by Kate Morris
“What do you think about our situation with North Korea and China?” he asked, waiting for a student to pipe up. Nobody did, of course, so he waited a few seconds. “Jane?”
She inwardly groaned. Speaking out in class sucked. She was not a public speaker, hated giving any type of oral report, and preferred to remain a wallflower.
“Any opinions?” he asked. “Have you been following the news?”
If he only knew. Her grandmother watched the news as if someone were paying her to do so.
“Yes, sir,” she answered quietly. Destiny snorted beside her. Her friend was laughing at her discomfort, something she did often just to mess with her. Jane glared at her.
“And? What do you think about it?”
She cleared her voice, tried to ignore the few snickers she heard somewhere behind her and said, “Um… I think it’s a dangerous alliance. The alliance between Russia and Sweden was unexpected and has turned out to be a really bad thing, and I think the new alliance between China and North Korea could be even worse.”
“Why’s that?” he doubled down.
She had her own set of ‘why’ questions. Why couldn’t he call on someone else? Why did she have to speak in front of all her classmates who either hated or openly bullied her?
“Uh…because China has a much bigger army than we do now. North Korea has always hated us, especially since we went to war with them twice. And I think that these combined nations overseas could be possibly talking in secret about world domination.”
This got more laughs and comments. Some were openly rude. Her cheeks burned. They could laugh all they wanted. Her father already fought the North Koreans in 2044. It could certainly happen again. That was only eighteen years ago right before her father met her mother.
“Class!” Mr. Hawkins said sternly, gaining quick control. He didn’t put up with much, but Jane liked him very well. He was kind and didn’t seem to judge her like she felt some or most of the other teachers did. “Why do you feel that way? It’s certainly not something anyone on the news is discussing. It’s a theory, though.”
“Because I think that history has a habit of repeating itself,” she stated then stammered, “and…and maybe this is going to be my generation’s World War Three. Nations aligned before and bad things happened. Superpowers stood by and let it happen. It seems to be happening again. Other than invasion, I don’t see the reason for alliances of this nature.”
“Retard,” Stephanie whispered under her breath a few aisles over.
“Good!” Mr. Hawkins said enthusiastically and slapped his thigh before standing from where he was perched on the end of his desk. His hearing wasn’t so great. “See that, class? She’s thinking for herself. And, Jane, if you’re right, then we’re all in deep trouble. I hope you aren’t, but none of us would know until it’s too late.”
Destiny tapped her arm after Mr. Hawkins called on another unsuspecting victim. She mouthed some words of praise, to which Jane gave an awkward grin. As she turned back, she caught sight of Roman, who sat behind Destiny. He was looking at her with a strange expression. It seemed as if he found her opinion fascinating. Maybe he did drugs, too. Probably. Most of the snobs in that group were also into their parents’ liquor cabinets and used illegal drugs. She’d heard many girls in the locker room talking about popping their mothers’ prescription pills, too. The only pills Jane could’ve stolen from her grandmother would’ve been diabetes medicine or stuff for her arthritis. Knowing her, she’d take them and have an insulin shut-down, but her joints sure would feel great.
The final bell of the day rang, and she rose from her seat and grabbed her bag.
“Are you coming over tonight?” Destiny asked.
“Oh, sorry, I can’t,” Jane answered her. “Gotta work.”
Destiny groaned. “Gimme’ a break, Jane. All you do is work!”
“Not all of us have a trust fund, Dez,” she joked. Destiny’s family was well off and lived in the same neighborhood as many of the other equally rich snobs that went to this school. Jane did not.
“This sucks,” she complained. “I wanted to go to Terry’s party. He said to bring you, too.”
“That was a pity invite,” she commented with a snort.
“No, he’s nice. Terry’s a good guy,” she argued. “He’s not like…the others. You know that. He’s sweet.” Her friend elbowed her and smiled widely, “I think he has a crush on you.”
Jane reserved her opinions to herself because she didn’t know him that well, and the idea that he might be interested in her was just plain ludicrous. Nobody was that moronic or oblivious to social suicide.
Mr. Hawkins started coughing at the front of the classroom. Jane looked at him and immediately turned back to Destiny.
“Well, how late do you have to work? We could go after,” her friend pleaded.
“Uh…maybe,” she answered noncommittally.
“How late?”
“I think eight o’clock,” she said. “But I’m at the stables tonight. I don’t exactly wanna’ show up to something smelling like horse manure.”
“So, shower and pick me up at nine,” Destiny begged. She was literally begging with her hands in a prayer pose in front of her.
Mr. Hawkins coughed again and pressed a handkerchief from his pocket against his mouth. Being early fall, there was crap floating around in the air and a lot more germs being shared in the school. Many students were sick with one thing or another or had bad allergies. Poor Mr. Hawkins. He was one of the good ones. She hoped he got some rest over the weekend.
Destiny said, “Okay? Alright, Jane? Earth to Jane? Nine?”
“What? Yeah, sure. Nine,” she agreed, then wondered why she had.
She reached under her desk and grabbed her notebook, stuffing it into her pack. As she stood straight again, she caught Roman also looking at Mr. Hawkins. He was coughing again. It sounded nasty and wet. She hoped it was nothing serious. She really liked him. He was probably her favorite teacher.
“Ready? Can you drop me home?” Destiny asked.
“Huh? Right. That’s no problem,” she replied. Jane followed her talkative friend, who was still blabbering on, out the door. She glanced back at Mr. Hawkins as she went and saw him staring with concern at his white handkerchief. It looked like a spot of blood was on it the size of a pencil eraser. Her eyes caught Roman next, who was also looking at Mr. Hawkins with an expression of concern that mirrored her own.
Chapter Two
He wasn’t sure why his friends were so cruel to people like Jane Livingston, but Roman didn’t like it. Sometimes he wasn’t sure if he even liked his friends. Stephanie was so out of control when it came to Jane that he often wondered if she was jealous of her. On paper, Stephanie had nothing to be jealous of. Jane’s family was not rich; she didn’t run in the popular crowd at school; she didn’t live in a gated community. She was certainly not blatantly beautiful like Stephanie, who wore way too much make-up to look that way and got two hundred-dollar facials twice a month. He even knew that her mother took her to get Botox injections in her face, which he was pretty sure was probably illegal. But there was something about Jane, a quality that made her attractive. Maybe not to other people, but she always had been to him.
“Watcha’ thinking about, Roman?” his little brother, Connor, asked.
He had all the curiosity of a typical eight-year-old. Roman was eighteen, and Connor was definitely an oops-baby. He also had two older half-sisters from his father’s first marriage, but they were grown and lived in other states now. Being the older brother to Connor was a responsibility that he took seriously. He wanted to be a good role model for his little brother.
“Nothing,” Roman lied. Then he felt guilty. “Just about a girl.”
“Girls are gross,” Connor remarked, making Roman laugh as he drove them home after school.
“You won’t always think so, Connor,” he said, trying to help him look beyond his eight years. It probably wouldn’t happen for a long time
to come. Roman wasn’t interested in girls until just recently. However, he’d dated a few in middle school, had even gone out with Stephanie for a few months last year, but he’d broken it off with her. She just wasn’t for him, and they had little in common. He shouldn’t have dated her for more than two dates. He immediately knew it wasn’t going to go anywhere, but she’d been persistent. Once she had her sights set on something, she was hard to dissuade. It hadn’t even bothered him when his best friend, Aaron, started dating her. Truth be told, they were a better match anyway.
“Oh, yes, I will! Girls are disgusting,” Connor said with the self-confidence that came with his tender years. “Besides, what girl are you thinking about? A girlfriend? Do you have a girlfriend now, Roman?”
Connor’s tone was so disappointed as if he were the father and Roman his son. Roman tried not to laugh because his brother was serious.
“Nah, nope. It’s just you and me, buddy. You know that. I was just thinking about a girl at school that gets bullied a lot.”
“Hm, bullies suck,” Connor said honestly.
“How would you know?” Roman asked, then went on red alert. “Hey, nobody’s bullying you, are they?”
“No way. I’d punch ‘em in the nose like you taught me. Nah, nope,” he mimicked. “I don’t get bullied.”
“That’s good,” Roman said. He breathed a held sigh of relief. Roman wouldn’t like it if his little bro was getting picked on as severely as Jane. She got it all the time, though. As soon as she’d started at their school, someone, maybe one of the teachers or the principal or a student with connections, leaked information from her file- or, at least, that’s what he guessed. It hadn’t taken more than twenty-four hours for the whole school to know all about Jane and her family. Then the poor treatment of her had started.
“Maybe you should teach this girl how to punch like you taught me. The only way to get a bully to stop bullying you is to give ‘em a poke in the eye,” his little brother said with vigor and made a fist showing Roman. Perhaps, he’d taken the lesson a bit too seriously. He sounded like a tyrant. Roman chuckled.
“Yeah, I don’t think that’s gonna work for this girl.”
“Why not?”
He sighed and thought about Jane for a moment. “She’s not a fighter. She’s kind of timid and small. I don’t think she’d fight back. I wouldn’t want to see her get hurt.”
“Why? Do you like her?”
This was even harder to answer, “Um…”
“You do! You like her. You want her to be your girlfriend!”
Connor started making kissing noises.
“Easy now, buddy,” Roman said in his best parental tone. “I didn’t say that. I just don’t like to see meek people get picked on. I’d feel the same way about anyone.”
“Uh-huh. You like her. I can tell.”
Roman just rolled his eyes at Connor and smiled. The kid was a charming scoundrel. He pitied any girl his brother set his sights on someday.
He drove through the pharmacy’s drive-thru window and picked up Connor’s asthma inhaler prescription and then grabbed them fast food. Both of their parents were working today. His mother was somewhere in Utah or California for most of this week- he couldn’t keep track of her schedule- and his father was in India. He and Connor were on their own for the weekend and probably even Monday. Roman was used to it. His parents were in the ‘harvesting’ phase of their lives, as his father explained it. They needed to work hard right now to save for their retirement and strike while the iron was still hot.
Once he had their food and handed it to Connor to hold, Roman drove them home. As he did most days, he slowed down as he drove past Jane’s home. She lived right next to the gated community in which he lived with his parents. She didn’t live with her folks, though. She lived with her grandmother only. He didn’t know anything about her father, but like everyone else in their school and probably the whole damn community, he knew all about her mother.
Jane’s mother lived a few hours south of them. She was housed in a women’s correctional institution and was serving hard time for drug charges, robbery, extortion, and second-degree murder. That was basically the only thing he knew about the situation, all any of them knew because it wasn’t like Jane was an open book. He’d learned what he knew because he’d looked it up online. As soon as the word got out that her mother was in prison, she was the school outcast. As far as he could tell, she only had one friend, and that was his next-door neighbor, Destiny. She was a really nice girl but never really fit in with any one clique.
He’d overheard his father one time telling his mother that he thought Destiny’s mother was the reason her daughter was an outcast, that the other mothers were jealous of her beauty since she used to be a model. Roman wasn’t sure if that was true or not, but the girls in school certainly would’ve treated Destiny poorly if their mothers treated her mother poorly. The daughter apples in Jackson didn’t fall far from the mommy trees.
He trolled slowly by the old white farmhouse that sat on twenty acres of prime development land, according to pretty much everyone in the area, his own father included. ‘What a waste,’ ‘she’s just a senile old woman,’ ‘they should force her out,’ ‘that land could be going to so many better uses.’ Those were phrases he’d heard frequently the past few years since he was old enough to take notice of adult conversations. Many contractors, including the ones who’d developed the land where his own family lived, had made Jane’s grandmother some handsome offers over the years, in the millions or so he’d heard. They’d even tried eminent domain, which she’d fought in court and won. He was glad for her, too. Roman didn’t think she should have to sell her land just so some asshole could build another golf course community on it. Her property had huge old trees on it, a gravel driveway, an ancient red barn in the back, and a white farmhouse with faded and chipped paint and a big front porch. It always looked so quaint and cozy to Roman. He hated where he lived, although he knew most people would feel blessed to live in such a nice home. He realized a long time ago that it wasn’t the house that made a home homey but what was in it, the people, the atmosphere, the history. Her grandmother’s home seemed like the kind of place that had a story to tell. He often found himself wondering what the two of them did in that house all by themselves. He fantasized that they watched Wheel of Fortune and played cards at the dining table. Or that they always had good, home-cooked meals and talked about their day while enjoying the food and each other’s company. The two-story white brick and matching stone mansion he lived in looked like all the other ones in his neighborhood. He turned an immediate left and pressed the button on the remote to open the gates to their housing development. Then he waved at the guard and kept going.
He drove past the sprawling mansions, each trying to outdo the next in grandeur and size and pulled into his driveway near the end of the first cul-de-sac. He left the Range Rover in the drive and didn’t pull it into the garage. Who would steal it? The community was gated, had a guard at each of the two entry gates, and cameras galore mounted everywhere.
“Can we play video games?” Connor asked as they went inside.
Roman dropped his keys on the round entry table in the appropriated basket for them and tossed his backpack on the first step of the curved staircase leading to the second floor.
“Um, sure. Let’s eat first. Then we’ll go over your homework,” Roman said.
“Awe, nuts!”
“Hey!” Roman corrected. Someone had to.
“Alright, but let’s play that one with the zombies tonight,” Connor requested.
“No, nothing scary. Sadie’s coming over later to watch you while I go out. You won’t be able to go to sleep if you play scary video games.”
They argued back and forth a few rounds until Connor realized he wasn’t going to get his way. Then they ate at the island in the kitchen, and Roman flipped on the television that hung on the wall between the kitchen and dining room. He wasn’t sure why his mother had w
anted a t.v. there. She’d said it was to watch while she cooked, but she never cooked. Roman did more cooking than her. Hell, Connor did more cooking than her, and all he could handle was pouring cereal and milk into a bowl.
“Hey, buddy, use a napkin,” Roman suggested as Connor licked ketchup from his stubby fingers. The blonde newscaster was droning on about some sort of dip in the stock market. He was glad his father was at work, or this would stress him out. He was always worried about money and investments and their retirement.
“Dangit!” Connor swore.
“Language, young man,” Roman said.
“…latest CDC reports are claiming the virus has spread across southern Africa and could possibly…”
“Here, let me,” he offered as Connor struggled with the dipping sauce for his chicken nuggets, which probably didn’t really have any actual chicken in them anyway. Might as well drown them in some saturated fats and artificial flavorings in the form of dipping sauce. Tomorrow, Roman planned on making pork chops and vegetables on the back-patio grill. He didn’t like his brother to eat too much fast food or junk food. He was still growing. He wondered if perhaps Jane would be working at the Italian restaurant tomorrow, Luigi’s, where she worked most weekends. Tomorrow was Saturday. Pasta would be good for Connor, too, and the kid loved spaghetti. Maybe the pork chops could wait until Sunday.
“…several cases have been reported in Morocco and Greece…”
His phone rang on the counter, and Roman answered. It was only Aaron trying to get him to go out to the quarry with them tonight to party. He’d already told his friend twice today that he didn’t want to go. He just wasn’t in the mood. He blew him off by telling Aaron that he had to stay home with Connor. His friends knew when Connor was involved that they wouldn’t be able to change his mind.
“Don’t you wanna’ go out with Aaron?” Connor asked the second Roman hung up.
“Nah, I’ve got other plans. Plus, I’m hanging out with you till I go,” he reminded him. “We’ve gotta tackle that fortress in Shadow Delta Ten.” At the mention of his little brother’s favorite video game, he perked up and started smiling. A shaggy lock of his brother’s hair fell over his forehead, and Roman pushed it back for him. His half-sisters were both blonde like their own mother. Roman was the only one of the four siblings and half-siblings who had black hair. He got his from their mother, though. Connor’s was a lot lighter in color, almost a light brown-dark blonde. Roman’s was pitch black like his mother, but wavy and usually unruly. It was sometimes annoying when it wouldn’t do what he wanted it to, and he wasn’t so great with the styling products his mother always bought for him in the hopes he would figure it out.
