Текст книги "Slow Twitch"
Автор книги: Лиз Реинхардт
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Текущая страница: 3 (всего у книги 22 страниц)
He was as big as a damn grizzly bear. He had Cadence’s green eyes, but, other than that, he was all bushy red-blonde hair, like a gigantic Viking. He stood with his arms crossed and watched us work for a while. Then he said, “Good job, guys. Will, when this batch is done, you’re free to go. Brian, come and help Will finish. Saxon, you come with me.”
He didn’t look back to see if I followed him, but I did. ‘Cause he scared the shit out of me, though I didn’t like admitting it.
I followed him all the way to a little back room, and I was hoping he didn’t plan on beating my ass in, because there was no escaping. At all.
He sat behind a neat desk in a big leather chair and nodded for me to sit across from him. “Did your father explain what you’re going to do here?”
I shrugged. “Work, I guess.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Call me old-fashioned, but I expect younger people to call me ‘sir’ when they address me.” His voice was like the voices of the guys they always use as the scary military ops leaders in movies.
“Work, I guess. Sir,” I ground out, keeping my mind focused on the small fortune that saying ‘sir’ was going to get me.
“Yes.” He steepled his fingers like some kingpin and nodded. “We’re open six days a week, Tuesday to Sunday. You’ll have Mondays off, but those will be spent running Great-Aunt Helene’s errands with her. You’ll have access to her car to drive her. You will take her wherever she needs or wants to go, and that will last all day Monday. Clear?”
“Yes.” He glared at me. “Sir.”
“Here, at Tony’s, you’ll start as a dishwasher. But there’s room for you to move up. There are better jobs here, but every single person starts as a dishwasher, at least for one shift. I think it’s important to know what the most menial laborer is doing. It helps foster respect among the workers. Your shift will be closing, so you won’t have to come in until five, and you’ll stay until around midnight. My daughter, Pamela will drive you home with some other workers every night. Do you have any questions?”
“Do I get paid? Sir.”
“You do.” Tony’s mouth finally curved into a smile. His eyes were all sparkly, like a wolf that just saw a fat deer wander into its path. “But that money goes directly into Aunt Helene’s bank account. Room and board, of course. You’ll get your lump if you last the summer, won’t you?”
I stood then. “Yes.” I grinned. “Sir.”
He stood too, stuck his hand out and we shook. He was trying as hard as he could to break my hand. I had to blink hard to keep my goddamn eyes from tearing.
“Good night son. Good job today.”
That was out of fucking left field.
“Thanks. Sir.”
I walked out to the kitchen, and Will showed me a bin where I could throw my apron. I washed my arms and asked for Pamela.
I was pointed in the direction of a fairly beat-up black Jetta. A tall girl with reddish hair and eyes like Cadence’s was leaned against the driver’s door, talking on a cell phone. There was a boy, maybe fifteen, playing with the dials on the stereo, which was pulsing with some kind of rap. He had Tony’s coloring and looked about as tall as his dad, but a good two hundred pounds lighter, and Tony was no fat ass. And there was Cadence herself, counting a thick stack of what looked like twenties. Holy motherload.
I walked up to the car. Cadence looked at me, her eyes narrowed, and she turned to Pamela.
“Crack head’s here!” she called. Pamela slid her phone into her pocket and climbed in the driver’s seat.
“Get in!” Pamela leaned out the driver’s window and waved for me to get in.
I slid in the back seat, next to Cadence. She didn’t even look over at me.
“I thought you lived a few blocks away.” My voice sounded overloud in the ridiculously small car.
Pamela looked at me in the rearview mirror and smiled. It might have been the first real smile I’d seen all day, and I’d be lying if I said it didn’t make my heart jump a little. This job was turning me into a fucking pussy.
“We do. Live close. But it’s late, and I don’t get to drive much, so Dad humors me. How was your day?”
I was a little shocked by her friendliness. Cadence rolled her eyes and leaned forward. “Don’t engage the druggie,” she said to her sister. “He’s a lowlife.”
Pamela smiled at Cadence indulgently. “She’s mean, right? So, how was your day?”
“Okay,” I lied. “Dishwashing sucks.”
“Seriously.” The boy laughed and a full mouth of metal glinted. “I’m Jimmy.”
“Hey, man,” I said, and we shook hands. “Nice to meet you. You dishwash, too?”
He laughed like a donkey braying. “I’m a slave. I do whatever my mom tells me to.”
“Your mom?” Obviously there was a mom. I just hadn’t met her yet.
The car got quiet. Pamela looked at me. “Our dad, it seems like he runs the show. But our mother is the real muscle. Don’t mess with her. Do what she says. Always. I’m not kidding. And don’t ever backtalk her. Ever.” The car stayed ominously quiet.
“Um, okay.” Weird! “So she’s really scarier than your dad?” I asked.
“My dad is Mr. Fucking Rogers next to her,” Cadence quipped. “She had a day off today, so she’ll be in tomorrow. And she’ll be ready to meet you.”
That made every one of them laugh like a bunch of lunatic hyenas. I felt a little chill on the back of my neck. Good God, what the hell was I in for? Suddenly the car lurched to a stop in front of a narrow, dingy row-house type building, depressing and dilapidated.
“This is your place, Saxon.” Pamela tossed me another sugar-sweet smile, and, I’ll admit, I melted. “Do you need a ride in tomorrow?”
“Do you mind?”
“No problem. Be ready by four thirty. I’ll swing by.” One more time, that awesome smile. “Have a good night.”
I paused and smiled back at her. “Thanks, Pamela. You guys, too. Good night.” My manners may have been a little rusty, but I had them.
I took a long look at the house, and it was faintly familiar. My mom and Jake’s used to drag our asses here when we were just kids and they liked to party too long and hard for any normal babysitter’s hours. Aunt Helene was sweet and old and always had lots of cookies. Like a grandmother type, but a hell of a lot better. Well, a hell of a lot better if the only grandma-type you had to compare her to was Mama D. The place was definitely pretty run down since the last time I saw it, and that was saying something, since it was always a shithole.
I hadn’t seen Aunt Helene in years, and I wondered why she was putting me up. Money, probably. Everything in my family went back to money. I would bet she was getting some kind of addition to her stipend. Plus my ass was responsible to drive her around, so there was that. Well, maybe she still made fucking cookies. I wasn’t a total asshole. Even I liked cookies.
I walked up to the door quietly and let myself in. It wasn’t locked or anything. The kitchen was dirty yellow. The light fixture flickered and there was a note on the old avocado-colored fridge in chicken scratch.
Dear Saxon,
There is a plate for you in the stove.
Love, Aunt Helene
I felt a weird twinge when I read that note. I opened the stove, which was on warm, and saw a plate with meatloaf, carrots, and mashed potatoes. Jackpot.
It occurred to me then that I hadn’t eaten a thing all day, though I’d been at a restaurant. I figured I was probably entitled to things like meals and breaks, but that was all something I could figure out another day. I took the plate to a small table covered in a dingy plastic tablecloth that looked like it was for Christmas or something. I opened the fridge and found a twelve pack of Dr. Pepper, unopened. I wondered if Aunt Helene had picked it up because I was coming. It was a weird thought, and one I didn’t dwell on for too long. I grabbed a soda and sat down in the flickering light to eat. When I was done, I put the plate in the sink, but that felt kind of dick, so I washed it and my fork and left them on the counter. Aunt Helene had been cool enough to leave me dinner; I wasn’t going to make her clean up after me.
I walked down the hall and saw Aunt Helene’s room. She was snuggled in her bed like a wrinkly little doll. There was a tiny bathroom next to her room, where I noticed she had put my toothbrush out, and then what I guessed was my room. It was dark and small, but the old twin bed was made with scratchy cotton/poly sheets in boy blue. It’s not like I had tohave silk sheets or anything. It’s just that I’d always hadsilk sheets. And they were damn comfortable.
I sat on the creaky little bed, then looked around the room. Weird. There was a tall dresser. When I opened the drawers, I saw that all of my clothes had been put away. There really wasn’t much besides the bed and the dresser, one little window with aluminum blinds over it, and a mirror on the tiny closet door. A shithole, but a clean, neat shithole. It could be a lot worse.
I should have been dead on my feet, but for some reason, I felt buzzed. I wanted to talk to someone, but it was almost two in the morning. Like it made a fucking difference. If it had been six at night I still would have had no one to talk to.
Then, suddenly, I remembered Brenna Blixen. Lovely, smart Blix across the Atlantic and a good five hours ahead of me. That put her right around seven in the morning, and I knew she would be up. I punched in her number. She picked up on the third ring.
“Hello?” I could hear her breathing hard.
“Run, Forrest, run.”
“Saxon!”
I felt a good, calm glow at her excitement. In a world of haters, here was one person who loved me, even if she knew what a rotten apple I was.
“How’s Ireland? Let me guess. Green and wet?”
She laughed, a happy sound that made me smile. She had a great laugh. “You got it. And I’ll tell you what. I know why Ireland doesn’t have any kick ass runners. Who could run on slimy, mossy cobblestone? I almost busted my ass three times.”
“Don’t do that.” I lay back on my bed and let the image of her lovely backside take away some of the day’s pain. “That ass is too fine to get busted. How’s your nerd class going?”
“Lots of Joyce,” she griped. “But I’m writing my bildungsroman.”
“Really?” I drawled, grinning. “You’re not even seventeen. Don’t you think you have a few more formative years ahead of you?”
She laughed again. “Seriously. But that’s the assignment, so I have to give it a try,” she said. “So how’s work? God, that’s a question I never imagined I’d be asking you.”
Now I laughed. “Well, it’s shitty. The people all know my drug-dealing past, so I’m referred to as ‘Crackhead,’ officially. My bosses are Scary and Crazy Bitch Scarier, apparently, and their daughter is hot, but probably wants to stick a kitchen knife through my heart.”
“Maybe you should write a novel about it when you’re done,” Brenna mused. I thought about it for a minute, but she obviously interpreted my silence as evidence that she had my feelings hurt or something. Good lord, I know I’ve been a fucking cry-ass lately, but I’m not that soft. “I’m just kidding, Saxon,” she said all gently.
“Blix, come on. You’re not going to hurt my feelings.” I remembered how it felt to lay my head in her lap and let her brush her fingers over my hair. I imagined what it would be like to do that again. Then I shook myself out of that train of thought. She wasn’t mine. She really wasn’t mine. She was Jake’s, and even this call was just me bullshitting myself.
“I worry about you,” she said, her voice wavery with emotion. “I think working might be good for you. And don’t worry about the other people there. You’ll grow on them.” Again that laugh. “You’re obnoxious, but you have an unmistakable charm.”
“Thanks.” I closed my eyes and exhaled slowly. “Look, I know you have to finish your run before your depressing nerd class, so I’ll let you go. I just needed a sympathetic ear to bitch into.”
“Well, I’m here. Anytime,” she said earnestly. “Take care of yourself, Saxon.”
“Will do. You do the same.” And we clicked off. It was like severing the last connection to any person who gave a shit about me. I looked at my hand, holding my cell, and the big, silvery scar where I had sliced myself open to become Jake’s blood brother. Which was pretty unnecessary, since we’ve been blood brothers since he was born. Not that I’d been a very good one.
I lay down on my hard mattress and started counting off things in my life that I had fucked up. It was better than sheep, and there wound up being so many things that I was asleep before I knew it, a deep, mercifully dreamless sleep.
Then next morning I woke up to the clatter of pans and the smell of bacon. It was eight o’clock. Aunt Helene must have been making breakfast. I got in the shower and washed with her Dove soap and Suave berry-smelling shampoo and conditioner. I brushed my teeth with her gritty baking soda toothpaste and got dressed in my little closet of a room. I did make my bed and left my dirty laundry in the basket. She didn’t need to pick up after me like I was some little kid.
I hadn’t seen my Aunt Helene since before I learned to ride a bike, but my memories of her were all good. I ducked into the kitchen, and she cried out like her lost kid had just come back from the dead.
“Saxon! Oh, Saxon.” She came at me with her old, flubbery arms open. She crushed me in a tight hug. Granted it was a weird little hug, since she came up to just over my bellybutton. “Look at you!” she cried. “So handsome! So handsome. And strong. Come and sit. You must be hungry, and I made you a big breakfast.”
She wasn’t kidding. Little, tanned, wrinkled Aunt Helene scooped so much food on my plate, I could have eaten for three days. She sat with me, but she only drank a cup of creamy coffee with lots of sugar, like a kid.
“So, what is your work like?” She watched me with her bright eyes.
“Shitty,” I said around a mouthful of perfectly cooked eggs over easy. I washed it down with what had to be fresh-squeezed orange juice. “Sorry. I mean it’s hard work. But I’ll be here ‘til four thirty every day, so I’ll mostly only waste my nights there.”
She patted my hand. “Erikson is a fair man. And his wife? She’s firm, but fair also. You will do well working for them.” She beamed at me, so I made my mouth smile back at her. She was a nice woman, and nice was becoming a hot commodity in my life as it currently stood.
“So, what do you do all day, Aunt Helene?” I asked while she cleared my plate.
“Oh, it’s too boring for a man!” she cried. “Just cleaning up, gardening, cooking. You should go out, find some fun! A handsome devil like you should have a few girls around. Am I right?”
I grinned. “Give me a little time. Let me help though. I like to keep busy.” Wow, how full of shit was I? But this place was a dump. She needed help.
“Well,” she said carefully. “The Erikson boy was going to help do my gutters, but they had to fire a few kids, so he’s been really busy at the diner. Maybe…”
I didn’t have a damn clue how the hell to clean a gutter. But I had an iPhone and it had access to Google.
“I’m on it.” I went outside with my phone in hand.
One ladder with rotten rungs, two near slips off the roof, three tons of fermenting leaves, and four hours later I was covered in scum, panting for breath, and smelled like I had just climbed out of a toilet bowl in a White Castle.
“Why do leaves smell like ass?” I griped, shaking my arms off. And it would have seriously screwed up my mood for the day, except that Aunt Helene was clucking around me, worried about my filthy self and telling me how she’d fried some kind of crazy Polish cookie and that I should get right in the shower.
And it felt good to have someone give a shit about me.
I took a shower and ate some knock-you-off-your-ass fantastic cookies and took a nap, and then it was time to go. Pamela was in the driveway, waving at Aunt Helene and accepting a plastic baggie full of cookies. Jimmy yelled thank you, Cadence waved, and then we were off. The car stayed weirdly quiet with all three of them eating cookies.
“You’re so lucky!” Jimmy wiped crumbs off of his chin. “Your aunt is so nice and she makes the best food.”
Pamela’s smile showed her perfect white teeth. “Seriously, dude. You have it made.”
Cadence glared, nibbled on a cookie, then rolled her eyes at me. “It’s not like he deserves it.”
And I might have agreed. If I didn’t have remnants of gutter sludge under my finger nails. And a mental list of shit I had to pick up from a hardware store. Because Aunt Helene needed my help, so I’d give it to her.
And it hit me then, that maybe I was pretty fucking lucky.
Chapter Three
Jake
When I first saw my dad in the flesh, it was like looking at myself, but from the future.
Gerald Maclean looked just like me, and it occurred to me that fate had been kind of screwed up in that respect. Saxon was his legitimate son, the son of the rich, perfect wife his family had pretty much expected him to marry. But Saxon was as dark as his mother, with that straight, shiny black hair and eyes that were brown-black too. Then there was me, the result of a fling with a girl from the wrong side of the tracks, and I wound up looking so much like my dad there was no denying that I was his.
Even if I wanted to.
Which I did, pretty quickly.
My girlfriend, Brenna, who was incredibly smart and amazing, didn’t know her birth father, and I knew it was irritating her that I wanted her to know more about him. But she was totally misunderstanding why. It really opened your eyes to see where you came from, and how little it really mattered.
I wanted her to see that because I thought she was still a little shallow about things like how you were raised and how much school you went to and what other people thought about you. Her mom had a lot to do with that. Her mom got herself an education and social status and all that late in life, so she hated any reminder of a time when she didn’t have all of it. And she wanted Brenna to have a totally different experience. Like, specifically, she wanted her to marry right, the right kind of person.
Just like my dad’s family wanted for him.
And look how that all turned out.
My dad showed up at my step-dad’s house in an early 70’s model Mustang that was cherry red with an engine that roared so loud the vibrations alone could give you chills. My step-dad was out, bowling, and I was glad. Because he drove a beat up old Ford. Maybe he would have had money for a better car, but he was busy spending what he brought in raising a kid. Who wasn’t even his.
“Hey.” I threw my stuff in the back seat. My dad stared at me. He had that kind of teary look like he wanted to hug me. Oh God.
“Jake.” His voice came out a little scratchy. “I’ve been waiting a long time to meet you.”
It was a lame thing to say. It wouldn’t be the last lame thing my dad said to me.
“Well, I’ve been right here for the last seventeen years.” I flicked my thumb at the beat-up house I’d lived in all my life. “And Saxon’s been ten minutes away.”
I had a love/hate thing going with Saxon, but he was still technically my brother, and I had a feeling a lot of his fucked-up bullshit could have been avoided if our dad bothered to stick around.
“I made a lot of mistakes.” He shook his head in what I knew was supposed to be a regretful way, but it felt like watching a crappy made-for-TV movie.
I knew what my next line was supposed to be. I was supposed to say something reassuring. Like, Well, you’re here now. Or, We all make mistakes, Dad. But all I could think was, Why would my mom have had her heart wrapped around such an obvious asshole?
“Yeah,” I finally said. “You did. Ready to go?”
We climbed into the car and he chuckled. “You’re a straight shooter, son. Just like your mother.”
I think that was supposed to make me feel better, but it made me clench my fists to keep from beating the crap out of my own flesh-and-blood father. I just nodded. He pulled out and we drove silently for a while. I snuck a look at him, and it was just strange how much he looked like me. Or how much I looked like him, I guessed. Same weird gray eyes, same brown hair. Hell, we even had the same turned eye tooth.
“Why didn’t you get braces?” I asked suddenly.
“Why do you ask?” He glanced over from behind expensive douchey Ray-Bans.
“You come from big time money. And we have the same twisted-out tooth. I would have had that fixed if I were you.”
He smiled. “Why didn’t you get braces?”
“Because my step-father works in a damn pharmaceutical factory.” The words hammered out like a blunt punch. “And his medical package is a big piece of shit.” I knew it was weird that I would even know about medical packages, but my step-dad had always been honest about why he couldn’t do more for me, why we had only the basics at best.
“That’s all going to change now, son.” Gerald’s voice came out pretty pious for a guy who skipped seventeen years of his son’s life and drove a car that cost about twice what my step-father earned in one year at work.
I just kept my mouth shut and thought about Brenna. She would have been gone for a few weeks at her Irish camp anyway, but it sucked to be away from her. In the summer. When we should have been having a good time together. Specifically on my truck’s big bench seat.
Bren was so damn pretty it still freaked me out a little. She was also really smart, like she devoured books in a few hours. She was a great artist. And she was sexy as hell. I’d been with a lot of girls over the years, and no one had ever managed to turn me on the way Brenna could. Just thinking about her was threatening to give me a boner, so I turned my attention to the radio.
My dad had all of the ‘cool’ stations pre-programmed into his radio. I had to flip through to find a classic rock station.
“Good choice, Jake.” Like I was a dog who caught a ball he tossed.
I sank into my seat and closed my eyes, doing that pretend sleeping thing that I always thought was such a classic dickhead teenager move. But I was feeling a lot like a dickhead teenager, and I didn’t mind playing the part. Eventually my fake sleep turned real, and before I knew it, my dad was shaking my arm.
“Wake up, Jake.” His smile was so disgustingly cheesy, it could have come in a can. “You’re home.”
I knew he wanted those words to mean something. Like, This is your real home, and you’re finally able to be here and enjoy it.But I didn’t acknowledge that bullshit. This was no more my home than my step-dad’s run-down ranch.
I didn’t really have one.
Yet.
My plan, long term, was to make my own home. One filled with people I chose. I had spent my entire childhood waiting for someone to give a crap and make me a nice place, but it never happened. So here I was.
The house stood fortress-colossal, like the kind you see in movies that everyone pretends regular poor guys live in. I mean, really poor guys in the movies get trailers with hubcaps on the sides, but every regular guy in any movie has a two-story brick monstrosity with a big front porch and shiny wood floors and at least one huge fireplace.
This was that kind of house, just add a story or two and roughly seventeen fireplaces. Even my guest room had one. And my own porch. That overlooked a lake. That my family didn’t own exclusively, but apparently owned part of. The furniture was old and expensive, and there were vases of real flowers everywhere and all kinds of valuable little pieces of crap set out to make it look nice.
I wasn’t so much of a bumpkin that I didn’t know what nice stuff was like. But it was one thing to see it in movies and pictures. It was a totally different thing to bump into antiques every time you tried to turn around. Dad showed me my room and told me we’d be eating dinner in forty minutes. I opened my bag and put my stuff away, glad that Brenna helped me dress up my sad-ass wardrobe.
Brenna always looked like she just jumped out of the pages of some high-class fashion magazine. Which was so intimidating until you got to know her. Because she was funny and sweet, and even though she loved clothes, she had no clue what a complete knockout she was. Anyway, with her help, my clothes were nice enough that I didn’t have to feel embarrassed.
Even as that thought crossed my mind, I was pissed. Brenna was worried I would change, and I told her there was no way. But here I was, one hour in this fancy, wallpapered, decked-out room, and I was already glad that the tag inside my shirt said Banana Republic. It was pathetic.
I wanted to call Brenna, but the time difference meant it was almost eleven at night in Ireland, and I didn’t want to bug her. She’d just got there, and I knew she had lots of work to do with her writing. So I lay back on my bed and thought.
Which is not something I’d ever had a lot of time to do. I’d always been busy. When I was young, I was busy taking care of things that a normal mom and dad would have done, since I didn’t have that kind of normal. When I got older, I was busy partying and making chaos with Saxon. When I outgrew that, I got busy working hard, then busier getting Brenna to say yes to dating me. I’d never had a lot of down time.
And I’d never had a vacation. This was all kind of new and weird. After a while I got up and washed my face in the little boat-decorated bathroom that linked to my room. That seemed to be another thing if you had a lot of money. No one wanted to use the same bathroom. Every room had its own, and there were three more for guests. It was like they were petrified to admit that there was shit in the world or that they made any of it.
I was laughing at my own thoughts when I heard a knock on my door. I expected my dad but was surprised to see a girl. Right around my age, cute and red-haired.
“Hey.” She smiled, her teeth perfect and white. She had dark eyes that looked strange since she was so light; light hair, light skin, even blonde eyebrows. Her lashes probably would have been light too, but she had makeup on, so they looked black.
“Hey.” I walked over to her and stuck my hand out. “Jake Kelly.”
She stuck hers out and shook. “I know. Everyone does. I’m Caroline Morgenstern.” She looked around my room, then walked in and peered out the window, acting like she owned the place. “They must like you. This is the best guest room by far.”
“Why would you say that?” Really, they all looked the same to me; kind of like they came from a magazine, and all with the same lame boat theme.
“The view.” She cocked one hip on the windowsill and gazed out. “You get a view of the lake and trees. And a good one. See that house?”
She pointed to a gigantic white mansion.
“Yeah.”
“That’s my family’s. We’re neighbors.” When she smiled at me, it was the slow, sexy smile I’d seen on girls’ faces way too many times, and it freaked me out.
“That’s nice. I have to go eat dinner soon, so, I’d love to talk, but–”
“We’re eating together.” Her voice was light and confident. “The families.”
Only I’m pretty sure she meant ‘The Families.’ “What does that mean? The Families? Are you my cousin or something?”
She wrinkled her nose. “No. Thank God. I’m not really a kissing cousins type, you know. The families are the Macleans, the Morgensterns, the Kicklighters and the Coopersmiths. Our families are some of the oldest on the East coast. Haven’t they drilled this into your head?” Before I could explain, she popped her hand over her mouth like she was really worried about offending me. “Oh, I forgot. You’re the–”
“Bastard.” A tiny blaze of anger lit me up. If there was one thing I couldn’t stand it was an innocent act. Just say what you wanted to say if you were going to open your big mouth at all. But I knew how to play it cool. “I’m starved. So, let’s eat.”
I had tried to give Caroline a pretty clear brush off, but I realized too late that was probably the worst thing I could have done. I’d met a few girls like her. Slumbunnieswas what Saxon and I called them. They were rich, bored girls usually visiting some relative in Sussex County who decided to slum it with some bad-ass country kids. They were always the most wild, the most willing to get in bed with you and get freaky, the ones who’d drink or snort or shoot whatever there was. Definitely not my bag, but Saxon had been with a few. Of course, technically Saxon was whatever the male version of a slumbunnywas.
Caroline smiled at me with that glint of a challenge I’d seen so many times in Saxon’s eyes, and I knew I was in deep whether I liked it or not. She curled her fingers around my arm when we walked down to dinner, and everyone at the table looked up and glowed like we were the sweetest couple they’d ever seen. They all shouted out their welcome to me. It was pretty overwhelming. Every solitary person got introduced to me, but I couldn’t remember a single name.
There were about seven courses and it was pretty fancy, but I didn’t worry about what fork to use or what to do or any of that crap. Brenna and I had eaten at some swank places, and she’d always just rolled her eyes and told me to relax when I got nervous, so I figured I’d take her advice. I ate with whatever fork or spoon was nearest my hand, and I didn’t talk with my mouth full or put my elbows on the table, but other than that, I wasn’t minding any p’s or q’s.
“So, Jake, dear, what colleges are you looking at?” asked the silver-haired woman across from me. My grandmother. She had dark red fingernails and a pretty, too-young face. I figured she’d probably had plastic surgery, but not the kind that made women look like crazy lion-women hybrids. I couldn’t imagine her kissing booboos or passing out cookies, but she looked fairly nice.
“To tell you the truth, I hadn’t thought about it much.” I put down my fork and tried not to bug out when every person at the table stopped talking and looked my way. “My finances weren’t the best, and I figured I would do two years at the community college and move on to Rutgers maybe. If my grades were good enough.” Brenna promised to help me with my academic work if I went.
The table went quiet.
“Rutgers?” My grandma’s voice questioned what I said, not too snotty, but not nice, either. “The state school?”
“Yes, ma’am.” My ears burned, so I knew they were bright pink, and I hated feeling like everyone looked my way and thought, ‘Stupid.’“It’s been around since the late 1700’s. I’m sure you know it.” I was aware I might come off as a simpleton, but I wasn’t, and I knew a barb when one hit.
