Boy Charming

Chapter Eight: Just A Misunderstanding?

We don’t really have a kitchen. My mom does all her cooking on a camping stove that runs on propane. We have a toaster oven but not a real oven like in real homes. There are cabinets for our dishes and cups, where I imagine the office “coffee area” once was.

It’s all open space here. There were cubicals that once ran along the opposite wall but those were taken out. Now we have a large living room / kitchen / dining room area. The only thing that seperates the ‘kitchen’ from the entire space is the crescent shaped “front desk” that we use as our kitchen island. The camping stove sits on this front desk and there are stools that run along it.

I really like our place. It could be in one of those home fashion magazines and win an award for design, then get the award taken away due to safety hazards.

There are two washrooms, a guys’ washroom and a girls’ washroom. The girls’ has a shower in it, I can’t imagine why an office building would need a shower, but it sure comes in handy for us.

I’ve imagined many different scenarios for what this space was used for in the past, especially my bedroom, the ‘corner office with a view’. Rich, business men, important managers, powerful CEOs must have once made important decisions in there, while looking down at the common folk on the street below, laughing to themselves at how rich they will become at the expense of these lowly conformists.

“Alanna,” my sister yells at me as I am passing the mashed potatoes during supper. “Malvin said he’d give you the story for our travel column this week!”

“What?” I missed what she said because at the time I was thinking about the yoga videos on youtube I’ve been trying out this Reading Week, since my life has become painfully boring. One of the videos said that I can pick an ‘intention’ for my yoga practice. After much thought I picked ‘having better posture’ as my intention. Its only been a few days but I think its working because I usually slouch during supper and tonight I am sitting like a queen.

“That geeky kid in your CLASS! MELVIN!”

“Morgan?” I feel unconfortable because I’ve been blocking any thought of Morgan from my mind since Friday happened and I don’t know how he ended up in this conversation over supper. He does not exist to me. “Why are you talking about him?”

“Whatever.” Vanessa shakes her head and starts gesturing with her hands. “Do you have it?”

“Have what?”

“The TRAVEL COLUMN!”

“Travel column?”

“I could just strangle you!” This coming from the perfect, straight-A student Vanessa. She is definitely losing it, with exams coming up and all.

“Can you just calmly tell me what you are talking about?” I say, imitating my mom (and sitting with excellent posture I might add). Then I remember Morgan was trying to give me a story on Friday. Which I assumed was directly connected to DC’s dropping hints during our chats that he had to “give me something” and he was going to ‘see me’ tomorrow, etc.

Was Morgan simply trying to give me something to give to Vanessa? A travel article for her newspaper column?… Of course! Sometimes my imagination gets the best of me and I’d done it again, I’d let myself believe something untrue (that Morgan was in fact my online friend DC whom I’ve never met) before getting the facts first. I blame it on the hormones, because that’s what my mom always does.

“I can’t come up with a travel column for Monday. Do you know how much homework I have? I don’t even travel! As you know…” Vanessa glances at Mom briefly but fortunately Mom’s mind is elsewhere. I don’t like it when Vanessa implies we are under-priviledged somehow. Expecting to travel to exotic places is kind of selfish really.