November 10th 2013
Christine's Pov
Ever since Thursday, I'd been more freaked than ever—which is pretty bad when you and your closest friends and boyfriends are involved in a secret world of bionics and scientists with your dad being one of them; and don't even get me started on the hospital.
Bree was better, taking a day off of school on Friday to gather her wits and redeem her strength again. Chase and I spent Saturday with her and Janelle catching her up on her studies that she missed thanks to her relapse and original illness.
"This is impossible!" Bree cried, her head landing on Janelle's shoulder with a thud. Janelle looked like she wanted to push her off, but didn't have the energy.
Chase snorted, looking superior. "Please, I could quote these scenes in my sleep."
"Well, not all of us pretended to date Juliet at one point, Romeo!" she snapped back, tugging tighter at her blanket with a scowl.
I paused, looking to my boyfriend while trying to choke down a snort of laughter. It barely worked, still escaping a little as I took in his tomato face. Unlike me, Janelle isn't gracious enough to try. She hiccupped with laughter, bending over in her lab chair.
"Bree, I'm so gonna get you for that," Chase muttered, glaring at his sister darkly.
Bree smiled and stuck out her tongue. "You wouldn't lay on hand on me and you know it."
This was true. However irritated she was by the fussing, Bree had a way of milking the sickness treatment in her favor, like a girl should. Chase had been especially fussy with her, as had I when I was around and poking around more in my attic with Leo, digging up more of my parents' past.
It was later the night of Bree's discovery did I tell everyone of the pictures and the drastic change between the mothers I saw. Davenport instantly began going off in a muttering spree, click-clacking on his control panel in wonder of what it could tie to.
Now, Janelle frowned as she skimmed the pages of her copy of Macbeth. "People really talked like this?" She said incredulously. "How the hell did they know what the other was saying?"
"It was centuries ago," I pointed out thoughtfully, "back then all this—" I gestured to the book—"made sense."
"Or Shakespeare was drunk," Bree suggests, skimming and frowning. "I mean seriously, what is it with this guy and gory murder?" She wrinkled her nose in disgust and flipped back to the page she had marked.
I shrugged, staring at my own copy indifferently. I personally only referred the first half of every Shakespearean story, where nothing was wrong and love was purely that—in its freshest state, love. "Or pitied the thought of happy endings."
Janelle clicked her tongue and snapped her fingers at me, now hanging off her chair backwardly. "That's the ticket," she agreed solemnly. "This guy was sick of everyone having a happy ending but him."
"Really," Chase interjected, "he kinda did get a happy ending because his wife outlived him, meaning he never went a day up to his death of his mid-50's without her."
She was quiet for a moment, mulling over this information from my Wikipedia of a boyfriend. Then she said, "You can never let me have a moment, can you?"
"I'll let you have a right one once you get your facts straight."
The two soon began to heavily bicker, Bree boredly playing dictator and flipping through the question packet that came with the book, tapping her pencil on her knee. I tuned them out, leaning on my fist in thought, thinking of my own Shakespeare experience.
The play was smoothing out its edges and fixing the loose ends now that the days of final rehearsal were nearing at lightning speed. The costumes were being shipped, the sets were finished two days earlier, and every cast member (and understudy) could rattle off any line from any scene like it was their address. Because, hello, opening night was staring us right in the face, coming at full force.
But that didn't stop the rest of the madness from happening. My attention in Tina and Callan and Eyebrows had been slipping ever since I dug up what I did on my mother—or at least the past her. There were more than pictures, this I knew, and planned to enlist Leo to have a mini movie marathon with the old tapes and CDs I found buried deeply in an especially worn box shoved away in a corner, clearly meant to be forgotten.
Too bad my father didn't count on me snooping my way around there with a little help from my sidekick.
Leo, for his credit, was pretty cool about the whole thing. Although, he wasn't afraid to announce his awkwardness on the whole ordeal when coming across an especially eyebrow raising photo of my mother in a short lacy number.
I, however, found this the most disturbing between the two of us and quickly demanded him to put it away before I proceeded to puke all over his favorite shirt.
That reminds me—
"I must leave now," I announced, brushing off my lap and packing up my things. I stood after giving a chaste kiss to Chase and ruffling Bree's hair as I passed her. Without turning I know she's scowling at my back and reaching up to fix her hair, horrid English assignment forgotten.
"If I didn't know any better, I would think you'd fancy my brother more than myself," Chase called out after me. I could hear the slyness in his voice as he spoke.
I turned on my heel, shooting a smirk to him. "For all you know, maybe I do."
Even as I left them in puddles of laughter, chuckling myself, I knew this could never be true.
Somehow, Leo beat me to my house. And I had been coming from his in the first place. I was about to question what motives he could've had for getting here so fast, but when I saw him with covered in cookie crumbs and casually channel surfing, I knew he must've sniffed out the cookies somehow. Or guessed. Maybe both.
I quickly discarded my bag on the Lay-Z boy and swiped a few myself. Snicker doodles, this time. Rem must've been baking for the entire time I was gone—the batter bowl still out on the counter, a fresh sheet of cookies cooling as the oven yawned open.
We went through the same routine or flipping in between SpongeBob and this new show called Sanjay and Craig. After watching carefully for a constructive thirteen minutes we both dutifully agreed that this stupid piece of work was not worth our time and another add-on to the list of shame for Nick.
"Okay, time to get to work." I stood and brushed cookie crumbs off my lap, starting to the stairs.
Leo groaned from somewhere behind me. "I feel weird going through your pop's past like this. I don't even like it when Mom relives her 80's years with me!"
I did a physical shudder. For me, 80's was all neon and leg warmers, and funky disco records that were made to be destroyed. No one should be able to make it through recounting a story featuring those things without throwing up. The mocking stories retold by Dad and some pictures recalled on especially long road trips didn't help ease my repulsiveness on the entire decade.
I set his and my uncomfortableness to the side, instead pulling him along and up the attic the steps once I yanked them down.
Leo and I had managed to cover the front boxes, the ones that weren't necessarily hidden away. Dad always been a man of science, but that didn't stop him from having a strong believe in different sayings, especially after the rough period after Mom abandoned us all those years ago.
His favorite? 'Many important details of life are hidden in plain sight.'
Who's to say that didn't mean his past in boxes?
But other than more pictures and a couple of desperate letters written in my father's messy scrawl, there was nothing useful—even between the lines of the innocent-by standing looking stuff.
"So? What else do we look for?" Leo asked as he rolled up his sleeves. We stood at the opening of the stairs, looking at the boxes all around us. It never occurred to me until then how many boxes we truly had, all stored with our original belongings and more newer and useless things added every time we moved. It was kind of depressing, really, to look at the box towers nearly as tall as I. (Either they were as large and tall as I was seeing them to be, or I felt incredibly small in that moment.)
"Anything we haven't already found," I said finally, pushing up my own sleeves and carefully sifting my way to a pile of tubs near the slanted window on the far wall. Leo, by the sudden noise to my left, headed toward a back corner behind the stairs.
When I popped the lid, it would be an understatement to say I was disappointed with what I found. I wasn't expecting a sudden breakthrough discovery or anything, but usually, by the clichés we seemed to following, I figured they would hold something juicer than broken Christmas ornaments and dusty Thanksgiving décor.
I dug through it just in case, and all I got was pricked by a sharp edged piece of what could have once been a baby Jesus bulb for the tree.
"Shit." I stuck my pointer finger into my mouth, sucking the blood off as I stood.
Leo didn't even bother to look up at my exclamation, choosing to still dig around. I pushed aside what I'd already dug through to grab a smaller, skinnier box that couldn't have held much beyond something tinier than clothing or books. I ripped the top off, running my hands over the surface of its contents.
Everything in it was books and old VCR tapes. Dad had always been especially old-fashioned when it came to the past, and I guess memories videotaped were no exception.
I grabbed the books closest to me. It was a really old copy of Carrie by Stephen King, the cover dependent on tape and dried bits of what looked like glue. Gingerly I flipped it open, running my finger curiously over the sticky note stuck to the flap.
Allan and Maria—West Side Story: The Musical
Senior moment; final performance.
It was written in my father's handwriting, but neater—like he'd taken great care with writing this. But that wasn't what struck me as odd; my parents knew each other before college? I felt something stir in the pit of my stomach. For more clues I carefully set the book aside, still open, and pushed my way to the bottom, where neatly lined were old VCR tapes.
"Yo! Lookit this!" Leo let out a whoop from his side of the mess, holding something rectangular and obviously overused in his hand. I squinted, leaning closer to get a better look. Not such an easy feat with him waving it back and forth as excitedly as he was.
The VCR player!
I jumped up, clapping my hands together excitedly. With a grin, I nudged my head toward my find. "We have got to show the guys this."
After another good hour of reading carefully placed sticky notes and digging out the corresponding tapes, we lugged our discoveries to Davenports' house in a huge wheel barrow I politely borrowed from my neighbor, Ms. Riley, an old substitute with a glass eye for Mission Creek.
"Whoa," Janelle said. She stood at the door, Macbeth still in hand and her hair now messily piled on her head with two pencils stabbed through it. "What'd you do? Break into a secret safe or something?"
Leo snorted from his spot steering the wheel barrow. He rolled his eyes as he complained, "if only the snooping was that exciting!"
I promptly thumped his head and directed him to help me bring everything inside and leave the barrow outside until it was needed again.
Janelle and Bree huddled off in the kitchen, their cell phones in hand as they rounded up the troops for an emergency meeting at the Davenport residence, ASAP.
"Didn't you already know that your parents met in high school?" Trina asked her and Rachel the first to arrive.
Rachel rolled her eyes, tossing a throw pillow at her sister's head. "Moron, they met in college."
Trina wrinkled her nose. "Same difference."
"Not really."
While the two began to bicker, Ashley and Sammie blew in, attached at hip like always. They were huffing and puffing, their feet in matching wedges.
Sammie righted herself, stiff panting, to see all the amused faces looking at them. She pointed an accusing (sparkly and manicured) finger at Bree. "You said someone died!" she cried angrily.
Bree shrugged, still wrapped up in her blanket. "I knew you wouldn't hurry unless it was of the upmost importance," she pointed out, which was true. To Ashley and Sammie—the latter especially—it had to involve a death or someone close to dying for them to steer away from their Spa Saturday. Kind of sad, but pathetically true.
Everyone scrunched together on the couch and floor, situating themselves between each other's legs and such while I and Chase set up the VCR and placed the tapes in order.
"Do you think this could be it?" He asked me softly, our hands brushing against each other's as we worked to untangle the knotted cords. Despite being together well over a year, I felt my face heat up at the contact as I smiled.
"Anything's possible, remember?" He grinned slyly and pulled me close the waist, kissing me softly.
"Boo! Go get a room!" Leo hollered, launching a nearby throw pillow at our heads. It missed by a mile, landing somewhere near the kitchen.
"Nice one, babe," Janelle snorted.
Chase and I pulled away laughing, finishing the last part of setting up the VCR to the TV. I grabbed the first one of the tapes I'd found, popping it in and playing around with the channels before the static-induced image came up.
Chase set me on his lap once he rested in his spot on the couch, hugging me from behind as the video began to play.
My dad looked handsome in his senior year. Well-cut hair and light eyes, no stress lines marking his face yet.
My mother naturally looked even more gorgeous than she did in the pictures I'd seen; prettier and younger, glowing with that youth glow that she now lacked. Long tresses of dark blonde hair fell over her night dress, her dark eyes staring into my father's eyes deeply, full of love not even the best actress in the world could fake.
They were singing, standing on a false stairwell, like the kind seen connected to the outside of apartment buildings downtown.
A few of the girls let out little "awes!" and dreamy sighs, making their respective guy groan. I myself leaned closer in my seat, smiling lightly at how loving and caring they were for each other, even in their rendition of West Side Story. No way could it have been Dad's work to blow it all away, like my mother accused it of being all those years ago.
It had to have something to do with her, and her now dark hair, and whoever her male friend is, spotted at her sides in all the paparazzi snapped pictures now.
I didn't care. I watched the couple my parents used to be as they sing their I love you's in perfect harmony, the world around them melting.
And for the life of me, I was going to figure out why they can't be like that now.
I guess this could be longer, but I really hate revealing too much in one chapter. Plus I love hearing about your frustration about it in your reviews so please tell us your comments and thoughts on the chapter and what you think could happen next.