Abnormal

Chapter 5

When I came downstairs the next morning for breakfast, nothing had changed. Jo saw me walk past through the living room and decided to follow me into the kitchen. I tried to ignore her. 

"Good morning, Vivvie!" she proclaimed. There was a grin on her face. To a stranger, it would have appeared sweet and cute. But I had seen that maniacal smile and its followings too many times to be fooled. Trouble was brewing. 

Fortunately, coffee was also brewing. The love a typical teenage girl would have for boyfriends and crushes was, in me, diverted to the dark and steamy substance whose rich aroma filled the kitchen.

Cocoa puffs plinked against the glass as they were poured into my bowl. A spoon was retrieved from the dirty dishwasher and washed by hand before diving into the cocoa puffs. Milk got dumped all over the cereal, appearing to have drowned it, but in a second, they bounced back up and floated on the milk surface, as cereal is so prone to do. Some of the milk had splattered on the table. With the swish of a rag, it was wiped away. 

The coffee still brewing, I sat down to eat my extremely healthy meal. My attention was drawn by the fridge shaking. Looking around the corner, I saw Jo shuffling around, digging through the items inside it. 

"Jo, what in the Timbuctoo are you doing?" I asked.

"I'm getting breakfast!" she said.

"Didn't you already eat?" asked.

"It was just a little and I'm hungry!" she whined. 

"You don't need more than one breakfast," I said. 

Sassy and annoyed, she growled, "You're not my boss."

"No, I'm not. But I know that it's a bad idea to eat too much." I reasoned.

"I don't care!" she said, "And you can't tell me what to do."

I sighed. "Fine, whatever.... get fat, see if I care." 

One thing people should know about Jo is that she hates the words skinny and fat when referring to her. "Say that again and I'll..." she hissed.

"I said, if you eat too much you'll be overweight," I said.

"I AM NOT FAT!" she screamed.

"I didn't say that..." I said.

Jo was no longer in the refrigerator. Jo was walking towards me. Jo was now in my face. Jo was growling at me. 

I backed away. "Jo! I didn't say anything rude!"

But it was too late. She was mad, and no one wants to be around a mad Jo. This would go badly. I grabbed my now soggy cereal, threw it in the trash, grabbed the cereal box, a cup, and the coffee pot, and walked briskly out of the kitchen. Jo followed me but must have decided she was no longer interested since by the time I reached the stairs she was still in the living room. I hurried up them anyway, just in case she changed her mind. 

Shockingly, it is very hard to open a door with a coffee pot, a cup, a bowl, and a cereal box in your arms. I had to put some things down on the floor first in order to get the door open. The cereal box and bowl still remaining in my hands were placed on my desk and I went to retrieve my coffee and cup. 

From the upstairs hallway, I could hear Mom trying to explain Jo's scoolwork. "A noun is the name of a person, place, or thing. Jo is a noun. America is a noun. Dog is a noun." 

"I knoooooooow" Jo whined. I could hear the roll of her eyes.

"If you know so much then how is it you couldn't finish your worksheet by yourself, little miss prissy pants?" Mom said. "Either you do it or I'll explain it."

I heard paper crinkle as Jo apparently snatched it from Mom. 

"Do you understand how to do it or not?" Mom said. 

"Yes!" Jo yelled. 

"Do this one and show me you know how." Mom said. 

Silence settled. 

"Well?" Mom said.

"I don't know how to do it" Jo mumbled.

Mom tried to explain the directions and show Jo what to do. Jo didn't get it. 

"No, Jo, that's not right." Mom said. "A noun is a person, place, or thing."

"You already said that!!!" Jo screamed. 

I'd heard enough; I went in my room and hoped to tune it out. Who doesn't listen to music while eating a breakfast of dry cereal and coffee in their room on their bed at 9:00 AM? Some older pop music would do the trick. I was slightly terrified that I would spill the coffee on my covers, but I managed to keep it in the cup. I had forgotten creamer, though, which was quite the tragedy. Sugar, too, remained downstairs. My taste buds were quickly alerted to the common knowledge that you don't drink something bitter than something sweet for if you do the two will make each other taste bitter or sweet to the extreme. In this case, the cocoa puffs, compared to the coffee, were quite sweet. 

As I shoveled cocoa puffs in my mouth, I mentally mapped out the events of today, a Wednesday. Ten billion things to do swarmed through my head, but not one of them was something I wanted to do. That was life.

Thirty-two math problems, nine pages of geography, fourteen sentence diagrams, an excruciating science exam, and exactly thirty minutes of violin practice later, I was catching my breath at the landing and contemplating whether I had enough strength in me to make it up the remaining flight of stairs at church. Why I had any desire to be in this place where I had no friends was a puzzle to even myself. 

One foot on the next stair, then the next. My legs were sore as I made my way slowly up to the top, then down the long hallway, my stress level rising with every step closer to the room. My stomach didn't want to go in. I reached for the cold handle and turned it, peered in, and entered the room. Scanning around, I looked for a seat, but the only ones available were by the guys. I couldn't decide which would be worse, the high school dudes or the middle school boys. I sat down somewhere in the middle. Everyone was talking--everyone except me, that is. I surveyed the group and listened to the ten conversations going on at once, watching the middle schoolers toss their water bottles in the air. Water--I wished I had some myself. The stairs had been killer, as usual, and the stress didn't help. I was exhausted. It was hot in hear. All too soon, the conversation stopped. Listening to announcements in the otherwise quiet space was fine, but once they were over, it came time for singing. 

My breath was quick and heavy again when I stood up with the rest of the crowd. They hadn't given me enough time to recover from the hike up. Singing only made things worse. I felt like I couldn't get enough air, I didn't have enough energy, and my head was spinning. I wasn't singing anymore. Nobody noticed anything until I ran into the aisle between the chairs, across the room in front of the guitar guy, and out the door. They couldn't see me anymore. I was safe. Just a few seconds more... I was in the bathroom now, grabbing a wad of paper towels, turning the faucet as low as it would go, and drenching the paper towels. I squeezed them out a bit and sank down onto the linoleum floor, my back resting against the 1970's dusty rose stalls. My eyes shut and I dabbed my face with the damp paper towel. Silence.

What was everybody thinking? I wondered. Was my face really red? Did I look all right? Was anybody worried?

The door swished open. "...Genevieve?" A voice said. "Are you okay?"

I opened my eyes and looked up to see the round face of Amanda Clemmons staring down at me. 

"Uhh, yeah, sure," I said.

"You don't look okay," she said. "Are you sick? Should I find your parents?"

"No, no," I said. 

Amanda walked over and sat next to me. "What's the matter?"

I laughed and mumbled, "A million things." 

She smiled compassionately but didn't say anything.

"I guess... I mean I'm probably just tired, and the people... and... I don't know..." I couldn't find the right words to explain why I was acting like an idiot. "Sorry, I just don't know how to explain it." 

"I get that," she said. 

"This has been a crazy week. Well, I mean, life is crazy. And this week has been especially crazy." I said. 

"Want to talk about it?" she asked.

"I can't really say what makes life so crazy... it's family personal stuff... not that my family is bad, though, I'm not trying to say that," I fumbled.

"Of course," she said.

I sighed. "It's just that my sister has so many issues--she's... special needs--and so that's its own crazy..."

I paused, then continued, "Yesterday I went out on my bike, just to get away from it all, and I ended up nearly getting hit by a truck." 

"Woah!" Amanda gasped.

"Yeah. I swerved out of the way so I didn't get hit, but then I fell off my bike and scraped my hands against the road and landed in the grass..." I held up my bandaged hands for illustrational purposes. 

"Wow, that must have been terrifying," she said.

"Pretty much. It's not every day you nearly die. But as if that wasn't crazy enough, that same truck hit another car a mile down the road then hit a tree and exploded in flames. I watched as the emergency people flooded in and saw them put out the giant ball of fire. A policeman saw me hiding in the trees and I had to tell the whole story to him, covered in grass and dirt and everything. Then he escorted me home, where I found my sister pitching a fit and acting crazy as usual. My parents never even heard the whole story--didn't seem to care as long as I was pretty much fine, too busy dealing with my sister. So yeah... that was lovely."

Amanda was speechless.  

"Well, anyways, I feel better now, so we should probably head back in there. They should be done singing and it should be quiet, so I should be fine." I said. 

"Oh, okay," she said. 

Out the door, down the hallway, and back into the room we went. A crowd of faces stared at us and Luke paused mid-sentence as we entered and made our way to two empty seats in the corner.

"Glad to have you both back with us," he teased.

My face glowed red. Seeing my frown, he seemed to realize that his teasing was badly timed and his own expression appeared to be apologetic. I sat down and he went on with the lesson from Galatians.

Some of the girls were looking at me and whispering to each other. I looked away and tried not to let it bother me. They could talk if they wanted to talk. It wasn't like they ever liked me anyway. Those girls weren't my friends and they weren't my enemies--just random people who didn't have anything better to do than to speculate on the affairs of other peoples lives. I guess they'd never experienced nauseating anxiety before. Well, good for them. They could have perfect lives if they wanted to. It didn't make a darn difference to me.

I remembered Luke was talking and tried to listen, but I quickly zoned out. The fruit of the Spirit was the last thing on my mind at that moment. I was thinking about what I had said to Amanda... and what she hadn't said to me. She didn't need to say anything. Not many people would know what to say after someone said the things I had said. But she had listened. She had come to see if I was okay, and she had sat down beside me, and she had listened. Maybe it was just her personality. Maybe she was just trying to be a goody-two-shoes. Still, it felt nice to have her there. It felt just a little like maybe somehow she actually cared.