I walked into the garage to find a wide eyed Zac looking at the contents of my hands.
“Why did you bring home two bricks?” he asked me.
“To plant flowers in,” I answered him, while mentally adding Don’t notice the obvious or anything.(they were the kind with two holes in them)
“Where did you get them?”
“Ralph and Cyndi’s garage sale. They only cost me a buck-for both of them!”
“You bought two bricks!?” he exclaimed.
“Yeah, so?”
“Why didn’t you just steal them? For God’s sake, you stole a refrigerator and you can’t steal a brick!”
“Because I have no emotional attachment with Sears. But I like Ralph and Cyndi.”
Zac just shook his head. Go figure.
I was laying next to Zac in my bed, when the phone rang. My mom was like, never home, always working, trying to support herself and me, or something like that, and my dad didn’t live with us anyway, he was dead, so Zac and I did it at my house a lot.
I picked it up, fully expecting it to be Mom, with one of her little, ‘Sorry Hon, won’t be home for dinner, heat something up for yourself,’ calls, that I received a lot. I was really quite the chef by now.
I picked it up to hear my mom’s voice, like I had expected. But what she said surprised me. A lot.
“Hey, Sweetie, I’m not going to be home for a while. About a month, actually. I’ve been called away on an urgent business trip. It’s going to take me a while. I’ll explain it to you later. Very complex. Anyway, I want you to fix yourself dinner tonight, then call your Aunt Catherine. Just say that I was called away suddenly and that you need to stay with her. Her phone number is 343-6237. You can stay with her for a while. I’ll be home, uh, well, not soon, but I’ll miss you.”
“Uh, who’s Aunt Catherine?”
“Why, my mother’s sister, Catherine. You were named after her.”
“Uh, my full name’s Caitlyn, isn’t it?”
“Well, it’s close enough to Catherine. I’ve gotta go now. See yah soon, well, not really, but, uh, you get it. Love yah, bye.”
“Bye.” I hung up with my mom.
“Well, that was unexpected,” I muttered to myself.
Then, turning to Zac, “My mom’s out of town. I’m supposed to stay with my Great Aunt Catherine, who I didn’t know I had.”
“Uh, oh. I wonder if she’s really strict and won’t let you hang out with guys?” Zac wondered out loud.
“No, Honey!” I explained. “She doesn’t know I’m supposed to stay with her! I’m not going. I’m gonna be on my own for, like, about a month. This is gonna rule!”
“Whoa! My woman’s gonna have her own place! This will rule!” he exclaimed, suddenly excited beyond belief. “I gotta use yer phone!”
“No! No parties! No one knows I’m here by myself, is that clear?”
“I was gonna call my mom.”
“Oh.”
He picked up the phone and dialled his phone number. “Mom?” he asked after a while. “Well, put her on, you buttmunch!”
“Mom?” he asked once again.
“This is Zac.”
“What do you mean!? I’m your son. The third one. I’m blonde. I look like the that other one.”
“Yeah, the blonde one with the blue eyes.”
“No, that’s not Isaac’s girlfriend!”
“No, he’s not your daughter either! That’s Taylor, your second son!”
“Yeah, him!”
“Okay, you remember me now.”
“Well, I want to spend the night at someone’s house tonight.”
“Yah know, where you sleep at someone else’s house.”
“No, that’s Jessica’s job.”
“Mom, that’s Tay and Ike’s nick name for me, not the family dog!”
“Uh, yeah.”
“Probably, I mean, what do you think?”
“Really? Cool! I’ll do that! See yah later, Mom!”
I trailed into the kitchen, tired beyond belief. I had had a long night. A really long night. As in no sleep, thanks to Caleb and Kate’s bed hitting the wall. God, did they have to go at it all night? Seriously. Did they ever get enough? Sam and I only did it, like, once a night, and we only did it for, like, five minutes. Caleb was so inconsiderate.
I sat down at the bar. Sydney was on the other side. She looked chipper. Like she had gotten all four hours last night. she only needed that much sleep. But she seemed to get a lot more if she could. That girl was asleep constantly, but she could go forever without it.
She was messed up when it came to sleeping. She had messed up dreams, and she could never sleep. Sometimes. Other times, she just go right to sleep. And she can sleep through anything. And anywhere. She prefers a big, cleared off floor, to a bed, couch or anything else. She had a bed, but she didn’t use it that often. She slept in bath tubs, she slept on benches. She slept anywhere. One time, she asked if she could go to the restroom in Math class, her least favourite subject, and one of the three we had together, and never came back. I found out later that she had fallen asleep on the narrow wooden bench in the restroom. She was just wacked out.
“Hey,” she greeted me. She quickly poured me a cup of coffee. She put seven packets of sugar in it, but left the cream out.
She set it down in front of me. I looked at her strangely, “Sydney, I don’t like coffee. You know that.”
“Whatever,” she dismissed it. She quickly replaced it with a glass of OJ, and downed the coffee herself.
“Uh, you don’t like coffee either,” I reminded her.
“Oh yeah!” she exclaimed, as if she had forgotten something unimportant, not one of her own major personal preferences.
I shook my head, and went back to my OJ. I didn’t like OJ. But I wasn’t about to complain. Why did we have all that nasty crap around there anyway? No one liked it. Not Sydney, not me, not Caleb, not Kate, not the sibs, not the rest of the crowd. It was just messed up. Sydney’s personal theory was that Caleb bought them to look mature. I wasn’t exactly sure what I thought.
Soon Sam came down stairs, also looking like she had been up for hours. Damn her. She sat down and started sipping at the OJ that Sydney set in front of her.
Quite a few more people joined us, and soon the bar was taken up, the kitchen table filled, both the couches in the closest parlour filled, and people were standing. Soon Caleb and Kate were the only one’s not there. I bet I know why.
“Dana, why haven’t you broke up with Ike yet?” I asked Dana while we were just about to start one of our little rendezvous in the tree house...again. We did it a lot now.
“I don’t want to hurt the guy, I’m, like, one of the first girls he’s dated in a long time. He’ll get bored with me after a while and then I’ll break up with him.”
“I know, it’s just, I well...”
“Well what?”
“I feel weird screwing the same girl my brother is screwing.”
“I’m not doing it with Isaac!”
“Oh, okay.”
Then we did it.
Zac looked over at me, a gleam in his eyes.
“She says I can stay here as long as I want as long as I go to school every day, and I don’t break the law!” he exclaimed.
“What the hell!”
“Uh, she’s not too bright. I’m sure you’ve noticed by now.”
“Well, I guess I have, but, well, that’s just messed up!”
The gleam returned to Zac’s eyes. “I know!”
We did it again. Then we fell asleep. Then we woke up. We did it again. Fell asleep. Woke up. Did it again. We just kept doing that. It lasted for about three days. Then we got too hungry to stay in bed any longer and went down to the local sub shop. Then we started our little routine again. Yep, we were definitely living together now. I liked it.
Chapter Nine Back to the Chapters
