Guilt (9 page)

The question was asked after a particularly long silence, which jolted me from my wandering state-of-mind, and caused me to knock my fork against my water glass. Lil rolled her eyes.

"Yeah," I answered, "she called me just last week. We made our arrangements."

"What arrangements?" She asked.

"Oh, I thought you knew," I replied. "I'm going to visit Laura and her family for Christmas." Mom's expression turned a little pained, so I had to explain why I decided to spend the holiday with my best friend instead of my family. "I haven't seen her new baby yet. And it's been almost two years since I've seen
her
."

Mom's disappointment lessened, but it didn't go away. "Your father and I were discussing coming out to see you for Christmas."

I glanced at Dad. His expression told me that their discussion had been more Mom's idea, and he had just gone along with it. Well, I wasn't about to change my plans. I was spending Thanksgiving with them, wasn't I? I deserved to see Laura for the next holiday.

"Sorry," I shrugged.

"Oh, that's okay." Mom said. "We'll just wait and come out in March. That's when Jake has spring break. He can come, too." She looked at Jacob, expecting to see a ecstatic response, but he just sat there staring at his plate.

Mom pursued him for the reaction she wanted. "Jake, wouldn't you like to go visit Aunt Claire with us?"

He continued with his standard apathy towards her.

"It's nice and warm, and you can wear your shorts there in March," she persisted.

"Sure," he muttered at last, while maintaining complete interest in the mash potato sculpture he had been creating for the last twenty minutes.

"Maybe your aunt will take you to the beach and you can swim in the ocean." She so badly wanted him to show some enthusiasm for the idea.

"Mom says Aunt Claire is a bitch," he stated flatly.

"Lillian Marie!" Mom cried, and all the adults at the table shot glares at Lil, myself included.

My sister only shrugged, and responded with "kids say the darnedest things." I noticed the smiled she suppressed as she shoveled a forkful of peas in her mouth.

* * *

After we stuffed ourselves and lounged about in our dining room chairs for nearly a half an hour, sipping our water and making very little eye contact with each other, Mom got up and began to clear the plates. Lil and I both resumed our roles in the old childhood chores by helping her to move the table things into the kitchen and store away the leftovers.

Then we took up washing the dishes, Mom at the sink, me drying and Lil putting the plates and glasses back in the cupboards or on the hutch. That's when we were most in harmony, when we worked as an assembly line to complete a mundane chore. No glares were passed, no sneers or crude comments interrupted the peace.

When the work was done, Mom started up the coffee pot so that we could commence with the dessert. Even though we were still stuffed, I had every intention of cramming a sizeable piece of Mom's pumpkin pie down my throat. It wasn't very often that I had this kind of opportunity to indulge in Mom's baking.

As I got the pie out of the refrigerator to warm it up in the oven, Mom resumed her efforts at dialogue. "So, Claire, what do you intend to do during your next few days home?"

I ignored the fact that she still referred to this place as 'home' in context to me. This may have been where I grew up, but I made my home a thousand miles away. Such reminders would only wound her, so I just replied, "I thought I'd visit some old haunts, see the sites."

"Oh," Mom took earnest interest. "Are there any people – any friends – you plan to see?"

Mom knew I had very few acquaintances in high school. Why would she think that there might be anyone here I'd want to see? She never understood why I was a loner, and what must have been wrong with me to make me so antisocial. She probably though it was her fault. Me, I think I was just innately reserved.

To make her feel a little better about the success of her mothering skills, I replied, "Yeah, there is one friend I might go have coffee with." Please leave it at that, please leave it at that.

"Really," she perked up. "Who?" Damn.

"Ah, someone I went to high school with." Well, actually, I didn't know him in high school, but Mom didn't need to know that.

"Yes?" Then, she prompted, "Who?"

Oh, just tell her already. "Kain Murphy," I said.

"Kain Murphy," Lil blurted out.

I glared at her, unsure of the meaning of her retort.

She laughed. "Why on earth are you going out with him?"

"I'm not 'going out' with him." I defended. "We might just meet up for coffee or something."

"Who's Kain Murphy?" Mom asked, out-of-the-loop.

Lil huffed. "A real nut job."

"Wait a minute," I became offended for the guy. "Didn't
you
have a crush on him in high school?"

"Yeah," she said, "'til I heard that he used to run around his farm doing chores in his mother's clothing."

I bit my lower lip to stifle a laugh, but snorted anyways, vaguely remembering my first conversation with Corry in art class. Obviously, he had taken my advice on how to get Lil off his back about dating his older brother. For some reason, that little inside joke that I shared with a long dead teenage boy made me feel just a tad better. One point for my evil sister Lil, and now one point for me.

Thanksgiving just improved a little bit.

Chapter Twelve

The table in the back corner provided the best seat in the cafeteria, but none of the other students realized that. It wasn't a very socially central spot, making it the most likely reason that it was available every day. As out-of-the-way as it was, it afforded an unobstructed view through a row of windows, which looked out onto the woods that lined the football fields. The aspect changed daily throughout the fall season while the leaves turned faster and faster from bright greens to burnt oranges, canary yellows, fiery reds and lackluster browns. The barren scene of the pre-winter hibernation even held a drab charm.

Still more fascinating was the view of the inside of the cafeteria. It lent itself to the study of human nature – specifically the nature of high school students. They divided and segregated themselves and each other. And those divisions weren't as simple as mainstream teen movies made them out to be. The groupings didn't simply stop at cheerleaders and jocks, smart kids and nerds. There was a finer subculture involved.

There
were
still the jocks, which consisted of athletic girls as well as boys. Many of those girls found their femininity to be new and awkward, and would dress in jerseys and sweatpants. Other jock girls found womanhood to be less gawky, but didn't make a big deal out of their breasts and curves. The largest number of them, though, knew full well that they had a body to show off, evident by the hip hugging jeans and baby Ts that barely met with the school dress code.

The jock boys could be subdivided into the good boys and the bad boys, the humble and genuine or the haughty and artificial. Some of them just wanted to play the game, no matter what it was. Some of them played for the fame that came with success. They were a combination of jokesters, achievers and washouts.

The cheerleaders – okay, maybe they were still just the quintessencial cheerleaders. It may seem unkind not to distinguish more intricate natures amongst them, but, after all, they really worked hard for personality conformity. Other than those that could be distinguished as benign and those who were callous, their attempted imitation of each other precluded any isolation from the standard of their group.

But then, there were the well-dressed business-like students. They were the ones that ran the school newspaper and the student counsel. Success for them was not an option. It was a complete and irrefutable expectation. They were bursting at the seams to grow up and make a difference. And they were oblivious of the likelihood of their own worldly insignificance.

Then, there was the nerd classification. The well-off nerds were labeled as geeks, while the poor nerds were typically regarded as rejects. Some marched in the school band, sang in the chorus or acted in the drama club, others steered clear of extra-curricular activities all together.

Most of them distanced themselves from the other main student classifications, either out of intimidation or aversion. Occasionally, though, a member of this group realized that they were classified beyond their control, and they'd try to breakout. They might try out for cheerleading or run for student council. Sometimes it worked, and the student changed his or her image, gaining some friends and losing others. Sometimes their attempts backfired, burning and scarring them into remaining in their determined cast system.

The population of Goths was particularly high, but harder to define. The term 'Goth' was a loose label for a broad subculture. Black clothes and pale skin, dark hair and ashen expressions abounded; but were they a fashion statement or a lifestyle choice? Were they attracted to the dismal? Or were they bleak romantics?

More and more divisions and subdivisions could be identified and defined the closer this isolated conglomerate of youth was studied. There were gamers and bookworms, the overwhelmed and the underwhelmed, the complacent and the outlandish. The dissection and categorization got so detailed and minute that it became difficult to really designate any individuals to one true set.

But Claire tried every day.

One particular subject held her attention on an afternoon in late November when a cold hard rain blurred the outside landscape through the windows. A rather pretty looking reject girl in a faded sweatshirt and worn jeans sat beside a friend of similar appearance, concentrating on her fish sticks, while a sophomore boy (a jock that Claire happened not to be too fond of, herself) flicked wads of straw paper into her hair.

Claire could tell that the girl knew what was going on, but the poor thing tried to ignore it. Rather than start a confrontation, she hoped that the boy would stop after he didn't get a reaction from her. He and his equally cruel friend continued to snicker as they flicked the paper wads into her mousy curls, and they cracked up at the notion that the girl had no idea about the prank they were pulling on her. Claire felt indignant about the disrespect, but what could she do? It wasn't exactly her dilemma to resolve.

"Hey," a voice came from behind her. Claire jumped as Corry took the chair to her left. "Oops, startled you. Sorry."

"That's alright. I just don't . . . umm. . ." Change the subject. "What are you doing here? I didn't know you had lunch at this time."

"Ah, I don't." He broke into a guilty grin. "I have study hall in Ms. Hollisburg's room; but she's too busy planning her wedding to take attendance."

Claire didn't have any classes with Ms. Hollisburg, but had heard the rumors about her flighty state of matrimonial bliss. The young teacher was too preoccupied with practicing her impending new signature to conduct a class – or even preside over a study hall, apparently.

"Yeah, the other day she actually asked us our opinions on two different shades of purple for her place settings. Frankly, they were both ugly." He smiled, but his eyes didn't appear to reflect the expression on his lips.

Claire asked him what made him decide to skip something as easy as a study hall. He told her that he couldn't stand the long silence of the class period any more, with nothing but calculus problems to solve. There was no way to get out of the building doors unseen, so he decided to hide out in the open, in the lunch room.