Redone: Sunday, June 08, 2008
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When your only friends are hotel rooms
The rain was pouring heavily, drenching the entire city within minutes after the clouds came to empty themselves onto the unsuspecting crowds below. The news reports had said nothing of a heavy down pouring that morning on the television, but then again when was the weatherman ever right? Many of the people who had been unfortunate enough to be walking the streets when the clouds had started to pour rain upon them had quickly gone to seek refuge in nearby stores or office buildings to get away from becoming completely soaked to the bone.
However, one of the few people unaffected by the weather walked calmly down the side walk, looking as though the huge droplets of rain were mere tear drops. The girl, around the age of seventeen, seemed not to notice the pouring rain that had effectively soaked her clothes and drenched her curling brown hair. While many of the people that passed her on the sidewalk had attempted to cover their heads from the rain with newspapers or briefcases, the girl didn't seem to mind the weather in the slightest.
She crossed the street by use of the crosswalk and continued on her way, almost oblivious to the happenings around her. Her pace was slow and careless, like the girl had nothing better to do than walk down the streets of Boston halfway through a day in which she should have been attending school. Her worn down shoes, a pair of black converse, squished on the wet pavement, probably soaked completely through themselves. But even the uncomfortable feeling of soaked socks didn't seem to faze the girl.
After ten minutes of walking through the almost barren sidewalks, the girl finally entered a small coffee shop leaving the rain behind. The bell above the door dinged as she walked in and took a seat up at the counter on one of the swivel stools. She dropped the messenger bag that been hanging from her shoulder on the floor beside her and let her head fall to the counter with a loud clunk.
"Alice, how many times to I have to tell you not to do that?"
The voice came from directly above the girl in a motherly voice, cutting through the dull hum of the customers that filled almost every seat in the room. The girl, Alice, didn't pay any attention to the woman and lifted her head to drop back onto the counter once again, just for the fun of it. The man sitting on the stool next to her, who was reading the Boston Times, gave her an odd look.
"That kills brain cells," the voice called to her again, this time further away. "You're already failing all of your classes, including PE, so I don't think losing anymore brain power would be in your best interest." The statement was said in a joking manner, but with a hint of seriousness.
Alice lifted her head to glare at a blond haired woman, around nine years older than herself. She was tall, beautiful, and had in Alice' opinion the most gorgeous green eyes on the face of the planet. Sarah was also the almost exact opposite of her younger sister. Alice had dark brown hair, deep blue eyes that she had gotten from their mother, and wasn't any taller than five-five.
"Are all older sisters this annoying?" Alice groaned as she reached over the side of the counter and grabbed a coffee mug. She held it out to her sister with a pleading look when Sarah came back from wiping down the tables.
She shrugged and took the mug, filling it to the brim with steaming hot coffee. "It's in the job description," her hand disappeared beneath the counter and came back into view with a towel in it. Sarah threw it at Alice, who stared as it landed a few inches away from her coffee mug. "You're dripping all over the floor. Carl will have your head if he sees the mess you've made."
Carl was both the owner of the small coffee shop that Sarah worked at, and also the two sister's landowner. They had been renting out the flat directly above the shop for almost four years, ever since Alice had come to live with her older sister. Their parents had died in a car accident, leaving Alice in her then twenty four year old sister's care. Carl had been Sarah's boss for two years already, and insisted she rent out the apartment and become the assistant manager of the shop.
He also happened to completely love both Sarah and Alice like his own granddaughters. Most of his family lived on the west coast, leaving him alone for the holidays. It hadn't taken many holidays to go by before he invited the Klein sisters to dinner at his small apartment across town. It wasn't quite as good as the memories from either of the girls' childhoods, but was definitely a close second best.
"Carl loves me too much to be mad," Alice smirked; taking a deep breath in, the smell of the fresh coffee invaded her senses. "It's only a little water anyways."
Sarah just looked at her and shook her head. "Why aren't you at school?"
Alice took a delicate sip of her coffee, choosing to look anywhere other than at her older sister. She wasn't looking extremely forward to explaining to Sarah, who had been a straight A student herself, that she was effectively failing every single one of her classes. That morning just before third hour, her principle had called her to the office and had pretty much spelled out that Alice was going to have to repeat her junior year. She'd been sent back to class, but instead the girl in question had chosen to skip the rest of the day instead.
In all honesty, Alice could care less about her schoolwork. She didn't have any plans for the future. If it weren't for the fact that Sarah wanted her to graduate, Alice would have already dropped out of school and simply gotten her GED. But she'd wanted to give Sarah a reason to be proud of her.
However, it had turned out easier said than done.
"I kinda' need to talk to you about that," Alice said finally with a sigh, still not looking at her older sister. She looked around the coffee shop, taking in almost every one of the booths and tables were filled with patrons. This wasn't something Alice wanted to tell in public, but then again there would be more witnesses to condemn Sarah in the murder of an innocent seventeen year old.
Sarah, who had been cleaning the counter with a bleached rag, stopped and looked at the younger Klein seriously. "What did you do?"
Alice gave her sister an affronted look, setting down her coffee cup. "Why do you automatically assume that I've done something wrong? Maybe I saved a hobo today from being run over by a semi truck and that's why I'm not at school! Would it honestly be that shocking if I did something heroic? You should be ashamed of yourself Sarah. You know what they say about assuming, makes an as-" The stern look Sarah was shooting her shut Alice up quickly. "Riiiiight. You wanna go upstairs and talk?"
--
The reaction from her sister was almost exactly like it had been in Alice' imagination. Although Sarah hadn't thrown anything like she'd expected, she had yelled for around ten minutes without seeming to stop for air. It had resulted in a permanent grounding until Sarah saw grades improving and the promise of a meeting with her principle.
Overall, it had actually gone over better than she'd originally expected.
After Sarah had returned to the shop below, Alice had changed out of her still drenched school clothes of jeans and a tee into a comfy worn pair of sweats from her latest season of softball and plain oversized green hooded sweatshirt. The perfect attire for an afternoon of leisure. She wasn't planning on doing anything much with the rest of her day, watch some TV, surf the internet, possibly go down to shop to mingle with the regulars.
Nothing too special or out of the ordinary for her.
She was flipping through the channels on the television a few hours later when Alice heard the buzzer sounding that meant someone was waiting downstairs to be let in. She stood up slowly; silently hoping that by the time she reached the intercom, the person downstairs would've given up and walked away. When the buzzer rang again when Alice finally got to the intercom, she was disappointed to find the person hadn't.
"Who is it?" She asked almost carelessly.
It was a seventy-five percent chance that it was Terrence, Sarah's boyfriend of six months. Another twenty percent to Carl coming to check up on her and Sarah since today was his self given day off, and the last five to Lorraine, Alice' best friend since moving to Boston.
"Let me in kid," a rough voice called to her through the gravely speaker. And the prize goes to Terrence. "I brought Chinese."
Upon hearing his declaration of food brining, Alice didn't hesitate to ring him in. She unlocked the front door on her way to the miniscule sized kitchen and heard Terrence let himself in as she pulled out a stack of paper cups.
"I'm in the kitchen!" Alice yelled when Terrence's footsteps started fading away further away from her, probably guessing she was in the den with the television. She heard a grunt of acknowledgement and shook her head.
She and Terrence weren't what some would call 'best friends' but got along fairly well despite their lack of love towards one another. Sarah had made it clear from the beginning that they both meant a lot to her, and wouldn't allow herself to be torn between them. They both shared a love of movies and it was only on the rare occasion that Sarah would come back from closing down the shop not to see them sitting in front of the television, watching one movie or another.
Horror flicks were a must.
Grabbing the plastic cups and a jug of fruit punch out of the fridge, Alice headed out of the kitchen and into the den where a Terrence was looking through the movies on a bookshelf against on of the walls. He was a tall man, sizing around six-two without a lick of fat on him. His perfectly white teeth contrasted greatly with the dark color of his skin, given to him by his African heritage.
He had dumped the take-out on the short coffee table in front of the television, which he had turned to the news while searching for a movie. Curling up on the red couch that sat facing the television, Alice picked at the box of take-out she'd grabbed and half attentively watched the news.
There was an ongoing police chase happening on the highway just outside of town. A news caster's voice was being overlaid the live feed of the chase. A half dozen or so police cars were speeding behind a sleek red convertible which was somehow expertly weaving between the hordes of cars all starting on their way home. She almost laughed as the camera zoomed in on flying dollar bills that were all tearing out of the front seat of the convertible, leaving the highway littered with hundreds of dollars.
Alice was about to call to Terrence to watch the chase with her when his cell phone rang. She shrugged her shoulders when he stood up and started to whisper into the mouth piece, his back to her. Terr worked for a security company for some big firm downtown and they always called him at weird hours for a reason unknown to Alice.
The chase on the television was slowly turning in the driver's favor; somehow he was able to get a good amount of distance between himself and the cops, at least a few city blocks.
"Terr," Alice said finally, too enthralled by the speeding chase to care that he could be in the middle of an important call. "You gotta watch this!"
A smack to the back of the head told her to shut up and she said nothing more as Terrence went back to his phone call. A few seconds later he flipped his phone shut and reached to pull his coat off from the back of the couch, catching Alice' attention.
"Where you going?" She asked, turning around to look over the back of the couch to see him pulling on the jacket and digging inside his jean pockets for his keys. "You just got here!"
Terrence spared her an annoyed look as he patted himself down, still searching for his keys. "My boss called. I gotta go in for a few hours," he told her, a triumphant look coming over his face when he finally located his keys on the coffee table right next to the take-out. He reached over the back of the couch and snatched them up, hurrying towards the front door. "Tell Sarah I'll call her later tonight. Later, shrimp."
Before Alice could give any sign of acknowledgement Terrence was out the door, leaving her staring at where his back had been seconds before. She shrugged and turned back to the television, where the news had moved onto other pieces besides the high speed chase which had ended when the cops lost sight of the speeding car.
How six cop cars "lost sight" of a speeding offending car while a news chopper followed overhead was beyond Alice, but somehow, it'd happened. Three cheers for smart criminals.
Ten minutes later Sarah walked in the door, unsurprised to find her younger sister sitting in front of the television, Chinese take-out boxes scattered across the coffee table and just starting to watch the beginning credits of 28 Days Later.
Alice didn't say anything as she sat down with a slight bounce on the couch next to her and without looking away from the television, reached forward and handed Sarah a random box of food. Sarah took it and gave her a sidelong glance but said nothing as she leaned back, picking up her food with a pair of chopsticks taped to the side of the box.
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