"Hi. Is Elizabeth home?"
"Yes. Let me go get her for you."
"Thank you."
"Liz! You have a visitor."
"Tell them to come in. I'm in my room."
The young lady comes back to the door. "Come on in. She's in her room. It's the 2nd door on the right."
"Thanks." Adams heads down the hall into a nicely decorated bedroom, bed by the window, with Elizabeth on it, folding laundry. "Hey."
"Did you come to yell at me some more or walk off when I give you a complement?" the anger in Liz's voice is apparent.
Adam, without being invited, goes over to Liz's bed and sits across from her. "No, not this time," she says trying to keep the conversation light.
"Oh, well that's good. I've had enough of a bruised ego for one day. Ya know moving from Kansas to Maryland isn't enough but on my 1st day of school to my 1st class I run into this guy, drop all my books, and his girlfriend, not him, helps me pick them up. Then he yells at me. Then at lunch, when I give him a complement to forget it all happened, he runs off. How many times can you feel totally embarrassed in one day?"
"How did you know that me and Joan were going out?"
Liz shoots him a look but Adam misses it because he's looking around the room of all her pictures of singer, actors, actresses, celebrities of all shapes, sizes and color, past and present. "Wow. Cool collages."
"Yeah thanks. I want to be one of those people. Someone people would want to put up on their wall. I used to think that if I put their pictures up I...I could pick up on their personalities."
Adam looks back at Liz. "What changed?"
"I came back to reality and realized that if I'm gonna do well , I have to do it on my own term. I just ... changed my attitude I guess."
"Good way to look at it."
"Thanks..so how did you know where I live and why are you here?"
Adam's looking back up at the collages. "Jane."
"Ok...who?"
Adam looks back at Liz again. "I mean Joan. I call Joan 'Jane'. She told me to come talk to you."
"Why did Joan or 'Jane' tell you to come talk to me?" Liz takes a pile of towels and head to her bathroom. Adam follows slowly behind and stands in the bathroom doorway as Liz puts away the towels in her closet.
"My mom's name is Elizabeth."
"Oh that explains it. Did she ground you for the weekend so you had to ditch plans with 'Jane' and you decided to take it out on me? It makes perfect sense."
"My mother's dead." Adam says matter-of-factly.
"Oh." That's all Liz could get out from the guilt and tears welding up in her eyes.
"Are you Ok?" Adam says coming towards Liz but she puts a hand up that stops him. So he goes back to the doorway.
"I...I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that. I didn't know."
"No. I shouldn't have went postal on you this morning or at lunch." After moments of complete and utter silence between them Adam decides to break it up. "So your...your mom seems really nice."
Liz wipes the tears from her eyes with one of the towels she was putting away. "That's not my mom." There was a pause, Liz watching and waiting for Adam to ask the inevitable question. When it didn't happen she answered the unasked question for him. "That's my aunt. My mom, like yours, is dead. She...uh...had cancer. Then about a year ago my dad killed himself. So I moved to Arcadia to live with my aunt and uncle."
"Wow."
"Yeah crazy right? So how did your mom die?"
"She overdosed on pills."
"Well everything happens for a reason."
"How can you have just said that?"
"What? You don't believe that there's a big plan that we can't see?"
"Too much bad stuff has happened?"
"Ha. That was very Landon Carter of you." Liz takes off back to her room, and sits on her bed. Adam follows, grabs a chair from the corner of the room and puts it by Liz's bed.
"What?"
"Landon Carter. A Walk to Remember." She gets up and finds the tape and hands it to Adam. "He said almost the exactly same thing."
Adam laughs looking at the tape's cover.
"But that's all I believe. What other explanation could they be?"
"That the world is totally against us? Wants to make us suffer? Make us miserable?"
"Do you honestly believe that?"
"AH...who knows what I believe?"
"You should." Liz laughs. "Well that was a nice conversation."
"Yeah it was." They both laugh. Adams stops and walks over to Liz while Liz is still laughing and puts out his hand.
"Hi! I'm Adam."
Liz stops laughing and looks down at Adam's hand. "Is this us starting over?" Adam nods.
"I'm Elizabeth. Liz for short."
"Nice to meet you, Liz."
"You too, Adam."
"Well I've got to go."
"Ok. Thanks for coming over."
"Oh no problem, yo." Adam walks out of Liz's room, with Liz not far behind, opens the front door for Adam. "See ya tomorrow."
Liz closes behind him and smiles. "This was a good day." She thought.
Adam walks out the door and back to Joan in her car, who was singing to her car radio. She stops once the car door opens but it was too late, Adam could hear her from far outside the car. "Nice singing."
"Yeah thanks. So how did it go?"
Adam gets in the car and explained everything that happened, everything that was said. "Yeah, and then she was talking abut personalities and attitudes and even though all the stuff that she has been though she still believes everything happens for a reason and that there is a bigger plan for her." Adam continues to talk while Joan stares off in amazement at what just happened.
He did it again.
And that's all there...there aren't no more. This didn't turn out as good as I hoped it would. Thanks for reading.