In A Jam

by Megan Sparks

  In the kitchen, Dad was slumped on a chair, his eyes closed and mouth half open. The lasagne he’d made last week was defrosting in the microwave. He opened one eye when Annie walked in.

  “Your friends sure know how to keep business booming,” Dad said as he opened the other eye and stretched. “Thought I was going to have to beat them off with a stick before they went home.”

  “You did make them pay, right?” Annie demanded. It was one thing for Lexie to get free cookies, but Annie knew her dad couldn’t afford to support a dozen teens’ food fix, especially hungry soccer players.

  “Oh yeah, they covered their tab and Tyler even threw some change into the tip jar.”

  Annie smiled at the sound of her boyfriend’s name. “Yeah, he’s good like that.”

  Not that he needed to at Rosie Lee’s. As far as Annie was concerned, Tyler and Lexie both fell into the “no-pay” policy, but he always insisted on covering his share. And Annie’s if they went out together. Annie knew that money wasn’t an issue for him as his parents were well off, but it was still generous.

  “I’m not complaining – it’s great for business having them there. It’s just that your friends eat a lot, meaning I had more prep to do for tomorrow,” Dad went on. “It’s hard to keep up with a popular daughter.”

  Annie smiled as she grabbed the oven mitts to take the lasagne out of the microwave. Dad was right. She was popular. Of course it was all because of Tyler. Because she was dating him, everyone knew who Annie was and wanted to hang out with them both. It was nice and nothing she had experienced before. Back in London, aside from a few close friends, not many girls at school knew who she was. That was because Annie had spent most of her time doing gymnastics instead of socializing.

  “I’ll help you out all afternoon tomorrow,” Annie said. “We’ll stock up on everything for the next time they come in.”

  Instead of saying anything, Dad just gave her a thumbs up; his mouth was full of spinach, beef, and cheese. When he swallowed, he had a much more pressing matter to discuss. He asked in a professorial voice, “And how, might I enquire, are your studies? Are you keeping up with your daily assignments?”

  “Like totally.” Annie flipped a plait over her shoulder and adopted what she knew was a bad American teenage accent. Playing with voices had always been their special game. “I’ll totally, like, get everything done after dinner. In fact on Thursday, I’m gonna, like, go study at Tyler’s house.”

  Dad narrowed his brown eyes. Any sign of tiredness or playfulness were gone from them. “Study? With a boy? I’m not so old that I don’t remember what ‘studying’ really means.”

  Annie pushed a bit of lasagne around her plate. There was nothing wrong with taking a few kissing breaks. Not that Dad needed to know that. “No really, we will. We’re reading The Taming of the Shrew for English and he asked me to help him out.”

  “Aren’t you two getting a bit too serious?”

  Annie shrugged. “I really like him.”

  “Right.” Dad rubbed his five o’clock shadow. Except that he’d been up since three in the morning and it was now past eight at night so his cheeks were scruffier than normal. “Um, how can I put this? Let’s say you’re this totally amazing singer. I mean real outstanding vocals, like all heads turn when you open your mouth.”

  “OK...” Annie squinted, not sure where Dad was going with this. She could hold a tune fine but no one would say she was the next Adele.

  “And then there’s this other musician, a guitarist let’s say, and you and the guitarist decide to form a band,” Dad said.

  Now Annie was really confused but she went along with it. “OK, so we can make music together.”

  “No!” Dad shouted, which made Annie jump. Dad took a couple of deep breaths before continuing. “You just, well, you sound OK together and that’s fine. You want to keep it that way. Just chilled and low key. But then you’re offered a, uh, record deal to make music together. The, um, guitarist thinks it’s a great idea, but the singer doesn’t want to.”

  “Is the singer still me?” Annie asked.

  Dad’s face had turned a dark crimson. “Maybe, yes. Yes, the singer is you. You don’t want to sign because that will change everything. But the guitarist keeps insisting and you finally agree. But making music together doesn’t feel right and you’ve, er, lost your groove. Forever.”

  Annie ran his words through her head again. It didn’t make any sense. She loved good music but she had never thought of joining a band. “Dad, I have no idea what you’re saying.”

  “I don’t want you to get pregnant or end up with some disease!” Dad blurted out.

  The echo of his words rang through the house while Annie felt the weight of the walls pressing against her. Please, let me die now!

  “Dad!” Annie blushed. Really! What brought that into his head? Oh right, studying at Tyler’s. “We’re not that serious.”

  Dad’s face started returning to a more normal shade of red. He took a huge forkful of lasagne and seemed to swallow it whole. “Good, phew. But just in case, you do know how...”

  Annie covered her face with her hands, still waiting for the world to end. This was not the conversation she wanted to have with her dad. Not that it’d be any easier with Mum either. “Yes, I know about it all. They taught us in Year Seven and Mum explained it again when we went shopping for, er ... clothes.”

  Dad ran a hand through his brown hair, making it stick straight up. “Yes, she said she did, but ... anyway. Do you, uh, have any questions?”

  You mean about losing my groove?

  If Annie wasn’t so embarrassed herself, she would have relished the sight of her normally confident Dad being so clearly uncomfortable.

  “Dad, we’re only snogging. Nothing else, I promise.”

  He seemed to accept that. “Good. But if you ever need to talk to me, or your mother, we—”

  Mum. Talk. Crumbs. Annie had forgotten about her Skype date with her mum. The oven said 8.27 p.m. That was 2.27 a.m. in London. Mum should be asleep, but with the late hours she worked there was a chance she wasn’t.

  “Sorry, Dad. I promised Mum we’d talk today.” Annie put her plate in the dishwasher and ran to her room, more than a little relieved she had a good excuse to leave the conversation with Dad behind. She turned on the computer and saw the green bubble in the corner that indicated Mum was still online.

  Annie pressed the call button as she pulled the headphones on. A few seconds later, a green monster appeared on the screen.

  “Ahh!” Annie jumped, and a pair of familiar blue eyes blinked open. “Mum?”

  “Sorry, sweetheart, I must have nodded off. You all right?”

  “Mum, you’re green!”

  Mum touched her face and grinned under the crusty face mask. “Yes, it’s avocado. One of my friends said it would rejuvenate me.”

  Other than on Halloween or in the musical Wicked, Annie had never seen a green person. Annie thought about pointing this out, but Mum wasn’t like Dad. She might get a bit put out if Annie teased her about her “looks”. “I better let you go so you can get back to sleep.”

  “Rubbish, I’d rather talk to you. Besides, I still have some work to do.” Mum was squinting and leaning into the screen a little closer than normal without her glasses on.

  “You shouldn’t work so much.” What Annie left unsaid was that if Mum didn’t work so much, she wouldn’t have to resort to applying green gunk to rejuvenate herself.

  “What else am I going to do? Without you here, work is the only thing I have to pass the time.”

  “Mum, I...” Annie didn’t know what to say. How could she explain to one parent why she chose to live with the other?

  Mum smiled sadly. “I know, you wanted to try out a new life. I understand. One of my biggest regrets is not having taken a gap year to travel the world. But then maybe I wouldn’t have met your father and had you.”

  That didn’t help the awkwardness of the conversation and the unspoken
fact that Annie had picked Dad over Mum. She tried a different approach. “Maybe you can go to an evening class. Yoga or something. I heard that can be rejuvenating.” And then Annie wouldn’t feel so bad about her mum working all the time to make up for being home alone.

  Mum laughed. “We’ll see. But enough about me. How are you? How are your friends? Lexie and the roller derby lot?”

  With a pang of guilt, Annie realized she hadn’t gone over to Lexie’s to make it up to her as she had planned. And she hadn’t had a text back from her either, which wasn’t a good sign. “Lexie’s in a bit of a strop. We, uh, had a misunderstanding.”

  “Did you try to explain?” Mum suggested.

  “I tried. But she left Rosie Lee’s kind of quickly.” Annie looked down at her fingernails.

  “What was the misunderstanding about? Maybe I can help.”

  “No, it’s that...” Annie looked around her room, avoiding her mum’s eyes. She really should have just rung, instead of doing a video chat. She hadn’t mentioned anything about Tyler to Mum yet, not even that she had a crush on him. Now that she was in a relationship (Wow, that sounded so grown-up!), she really couldn’t hide him any more. “The thing is, I got a bit distracted. I’m kind of seeing someone. A boy – Tyler.”

  Mum fumbled with something in the background and all of a sudden reappeared with her glasses over the green mask.

  She peered at Annie and said, “Pardon? You have a boyfriend?”

  “Yes,” Annie mumbled. Mum didn’t have to make it sound like it was such a surprising, or horrid, thing.

  Mum pressed her lips together in a straight line. “Hmm. You remember that talk we had at Harrods? When you got fitted for your first bras?”

  Argh, does everyone have to bring that up today? “Yes, I know about all that. Dad asked the same thing. I’m not a baby, you know.”

  “I never said you were, I just want you to be safe.” Mum forced a smile. “So, tell me about him then.”

  “Well.” Annie twirled the end of a plait around a finger. “He’s really fit. And really friendly. He talked to me on my first day of school. He’s a great soccer – I mean, football – player, and he’s really popular.”

  “Hmm,” Mum said again. “I guess I’ll see for myself when I meet him.”

  “What?” Annie stared at the computer screen in surprise, wondering if she’d heard right.

  “I’ve decided to come visit you in a few weeks. I know you’ll be off school for three days because of Thanksgiving and it’ll be a good time for me to take time off work before the Christmas madness.”

  Annie blinked a few more times, taking in the news. “You’re coming to visit me?”

  “Unless you don’t want me to.”

  “No, of course I do.” Annie glanced around her room again. She’d have to do a major clean up before Mum arrived. “It’s been ages since I’ve seen you. Are you staying with us?”

  “Your father agreed I could stay in his old room since I hear he’s taken over your grandparent’s bedroom. He promised me his AC/DC posters have been taken down.” Mum gave Annie a big smile, cracking her avocado mask. “It will be great to see each other, won’t it?”

  Annie hoped so. She missed her mum more than anything. It would be great to show her around and introduce her to Lexie and Tyler, but it might be a bit weird. One of the biggest reasons her parents split up was because Mum worked so much. Even when she was meant to be on holiday, Mum was always checking her work emails. Mum liked to be in control.

  But how would that work when she was a guest in her ex-husband’s house?

  Chapter Five

  “I don’t get why we have to read this.” Tyler slammed The Taming of the Shrew on the glass dining room table at his posh house. “All this rhyming poetry crap. Why can’t they talk like normal people? It doesn’t make any sense.” He slouched down into the chair in exasperation.

  Annie pushed the copy back towards his hands. His voice had echoed through the house, which was massive even by American standards. She had been given a tour the first time she had been there. It had lasted about ten minutes. She was fairly confident she could find the nearest bathroom, but there were loads of other rooms, like the library and the conservatory, that she would need a map to find again. Such a huge place and they were all alone. She tried not to think about that. She came here, after all, so that they could work on their homework together. Mostly.

  Even with their two-year age difference, they were in the same English class. Annie reasoned it was because the British school system started earlier, not because she was particularly clever. “The book’s not that bad.”

  Tyler gave a melodramatic sigh. “That’s because you’re English. You understand what they’re saying.”

  Annie laughed. “Surely you know that no one speaks like that any more.”

  “Surely, I don’t.” Tyler teased her in a passable English accent. She pushed him playfully but he grabbed her hand and turned her towards him. “I love the way you talk. It’s really sexy.”

  Annie’s heart gave an internal squeal as he started kissing her. But no, they couldn’t get distracted. They had to get their homework done. If Tyler didn’t get a passing grade on his essay, his place on the soccer team could be in jeopardy because players needed to maintain a minimum Grade Point Average. Hating herself for doing it, Annie straightened back into her chair although she could feel his presence next to her, his body heat tingling on her arm.

  “We really need to crack on if you want to get a good mark,” she said.

  Tyler kissed the hand he was still holding and sighed. “You’re right. OK, so tell me about this shrew thingy. Is it one of those plays where everyone dies?”

  Annie knew she should make him read the play, but it didn’t hurt to give him an overview. In fact, that might be exactly what he needed to understand it. “No, it’s a comedy, not a tragedy. So there’s this girl Katherine, the shrew—”

  Tyler rested his head in his hands. “What’s a shrew again? Like a mouse, right?”

  Annie blinked. Maybe this would be harder than she thought. “Yes, shrews are rodents, but in this case it means a grumpy and bitter woman. Katherine doesn’t get on with anyone and her sister, Bianca, who’s lovely, can’t get married until Katherine does. Then along comes Petruchio who wants Katherine for her dowry and likes the idea of ‘taming’ Kate so he marries her to prove a point.”

  “Fascinating,” Tyler drawled sarcastically but the mischievous look in his eyes was so sexy that Annie chose to ignore his tone. “And you’ve already read the whole thing? You’re so smart.”

  Annie blushed under his stare. “I haven’t read it all yet, but Mum and I saw an all-male production of the play in a park in London. It was brilliant because it was how it must have been in Shakespeare’s time when they didn’t allow women on stage.” Annie remembered the men in their wigs and them walking in dainty steps. “The bloke who played Katherine was amazing. His speech at the end made it seem like Katherine wasn’t tamed, but was taking the micky.” Annie booted up her laptop. “I’m going to write about how the ending is ironic.”

  Tyler looked like he had barely heard what Annie had said, and just stared at her teasingly. Annie took a deep breath just to keep focus. Not that it helped. His bare foot was playing footsie with hers.

  Annie closed her eyes for a few seconds. She could focus on her homework. She really could. “What are you going to write about?”

  Tyler didn’t even pick up the book to thumb through it for inspiration. She could feel his eyes on her. “You. ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’”

  “That is Shakespeare, but it’s not a quote from this play,” Annie corrected with a smile. She wouldn’t, couldn’t, look at him.

  “So?” His foot snuck up her jeans, just above her ankle. Who knew that part of her body was so sensitive? She had to bite her lip to keep from sighing with pleasure.

  Instead, she started typing frantically, not even aware of what she was
writing. “No really. You need a topic.”

  Tyler finally stopped trying to distract her and turned to his computer. “Maybe I can talk about how this shrew is kind of like a mouse?”

  Annie wasn’t sure how well that would go down with Ms Schwartz, their English teacher. But on the other hand, she was so Bohemian, that might be exactly what she was looking for. “Could work, if presented the right way. Let’s work for half an hour and then we’ll take a break. Deal?”

  “Yeah, whatever.” Tyler slumped in front of his computer and began clicking at the keys, although his foot kept up with its game of footsie. As did hers. After all, she could multitask.

  Sort of.

  Ten minutes into the writing, she glanced over to see how he was doing. Not well. In the background there was an open document with the title: “Shrews: How Women are Like Mice”. Annie couldn’t tell how much he’d written because in the foreground of the screen he had a silent game of pinball with a high score.

  Maybe they needed a break.

  Annie finished her paragraph quickly and saved her essay. There was loads of time to finish it.

  “I’ve got a new idea. This won’t get you out of reading the play, but maybe it’ll help you understand it.” Annie pulled out a copy of the movie 10 Things I Hate About You. She had brought as something they could reward themselves with when they’d finished their homework, but maybe it wouldn’t hurt to put it on now. “It’s very loosely based on the play, but some of the themes are the same.”

  “Cool.” Tyler closed his computer with a huge sigh of relief.

  They moved into the “recreation room”, which had a massive TV built into the wall and surround sound speakers. It was like being at the cinema but with much comfier seats. Tyler used the five remotes to get everything going before gesturing for Annie to sit next to him. She leaned into his chest as he kept an arm around her. There was no denying this was much nicer than sitting in front of a computer.

  They skipped the adverts and thirty seconds into the film, Tyler was kissing Annie’s neck. Then her collarbone. Ooh, that was nice. His hand had shifted her shirt just a bit so he was running his fingers on her bare waist and still kissing her neck. Oh, what the heck, she’d seen the film before.