Chloe pulled the small blue Neon into the driveway of her family’s old ranch home. Climbing out slowly, she stretched her legs and sighed, looking at the familiar surroundings. She had fully planned on spending the summer in her apartment by school, working the internship she had earned at the aquarium, and receiving credit for her degree in marine biology. Everything had been set. Unfortunately her plans were more than a little changed when her dad, Frank Hamilton, tore a ligament in his left ankle on the construction site he owned. She was called home to help around the house, and she quickly packed a few of her things to come.
She would have done anything for this family. Day in and day out she was thankful for all they had given her. When she was first found, the adoption agency was reluctant to offer any hope for her. Couples normally wanted infants, babies they could raise from the beginning. By some miracle, the Hamilton’s were different. They wanted a young girl, someone they could offer hope that missing to, not wanting them to grow up in an orphanage. What they found was a girl who remembered nothing of her past; they wouldn’t have even known her name if it wasn’t for the charm bracelet wrapped delicately around her left wrist. They took her in, instantly falling in love.
They had given her a life again. They had given her a little sister to strive to be a role model for. They had given her a family. She would have done anything for this family.
Picking up a large duffle bag in one hand, her purse and suitcase in the other, she shook her wrist to straighten out her bracelet and began walking to the door. She opened it to find the wonderful smells of her mom’s cooking filling the house.
“Mom,” she groaned, dumping her stuff in the doorway, “remind me why I don’t come home more often.”
“Cause you’re a very busy girl with a life of her own and a strange addiction to fast food,” the older woman with wispy blond hair smiled, pulling her daughter into a hug. “Now close that door up before you let all the cool air out. Your dad will have a fit.”
“It’s not even that hot out. Do we really need the air on?”
“It’s a luxury he worked hard for, and he fully intends on taking advantage of it while he can. Go say hi to your sister too. She’s been waiting on pins and needles all day for you to get here.”
“Traffic was bad,” she said lightly, walking down the hall where sounds of the television were coming. “Oh, Kat.”
“Chloe!” The young girl jumped up excitedly, purple tennis shoes running across cream carpet quickly to where she stood, two short blond braids bouncing behind her. “You’re home!”
Katherine jumped at Chloe, wrapping her arms and legs around her. “Oh God, Kat. You’re getting too big for this,” Chloe squealed, falling backwards to the couch.
“I am not,” she said stubbornly. “Besides, you’re strong. You can carry me.” She slid off of her sister and curled up next to her on the overstuffed sofa. “I’m so glad you’re home. Daddy’s so stressed out over his leg. He’s even making me get a job for the rest of the summer.”
“You’re fifteen. You can handle a job.”
“Like an actual job though, like with paychecks and everything.”
“No more babysitting?”
“No. I have an interview tomorrow at the gardening place down the street.”
“Oh, Mr. Luke is nice. You’ll love working for him. That was my first job, ya know.”
“Yeah, I know.”
Chloe looked over to see what her sister had been watching and was surprised to see MTV playing. “We got cable?”
“We’re gonna get rid of it though. They’re teasing me. They give me a month to get used to having it, then poof. Away it’s gonna go. Stupid leg...”
Chloe watched as a new video began playing, sending chills down her arms and neck. Kat looked at her carefully, before rubbing her sister’s arm. “Want us to turn the air off?”
“Eh, no. It’s nice in here. Just, uh, turn this show off.”
“You don’t like ‘NSync? I thought you did. You have their first CD, don’t you?”
“Yeah, but that one guy always gives me the creeps.”
“One guy? Who?”
“The one that used to have the curly hair.” She waited a second later, and his face appeared again. “Him.”
“Justin? Oh, he doesn’t give me the creeps. I think he looks hot.”
“I don’t know. I like their music and everything, but that one guy. He just...”
“Girls!” a call came from the kitchen. “Dinner’s ready. Come and get it!”
Kat grabbed the remote, turning the TV off, and began dancing around Chloe. “Sick and tired of hearing all these people talk about, what’s the deal with this pop life and when’s it gonna fade out...” She took her older sister’s hand and twirled around in a circle. “They’re in town this weekend, ya know.”
“Hi, Daddy,” Chloe said, leaning over to kiss the salt and pepper hairline of the man sitting at the table with one leg propped up on another chair.
“Hey, honey. I’m so glad you’re home.”
“Me too.”
“Yeah, so they’re in town this weekend,” Kat interrupted again. “I want tickets, but they’re so expensive this time, like, sixty some dollars.”
“They’re sold out too,” Mrs. Hamilton smiled, putting a pot of mashed potatoes on the checkered tablecloth.
“I’m gonna win tickets though. That’s what I’m doing tonight. 103.7 is giving them away. Good seats too.”
“Good luck.”
“What are your plans for tonight, Chlo’?”
“I’m probably gonna stop by Davey’s tonight. He’s got a group of people coming over.”
“Don’t be back too late.”
“I won’t,” she smiled, picking up her salad bowl and pouring Italian dressing over the green leaves.
“Can I come?” Kat asked hopefully.
“I thought you were winning tickets tonight?”
“Yeah, but I could always win them tomorrow.”
“No,” Mr. Hamilton said. “You have to get up early for your interview with Mr. Luke.”
“Besides, you’ll have your sister home for the rest of the summer, Kat. Soon you’ll be sick of her.”
“I never get sick of Chloe. She’s cooler than you two.”
“Hey, I can be cool.”
“Whatever, Mom.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow, and we’ll go out,” Chloe promised. “Okay?”
“Fine. Tell Dave I said hi. He’s so cute.”
“You think everyone’s cute.”
“Do not.”
“Do too.”
“I do not.”
“Girls,” a deep voice came from one end of the table.
“Sorry, Daddy,” they said in unison, before giggling softly, and pushing one another under the table.
It was a quarter to nine when Chloe was finally able to slip out of the house. It had taken her a bit longer than expected to get herself settled into her old room. She hadn’t brought that much home with her, but over the months her parents had begun storing various things they didn’t know what to do with in her closet. After going through all the boxes and finding a proper place to store them, she still had to take a shower to wash off some of the road weary from her long drive in, and rinse away those chills that were still with her. Add a hyper little sister who didn’t want to leave your side into the mix, and time tended to tick slower.
When she arrived at Dave’s apartment, there were a good ten people there. Some of them she considered ‘the gang’ while others were new faces. Dave quickly introduced her.
“Chlo-ster!” the stocky man bellowed from the doorway as it opened.
“Mr. Crocket!” she laughed, holding her arms open to him. He picked her off her feet easily, twirling her around in a hug. “Now just where is your ‘boon skin hat, Davey?”
“It’s being cleaned. Chewy tried to eat it,” he shrugged, glancing over to the oversized puppy happily jumping between people’s legs. “And how would my favorite person in the entire world be doing?”
“Oh, Kat’s great,” she smiled. “She wanted to come with me tonight, but the folks said no.”
“I see. I see. And Kat’s sister?”
“I am doing good. It’s good to be back home.”
“Great! We’re glad you’re back.” He grabbed her hand and pulled her to the living room where most had gathered, attention being drawn to him at his entrance. Dave was the guy who was always the student body president in high school, the guy who marched to a different beat than everyone else, but was respected for it, not looked down upon. He had just finished school, graduating with a masters in business management, which everyone knew he’d be successful at. One day he’d be the CEO of a huge company with thousands of people working for him, and he would know every single person’s name. That’s the way Dave was.
“Okay, guys. For those of you who don’t know, this beautiful little thing standing next to me is, unfortunately not my girlfriend, but the lovely Miss Chloe Hamilton. She is single, accepting phone numbers, and...” He picked a dark bottle off the counter and offered it to her.
“Davey, come on. You know I don’t touch the stuff.”
“And she will not be having any fun tonight, but don’t hold that against her.”
“You goon.” She pushed him half heartedly, and he was off on his way. After grabbing a Coke from the fridge, Chloe made her way over to the couch where she recognized two faces, Bonnie Davis and Jim Hay. They had gone to school together with Chloe and Dave, along with a few others present. Back then, they were high school sweethearts, and from the looks of the rock gleaming on Bonnie’s left ring finger, she guessed they were still madly in love.
“Bon, let me see,” Chloe smiled, holding her hand out. The bubbly red head extended her fingers, rocking them lightly so the diamond would pick up the light in the room. “It’s beautiful.”
“He finally dropped the question on the fourth of July,” she smiled widely.
“Romantic holiday,” she laughed. “It sure took you long enough, Jim.”
“Hey, I wanted to ask her back in senior year,” he defended, “but money for something like that takes awhile to save, ya know.”
“Understandable.”
“Have you met Adrian?” Bonnie asked, tapping the dark skinned man sitting behind her. “This is Jim’s best man.”
“Hey, Adrian. Nice to meet you.”
“Likewise. It’s Chloe, right?” he asked, shaking her hand firmly.
“Yes.”
“That was some introduction from Dave. You, uh, don’t drink?”
“No,” she shrugged uncomfortably for a second. “You never know what unwanted traits are going to pop up from the family tree.”
Jim and Bonnie smiled softly at her while Adrian continued talking. “Good deal,” he said, tilting his head back to take a last drink from his beer.
By the end of the hour, the last few people had arrived. It was a colorful mix of half tipsy people, most of which would be crashing somewhere on the floor that night. Chloe sat back and watched everyone, cheerfully carrying on about different things happening in their lives.
One woman named Lisa, a petite brunette, was beginning to talk about her three year old daughter Leslie. It amazed Chloe that some were at the stage of their lives where they were able to settle down and bring kids into the world, meanwhile, she could barely have a relationship that lasted longer than three months.
Lisa was commenting on how children were growing up today and how it was different from when they were younger. “The eighties was the greatest time to grow up,” she spouted. “Honestly, think about this for a moment. Toys back then were simpler. You didn’t need to be a rocket scientist to take something from its box. Television was so much more entertaining. You had your He-man and Shera, My Little Ponies, the Care Bears, Rainbow Brite...”
“G.I. Joe...” Dave added. “I remember watching that before school started in the morning while I was waiting for the bus.”
“Now they have stupid shows that, as a mother, it nauseates me to sit and watch even five minutes of it, let alone thirty. Barney? Teletubbies? Pokemon? It’s all trash. Give me Under the Umbrella Tree or Mr. Dress Up any day.”
“Do you guys remember skip-it’s?” Bonnie asked. “I had this neon pink one that I must have played with everyday after school until it cracked and the counter didn’t work.”
“No... What about, oh what were they called? Shrinky Dinks? When you colored them and put ‘em in the oven? We had so many of those lying around the house. Those were great. They got so tiny.”
“My older brother and I used to put the Shrinky Dinks in the middle of Spit Fire and knock ‘em down. It was like target practice,” Adrian laughed.
“You must have driven your parents crazy, Adrian.”
“Nah, they didn’t mind it too much, and when it got to a point where they did, they’d simply ship us off to Nana and Pop’s, and that’s when we broke out the Transformers.”
Chloe shifted in her chair, again uncomfortable at the topic at hand. She sat quietly racking her brain to come up with something, anything, that she could really contribute to this conversation. Nothing was coming to mind.
She remembered when she had first moved into the Hamilton home, when she met Dave, that he tried to fill her in on all the fun stuff she ‘had to have played with.’ Names to things sounded familiar. She had seen shows once in awhile on re-runs, but nothing was a memory she herself owned.
It never bothered her much. She had years to deal with not remembering simple things that most people took for granted. For the most part she was fine; she didn’t want to know. If the conversation had been about a few years later, when they were all pre-teens and the like, she could have come up with countless memories about trips to the pool park, going to the mall, or riding bikes down to the drug store at the corner of Main and Yorkshire.
“Uh, God,” Lisa said, interrupting her thoughts. “My parents were such pains. They wouldn’t let me do the simplest things. I really wanted to start wearing make-up when I was, like, eight. I know it’s young, but I didn’t care then. They just wouldn’t let me even try it. I got into my mom’s cosmetic bag one day... I was grounded for what seemed like forever.”
“But you eventually got over it, right?” Chloe asked.
“Eventually. I mean, in the long run, I started wearing make-up just to spite them, just to get a reaction. I just didn’t get them. Still don’t really. Parents are such odd creatures.”
“You are a parent, Lis,” Jim laughed.
“I know, but we know how to handle things because of how screwed up our parents were. I’ll let my daughter try on a little blush when she’s playing dress up. It’s not going to kill her, and it won’t send her to therapy for years either. There won’t be any resentment there.”
“So you’re saying that you had to go through years of therapy because your mom wouldn’t let you wear make-up?” Chloe spoke up, the conversation finally getting to her. “That’s a bit extreme, don’t you think?”
“No, that’s not what I’m...”
“I guess if you were going to waste your time spending years resenting your mother for something that retarded instead of concentrating on the more important things she most likely did for you, that’s up to you. You have to work with what you’re given. If you weren’t beat or abused or anything like that, you might as well go for the make-up.”
“Chloe,” Dave warned from his chair next to hers.
“Dave,” she warned back before continuing. “Sorry, Lisa. I’m just curious as to whether you think your daughter, now that she is allowed to wear make-up, liberated from the chains that bound you as a child, will still harbor resentment towards you for, say, making her eat broccoli, or maybe cause you want her to have a clean room? She may grow up a slob, knowing that is will get a rise out of you.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Lisa snapped, looking utterly insulted at Chloe.
“I was just curious about this whole resentment and wearing make-up thing, seeing as you spent years angry at your parents over it, and when, bringing up your mom, that’s one of the first memories that apparently came into your mind, or at least, the first that you brought up, not something about everything positive she ever did for you.”
“What? You don’t resent anything your parents did when you were little?”
Chloe stood up carefully, watching a dozen or so pairs of eyes looking upon her curiously. She sighed briefly before answering. “I don’t know my parents, at least not the ones I could resent anything for.”
Silence filled the small room as people looked around, unsure of what to do, say, or think. “Excuse me,” Chloe said, walking towards the door of Dave’s bedroom, where she was planning on getting some air on the balcony. Her lungs felt as if they were about to implode.
“She, uh, was adopted when she was eleven, didn’t remember a thing when she was found...” she heard Jim begin to explain.
“Doesn’t give her an excuse to act like a bitch,” Lisa snorted.
She closed the French doors behind her, taking in a chest full of clean air into her lungs, praying it would clear her fogged mind as well. A moment later a creak came from behind her, followed by the click of the lock.
“Don’t even think about lecturing me, Dave.”
“Chloe, what was with you in there?”
“What part of don’t didn’t you understand?” she asked, turning towards him slowly. He rose an eyebrow to her, asking for an explanation. “What!”
“You just went off on someone who you’ve known for...” He moved his shirt sleeve up to check his watch. “You’ve known Lisa for a little over an hour and suddenly you become the queen bitch of parenting?”
“Do not call me a bitch!”
“Okay, I know. I’m sorry. I probably should have steered the subject away from the throws of our childhoods, but I haven’t seen you react like that in ages.”
“It’s not my fault she spent her childhood hating her parents cause she wasn’t allowed to get all skanked out when she was eight and now thinks that letting her THREE year old wear make-up is going to solve the world’s problems. If anything, it’s gonna cause even more. That’s probably how I got here.”
“You think you ran away because your mom let you were lipstick while talking to your stuffed animals and serving them invisible tea?”
“Who’s to say I even had stuffed animals or a tea set?” she huffed, crossing her arms and turning to look at the city skyline before her.
“I think this needs to be added to the ‘Chloe Hamilton What If?’ list.”
“Davey...”
“Listen to me, honey,” he said, placing his large hands on either side of her shoulders and carefully turning her around to face him. “I know it’s uncomfortable for you to even think about what your life could have been like before you came here to us. I know you have more issues than the New York Times because of it.” Dave paused when she looked away from him stubbornly. He took her cheek in his hand and brought her eyes back to his carefully. “I know you wish at times that you could just be normal, just another kid who remembers getting baths with lots of bubbles and rubber duckies...”
“I do not.”
“You do, but that’s not who you are, and that’s what makes you so different and lucky enough to earn the title of my best friend.”
“I’m that lucky, huh?”
“You think I would put up with your shit otherwise?”
“I was hoping.”
“It’s getting late, it’s your first night home, and you had a long drive today.”
“I know.”
“Why don’t you call it a night?”
“I should apologize to Lisa.”
“She’s had a few too many glasses of wine tonight. She won’t even remember.”
“But I should still...”
“Just get some rest.”
Chloe let him lead her into the house again. She paused momentarily before sighing deeply. “Kat’s just now starting to wear make-up, Dave, and I swear to God it’s driving me insane. I’m convinced she’ll end up on the corner of Eight Mile and...”
“You’re little sister’s not going to become a hooker. She has you to look up to, to know what’s right, and she knows that you’ll kick the crap out of her if she ever takes advantage of her life.”
“I know.”
“Now, go home and go to bed.”
“You’re such a dad,” Chloe laughed, grabbing her purse off his bed and following him solemnly to the door, hoping nobody was noticing her leaving.
“I’ll call you soon, okay?”
“You better.”
“Tell everyone hi for me. Give Kat a hug too.”
“She’ll swoon.”
“Bye, honey,” he smiled, pulling her into a quick hug and placing a kiss on her forehead.
“Bye, Dave.” She waved good bye before turning the corner and slowly walking down the flight of stairs to her car. The drive back home was a quiet one. Chloe left her radio off and silently questioned herself. Dave had been right in the fact that she hadn’t reacted to anybody that way in awhile. The more she thought about it, the clearer it became that she had never sat there and gone off at someone for mentioning a simple childhood memory before. It had never bugged her before. There were no reasons for her behavior that she could come up with, other than those Dave had suggested: it was late, her first night home, and she had a long drive. In her mind those didn’t warrant anything. Nothing excused the ‘holier than thou’ attitude she had taken on, and she was now angry at herself.
“What’s with you, Hamilton?” she whispered to herself, meeting her own gaze sadly in the rear view mirror. “Why do you suddenly care?”