized about all the boys I’d meet when I finally made it to New York. During the day, I studied and worked my ass off, but at night, alone in my room, I let my fantasies run wild.

I’d dream about sitting on a bench, the air cool and damp, the threat of snow just enough to make you want to curl up with your crush and cuddle as leaves fell around you. All the magic of autumn would combine as I made out with the all-star football hunk or even the all-star geek if there was such a thing. He’d snuggle up to me and whisper to me about how very much he wanted me.

He wouldn’t want the hot cheerleader who managed to fuck the whole football team just to get a piece of the star player. He wouldn’t want the hot sorority leader either; the popular one that every guy wanted. Oh no. He wanted only me.

Plain, simple Celia O’Donnell, the one that no one noticed back in high school. But now, at the university I’d dreamed that I’d get into, this magical, mythical guy would notice me, and he would want me, desperately.  

I would look at him and think that I was the luckiest girl alive and that I’d give him what I’d saved for so long. We would date for six months before I gave him my most special gift and college life would be pretty cool.

Reality infiltrated as a sharp gust blew against a loose edge of the paneling on the trailer. I was so damn anxious. I’d worked like a crazy person to not only get into NYU but since I’d known that my mom couldn’t afford it, so I’d done everything I could to get scholarships and financial aid to pay for it and to make it all possible.

I wanted a boyfriend more than anything as I set out on this new phase of my life. I was eighteen years old and I’d never had a boyfriend. It was ridiculous, really, but I’d been far too busy with work and keeping my grades up, while I begged for scholarships to have anything to do with boys. Now, I’d get the education I wanted and a boyfriend. I couldn’t wait for the sun to rise so I could get on my way.

I pretended now, as I’d done so often when I’d come home to an empty trailer. Mom worked all the hours that she could to provide for me and to try to help me save up for the years of education that I now faced.  

A wave of guilt flushed over my skin as I thought about the fantasy man I longed for. Mom was at work to feed me and send me to school and all I could do was think about a stupid boy. Maybe I should be focused on what classes I had to take and how I’d get around in a place that was so completely unfamiliar, instead of on having sex with a fantasy guy, I told myself.

Tomorrow, I’d leave Mom, my hometown, and I’d go out into the world on my own. An adult to most of the world, but still little more than a teenager. I’d be left to make my own decisions, my own mistakes, and the only person I could blame would be myself. Mom would be back here, counting on me to succeed. I couldn’t let her down.

Still, it was nice to think about the possibilities. Maybe I would have a nice, young, hot professor, I thought. The thrill of the naughty idea made me bite my lip with glee. More than likely all my professors would be old men and women, with less sex appeal than a potato that had sprouted. That made me laugh, and I rolled over in bed to stare up at the faded glow in the dark circles on my bedroom ceiling.

Mom and I had put those up there when I was five, and after all these years, there was still a little bit of glow left. I sighed because I knew the day I’d worked so hard for was just a few hours away. I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t concentrate on my fantasy boyfriend or any of the million other thoughts that flitted through my mind.

I pushed the sheet down from my body, the night was still too hot for even that light cover in late August. I’d get up, watch some TV or read a book, but I was desperate to sleep. I wanted the hours to disappear as I dreamed of what was to come. I wanted tomorrow to be now.

Throughout my high school career, I’d been the studious one, the one that spent more time asleep, so she could be fresh for the next day of class, instead of up hours early to work on her hair and makeup. I wasn’t advertising for a teenaged boyfriend to marry and have kids with before we’d even hit the 20-year mark. I had bigger plans than that.

I wanted a career that meant I didn’t have to rely on anyone else, ever. I wanted a homemade of bricks and mortar, not cheap lumber and thin aluminum. I wanted a bathroom where the floor didn’t sag and a kitchen that had appliances that worked. I wanted a life that wasn’t complicated with struggles. I wanted the life Mom couldn’t give me even though she had tried.

And while I worked at it, I’d finally let myself look at boys. I’d finally find a real boyfriend, not the fantasy kind I’d dreamed about for so long. I’d be wanted, loved, adored and it would be perfect.