Lola is Just Like Me

Chapter 04

The kitchen was spotless in the morning. My dad was already at the table with a cup of coffee in his hands. When he saw me come down the hallway, his face brightened up like it always did. I made a smile for him.

“Hey, kiddo! How’d you sleep?” Dad got up from the table and put his cup on the counter. The sour smell of alcohol was completely gone; the trash had been emptied and put outside. Marie’s cheating nature was well-served by her neatness.

“Alright, Dad.” I took a seat at the table as Lola came trotting out of my room. She sat down across from me, grinning at everything like she always did in the morning. She once said it was her “clean slate time.” Nobody had done anything to make her angry yet.

“Excited for school?” Dad joked.

“Sure am,” I said to him. I actually couldn’t care less whether I had school or not. “How’s work been?” I hated small talk. Or any talk at all, really. It was the pointless talk that really irritated me, though. Still, I did it.

“Oh, it’s fine. Tiring and kind of boring, but okay.”

“Ask him,” Lola said, “if he’s worked anything interesting.”

“Any interesting cases lately?” I asked. Dad kind of laughed.

“Well, we don’t get many ‘cases,’ at least not at my level work. And not here in Tigard. Most things that are actual ‘cases’ are open-and-close. But we do see some pretty amusing traffic tickets.” My dad liked to joke about his work, tell you it wasn’t really important. But when you’ve had your mother killed in the accident that scarred you forever, you held the speed limit in high regards. And then one day you passed by your dad helping someone deal with a minor accident, and you wondered why he didn’t talk about it. But you don’t know him so well, so you never asked. “What about you? Any interesting schoolwork?”

“No,” I laughed, “not really.”

“Tylar, today’s the day we get our replacement teacher in English II,” Lola said.

“Well, we’re getting a new teacher, Dad.” I had forgotten. I had never had a teacher be replaced in the middle of a school year. It was unusual, but Mr. Clarke was also an unusual man. He was old, in the latter bit of his seventies, and he had long-standing troubles with his heart. He had been talking about having to leave for treatments, but I never took it seriously.

“Really? Is Mr. Clarke leaving for Portland already?” Dad stuck his nose as far into town affairs as he could. As oblivious as he was to our family’s situation, I suppose he had to find something to make him feel lucid.

“Yeah, he said it’s his heart.” My dad nodded, a stern, focused look settling onto his face. It was quiet for a moment before Marie strolled into the room.

“Already made up for Derek,” Lola snapped. My step-mother patted my father’s shoulder as she passed. She immediately started rinsing Dad’s mug in the sink, wiping the counters, that sort of busy work that makes bad wives look good. They had some meaningless exchange before my father gathered his suitcase and jacket and left for the station. Then came that hilariously predictable question.

“How’d you sleep?” Marie asked, turning for moment, away from her work. I said nothing for a moment. I felt casual around her. “It sounded like you slept good,” she went on. “It was quiet.” I tried not to take that as an insult.

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Let’s leave.”

“I’m gonna go, Marie.”

The bus hadn’t arrived by the time we reached the stop. A sparse fog was stretched across the neighborhood, softening the light as it passed through the low-lying clouds.

“She has some nerve talking to us like that.”

“I hardly think she means it.” I leaned against the street’s stop sign, dropping my backpack and purse to the ground. Lola scoffed and made a face.

“You don’t think so? She’s shifty, Tylar. She’s weird. You know how she lies to your dad, goes behind his back. She’s no good. We have to watch out around her.”

“If you think so,” I said.

“Shh. Look who it is.” Lola pointed a red-tipped finger into the distance. Coming out of the fog was Trevor Cave.

“He never rides the bus,” I whispered, picking my things up. Ever since that day in elementary, he had been weird toward me. His eyes followed me the majority of the time we had in class together. He would sometimes greet me as I passed in the hallway, but I couldn’t bring myself to say anything to him. Something in me had grown close to fear. I turned and pretended not to care that Trevor was approaching, pretended that I was just nonchalantly watching the fog swirl, waiting on the bus. I heard his feet crunch on the grass, stopping next to me. Lola crept over to my other side, eyeballing the boy with curiosity.

“Hey,” he said. My mouth ran dry. I couldn’t speak to this boy. Any wrong move might convince him to dislike me, tempting him to tell everyone about my secret.

“Say something!”

“Oh. Hi.” I cleared my throat, and it sounded just as nervous as I really was.

“’I didn’t think you rode the bus.’”

“I didn’t think you rode the bus.” I forced myself to take a look at him. It was the first good look I’d had of the boy in years. I realized that he looked different from the others at school. But then again, I never really saw them, either.

“Oh, yeah,” he chuckled. “No, I don’t usually. My grandma’s car broke down, so I have to ride it today while it’s in the shop.” I nodded. What more could I do?

“He lives with his grandparents?” Lola said, walking over to Trevor, looking into his face and studying it. “He looks like the type of kid who would, now that I think about it.” I shuffled my feet, trying to distract myself. I was tempted to completely ignore him or even tell him to leave, but I couldn’t.

“I tried to tell her Pa and I could work on it together, but she wouldn’t have it.” Trevor gave another one of those light-hearted laughs that lightened the mood for a fraction of a second. I forced a one-syllable laugh to make him feel better. “You ride every day, don’t you?” he asked. Being asked a question, especially one like that, made me falter. I’m sure I made some “um” noises before I found my words.

“Oh, yeah. I do. Why do you ask?” I looked at him again, trying to be as natural as I could.

“We drive by every morning, and I see you standing out here.” He laughed again. I felt Lola’s irritation growing. He shouldn’t have said something like that.

“Good of you to notice something like that.” I realized too late that the words had slipped out. “I mean,” I stammered, “since we don’t talk often. You’re always really hospitable.” I cleared my throat again, and the boy laughed.

“Well, I kind of have to remember you,” Trevor remarked as the bus rolled up, out of the fog. It left me uncomfortable and astounded. The moment he turned his back, I looked over at Lola. Her jealousy was boiling over already. It was lucky that she had grown up a little.