Sweet Lantern

Chapter 38

Darry

The flight is uneventful and we both sleep through most of it. There are no layovers this trip, it's straight through. When we land, we wait for our bags to come around and then we head out to the parking lot to find our car. I can feel the weight of disappointment in having to leave so quickly, it feels like we stepped into paradise and now we have to come home and face the music of our reality.

Not that we have a bad life, we are truly blessed in our lives. It's just so different. Being away, in a new place, a beautiful new place at that, no real responsibilities other than ourselves, no worries, no rushing around to get chores done, it's just... different.

Now we're going back to school and working the farms, maintaining the house and preparing for the baby. Vacation time is over.

When we pull up to the farms, they look exactly how we left them. I think to myself how nothing ever seems to change around this town. We pass my family farm first, and then we pull into the driveway of Alice's family's farm and to our new home.

It's dusk; the sun is headed down to slumber, and the moon is preparing to light up our night. The porch lights have already been turned on; the streetlamps are starting to flicker a bit too. When our tires hit the dirt and gravel, Alice's mom steps out on the front porch, a big bright welcoming smile on her face. When we get closer, she steps out to where we can see her better and begins to wave, walking down the steps toward us. I pull further down the driveway, going around the house to park the car at our house and I wake Alice up. "Hey, beautiful. We're home. Your mom wants to see us, I think."

Alice stirs and sits up straight, looking around, trying to get her bearings. "We're already home? That was fast", she says, unable to really disguise the sadness in her voice.

I walk around the car and open her door, taking her hand, I pick her up out of the passenger seat and we walk over to where her mom is now standing beside her house, looking into her backyard, toward us.

"Hey! How was the trip? Did y'all have a good time?" she asks, reaching for her baby girl and pulling her into an embrace. "What did you think of the ocean, Alley?"

"It was wonderful, Mom. I hated to leave it behind. I've never seen anything like that, it was just so... ridiculously beautiful", Alice tells her, still hugging herself closely to her mother.

Mrs. Wilson looks around Alice, asking me, "So how did you like it, Darry?" Alice lets go of her mom and turns toward me, listening intently to what I'll say to her. "I loved it. It was definitely an experience of a lifetime. I can't wait to take her back again." Alice smiles and looks down at her feet, swaying her shoulders gently and moving her foot around in the dirt, obviously happy with my answer.

We walk around to the front porch and start up the steps, knowing that Mr. Wilson will want to see his little girl and ask her all about her adventure to the sea.

We will go over and see my family in the morning. After our visit with the Wilson's, I know she'll be ready for bed because I'm tired too and I'm not the one that's pregnant. It was a long flight and our emotions need to settle back into real life and our responsibilities here.

The next day we have breakfast with my parents and Beth. Mom wants to hear all about the hotel room, the ocean and the aquarium. She wants to know how real, fresh seafood tastes, and what the air smells like and feels like. Mom has never seen the ocean; she's never left Montana at all. She's so excited as we tell her every detail we can remember. She listens wide eyed and interested, like a little girl hearing about Christmas for the first time ever. It's really cool to see her reactions to Alice's descriptions of the massive fish tanks and us touching the rays.

Dad and Beth listen to us too, asking questions here and there between bites of eggs and bacon. Beth mostly wants to know about the beach and if anyone got bitten while swimming with the whale sharks. Dad's interested in how much it cost and how clean the hotel was, how the service was there and at the restaurants around the city.

When breakfast is over, we head out to school. We're going to be about an hour or so late, but that's OK. We're doing good just to be going today.

Once we're inside the school, we check in at the front desk, collecting our tardy slips. When we walk into the empty hallway, I kiss Alice and rub her belly, telling her and the baby that I'll see them in next period. When I walk into my math class, Kevin is sitting at the table we normally share, alone, reading the book in front of him, paying no attention to the door opening and closing.

Mr. Smythe keeps the classroom dark; instead of the main light being on, he keeps a little table lamp at each individual table. The sporadic balls of light making little yellow circles around each table top but not really spilling over into the spaces between each table, which makes it difficult to locate the source of the voice that cuts through the silence, saying, "It's good of you to join us, Mr. Williams. Take a seat and open your book to page 25, read and complete the assignment at the end of the chapter please, sir."

I look over and see that Kev has lifted his head and is now looking in my direction. I sit down next to him and he says, "Hey man! When did you two get back?" he moves his books from my side of the table and slides them over in front of him.

"We got back last night. We were beat so we slept in a bit and then we had breakfast with my parents. They wanted to hear about the trip", I tell him, hoping he will wait to ask for more details of the trip. Thankfully he catches on and says, "Well, I want to hear all about it after school, dude. I bet y'all had a blast. Is Alice here today too?" He asks, looking around like he'd see her in here somehow, knowing that even if there were light in the room, she doesn't have this class with us.

"Yeah, she's not in this class though, remember?" I laugh as he realizes he won't find her by looking at the darkness surrounding us. "Oh, yeah... my bad." He grins nervously and shifts in his seat, looking back at his book.

We go through the rest of the period in silence as we both try to figure out the formulas in front of us. I keep a check on the clock, waiting for the bell that will send me back to my girl.

When the bell rings, I gather my books and grab my bookbag from the floor beside the table, throwing it over my shoulder, I race out the door, and enter the hallway. Students are steadily spilling out into the corridor now, surrounding me and hiding Alice. I walk toward English, looking over heads and down into the crowd, searching for that familiar face that lights my soul on fire.

I look over at the classroom door and see her, standing there, her face searching the crowd for mine. When our eyes meet, we both smile, the tension easing and melting away from both of us. "Hey, babe", I say as I reach her, taking her into my arms, and kissing her full, pouty lips. "I missed you", she says, as we walk into English and take a seat at a table by the window. Ms. Daniels walks in and closes the door, as I grab Alice's hand, holding it to my lips, the gray-haired teacher begins her lecture on Jane Austen concentrating on how remarkable she was as an author and how she was a legend far ahead of her time.