Back Talk

Ch8: More Back-Stories

"...and then I hit my head real hard on the concrete. So Beck came over and helped me into Jordan's car and now I'm here" I explained to Iris. I was spilling my guts to her about my life, about my late mother, Chet, and Shannon.

"So, why didn't you just confide in your teachers or friends?" she asked

"Hmmm," I had never really thought about that. "Probably because I repelled people like I was a giant purple dinosaur. No one really liked me because I only had 3 shirts and 2 pairs of pants, which in their book was 'like totally not cool'." I said doing my best impression of a popular girl at school.

We both started cracking up, laughing at the misfortune soon to come for the popular girls when they realized that after they left high-school, no one would worship them anymore. We just sat there, laughing for what seemed like hours.

It was the best time I've had in a long time.

"Hey!" I exclaimed suddenly.

"What?"

"Do you want to run up my step-moms credit-card bill?"

"What kind of a question is that? OF COURSE I want to run up you step-mom's credit-card bill!" She replied scooting next to me on the couch.

"Awesome!" I said opening up my now torn up ratty bad and pulled out Chet's laptop. I typed in Shannon's username and password I had created at McDonald's and the screen blinked 'Welcome Shannon'

"Ooooh! Buy everything of Jackass you can find on there." she squealed pointing to the search box.

"What’s that?" I asked

"Trust me, it's awesome." She smiled taking the laptop off my lap and onto her's. She then quickly proceeded to buy every season, movie, and unrated versions of everything Jackass. After a few minutes of waiting for everything to download, she plugged one end of a cable into my laptop and another into her TV.

The TV was suddenly aglow with 6 guys shooting paint balls at a idiot dressed as a duck who was just catapulted off a enormous bag full of air and into a murky pond.

And just like that we both started laugh again

After a few hours of watching my new favorite show Iris spoke up over my laughter.

"Do you wanna invite Beck over?" she asked picking up one of those old rotary-dial cherry red phones from her coffee table and placing it on her lap.

"I don't care." I replied leaning back in the couch, catching my breath.

"Kay," she pressed the red phone to her ear and spun her fingers around in the little wheel. It was one of those old phones with a rotary dial.

"Hey, Beck it's Irina, yeah me and Amanda are watching Jack-Ass and we were wondering if you wanted to come over and chill with us... cool, bye." she put the phone back onto her table and leaned back with me.

"What'd he say?" I asked nonchalantly.

"He'll be down in 5 minutes." she replied right before we both burst into a fit of laughter because some guy had fallen out of a tree and into a big pile of snow.

"So enough about me," I said pressing the pause button on the laptop "what's your story?"

Irina flipped a little curl out of her eye, and turned to look at me. "I don't usually tell people about my past, but seeing as how you’re my new roomie- I'll make an exception."

She looked down at her feet and scrunched up her toes into the chocolate carpet. She seemed as if she was contemplating whether this was a good idea or not.