lulusgardenfli : great to hear from you again! Yes, I think Johnny is a very strong character, and people forget that. But that quiet strength is what will draw Wendy to him.
Happier than Most: I'm so glad you love Wendy's thoughts, I really want her to be unique in her thoughts and mind.
Guest : I'm glad to like the pace of the relationship, it really important to get it right.
Kokun: There will be more of Johnny's point of view later on. I love writing him.
scillio: Yes, Connie was named after the Connie from the Godfather. You'll see why later in the story.
Chapter VII
S*S
"And after Bonnie got from the bathroom, she had toilet paper wrapped all around her like a mummy! I thought Miss Maloney was gonna drop dead right on the floor," Sam eagerly narrated later that night, around bites of mash potatoes that Wendy had prepared for herself and her brothers. By the simple fact that none of they had yet to die of food poisoning, Wendy interfered that she's wasn't a terrible cook. But her list of meals she could create on her own was rather...reparative. Potatoes, pasta, chicken soup, cakes for birthdays, and sandwiches for lunch.
Rinse and repeat. Left-overs were her salvation, a large enough meal could be stretched out over a week at the least. Even if that meant sacrificing the favor for connivance.
It wasn't like that with Mama. Of all the well-to-do families in their Washington neighborhood back home, the Allens had been one of the few that had never hired a cook. Mama wouldn't hear of it. The kitchen had been her passage to a realm beyond the time and countries and oceans, offering hints back her girlhood through the food she served - a lot of grilled and baked meat and vegetables, often spiced with paprika and chili. Tomato-based beef and vegetable stew. It use to be a senses-tantalizing mystery for Wendy and her siblings to come home for dinner, loving the way their eyes would explode in their sockets as their tongues watered with the favors of another world altogether.
That world was closed off from them now. Locked and bolted with the key thrown away. In the first mind numbing days after Mama was placed in the hospital, they'd all very nearly joined her; by reason of sudden malnutrition. That was what happen when you suddenly were scourging whatever you could, without any real appetite to eat. That is, until the horrible little light went off in Wendy's head, as Dad began tiredly mentioning hiring a cook to fix the problem. That was where she'd stepped up to her mother's place. And honestly... hadn't really stepped down since.
Though not without mishaps...the first meals she'd tried to create, she'd wound up burning her hands and wrists more often than not. As a result, she became very familiar with the wonders of their aloe plant.
But none of that mattered now.
"She sound's like quite a character," Wendy commented easily, loving the way both the boys were lit up with the memory. She was just relived their first day had gone without incident.
"She is. She's like a loony tunes character that escaped outa the television," Eric laughed. "Which is kinda funny, since when her brother picked her up he was wearing a Mickey Mouse shirt."
Wendy blinked, lifting her head from where it had been resting calmly on her hand. Suddenly, this conversation had gotten a lot more interesting.
"This brother," she asked slowly. "Did he have rust colored haired and sideburns? Gray eyes and a blue pick-up?"
Both twins stared at her. "How'd ya know that?"
Wendy bite hard into her lip to keep from laughing. "Cause I go to school with that brother. He's an escaped loony tune too."
"Really? What did he do?"
Both boys leaned in, eyes bright and glittering. And Wendy knew she'd have to watch what she said, least she create a pair of copy-cats. Mentioning the stealing of the secretary's cigarette was out of the question. Besides, the other incident promised to catch their attention more that than anyways.
"He whistled at Connie while she was walking by, and told her to work it."
The boys' jaws fell open like peeled bananas, before spreading with wide delight.
"No way!"
"Way," she assured him.
"Well what happened?! Did Con make him cry?"
Wendy snorted and shook her. "Hardly, he called her a live one and she told to try and find out. Con was in a good mood, wasn't looking for blood."
"She would've eaten him alive if she had," Sam sniggered. But besides him, Eric frowned suddenly.
"Hey, where is Connie anyways?" he asked, looking around as though he'd just noticed their oldest sibling's absence. Which wasn't all that surprising, given that the boys had come in bushy-tailed and red cheeked, only to spend the entirety of the time until dinner sharing the phone to call Bonnie Matthews. Since they'd apparently promised her they would, having swapped phone numbers with their new friend soon after she was de-mummified. It was the longest Wendy had ever seen either of her brothers sit still -albit with the inevitably shoving as they fought over who got to speak first and for how long.
S*S
Wendy sighed, and gave the all to familiar half-shrug of her shoulder. "Out with friends."
Sam had lowered his fork. "Again?"
"Yes," Why on earth did she suddenly feel so tired all of a sudden? It was barely six o'clock. She'd been perfectly fine earlier today. "Again."
"Why?"
"I don't know Sam," she snapped, sharply, more so than she'd normally ever been with the boys. And it showed with the startlement that flashed across their faces, while thin bodies jump to attention in their seats; blinking owl eyes looking at Wendy like they'd never seen her before. In a way, maybe they hadn't.
Rubbing her temples, Wendy took a deep breath and tried again. "I -look boys. Connie's eighteen, so it's not unusually that she want's to be out and about. That's what teenagers do."
Eric was tapping the rim of his bowl with his spoon (why either twin insisted on eating mash potatoes with one or the other, she'd never know.)
"You don't," he noted quietly, eyes following the constellations on their mahogany table, so quietly she almost didn't hear his words.
She blinked, unable to follow him. "I don't what?"
"You're a teenager, Wen. But you don't go out with friends and stay away from us like we smell bad," Eric told her with childish frankness, neither demanding an answer or expecting one. Merely stating what he noticed around him.
Wendy shuffled. "Well I...I don't want to."
Did she? Surely not...if she ever pulled a vanishing act like Connie did, she'd just spend the whole time worrying whether or not the boys were doing their homework, if Dad had remembered to actually make them dinner, instead of merely setting a couple of the plates; or if he had fallen into one of his silent, unreachable moods -the ones where he wouldn't noticed if the house was burning down around them, with his children inside.
Wendy flinched at the last thought, knowing it could very well be true. She learned that early on, when she'd come home from a rare trip to the mall with friends, only to find her brothers in a panic, trying to put out the dish cloths they'd accidentally set on fire. Cause they were hungry, and trying to make Kraft mac-a-cheese. All while their father sat in his chair, unresponsive to his nine-year-old sons requests for lunch, and then to their shouts as things very quickly went wrong. No. She could never run off, not even for a night. If she did, she'd run the gamble -no matter how ridiculous- that there wouldn't be anything left when she got back.
And that would simply be the end of her, like the closing of a book. The End. There would be no more story after that.
But even if things were different...would she want to be like Connie, out and about and pretending she didn't have family? Honestly...she didn't think so. Even when Mama was here, Wendy had often preferred to stay closer to home, feeling safe where Connie had only felt trapped. It was just her nature. Simply how she was built.
Eric eyed her. "Really?"
"Really," she confirmed, certain this time, and reached over ruffled his hair, before dropping a kiss to it.
"Ah, Wendy," he complained, wresting out of her grip while Sam laughed gleefully at his expense. Wendy smirked, and took the opportunity to smuggle an identical mark on to his head. She then got treated to the dramatic show of her brothers trying to rake the coodies off their heads. It never got old.
"Can we go Wendy? I wanta burn my hair off," Sam grumbled. Eric nodded beside him, equally disgusted. Wendy rolled her eyes at them, and scrunched up her nose. They scrunched up their own right back at her.
"If you must-" but they were already gone before she could finish the third word. Laughing and bouncing out the three seasoned porch and back into the woods. Wendy knew she probably wouldn't see them again until bedtime.
Like always.
Breathing out, she began gathering up the abandoned dishes, and placed them in the sink to wash later, after she'd wrapped up larger bowel and putting it away to finish tomorrow. Mama had utterly despised the wasting of food. It was as much as anathema to her as taking God's name in vain. It had been one of the most annoying parts of her when Wendy was little. But now she was thankful for it. The ability to make a meal last was more useful than most of what Wendy had ever learned in school.
S*S
For all she hovered and worried over them, Wendy never really concerned herself with the boys getting themselves ready for bed. They knew the drill in that regard. If they weren't ready by eight o'clock sharp, she wouldn't read to them. Simple as that. And it was quite effective.
Which was why she was sitting primly in the old rocking chair, ready in her own white nightgown while the boys all but out of the bunk beds to listen how Jim Hawkins got pulled into the quest for Flint's treasure. While the pirates stood in the way.
"Isin't much use for fools, you may lay to it-that, nor nothing," cried Silver. "But now, you look here: you're young, you are, but you're as smart as paint. I see that when I set my eyes on you, and I'll talk to you like a man."
You may imagine how I felt when I heard this abominable old rogue addressing another in the very same words of flattery as he had used to myself. I think, if I had been able, that I would have killed him through the barrel. Meantime, he ran on, little supposing he was overheard-"
"Why would he do that?" Sam demand, fired up with angry against Silver on Jim's behalf. "How could he do that?"
Wendy lifted her eyebrows. "Well he is a pirate, Sammy. They would do whatever it took to get the treasure -"
Sam shook his head furiously. "No not that. It's the way he did it. He...he made Jim think he'd like him. Cared about him. He told him nice stuff, like they were friends...and it was just for nothing?"
Wendy closed the book, sensing they wouldn't be get much further than that tonight. "Some people are like that Sam...it's called manipulative."
Her brother's brow furrowed as he rolled the word in his own mouth. "Ma...manippi-"
"Manipulative," she corrected."...It's when someone wants what they want, and they'll use anybody to get it..."
Her head dropped here, the fingers of her right hand rising up to play with the end of her braid. "And when that person's no longer u-u-useful anymore, they toss them aside. People like that don't care who they hurt."
"But why?"
She shrugged helplessly. "Your guess is as good as mine. I don't know...but if I had to guess, it because people like that don't know how to love properly."
Sam and Eric exchanged a look Wendy couldn't read, born of closeness she didn't share with any living soul. It was over after a moment, an entire conversation held in the span of a second, in a language impossible to decipher.
Eric picked at his bed covers. "So...like Connie then?"
Wendy started, shocked good, she had to admit. "Like Connie what?"
"Connie's like that a lot I think. Maniiplativi."
"Manipulative," Wendy's mind was still trying to catch up. "What do you mean?"
Her brothers arched their eyebrows at her. Somehow, everyone in the family had that trick down except for Wendy.
"Well...Connie likes to use people like that. Dad, you, your friends you hang out with..."
Sam nodded fervently. "Yeah. She uses people then she loses them. And first she pretends to like 'em. She makes you feel like Jim."
Wendy could feel her face flaming up like it had gotten a full blast of pepper, tearing at her throat and burning her eyes. "And you think...you think she does that to us?"
Eric's gaze dropped again. "She's really good at it. Always was, but now...she's got a lot better."
There wasn't much Wendy could say after that. Mostly because...she wasn't sure she could even argue their point.
S*S
Thankfully, she didn't have to. The twins dropped off soon after their assessment of their oldest sister, apparently content with having said their piece. For a long while, Wendy just sat their dumbly in her rocking chair and watched them, steadying her world with the rhythm of their breath. When some semblances of common sense returned to her head, she set Treasure Island down on the night stand and stood, watching them carefully before smoothing down their blankets and switching off the lamp light.
The silence of the Allen house was deafening in the darkness, the lights of passing cars her only companions as Wendy filtered down the swirling stairs in gradually steps, silvery-white in the moon's glow, barely even there.
It was only nine o'clock.
Soon enough, she'd made her way back to the front parlor to resume her post as the Ever Watcher in this family. Here was as good a place as any she supposed. Out of all the rooms in the house, this was the that felt the most like home. Probably because Mama would've loved it for it's tall, lace draped windows, calming blue wall paper, and delicate things placed with soft affection on the fire place mantle and the lamps made of star-caught crystal.
Without conscious thought, Wendy soon found herself curled into Mama's reading chair, pressing as far into it's velvet cushion as her slender frame could stand, wishing the scents earth and roses and rain were real, and not only in her head.
She hated nights like this, where the quiet dragged the hours on into the very ends of eternity...and not in the fun way like Isaac Asimov wrote about. Silence and darkness made for lousy conversationalists. But that was what she was stuck with, unless she was willing to wait for Dad to return around eleven...or for Connie to roll back in from painting the town red.
She thinned her lips. Fat chance of that happening anytime before midnight. Connie had always counted on Wendy to leave the backdoor unlock. And to lie to Dad's face, saying she was home in bed when she was really God-only-knows-where.
She uses people then she loses them. And first she pretends to like 'em. She makes you feel like Jim.
...leave it to a ten year old to tell you when you're being a sucker. She blinked hard, hugging her knees. Ah God...
On second thought, she wouldn't stay up. She wouldn't. With a strange sort of calm, Wendy got up again, and smoothly navigated her way to the porch door, turning the locks to bolt them shut. If Connie preferred to spend all her time outside the house, then surly she wouldn't mind sleeping there either.
Staring a moment at what she'd done, Wendy collected herself and turned back without fanfare, treading up the stairs to her room and leaning hard against her closed door. Well...that felt a great deal more dramatic that it was, she reflected wryly. Certainly wasn't Shakespeare by any means...but it had to be done.
Then she frowned, hands twitching in the folds of her night clothes.
Though admittedly...Wendy wasn't sure what to do with the last few hours of her night now. Her eyes were tired of reading, and she couldn't talk on the phone with anyone now that the twins were in bed.
Unable to think of anything substantial to do, she finally heaved a sigh and just turned back the covers, crawling into bed without much in the way feeling, though she tried to force that back, down into the drawer of thoughts she used to keep her mind tidy. The bad stuff went to the bottom, while nicer things rested on the top, good memories that brush against the skin like ocean water and night air and tasted like tomato-based beef and vegetable stew. She poured over each of these in the fullest extent of their symbolism, blending them behind her eyelids until they swam there in a sleepy river, carrying her along its tide.
The last conscious stirrings in her mind was the sound of an autumn voice with gentle questions, waiting for her answer.
Review make me happy so tell me what you thought and I'll update sooner.
Okay, more of an explorative chapter, but I hope you like it, and what it tells about Wendy and her family. She and Darry will have to form a support group. How to deal with little siblings who don't appreciate you.