by Bob Bannon
When it was time for bed, she reappeared in the doorway of the TV room. Eric purposefully screamed in her direction in a yelp of terror that startled both her and Jonah. “That’s not funny,” she said.
“Oh yes it was,” Eric said, cracking himself up. Jonah tried not to laugh.
“When is this movie over?” She asked.
“About twenty minutes,” Eric said.
“Twenty minutes and then bed,” She said sternly.
“Alright, alright,” He answered. “It’s twenty minutes. Jeez.”
“I’m not coming back down for you,” She said with an underlying threat if they weren’t upstairs in twenty minutes.
“Yes ma’am.” Eric said.
“We’re waking up early, then an hour of homework, then haircuts,” she said, then added “for both of you.”
Jonah started to say something, he wasn’t exactly sure what, but she cut him off. “I know,” she said, thinking he’d bring up the money issue. “Your father and I already talked about it. It’s all taken care of.” Jonah sat back in his chair.
“Good night,” she said.
“Good night,” the boys said in unison.
Both of the boys turned to each other with a little amusement that they had gotten away with the phone call, but with a twinge of disbelief that it actually worked.
The boys went to sleep right on time. As the credits of the movie began to play, they both had to drag themselves up the stairs. Mrs. MacIntyre must have heard them coming up, her bedroom door was closed, but there was light coming from underneath. As Jonah passed by, that light went out. He unrolled the sleeping bag at the end of the bed and was fast asleep in no time.
The next morning, Mrs. MacIntyre knocked on the door to wake them up. Once again, the noise shocked Jonah into sitting straight up with his eyes wide. She opened the door and poked her head in. “Up, up up,” she said. “Showers, than breakfast, then homework.”
Eric groaned and put a pillow over his head. “That means you, Mister MacIntyre,” She said. Eric raised an arm and gave her a thumps up while the other cradled the pillow firmly over his face.
Jonah had neatly folded the sweaters and put them on the chair at the desk, but they had forgotten to retrieve the rest of the laundry before they went to bed.
“Dude, you have to go get my clothes,” Jonah said to Eric.
“Uh-huh,” Eric said from underneath his pillow.
“Seriously.” Jonah said. “I can’t do it or your mom’s going to think I’m weird.”
Eric pulled the pillow from his face with a huff and put on his glasses from his bedside table. “Okay, okay, I’m up,” he said, but it was another couple of minutes before he made it to his feet.
He returned with an armful of laundry and tossed it on the bed. He sorted out what was his and what was Jonah’s. Jonah neatly folded both of his outfits and returned one to his backpack. Eric didn’t fold anything, and stuffed things into drawers seemingly at random.
Jonah walked to the guest bathroom, but Eric stopped him just before the door closed. “Wait a minute,” Eric said. He went into the bathroom and searched in the drawers under the sink. He came out with a toothbrush, still in its wrapping, and some toothpaste. “I get these at the dentist all the time,” he said, referencing the toothbrush. “You can have this one.” On his way out he added “You should take the toothpaste too. You stink.”
Jonah took two steps with his fist raised, but Eric was already gone. He then blew a breath into his hand to see if he could smell anything. It wasn’t fresh by any means, but he doubted people could smell it.
After he was cleaned up, he opened the door to the smell of bacon. It was so amazing it made his mouth water.
He went downstairs and found Eric already at the table. “Beat you,” Eric said.
“Yeah, yeah,” Jonah retorted and sat down across from him. There were glasses of orange juice in front of them, Jonah took a large gulp.
Mrs. MacIntyre served them both two strips of bacon and two eggs each. Then she served a plate for herself and returned the pan to the stove top. They ate while Eric described a dream he had about being in a haunted amusement park, but his body was shaped like Danger Man so he was able to overcome anything that came his way using his video game moves.
Jonah started to clean up, so Eric followed suit, but his mother stopped them. “Homework,” she ordered from behind the newspaper. “We have to be at La La’s at eleven-thirty.” It was ten in the morning. So the boys dropped their plates in the sink and went upstairs.
Eric showed Jonah where the word processor was on the computer and then sat on his bed and opened his Math book. The two dinosaur sites were still on the task bar of the computer, so Jonah opened the first one and started reading, and then began to summarize what he read.
“Hold up,” Eric said, and then stood up and leaned over Jonah’s shoulder. He took the mouse and opened his music folder and double clicked on the first song. For the next hour, there was music and little conversation as Jonah pounded out a page and a half report on T-Rex and Jonah completed his homework on the central nervous system.
When it was time to go to the mall, Eric’s mom called them from the font hall. It was Eric’s idea for Jonah to make a show of bringing his page-and-a-half report downstairs in his hand and not in his pack. That way, his mother was sure to notice. “You should put that in a file folder so it doesn’t get ruined,” she suggested to Jonah as she was putting on her coat.
Both boys stopped mid-staircase then backed up. When they got back to the room, Eric said “told you she’d notice,” and handed Jonah a green file folder from his desk.
Jonah held up the file folder for her approval as the two boys descended the stairs again. She nodded, and held the door open for them, then followed them out.
XIII
Emma Wong walked into the mall unzipping her coat and tossing back its fur-lined hood. It had just begun to snow. She relished the warmth that greeted her. Her phone had been pinging for the last five minutes. It was Jennifer Summers, the captain of the high school cheerleading squad, fretting about where they were going to have practice tomorrow. Even though she was a senior and Emma was a freshman, Emma had come up with some really good ideas and the two had become friends. Up until now, they both agreed it was warm enough during the day for the team to practice outside in their tracksuits. It was finally too cold to do that now, and it seemed that the gym was reserved for something else. Emma texted back and said they should just use the cafeteria and push some tables out of the way. Jennifer hadn’t thought of that, so she said she wouldn’t cancel practice just yet and she would ask the principal if using the cafeteria was okay tomorrow.
Emma put her phone back in her handbag, a small clutch purse that she got for her birthday. It was one of her favorite items in her wardrobe. She knew she had to have it the moment she saw it; it was black with waves of gold on one side and waves of white on the other. It was just large enough to hold her wallet, her lip gloss and her phone. It also came with a strap, but she hardly ever used that.
She had come to the mall on a mission. The Winter Ball was rapidly approaching. She had twenty-five dollars from her allowance saved up and she had bargained her father into giving her a ten-dollar advance. She needed a necklace, and wanted a matching bracelet, but was willing to settle on just the necklace if she came across something cute.
She had found the perfect dress with her grandmother at a dress shop just off of Main Street. Times like these were relatively difficult when you didn’t have a mom. Moms apparently knew things dads didn’t. Emma’s mother left when Emma was very young. She hardly remembered her, but she was relatively close with her mom’s mom. When it came to dressing for important events, she always called her grandmother and asked what she should do. Those phone calls usually ended with her grandmother arranging a weekend trip.
Emma had only been to San Francisco, where both sets of grandparents lived, on a handful of occasions and only to visit her
father’s parents. Her older brother Matthew hated it there and would rarely leave the house. But when they were there, they would always have her mom’s parents over for dinner. She never trusted her dad’s mom with fashion advice. The clothes she got from her for Christmas always seemed almost old fashioned and very bland.
Here in Kensville, there were only two formal dress shops in town and both campaigned for the limited business available by touting only a few sizes in different styles. This almost always assured customers that they wouldn’t be running into someone wearing the exact same dress. Emma was fortunate that her grandmother kind of had a flair for these things, so a lot of times she could find matching or similar fabric at a store and add a little something special with the help of the sewing machine.
Last year, Emma got to take a Home Economics course at school and loved every minute of it. She learned how to make cinnamon rolls from scratch and she learned how to sew a pillow from two pieces of cloth and polyester stuffing. Emma loved learning the sewing machine. After the pillow lesson was over, she had come home and begged her father for a sewing machine. Then she called both of her grandmothers and explained why it was a much-needed appliance. They, of course, sided with her.
That time, it was her father’s mom who had come for the weekend to help her shop for one. She said it would be an early Christmas present. Her grandmother helped her set it up and then stayed in the room all day and talked her through different ways of sewing. There was something so creative about it. Emma loved every creation that came out of it, even though she knew most weren’t very good. Her Dad’s mom had then tried to get her interested in knitting, which she couldn’t imagine ever doing; it seemed very boring.
Her interest in the sewing machine had waned quite a bit when she was accepted to the cheerleading squad, but she still used it to repair clothes. She even made another pillow for her brother Matthew when he went back to college this year.
Emma and her maternal grandmother found a spectacular electric blue knee-length dress for the Winter Ball. It fit her just perfectly.
After Emma had found shoes, her grandmother used her magic with the sewing machine and added a sheer, black fabric across the chest of the dress and added the same fabric at the shoulders, which made the dress really unique. Emma thought it was beautiful.
Emma was a popular girl. She knew that. But what separated her from other girls she knew was that she liked to be nice to everyone. Emma really couldn’t see why some kids at school had to be so mean to others. Downright vicious, sometimes. She never saw the purpose in it. Unless someone was really mean to her, she saw no reason to comment on how they dressed or how they chose to wear their hair.
She had sat and listened to her friends Courtney and Heather giggle about other kids, sometimes in really harsh ways, and Jennifer and the senior cheerleaders seemed to ignore just about everyone else who wasn’t in a sports uniform.
Emma found other people interesting. It was nice to talk to other people about their interests and find out about things that she didn’t necessarily know about. For instance, there was an overweight girl in her art class called Lisa. Lisa had frizzy black hair that looked like it was never quite brushed right, and probably never had conditioner on it. None of the other girls Emma knew ever took the time to even talk to her. Emma found Lisa’s artwork amazing though.
There was a drawing assignment where they all had to sit at different angles and draw a still life that sat in the center of the room. Lisa’s was amazing to look at. Then there was the watercolor assignment where they had to go outside in the field and find something to paint. Lisa painted the large oak tree at the back of the field near the gate and even included a piece of the gate in her painting. The whole effect made Emma feel like the tree looked a little lonely. It struck her that she never even gave anyone else’s artwork a second glance. So, one day, she just struck up a conversation with Lisa by complementing a clay piece she was working on. From then on, they were kind of art-class pals.
She found similar people like Lisa all through the school. She found it nice to not always have to talk about cheerleading or listen to the boys talk about football and pretend that interested her at all.
Emma was a popular girl not just because she was attractive and a cheerleader, she was popular in the real sense of the word. A lot of people liked her.
Then there were kids like Eric M. She had done homework with Eric M. in study hall because she had trouble with Algebra and Eric was in Advanced Math. He was nice about it, but he was standoffish. At first she thought he might just be overly shy, but then she began to feel like maybe he just didn’t actually want to talk to other kids. She kind of felt like he hid at school a lot, like if he wasn’t noticed he couldn’t make waves. There were other kids like that, and some that had their own little cliques, like the computer kids or the gamer kids, who really had no interest in talking to others. Most of them she just left alone.
Then there were the dumb brutes like Logan Oswald. Logan was on the sophomore football team and thought that made him king of the world. He would walk by kids in the hall and push them into lockers or yell really mean things as he passed them by with his two even dumber friends, Mason and Tyler, who followed him around like puppies because his dad was one of the richest guys in town.
Emma’s father was the only doctor in town, so her family was pretty well off in their own right. This made Logan think for some reason they should hang out all the time. He really disgusted her actually. Sure, he was cute, but he had no sense of style and he certainly wasn’t that bright. Putting those together with the way he treated people, she had no interest in him at all. She only put up with him at lunchtime when the boys would sit with her and her girls or at social events where he was unavoidable. He had asked her to the Winter Ball and she turned him down. A couple of the other boys asked as well, but she had given non-committal answers. The truth was, she knew all of those boys too well and none of them really interested her all that much.
Then she met Jonah, the boy with the mysterious brown and blue eyes. When she found out they were real, and not just some random joke with contact lenses, that fascinated her. She knew she liked him after that ridiculous attempt at a compliment about her shoes matching her hair. When he stood up to Logan, as very few ever did, that pretty much sealed it. She wanted to get to know more about him. She actually couldn’t stop thinking about him. The way his hair was all sorts of crazy curly and the way he smiled at her. He had a nice smile. And those eyes, she knew it was weird, but she really liked them. She wanted to ask Jonah to the Winter Ball, but he didn’t go to her school, so she was going to have to get to him through Eric M. and she didn’t quite know how to go about opening that conversation.
She was just about lost in her thoughts when she bumped into the boys and Eric’s mother walking into La La’s Salon.
“Oh.” She said, adding her most courteous smile. “Hi, Mrs. MacIntyre.”
“Oh, hello Emma,” Mrs. MacIntyre smiled back. She knew Emma and her grandmother from shopping at the store on several occasions. Emma was one of the girls she liked having as a customer, always polite. On two or three occasions when Emma came shopping alone with her father’s credit card, Wendy called Emma’s father just to make sure everything was on the up and up. Doctor Wong really appreciated the courtesy and always gave his approval. Other girls Emma’s age would ransack the store, picking things up and then finding other things they liked better, so they would hang their first item wherever they stood, or, worse yet, they would leave piles of clothes on the dressing room floor.
The moment Jonah saw Emma, he lit up. A broad smile crossed his face. “Hi” came out of his mouth before he knew he was going to say it.
“Hi,” she smiled back and then immediately said “Hi, Eric”, because she knew what she wanted to ask and she couldn’t believe her luck in running into Jonah. She was suddenly flustered.
“Hi,” Eric replied, but registered somewhere in the back of his brain that sh
e had not called him Eric M. She always called him Eric M.; everyone at school called him Eric M. He kind of liked being recognized as just ‘Eric’.
Mrs. MacIntyre read the signals well. She put an arm around Eric and said “why don’t we go check in and see if Sarah is ready for you two, huh?” and gently maneuvered Eric toward the door.
“You coming?” Eric asked Jonah, struggling to twist out from his mother’s arm.
“I actually wanted to ask you something,” Emma blurted out.
Jonah looked at Eric and then at Emma and then back to Eric. “In a minute,” he said to Eric.
“It’s fine, take your time,” Mrs. MacIntyre said, suppressing a smile. “Good bye, Emma. Nice seeing you.” And with that, she ushered Eric into the salon with a hand on his back.
Now alone, Jonah and Emma stared at each other for a moment. Jonah looked down at his shuffling feet. “You were going to ask me something?” He asked his feet.
“Oh, right,” Emma said with a small giggle and then blushed. “Logan didn’t hurt you the other day, did he? No permanent damage? That guy’s such a jerk.” Her mind shouted that wasn’t the question.
“No. Not at all. That guy’s a weasel. I’m not afraid of him,” Jonah said back, unconsciously puffing his chest. “I’m totally good. Is that what you wanted to ask?”
“Well, no.” Emma said to her shoes. When she looked up, she pulled her hair behind her ear. It was Jonah’s favorite gesture she did and he didn’t know why, but he was completely captivated. “See, there’s this dance coming up,” she said.
“The dance you bought shoes for,” he said, finishing her thought.
“Yes, that one,” she agreed. “It’s just, well, I don’t have anybody to go with yet. So I was just wondering if…” She dropped off, waiting for him to answer.
“If what?” he asked, totally lost in the conversation.
“Well, do you want to go with me?” She stammered with a big smile, a small giggle and a deep blush.
