As Dirty As Toms

Chapter 3

Our house is like one of those shack-things you see out in the country. Looks like a clump of old wood on the outside but is actually kind of cute.

There aren't houses super close by, but you can see them from here. The term 'neighborhood' can be applied quite loosely to where we are. There are other houses out here as well, each on plots of land mapped out randomly. Some of the houses face each other but ours stands as if it's facing the wrong way. Towards nowhere. We hardly use the front door except to fetch the mail, and mostly use the side door. The back door is nonexistent since we extended our house last year so it leads into the house now.

Land plots out here were built strategically to make you feel like you have your own privacy but from the picket fence around our yard, the mailbox a couple yards away, AND then a driveway leading up to the house; in the distance you can see some of the actual suburbs, trees and bushes that snake through each of the idiotically-similar buildings. A house is not a home I guess.

I usually drive to get to town. Town is where the stores are. The fast food chains. The cinemas. The bars. It's actually quite urban and not that far away. But just being here, by our house and the houses near ours, you do feel like it all could be so much farther. And when your mind wanders, it is.

...

I'm no chicken, but I dart into the house faster than a cockroach scurring from the light. I'm almost to the door. The car door slams shut. My foot touches the stair and I jump over the last three and just as my two fingers wrap around the handle to the screen door, the muscles in my arm begin to pull back and-

"Jade."

I flinch and slowly retract my arm.

"Yes?" I reply shyly.
"What are you doing?"
I squeeze my eyes shut. Damn, I don't have an excuse saved. I spin on my heel to face him.

"I, um, was taking a look around the premises. Did you know we have mice?"

Chris's eyebrows shoot up.
"Well, no, I didn't know we had mice but apparently we have liars."

I roll my eyes.

"Get in the house, kiddo."

...

I find myself sitting at the dinning room table, only the light above me illuminating the darkness that surrounds me not unlike a makeshift interrogation room. You done goofed, Jay, you done goofed.

When Cal got home Chris told me to sit down until they had a chance to discuss things. I immediately felt bad for what I'd done the moment he walked in. Guilty even?
Something about today just felt different. Like I needed to be alone. I felt like no amount of air I breathed in would fill up my lungs if I couldn't be anywhere that wasn't around people. Like I would get sick if I even saw someone as far away as my eyes having to squint to see them.

I hoped for Cal to be home soon. Mostly so this could all be over with. Dinner probably wouldn't be cooked until later now, one hundred percent my fault, but as hungry as I was, (catching onto any of this sarcasm?) , I still just itched to be by myself somewhere. To think of anything. Anything that wasn't that night so long ago, because sometimes time doesn't do a good enough job of making the pain go away.

Cal's eyes were bloodshot and his clothes contained all sorts of grease stains from what I assumed was more than one shift with no breaks inbetween. Cal's eyes immediately meet mine after he pushed the door open. He stops mid-step a million questions on his lips. Chris enters from the hall behind me and answers him swiftly.

"She skipped school. "

Cal's lips press together in a hard line and he then gave me a tired look of "Why, Jay?"
I look down at the table in response.

"Right. " he says flatly, deciding the answer for himself. He walks past the table and nearly knocks my chair while he follows Chris down the hall. I know they've stepped into the kitchen when the light flips on. At first there's silence because I know they are saying hello, and then they start to whisper-talk.

For about ten minutes I hear hushed, harsh whispering and a couple of foot shufflings. I know that me skipping school was not something the two of them hadn't had to discuss with me before but it's never been the first day. They know exactly what this entails and they've never really had to address that with me.