Happenstances
On his sixteenth birthday, Roth learns he's adopted, and his life suddenly tuns into a telenovella about video games coming to life, intrigue of the oh god mom did what kind, and time travel. Satire? You betcha.
I like tormenting my characters. All of them. And no, it's not nearly as OC centric as the summary indicates. Bear with me; it gets less OC-y. Okay, let's get this thing started.
I don't own FFVII.
**
Prologue -
When the Porsche pulled up in front of Roth's house, Roth was sitting at the table, staring out the window, and he nearly dropped his spoon full of Wheaties. That was the sort of car he only dreamed of, the kind he drooled over in secret while his parents were making noises about Hondas and responsibility.
A woman emerged from the driver's side door, as Roth's across-the-street nosy neighbors started coming out to stare. Roth felt a surge of smug exhilaration as the woman started up his house's driveway. They were going to ask a lot of questions, maybe he could impress Joanna enough to get her out on a date.
The driver herself was dressed well, in black slacks and shoes, a black and white top that clung to her well-toned but solid physique (she was not and would never be really skinny), and asymmetrically bobbed dark hair that framed a pale, round face. She had big boobs. She glanced over her shoulder once, and he could see her lips twitch in either consternation or confusion as the Wallers pointed at her and her car with their lips moving.
She disappeared behind the front side of the house, and the car remained sitting there perfect and blue in the summer sunlight. It didn't have Texas tags, Roth realized. Arkansas? Really?
Do they even have nice things up there?
His doorbell rang, and Roth suddenly remembered that this woman was coming up to his house. He forgot his Wheaties instantly and ran to the door, and for a moment stood there, telling himself to be cool. He was almost sixteen! Play it cool.
He opened the door, and looked out at her.
"Yes?" he asked, as if he hadn't been bouncing on his heels moments earlier.
"Hi," the woman said, her eyebrows raising just high enough that they could be seen above her sunglasses. "Roth?"
He stared back at her, mouth slightly ajar.
"Yes," he replied, the statement clearly a question.
"You don't remember me," the woman said, grinning hesitantly. "I'm Meryl. Your mother's friend?"
Recognition—or really, name recognition, and the tiniest bit of facial recognition from the dimmest parts of his memory—dawned on him. His mother talked about Meryl every now and then, as a part of an ongoing, distant friendship that he wasn't a part of, and if she did it around dad, then it usually turned to some comment about money and how they needed more of it. And come to think of it, the woman was an older version of the one in some of his mother's old pictures.
"Oh, yes, I know you," Roth said, nodding.
"I haven't seen you since you were this big," Meryl said, and held up her hand over the ground just below the widest part of her hip. "You look exactly like your mother."
Why did adults think that's a good way to make people remember them!
"Is Harriet, uh, your mom home yet?"
"She was supposed to be back an hour ago, but she called and said she'd be late. Her boss is making her work late tonight."
"Ugh," Meryl said, wrinkling her nose. "That sucks."
Roth nodded in agreement.
"Well, she asked me to meet her here at six, and it is six, so...I guess I'll just call her to see what's up, then."
The woman dug her phone out of her purse, and then paused.
"Oh," she said, a bit sheepishly. "She called me three times and sent a text. Um...okay...you hungry?"
He started.
"Huh?"
She turned the phone's screen to him, in case he wanted to read it. That was his mother's number, anyway.
"Your mom wants to eat at Taco Rio, and you don't have a car, yet, do you? She asked me to pick you up and order drinks when we get there."
"No," he said, a bit uncomfortably. He wanted to say, But I'll be getting one soon!
She blinked.
"No, you don't want to drive with me?"
"Er—no, I don't have a car..."
"Oh," she said, and they skipped a beat. "Well, come on."
"Yeah, sure, hang on a sec," he said.
"Right, I'll be in the car," Meryl said, and turned as Roth shut the front door, needing to go put the bowl of Wheaties in the sink.
Wow. Okay, so, he was meeting his mother at Taco Rio and being taken there by a lady he apparently hadn't seen since he was a little kid, in a Porsche.
This hadn't really been how he intended to finish his day, but if he got to ride in that Porsche, he was all in.
*
The car was as spotless inside as out.
Meryl had her wireless music player hooked up to the stereo, and while Roth never said anything about it, he didn't really like the old music she listened to.
It was a standard, and she hardly seemed aware of it as she looked around, switching gears and moving all four limbs to downshift and turn a corner onto Center. She had a little GPS attached to the dashboard of the car, which radiated the directions onto a small part of the window like it was a projector screen, and beside that, a stealth radar detector.
The twenty minute drive to Taco Rio, his mom's halfway point between work and home, was silent, except for the voice of the GPS which periodically gave out directions in what Roth was pretty sure was German.
His mom's silver Hyundai was already waiting in the parking lot as they pulled up, and they all ordered at once. Roth noticed that his mom and Meryl didn't make a big deal of seeing each other again; they just looked at each other, smiled, gave a few compliments, and hugged—rather delicately, compared to the way his friends who were girls hugged each other at school.
"So, Roth," Meryl started, as they sat down with their three #7's and large sodas. "You're in high school, right? How are you doing."
"Good," he replied, a bit stiffly. He didn't really like talking about school. He didn't really like school, either. He hated being stuck in a chair all day.
"What classes are you taking?"
He felt compelled to respond, grudgingly, when his mother glared at him after a few seconds of his trying to umm and well his way out of answering. He gave a list, and when she asked how he liked them, shrugged.
"I hate history, it's boring," he said.
Her face twitched for a moment, and he could tell he'd disappointed her somehow. Oh well?
"I like biology, though."
"Huh," she said, shrugging.
"I like sports, too," he said, hoping that they could change the subject.
"What sports?"
"Meryl, you gonna eat that?"
Both Meryl and Roth jumped, and while Meryl shoved her pico de gallo towards Roth's mother, Roth stared, dumbfounded. His mother just didn't do stuff like that. She seemed to realize the error as soon as she noticed him staring at her, while she was digging a chip into the little cup, and she popped the chip into her mouth, coughing guiltily.
"How's Dale doing," Meryl asked, turning to mom. Dale was Roth's dad.
"He's doing fine, he got promoted at work a few weeks ago and we went out to celebrate."
The conversation turned really, really boring at that point. Roth knew all of it, that his dad had been promoted to district manager for Radio Shack, and because of that they could afford to get him a car.
After a few minutes of what really felt like going through the motions, his mother set her coke down, and her last, half eaten taco.
"I started a new game."
Roth frowned. So? What was the big deal about that? Both his parents played video games. They fought that way, by kicking each other's asses on DOA, whatever version they were on now.
But where Roth was nonplussed by this announcement, Meryl's face had gone grave. She peered at his mom, rolling the fork in her hand over and over thoughtfully.
"Willst du das jetzt besprechen?" she asked, glancing unsubtly at Roth.
"Nur auf Deutsch. Er kann kein Deutsch."
Well, shit. He shouldn't have taken Spanish.
If he hadn't really cared what the two women were discussing as long as he got a free meal beforehand, now he wished he could understand more than the odd coincidental word. They charged ahead at a mile a minute, and Roth was a bit startled and impressed by himself to realize that he could tell Meryl had a different accent than his mother. Meryl rolled her R's, and the pitch kept going up and down.
It was a serious discussion, neither woman was smiling, and it went on for an hour, long enough for Roth to become engrossed in his own conversation through texts.
"Roth?"
He looked up at his mom, a bit dazed. He had been trying to walk his friend Jake through fixing his stupid, crappy computer, which he really just needed to trash and get a new film-screen instead.
"Yeah?"
"Sorry we took so long."
Both his mother and Meryl were already getting up from their seats and taking their trays to the trash cans.
As they left, and he and his mom climbed into the Hyundai, he couldn't stop himself from asking what they had been talking about.
His mother, crouched over the steering wheel and about to turn the key, sat back in her seat, licking her lips with obvious, deep concern. She was a pretty woman, and one who hadn't inflated after putting a ring on her finger, but she looked tired, and old as she gazed up at the Taco Rio sign, which had a flashing neon sign of a taco being put into a smiling person's mouth.
"Something that you wouldn't remember," she said.
"No, really, what is it?"
She shook her head, and started the car.
"Mom, what the fuck is—"
"Language," she interrupted shortly.
"Is she in some kind of trouble? She's rich, isn't she?"
She looked over at him, chewing on her lip. Then, as he could tell it surge to the top and threaten to burst out—she swallowed it back down.
Roth knew that look, and knew it would be better to just give up before he wasted time trying to wrench the answer from her. She was poor at deflecting questions without getting emotional, but she could keep a secret like a lock box.
She jumped forward, and turned on the car in one big, upset rush. The drive home was silent, and after she parked in the garage, his mom got out of the car and went straight inside, without a word.
He followed her to the study, where he found her picking through the old photo books that sat on the top shelf, next to his baby pictures. When she caught him looking in from the doorway, she got up to shut the door, but before she closed it, gave a choked up comment about Roth needing going to bed since he had school tomorrow.
**
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BTW, I don't mean to sound ungrateful or anything, but if you watch this story, I'd really appreciate it if you could please maybe leave even the smallest comment about why? I'd love feedback, even negative feedback. Helps me to know what I'm doing right and what I'm doing wrong. I.e., even if you're watching it for the lulz of an inevitable crash and burn, please tell me. You can't offend me. Seriously. I have +4 Armor of Just Being Grateful for Comments.