"Wait, and some guy in the alley gave you this?" Steve asked to confirm, a deep frown on his face. It wasn't that he was upset about the flyer exactly, but rather the fact that a stranger, clearly someone who wasn't of that small town, was handing stuff out. "I want to see this."
"What, do you think I'm lying?" I scoffed and gave a sharp yank to the back of my hat, fixing it so that my bangs were just over my eyes. "If I had some mad art skills for this, I wouldn't be playing soccer all day." Nevertheless where Steve went, Darren and I followed. As we moved, something occurred to me. "He helped me up after I literally ran into him and reminded me that I had the race to win – looks like you owe him a swift kick in the ass, otherwise I would have lost!" My laughter lightened the mood for I could see Darren grin and Steve's walk slow a bit. As unpredictable as he could be at times, I was a bit proud that I could read his body language usually.
When we three got to the alley, we stared in for a long moment. Despite it being day with the sun shining and winking at us, no one really wanted to go into the dim slab of space. Of course perhaps it had something to do with the fact that the flyer we had, the Cirque du Freak, meant that he was part of it…and therefore a freak. But besides a scar on his face and his hair being as ridiculous as the fruit, I couldn't quite figure what made him a freak. Maybe it was just a marketing position…yeah, maybe he was an intern or something.
With that thought taking off the edge, I stepped in and turned around to face the boys. "Well, he was here." I turned back around and looked around, not thinking he had shrunk or anything but more for some sort of proof. "Let's see…oh, there! That's where I ran into him and skidded into the loose gravel." I nodded at the area that showed a total wipe out.
Steve walked after me first, Darren lagging behind. I shot him a quizzical glance to which Darren muttered, "I dunno…gut feeling."
When I felt Steve's warm body next to me, he snorted. "Clumsy."
"Hey, this clumsy ass beat yours to the street sign! What does that say?!" I elbowed him in the side before walking Darren out of the alley. "Anyway," I must have had a shit eating grin on my face, "we have the flyer…and you have Alan as a teammate. Let's call it a day, it's dinner time!"
After a quick round of byes, as well as a plan to meet up tomorrow at noon for said soccer game, I went to call it quits. Darren left but Steve lingered, following me after a few steps until I felt a tug on my arm. "Hey?" I looked over at him, a bit startled from the look in his eyes. My hand went to my neck, rubbing the back softly and completely oblivious to my own body language.
"Would…you like to uh…go grab a burger at the old DQ?" He seemed twice as nervous as I felt even though he'd never admit it. Well, hell, neither would I. I had known this guy since we were six…a decade later and here we are now. He and Darren treated me like one of the guys and lord knows I behaved and dressed like one – must to my mother's everlasting annoyance. So why was he nervous now? Why was I?
Shifting to my other foot, I went to speak…but felt like…we were being watched. The sun was starting to sink so I couldn't see into the new forming shadows, but I definitely felt it. Just like Darren's "gut feelings", I learned to trust some instincts of my own long ago. Turning back to look at Steve, I shook my head. "Sorry, I'm flat broke. Raincheck it to next week?" Wait, why would he ask me and not Darren? "There a reason for craving cow suddenly?" I tried to pull off my curiosity by adding a smile but even then that looked awkward.
Steve would have hid his disappointment well…from anyone but me. His shoulders slacked for a moment before he pulled them up, standing straight to compensate. Even his jaw had slacked before he took on the usual over-confident Steve Leopard mask. "I…just wanted to look at the flyer a bit more."
"Oh!" I had forgotten the flyer and therefore when he brought it up, forgot all about how his answer was a load of crap. Digging it out of my pocket, I held it out, "Here…you keep it tonight. I don't think my family would be happy if they found it somehow. I don't think Jamie," my sister, "would look through my stuff, but mom might. I swear she's expecting me to come home with cigarettes one day and blame you and Darren." I finished it off with a laugh but even that felt weird in my throat. Mom wouldn't blame Darren and Steve, just Steve and we both knew it.
Still, he took the paper and folded it back up into his own pocket. "Alright well…I'll see you at school tomorrow. We'll have to tell Alan and Tommy about this show!" There was at least a light that came back into his eyes at the mention of the show.
Grinning without any weirdness once more, I waved as he took off and followed suit. As I started down the road to my house, I shivered. It was fall, yeah, but nowhere near that chilly yet. When I looked around, again allowing my body to react when my mind couldn't, I saw a shadow move…or was it a tree branch? Swallowing thickly, I walked a bit quicker, my heart mimicking the speed of my feet. Within minutes I had broken into a full sprint, feeling as though the shadows – or whatever they hid – were keeping up with me.
When I got to my house, I knew the door open, spun around inside, and slammed it shut before locking it. My heart started to calm, my body starting to relax…I was safe in this house. Yes.
It may not be much, but it was protection. I finally let go of the locks and stepped back, tossing my hat off to the counter, avoiding the broken edge of the wooden table that we had gotten at a yard sale. "Hey, I'm home." I called out, heading to the living room. That was, after all, where my dad spent most of his time. Plus I heard the television on low. "Anyone gonna answer me back?" For a brief fleeting moment, I imagined that there would be no one in the house, no one in the living room…that I was alone, that my family had just…disappeared.
The irrational fear was proved to be just that when I poked my head in and saw…my dad on the couch. Whew! "Hey dad, what are you up to?" The man before me had his leg, or what was left of it, on the foot rest of the couch. A few years back, due to an accident at the job, he lost it…as well as the job. The sleazy company managed to get away with saying that it was an accident that he could have prevented, that it was his fault…so there was no compensation. And since my mother was a banker and the only one making an income from then on, we weren't as well off as we once were. Despite the last name being Ivy, sounding all fancy and wealthy, we were far from such.
"Hello Sam." He muttered, his eyes glued to the television. I stared for a moment, catching that something was off. Tone and body language was the complete 180 of how my father usually acted. He was the type that saw the glass half full, a trait that I strived for.
"Um…where's Jamie?" I looked at the coffee table and caught third grade homework from my little sister's class just…there. She had been right in the middle of a math problem too…where did she just up and go to? "Hm," I decided to try and lighten the mood, "the pencil is still warm…someone was here doing her homework for her!" I looked up at my dad with a grin…which fell a bit. He didn't react.
Before I could question it further, for now I was really suspect, my mother's voice rang out from the kitchen. "Samantha, can you come here please?" I grimaced a little. No one called me by my full name, it was always just Sam. Alas, my mother was determined to keep it as Samantha and continuously called me it despite my constant protests. I was a lady, she stated, not some roughhousing boy.
Walking into the kitchen, I spotted my mother at the table with a cup of Earl Grey tea at the table. Originally I had planned to get a soda but at the smell of lemon and tea, I quickly made a shift to the stove where the kettle was. "Hey mom." I muttered as I poured myself a glass. That drove my mother up a wall, I knew, but it was my way for getting back at her using my full name. With a glass, not a tea cup, of Earl Grey in my hand, I plopped into a seat and looked up at her.
With a tight, almost grim look on her face, she swallowed her criticism with her drink. Huh…that only happened when she knew there would be a fight to come, so she didn't want to push tempers quite so early. Uh-oh. "Am…I in trouble or something? Dad looked…I don't know. And where's Jamie?" Once again, my body reacted and became alert when my mind was sluggish.
"There is something we need to discuss."
Snorting softly, another habit that was un-ladylike, I took a sip of the warm drink and nodded. "Well, yes, which makes my question all the more urgent. What did I do now?"
"You've done nothing wrong, Samantha." Talk about a rare order of words put together. "I have news for you. You'll be turning seventeen soon…graduating high school." I nodded, following so far. She continued, "We don't have the money for college." Uh…well…yeah. I had to take a long gulp of tea to keep from expressing my sarcasm and, honestly, annoyance at how she was stalling. Of course we didn't have money for college…we could barely pay the bills. "Yeah? I'll get a job."
My mother scoffed, her usual spark of pride (arrogance?) coming back to life. "You will do no such thing! You are an Ivy and we are a proud line of people. None of the women on my side of the family," the cliché Southern Belles, "ever worked a day in their life."
"You work. You're a banker." I pointed out a bit dryly, my lids lowering just enough to give a dull stare.
"I had no choice…our family has to be provided for and that responsibility had fallen to me to take care of." She pointed out with her feathers ruffled. I didn't mention how my grandparents, her wealthy parents, refused to help us out. Despite the opposite personalities from mom and dad, mom had been disowned from her family (siblings and aunts/uncles included…haughty bunch) for marrying dad, a lowly "poor" man. It was a marriage of love…which always left me in awe I have to admit, since I rarely saw that side of her. "And brush your bangs out of your face! You are not an urchin on the streets, even if you dress like once."
"Mom, they're blue jeans! Women have been wearing them for, like, fifty years or something!" I quickly moved on to keep her from calling me out on my lack of historical knowledge, "And I don't know what you're talking about, I have a choice too…find a job. I don't mind it. I get bored anyway." Okay, maybe that was a lie. I'd rather play soccer or just hang out with Darren and Steve all day, but she didn't need to know that.
My mother let go of her tea cup and nodded. "You are right, you do have a choice...and that is what I wanted to talk about. A very old friend of mine has spent the year trying to find a match for her son – he's about twenty now and already working in a company – so she reached out to me." It didn't quite hit me what she was gunning for, I was more distracted by the fact that she still had contact with her uppity old friends. "Her son is already on track for a high management position and therefore quite a large salary. He wants someone to take care of with that salary…so I suggested a marriage between you two."
It took a total of three seconds for me to process what she said, and another three seconds to react. "WHAT?!" I yelped, standing so quick that the chair fell back. "Wait, whoa, hold right up there, what?!" My palms were flat against the table now, my body tense. "Marriage?! With a stranger?! Like, an arranged one?! Um, no!"
"Samantha, this is the chance to get out of here! You'll be taken care of, you can go to college, and you can help support your family now! You need to and will do this and that's final, young lady." Despite my hostile and shocked body language, she merely sat there. Always in control, that one, always concerned about the public eye.
I spluttered, struggling to really understand this. I thought arranged marriages had died out like…decades ago. "Wait, is that why dad was acting so weird?!" Oh god, I realized, he knew and he couldn't look me in the eye because…he knew mother was right. "You sent Jamie to her room so she wouldn't tell me, didn't you?!" Good job self, you notice all this about four pages later in the story. "No! No I refuse to marry someone I haven't even met!"
Occasionally mother would get…well, she'd be a smart ass. Which, hey, I got from her to begin with and could usually appreciate the humor after the fight…but not this time. "Oh good, your only concern is meeting? Then I've got pleasant news that will calm your mind. Your fiancée, Mark, will be coming down for dinner tomorrow night." My heart stopped for a second. It wasn't the fact that she had said "fiancée" or that he was visiting, it was the fact that tomorrow night was…well, the Cirque. Glad to see I had my priorities straight.
"You…you hypocrite, how can you push me into an arranged marriage when you married dad for love?!" I yelped, hitting below the belt pretty quick.
Mother's jaw set and she glared, her voice cool but sharp. "I am trying to prevent you from making the same mistakes I did – though I love your dad and I love my children, I have always wished I had handled the situation differently." What, I thought, and not married the man? "And the marriage will blossom into love…as you said yourself, you haven't even met him, so how do you know you won't love him?"
I stuttered quite loudly for a moment, feeling my brain slowing down and sputter out. Finally I slapped the table and snapped, "No, I refuse to go through with this and you can't make me!" Instead of running out the door, I ran upstairs to my room…then, later, would climb through the window to Steve's. But for now, my room to pack.