Parker Lowell
Really, all I was doing was saying something for the sake of sound. None of us had said very much since Taylor had stopped crying in the parking lot of the hotel. None of us had really known what to say. Gina didn't even turn on the radio, as she normally would have, to fill the silence. It was definitely not one of the most comfortable situations I've ever been in, so I wanted it to end. Unfortunately, it wasn't going to be that easy.
Taylor nodded at my comment as he got out of the car with timidity as if he were a mouse surrendering himself to a cat. I noticed his red, tear-streaked face for the first time. He had kept it concealed by staring steadily out of the window the whole ride home.
"We're um, fixing up the porch," I said pointlessly. "That's why it looks like that."
"Oh?" he said absently.
"I hope you know that there's going to be a quiz later," I said.
He looked at me suddenly, seeming to snap out of whatever zone he had been dwlling in for the past hour and a half.
"Huh?"
I shook my head. "Nothing."
He nodded and looked back in the general direction of the house. He wasn't really seeing it.
"Look," I said, putting my hand on his shoulder, "it's okay." I don't know exactly what I was talking about, but it seemed to be the right thing to say. He nodded again, tears welling up in his eyes. "You know, keep nodding your head like that and your brain might fall out of your ear. I'd be careful."
He grinned for the first time since the day in Darien Lake.
"No, Parker, that's only you," Gina said, lifting suitcases out of the trunk of the car and pointedly setting them at our feet.
"Was you too a long time ago," I said, giving her a cocky smile.
"Good one," she said sarcastically.
I bent down and picked up two of the suitcases Taylor had brought along with him. I made a mental note of a few cracks I could make about the weight of the suitcases later, when things had lightened up a little bit.
"Don't worry, we're always like this," I said.
"Oh," he said.
I cleared my throat and led him up the stairs of the porch and into the house, noting with some amount of chagrin the dirty dishes still piled by the sink, left their since the day at Darien Lake.
I suddenly stopped short in the middle of the kitchen, causing Taylor to knock into me the slightest bit.
"What's wrong?" he asked anxiously, as if he were afraid that if he stepped the wrong way, the floor would open up and swallow him into a bottomless chasm.
"Sssh," I said, holding up my forefinger to indicate the need for his silence. "Five...four...three...two..."
All of a sudden, Gina came jogging into the house, the two lightest suitcases in her hands(I hope none of the females in the audience are offended if I take the time to roll my eyes and say, as usual) and, setting them down as carefully as was possible at her speed, went straight to our answering machine.
"One," I said as she pressed the button on it so as to collect messages. "It's a sort of, um, hobby for her, I guess. I'm ashamed to admit that I'm sort of the same way with e-mail."
"Ssh," Gina reprimanded me as she listened to her own voice on the machine telling people that we couldn't come to the phone right now and to leave a message after the beep. Pretty standard. I had suggested putting a recording of that part from the Sheryl Crow song "Changes" that goes, "Hello it's me, I'm not at home. If you'd like to reach me, leave me alone" on there, but Gina wouldn't go for it.
The next voice on the machine was a familiarly unpleasant one to me.
"Hey, Gi, it's me. Uh, you didn't show up at Turner's last night and I was just wondering why. Okay. Call me. Bye."
"Shit!" Gina swore rather vehemently.
"Who was that?" Taylor asked quietly.
"Lyle, Gina's doofus boyfriend," I said, rolling my eyes.
"He's not a doofus," Gina protested as the machine beeped again. I rolled my eyes at Taylor to indicate that he was and she was just in denial.
"Gina Christine Lowell, where the hell are you?!" came Rose's agitated voice. "We are absolutely buried in work and everyone's on the verge of quitting! You'd better get your butt in here soon or pray that you live to see the light of day again after the next time I see you. Oh, how's Parker?"
"That was Rose," I told Taylor before he could ask. "She's Gina's best friend, if you couldn't tell. Uh...She's also the mother of the redhead you were with at the concert."
"Theresa?" he said.
I nodded, surprised somehow that he knew her name.
"Hi...Uh, this is Theresa," came Theresa's voice as if on cue.
"Her," I said, pointing over my shoulder to the machine as if Theresa were standing in the room with us.
"Um, we're not quite sure what happened to you after the show, so we're...kind of worried. Call me when you get the chance."
"Parker, this is Leslie. It's now....six o'clock and it's clear that you're not coming in today..."
Leslie's voice was about to go on, but Gina scrunched up her nose and pressed the skip button.
"Blah blah blah," she mumbled.
"I told you I was going to get in trouble," I said.
She shrugged, not paying any attention to me.
"Come on," I said to Taylor, indicating the direction I was planning on heading in with a nod of my head. He nodded back, picking his suitcases back up. "This is my room," I said, stopping in front of the door that was right near the kitchen. "It's probably pretty messy, seeing as how I wasn't exactly planning on having visitors. I hope you don't mind."
He snorted. "It can't be half as bad as our bedroom is most of the time. My mother always makes lame comments about how it looks like a bomb has gone off or something."
"Gina's always saying how my room looks like where everything that's sucked into a black hole goes," I said, rolling my eyes.
"It's a little more original at least," he said, grinning.
I smiled and put my hand on the doorknob, taking a dramatic deep breath. I looked back at Taylor, my expression serious. "Brace yourself. You'll go in...but you may never come out."
He chuckled as I pushed the door open. I walked in ahead of him cautiously, hoping to spot anything I didn't want him to see and have the time to get rid of it before he saw it. Luckily, I had been fairly bored the morning we had gone to the concert and had had the time to clean my room a little bit. Lucky. And a littel bit creepy besides.
"This is my room," I repeated lamely, gesturing around at the dimly lit corner of the house.
I set down his suitcases in a random corner of the room. He did the same. As his gaze began to wander and occasionally stopped on certain objects in the room, I tried to follow what he was looking at. First my Beatles posters, then my bookshelf, and finally to the photographs I had hanging on the wall and sitting on my dresser.
"Who's this?" he asked, pointing to a picture of my friend Julian and I at eighth grade graduation, holding up our little certificates with pride.
"That's my best friend, Julian."
He nodded, his gaze moving to the photograph next to it.
"Girlfriend?" he said slyly, pointing to the picture.
I smiled and shook my head. "That's the daughter of Gina's last boyfriend, the one I told you about that day in the hotel room."
"Oh. Pretty."
He quickly moved on before I could comment back.
I turned away for a moment, waiting for him to find another picture to ask a question about. I found his curiosity flattering. No one that had ever entered my room asked about the pictures on my wall.
"Who's this?" he asked, pointing to a picture I had somehow managed to forget was even there. If I had known, I might have taken the time to hide it, knowing of the awkward silence that was going to ensue once I told him who it was.
"That's....that's us...," I said slowly, carefully.
The expected silence followed as a look of astonishment passed over his face.
"Uh, the computer is this way," I said, desperate to change the subject. "In case you wanted to e-mail your family."
"Could I?" he said, sounding uncomfortable.
"Yeah, sure. Come on," I said, once again leading the way.
I took him over to where our computer was, switched it on and logged onto the internet for him. Once he started typing, I decided to walk away and give him his privacy. I walked back into my room and began to do some extra straightening up. For the first time, the thought that my brother was, in a way, home, occurred to me. I didn't smile as I had always thought that I would.
Come on, you made it this far. You may as well tell me what you think! :-)
Index
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Five