90 Days of Different

by Eric Walters

  Control. That was another one of those bad words, like responsible or predictable.

  Oliver came back into the kitchen and opened the fridge door. He sighed like he’d sprung a leak. “There’s nothing in here to eat. We need food.”

  “What you really need is the fridge food fairy to arrive,” I said.

  Still holding the door open, he looked at me in confusion. “Fridge fairy?”

  “Fridge food fairy,” I said. “You know. The magical creature who puts food in the fridge every night when everybody in the house is asleep. Isn’t that how it works?”

  “It always did before.”

  “Think of this as a magic wand,” I said as I held up the pen in my hand. “Just make a list or even call Dad at work and have him bring the food you want home after work.”

  “After work is a long time from now, and I’m hungry now.”

  “There must be something to eat in there.”

  He opened the door wider and stepped aside. There really wasn’t much.

  “Because we’re going to Auntie Janice’s place tomorrow, Dad didn’t want to leave food that would just go bad.”

  “How about opening a can of something?”

  “I finished up the types I like. I ate the last can of Scary O’s for breakfast.”

  “You had Scary O’s for breakfast?” I asked disgustedly.

  “It’s not just a lunch and dinner thing, you know.”

  “It’s hardly a food thing. What about fruit?” I asked.

  “No fruit. We just have some apples.”

  “Apples are fruit.”

  “Not tasty fruit. Fruit is a banana or an orange. A watermelon or even baby carrots.”

  “Carrots are a vegetable.”

  “I said, baby carrots. The older ones are vegetables. But we don’t have any of those anyway.”

  “Look, I have fruit, and you’re welcome to go and take some.”

  He looked all excited and then hesitant. “I don’t think I can do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “You know, it’s not our agreement. Dad might get mad at me.”

  “It’s hard to get Dad mad at anybody for anything,” I said. “Besides, it’s not like I’m fixing you food. I’m just sharing what I have, the way I would with Ella or any of my friends.”

  “I’m not a friend. I’m your brother.”

  He closed the fridge door with a loud slam and went over and opened up a cupboard. He pulled out a box of Cheerios.

  “I figure if I can have Scary O’s for breakfast, I can have Cheerios for lunch.”

  He pulled out a fistful of cereal. Some dropped onto the floor, and the rest he stuffed it into his mouth.

  “Are you going to get a bowl and milk for that?” I asked.

  “Bowls we have. Milk we don’t. Besides, this way there are no dishes to wash.”

  He walked out of the kitchen, a few more little O’s dropping out of his hand and onto the floor as he went.

  Thank goodness they were going to my aunt’s for the next few weeks so they could get some good food. But that wasn’t going to help them when they came back and when I went away to school. This whole thing was to prove to me that they could get along without me. So far they’d only been proving the opposite.

  DAY 19

  The car was all packed, and they were ready to leave.

  “So what are you forgetting?” I asked my brother.

  “I’m not forgetting how much I’m going to enjoy not having you around to not nag me about what I’m forgetting.”

  “That doesn’t even make grammatical sense.”

  “Not to mention being free of you correcting me for the next three weeks. How are you going to survive without somebody to boss, correct or nag?”

  “Somehow I’ll survive.” Luke had talked, too, about my correcting him. Did I really do it that much?

  My father walked up and joined the conversation. “Are you completely sure you don’t want to join us?”

  “I promised Ella I’d be here for our adventures.”

  “It’s just that it seems wrong for us to go away without you when in September you’ll be going away. We’re really going to miss you,” my father said.

  “Speak for yourself!” my brother said.

  “I know I’m going to miss you enough for both of us,” my father said as he wrapped an arm around me.

  He really was a nice, sweet, kind guy. That was part of what made me worry so much about him.

  “So do you have everything?” I asked him.

  “I hope so, because if I have to put anything else in the car, I’ll need to leave your brother at home.”

  “I’ll ride on the roof if I have to,” he said.

  “I’ll help tie you to the roof if I have to,” I added.

  “Then we better get going,” my father said, and the two of them got into the car.

  I felt a tinge of sadness. This wasn’t an Ella-initiated different, but it was a different. This was the first time I hadn’t been part of a family trip. I thought back to all those trips, back to the times before Oliver was even born, when it was just my dad and my mother and me, and the feeling of sadness got much stronger all of a sudden.

  “Ella’s coming over today, right?” my father asked, leaning out the car window.

  “She is.”

  “And does she have something planned for you today?”

  “She does, but she won’t tell me what it is.”

  “She knows you’d just worry.”

  Everybody knew that worry was part of my standard equipment.

  “I just want you to know that no matter how wild it sounds, whatever she suggests you do, well—”

  “I know. Be careful, and think about it and be safe,” I said.

  “Actually, I was going to say the opposite. Don’t be careful, don’t be thoughtful, don’t be safe. Just do it. Okay?”

  “This has to be the strangest goodbye wisdom a parent has ever given their teenager when they’re leaving her alone at home for three weeks,” I said.

  “Maybe that says something significant about you, or me, or our relationship. I can always count on you to be responsible. Maybe this time you have to be at least a little irresponsible, and maybe even a little stupid?”

  I laughed. “Yes, I promise to be irresponsible, stupid, uncareful, unthoughtful and unsafe while you’re gone.”

  “That’s my girl!”

  “I’m pretty sure uncareful isn’t even a word,” Oliver said, leaning across the seat. “Maybe you should have been unresponsible as well.”

  “I love you, Oliver.”

  “And we love you,” my father said. “We’ll see you in three weeks, and you know you can reach us anytime you need to.”

  “We’ll talk. Every day. Count on it.”

  My father backed out of the driveway, and then he waved. Even my brother waved. And I waved back until they were halfway down the block, watching until they turned the corner and disappeared.

  The credits rolled at the end of the movie. Thank goodness it was over.

  “That was incredible,” Ella said.

  “Incredibly bad. That plot made no sense whatsoever.”

  “It’s a horror movie. The plot isn’t supposed to make sense.”

  “Yeah, but why did all the characters keep going off by themselves?” I asked. “It was just stupid that they didn’t figure out that it meant they were going to die.”

  “Okay, point taken. Didn’t you want to just yell, Stay together, you idiots, and whatever you do, don’t go into the basement?”

  “If they could have heard the creepy background music, they would have known. Really, those were all such seriously stupid people they deserved to be murdered.”

  “People in horror movies have to continually do the stupidest things possible to keep the plot moving forward, and you’d
know that if you’d ever seen one before,” Ella said.

  “I never wanted to see one before, and I doubt I’m ever going to see one again. I just don’t get it. Why do people want to be scared?”

  “It might be that they like to feel smarter than the people in the movies. Or maybe it makes them feel alive. You have to admit, for something so predictable you were still surprised sometimes. That shows some cleverness,” Ella said.

  “Jumping out of a closet wearing a mask would be a shock, but that doesn’t mean it would be clever,” I said.

  Ella looked a little uneasy. I knew why, but she didn’t know that I knew.

  “Well, I’ve now seen one horror movie, so I’ve done my different for the day.”

  “No argument, and you kept your eyes open for most of it,” Ella said.

  “Closing my eyes wouldn’t have helped. The screaming and chopping and slashing were the worst parts.”

  “What do you expect from an ax murderer?” she said.

  “I still don’t get why they just didn’t leave the cabin and get away,” I said.

  “Their cars didn’t work because the ax murderer had chopped up the tires and engines, remember?”

  “But they could have walked or run away.”

  “They were deep in the woods. It was too far to walk,” Ella said.

  “If four of your friends had been viciously hacked to death in a cabin, wouldn’t you be prepared to walk really far and really fast?”

  “I would have been moving so fast that the only way I would have been caught was if the ax murderer was an Olympic marathon champion. Even then, it would have been kind of like being chased by a bear.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “You don’t have to outrun the bear. You only have to outrun one of your friends.”

  “You’d sacrifice me?” I asked.

  “In a heartbeat.”

  I felt a little hurt, and it must have showed.

  “Wouldn’t you sacrifice me if it came down to the two of us?” she asked.

  I didn’t answer.

  “But realistically, if we were in a horror movie, you’d probably be one of the last ones killed. You might even survive.”

  I gave her a questioning look.

  “You haven’t watched any other horror movies or you’d know that the hot girl is almost always the last to be killed or the only one to survive. Spunky, cute best friend almost always gets killed before her.”

  “Are we going to talk about this again?”

  “Do you think one bad picture of you on social has changed that?”

  She still had that roller-coaster picture up on Facebook.

  “Of course I wouldn’t be the first to be killed,” she continued. “Usually the annoying guy, then the rich, snobby girl and then the chubby guy are the ones to be sacrificed. You’d definitely know that pattern if you watched a few more of these movies,” Ella said.

  “Then I guess I’ll have to take your word for it, because I’m not planning on ever watching another one.”

  “Okay, but getting back to that being-chased-by-a-bear thing, are you saying you wouldn’t do the same and sacrifice me to save your own life?” she asked.

  I shook my head. “I’m way too responsible for that.”

  “You’re right. You probably would have tried to reason with the ax murderer as well, asked him to take off his bloody boots and leave them at the door along with his ax. You would have reasoned with him until he took his own life to get some peace.”

  “Is that how you feel?” I asked. Is that what Luke felt, that he needed to get away from me to get some peace?

  “Of course not.” She got up and started to walk away.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I just want to get something from my bag.”

  “Something…like this?” I asked. I reached under the couch and pulled out a ghoulish mask featuring the image of the murderer in the movie we’d just watched.

  “You went into my bag?”

  “Of course I went into your bag.”

  “That’s, that’s, well, wrong.”

  “Would it be as wrong as wearing a mask and jumping out of a closet?” I asked.

  “It wasn’t going to be a closet.” She paused. “It was going to be in your bathroom. You spoiled my surprise.”

  “Not that much of a surprise. It’s not just you who thinks she has her best friend all figured out. I know you pretty well too, so I thought there’d be more to this than just the movie.”

  “Obviously.” She turned to continue walking away.

  “Where are you going now?” I asked as I jumped to my feet.

  “Now I’m just going to the washroom. Are you planning on joining me?”

  “I might. If that one girl had taken a friend to the washroom with her, she wouldn’t have ended up in hacked pieces stacked in the bathtub.”

  “At least he was being neat and tidy. I thought you’d respect that part.”

  Part of me had appreciated that part. I followed after her.

  “So is your plan now not to be alone at all tonight, even for a second?”

  “Not a bad plan.”

  “Funny, if it was a stupid, unbelievable plot that made no sense whatsoever, what exactly are you afraid of?” Ella asked.

  “I think maybe you should get used to having me glued to your side until the morning.”

  Ella looked at her watch. “I guess I can wait fifteen minutes before I use the facilities.”

  “Why wait?”

  “Because in about five minutes my father is picking me up to go home.”

  “You’re going to your father’s tonight?” I gasped. “Why?”

  “Because that’s where I live at least part of the time.”

  “I know where you live. I thought you were sleeping over.”

  “You being alone overnight is another different. If I’m not mistaken, you’ve never been alone overnight, have you?”

  “No. I knew you weren’t going to stay over every night while my family is gone, but why tonight, after that movie?”

  “This whole horror-movie thing really enhances and heightens the whole different, don’t you think? You’re lucky I couldn’t actually arrange a cabin in the woods,” she said.

  We heard a car horn honking.

  “Perfect timing. That would be my father.” Ella gave me a big hug, and I hugged her back—hard.

  “Don’t worry, you’re going to be all right. It was just a movie.”

  “I know, I know.”

  She grabbed her bag, and I followed her to the door.

  “If you’re really that scared, I could stay,” she said.

  “Don’t be silly. Your father came all this way to get you.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure. I’ll be fine.”

  “If you need to, you can call me. Anytime during the night, if you need to. I’ll leave my phone on.”

  “I’m going to be all right. I’m a big girl.”

  She gave me another hug. “You’re doing well. Remember to write about all of this.”

  “I will.”

  “And we’ll just hope there are no ax murderers following you online who read about you being alone tonight in the house,” she said.

  My eyes widened, and Ella giggled. “Don’t be paranoid. Write about the alone part tomorrow. Good night, Soph.”

  I stood at the door until she got safely into her father’s car. I was happy to see she made it without any ax murderers intercepting her—unless it wasn’t her father but a murderer at the wheel. Or maybe the murderer was in the backseat, or waiting for them in their garage at home, or—

  I closed the door and locked it as they drove away. I now had to fight the urge to push furniture against the door. That wouldn’t help much, and in fact it might block my way if the ax murderer was already
in the house.

  I didn’t want to be alone, but it was still good to see the two of them together. When her parents had first separated, when Ella was fourteen, she’d sworn she’d never talk to him again. It was brutal for everybody, but especially for Ella. She was an only child, so I’d always been like her sister. Apparently, her much older, overly responsible sister. But how would she ever have gotten through that without me? I didn’t even want to think about the number of phone calls in the middle of the night, and the sleepovers, and the tears we’d shared.

  That was the worst time of Ella’s life—and one of the worst times of my life as well. But she’d gotten through it. We’d gotten through it together. And I’d get through tonight too, but maybe I’d call her in the middle of the night. She really did owe me a couple dozen of those calls. And she might get a few of them tonight.

  DAY 20

  I’d written my review of the movie on my various social channels. I was shocked at the number of people who actually considered it a “classic” movie. Gone With The Wind, Casablanca, The Sound of Music and The Wizard of Oz were classic movies. This one was really pretty bad, I thought, and that’s what I wrote. One guy was so unhappy with my review that he unfollowed and unfriended me, but not before he posted an Instagram picture of him holding a DVD of the movie.

  More disturbing than that person’s reaction or even the movie itself was a posting from Luke. He had given the movie two thumbs down and me two thumbs up for watching it. I thought long and hard about what I should say as a response, even typing in a couple before deleting them. I decided the best response was no response.

  It bothered me that he was following me, but in some ways it would have bothered me more if he wasn’t. It didn’t help that he seemed to be having fun without me. I’d been creeping him on Facebook. He and his friends were just hanging around, going to the beach, staying out late, and the pictures looked happy. He looked happy. Was that what people looked like when I wasn’t around to be responsible?

  Now that the sun had risen it was time for me to blog about being alone the previous night. I was pretty sure Luke would read it.