Phenomen-04: A Narrative of Naivety

Absolutely No One

Jackson sighed as he stepped off the bus, watching his new friend ride off down the wooded, unpaved road. The cloudy, gray light shimmered through the pine trees as the birds sang and the flowers bloomed. The tail-end of Summer was always a beautiful time of year in Fromone.

As his backpack hit the floor of the kitchen, Jackson's eyes were on the food in the cabinets, and his phone was in his hand displaying a recipe for chocolate chip cookies. "It really doesn't seem that hard," he whispered to himself, "I see Mom do it all the time, and she doesn't really know how to do anything."

He cracked a cylinder of premade cookie dough on the edge of the counter a few times until it broke open, only to realize he didn't have anywhere to put it. He moved the plates off the counter and into the sink, washing them down by hand because he didn't have a dishwasher, then put them back in the cabinets where they belonged. "Okay, now that's done..." he whispered once more while grabbing a warped metal pan from under the sink.

Each blob of cookie dough melted to conform to the semi-flatness of the pan, and it was at this point that Jackson realized he wasn't even actually making cookies. He was just baking them. He didn't care, of course, but he felt a little unsatisfied with the lack of work. Fifteen minutes wasn't a whole lot of time when you've got another... well, Jackson didn't quite know that yet.

As the cookies baked, he did the math in his head. "Let's see... get home at 3:30, which is eight and a half hours before midnight... then add another seven and a half hours until I get on the bus..." he sat on the counter as he whispered to himself some more, feeling the cheap plaster that covered the wooden counter beneath, making the counter look like it was granite. The light in the middle of the room didn't illuminate anything very well, but it did the job. It needed to since there were no windows in the kitchen. The way between the sides of the kitchen was narrow, providing about enough space for two people to awkwardly scootch past each other if need be. The heater under the oven didn't work too well, but Jackson liked to stand in front of it when the vent in his room didn't get enough heat.

"I sit here and wait for about sixteen hours every day." Jackson felt he did more work here than he did preparing the cookies. He was unsatisfied.

He didn't do much else before the oven chimed and the cookies were done, filling the air with that familiar smell as Jackson opened the door to the oven. With an old, stained oven mitt, he grabbed the pan out from the oven and placed it on the stove. The heat from the pan still went through the mitt, though.

As Jackson marveled at his creation, his mother walked through the front door. Neither of them said anything to each other as she walked rather quickly into her room down the hall from the dining room. She was tall and thin, with unkempt, curly red hair and wrinkles around her eyes and nose. She looked stressed, Jackson thought, almost all the time, with those bags under her eyes.

Jackson could hear his little sister greeting their mother, and their mother's facade of a "There she is!" Her voice was shaky and unstable. Jackson could see the fake smile she displayed for the five-year-old through her voice alone.

Jackson's heart felt heavy. He remembered when his mother would greet him like that, with a smile he believed was genuine, and a tray of cookies he always thought were homemade. He picked one up off the pan, though they were still cooling off. Jackson didn't care. He bit into one, the softness of the dough and meltiness of the chocolate filled his mind with warm memories. He realized, then and there, as the cookie burnt his tongue harshly, that the memories burnt his mind, too.

"Hey, who made those? Did Mom say you could have one?" Jackson's older sister came out of nowhere, making Jackson jump a little in surprise.

"Jesus, Gina, where'd you even come from?" Jackson talked through the cookie he was chewing.

"Doesn't matter if you're eating Mom's cookies." Gina rested a hand on the dining room table and the other on her hip. "Why should it matter anyway?"

"I made these. Used the tube from the fridge that's been sitting there for weeks." Jackson finished the cookie and reached for another.

"Oh, okay, so now you're just eating all the food in the house." Gina walked into the kitchen, shuffled past Jackson and grabbed a warm cookie for herself.

"So you were gonna eat the raw cookie dough?" Jackson chuckled.

"Maybe Mom was. Point is--"

"I'm not allowed to eat anything without asking first?" Jackson didn't feel like arguing over this.

"Geez, you're no fun." Gina took her cookie, shuffled past Jackson again, and disappeared to her room.

The cookies were a little bland.