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Tentative
Chapter Two
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My sparse home greets me as I stumble through the front door. It isn't much, but I love the floor-plan of the ranch-style building. My bedroom is a small open loft, up a set of ten stairs; my couch is pushed beneath it with a barrage of garage sale chairs in odd groupings with the television. My piano, my one real splurge, is pushed against the wall near the door. The kitchen is in one corner, the dining room in the center of it all.
The phone is ringing. I grab it as I wander toward my bedroom, but I don't button the cordless on. The caller ID reads 'Unavailable', so I wait for the answering machine to pick up and warn me of who is accosting me now.
"Hi, Greg. It's Grissom." He sighs, continues, "Nick came to me after the shift to tell me your Dad's sick. I think that's why you've been so preoccupied lately. If you need to take some time off, I'll understand. We'll see you tonight." There's another pause, "If you want to talk, we're all here for you." Then the phone clicks as he hangs up.
I toss the phone and throw myself onto the bed.
Contrary to what I could feel, I still trust Nick Stokes thoroughly. He did what he had to do because he needed someone to guide him. He clings to his mentor on the hopes that he'll come up with some semblance to the great Dr. Grissom.
I wish I had that. When I was younger or during these present days. Just have someone there to help me. Help Kia and I when one of the boys would get sick and we were left trying to get to the hospital through a series of bus rides, help when the gas and electric got turned off while we tried to find something to feed which ever infant was screaming with hunger.
Somehow I have acquired the old silver Zippo with my initials engraved from its home within the confines of my nightstand drawer. My mother gave it to me as a graduation present when I moved on from Junior High; I don't think she ever forsaw the possibility that it could be used for alternate purposes. Too bad considering she made me start doing this to myself.
"My friend." I lisp to it and flick it on without second thought.
The flame dances and tilts from side to side. Taunt me, laugh at me, love me. And I lay it closer and closer until the skin on my stomach bubbles. It burns away at the cells and my thoughts.
I have few real friends nowadays. A girl from high school, a few boys from college, and an ex-girlfriend. No one who can make me feel like I'm getting the childhood which was stolen from me at a tender age when I should've been declaring my love for trucks and planes, begging for them for my birthday.
Phone rings again. Reminds me that there's a world outside my harbored memories, where there's coworkers who need things yesterday and bills to be paid.
"Greg, it's Catherine and Sara. We went out for breakfast at Leo's. Lindsay would like to know if you could join us. But I'm guessing you went straight to sleep. See you later."
I wonder why my father's impending death has suddenly made them care. They didn't before. I was just silly Greg who gave them test results and drove them to insanity some days trying to act happy so I'd be happy.
When I was six, my father first picked up the bottle. When I was seven, my mom started. When I was twenty and about two years from getting out of college, I burned myself with a match to make me feel something more that the crushing depression I was living with. When I was twenty-five, my parents ended their drinking binges; my father started to become ill. When I was twenty-seven, I stopped burning and made my peace with my parents.
And now that I am twenty-eight I've picked up my flames again.
Funny. Because I never thought I'd be here again. Alone in the world with nothing that can put a stupid fucking smile on my face.
Through the stinging pains, I search a hand around my floor to find the phone and dial out Niko's cellphone. It rings once, twice, three times until that post-puberty voice comes through the line.
"Hello?" He picks up and yells out for 'Everyone to shut the hell up!'.
He's something like I used to be, while managing to be completely different. A paradox-enigma of a child who didn't live the same life I did – I made damn sure he wouldn't.
"Hey, bro." I wheeze out.
"Luka? Hey! What's up?"
I grin mirthlessly at that. Glad he cannot see, "Not much. Just wanted to call and tell you congratulations on graduating. You and your friends."
"Thanks! Are…are you coming to see us? You know, get our diplomas? There's gonna be a party that day too." He sounds so hopeful that it breaks my heart.
I can't tell him no again.
"I think I am. I haven't talked to Mama yet, but I just have to ask my boss for time off."
"You mean it? 'Coz the ceremony is June twenty-eighth around noon." My brother immediately tells me.
"I've missed you guys and I wanna see everyone so badly. I'm definitely coming. My boss'll gimme the time off since he found out about Papa."
"Good. I want you to be here when I tell everyone which college I've finally decided on. I gotta go. Call me tomorrow?"
"Yeah. Later."
He hangs up. My darling brother hates to say goodbye, loathes the word and never says it. Goodbye would mean forever; a real goodbye is to the dead. He knows that pain. He's buried his girlfriend already and it bites at his young soul.
Once more I am left to stare at the ceiling with renewed bitterness and dark thoughts the world experienced an age ago. My skin burns again, the stench rapidly exiting out the windows above my bed. Nauseating, yet comforting. A scent I want to hate but can't.
The scent I have forever equated with death since the accident when I was a child. When a summer vacation with an uncle in the center of Siberia ended in funerals and hospital visits. I still have the scars on my thighs, my back, courtesy of licking orange-n-red fire.
I flick the lighter closed, settle it on the floor beside my slippers.
I'm so tired. So worn out and ready to join the choir invisible. Yet I can't because I have to stay here, chained imperceptibly to the lab and to a past that refuses to release me.
Grissom told me once that we don't control our fates. That we must learn how to best deal with the world's cruelty. Unfortunately, I never learned anything more than to hide behind a mask and ignore emotion. And that never really works well.
Aria left me over that trivial crap, left me over my way of working through life. One day she was here, cooking breakfast for me, then one day she was gone and I became more alone.
Sick of this life.
Tired of fighting for nothing, for someone to ask me to go somewhere more interesting than the Trace Lab to get them test results.
Shut up, brain!
I think I yelled that. I can't tell if I did or not; doesn't matter thought, because no neighbor ever comes to my door to see that I'm alright. They don't even say hello when I stop to get my mail from the box.
"Listen to yourself, Greg." I rub my eyes, and glare blearily at my ceiling fan as I sit up straighter in the tousled covers, "Nearing thirty and turning into a total nut job."
The machine picks up one more time and I know who it is, by the beginning rant of Russian and Norwegian mixed like they belonged together. Then, eye-of-the-hurricane-calmly, my mother continues in rough-sounding English, "Don't make any promises you are not intending to keep, Luka. His heart won't take it if you say you are coming and do not show up." Then she hangs up.
Damnit, I'm crying. Moronic tears. They never fix anything, except break more souls when you plead for the pain to end. When you plead with your mother to let you go because you can't live with the drinking anymore, but she just grips your arm tighter and tighter until it fractures beneath her touch.
"Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!" I grind out at the edge of my breathing.
A little voice in my head demands to be acknowledged. I neglect it.
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"Hey, Greg." Sara walks in with her nose buried in a file. There's an evidence bag hanging from between her fingers, "Do you think you have time to do something for me?"
"Depends on what it is." I ask, not caring that I'm not acting at all like Greggo, "I…uh…have to find Grissom in a little while."
She removes the folder from her face, "Taking time off?"
"Yeah. I haven't seen my brothers and sisters in five years. Haven't met wives and nephews and nieces." I catch her gaze, "I figure it's time to see if I'm still welcome in the family."
"You've
seen you mom and dad though?"
I nod, "Mama brought Papa down
in January so we could bond." The printer spews out papers at me, a few slip to
the floor. I scramble for them, set them
down on the table, and see that she's gone from here but left me not the
evidence bag. The file with a
sticky-note attached to the cover.
Greg: Please fill out the pages in here. Thanks man. For everything you do. – The Team
"Oh-kay." I open the manila object, look at a couple of surveys on the Lab, on my job, and on my coworkers. Then at the bottom is something scribbled in the harrowed handwriting of Miss Sidle. My name. My full name.
I have to know what is going on around here. When I get back from Cali.
There's nothing else to run, which is unique considering the usual amount of overload I am handed, but appreciated that Dayshift must've finished their work for once. So I settle into the chair that appeared in this part of the Lab an hour ago and begin filling in all the papers.
Sara…A workaholic that does her job as best she can, unwilling to leave a case unfinished because she wants perpetrator to receive punishment at the hands of a just court.
Warrick…An indispensable member of the team. He works some overtime when warranted, but has learned to separate himself from the work.
Nick…Still learning all he can. His skills grow with every case. No doubt he will someday be a supervisor.
Catherine…Protective and caring, even with her job, refuses to let any opportunity to catch the suspect slip through her fingers. Loyal.
Grissom…Highly intelligent, understanding, and traps the suspect with words. Normally manages to stay a professional distance from the victims or the criminal, unless children or battered wives are involved.
Simple shoestring sentences and words that describe the people I work with. A bit sad.
I dot the 'i' in my name, then turn my eyesight to see if any thing else is done and I notice Warrick standing in the doorway, "I don't have your DNA done yet, but I think Tina has…"
He shakes his head, "I wanted to apologize for yesterday. It was uncalled for when I told you to grow up. Your dad's sick, you're understandably preoccupied."
"Thanks." I eek out a tiny smile.
"Sara said you're taking time off."
"Yup. My brother's graduating from high school and he wants me to be there. Figure it'll be good to spend some time with him and the rest of my family. My grandfather's gonna lose his mind when I walk in to the house. He was pissed that I didn't go to the family reunion." I rise and stretch, closing the folder.
"Oh." He replies awkwardly, "Well, I'll see you 'round."
"Guess so." I grin dismally and he goes, leaving me alone again.
Like everyone before.
The clock chirps the seconds, the minutes, the hours of my containment away. Clicks, ticks, endless annoying sounds.
I scratch my belly where the scab has begun to form, where the aloe worked to soothe and failed miserably like I did in Pre-school when I arrived, speaking Russian and refusing to learn anything they tried to teach.
It's quiet and desperate in here; people are whispering more and talking less. Archie and Tina are the only ones talking to me at the moment. It hurts since my life revolves around this building; the only people I really interact with are here.
Do I go out? Yeah. But not like I used to, not like the year I came here and spent months going from casino to casino and bar to bar so I'd be acquainted with the city.
Then two years in, I tapered off my betting nature and the one-drink-a-week habit, staying home and playing on my computer.
My necklace swings against the fabric and against my chest with an irregular rhythm. The ring hung on the chain lets off little metallic sounds, reminding me that it's still there.
Like my soul's insistence that it hasn't gone completely away.
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*v* Cassie Jamie *v*
csimiami@cassie-jamie.com
