I didn't mean to cause so much controversy with my last chapter and Seth's Jewish identity… Okay, I lie. I sort of did. But for everyone's FYI, I did some research on the matter and what I wrote stands. In any case, it's not a major plot point, just one thing among many that will be bothering Seth as time goes on that leads him on his Downward Spiral. For me, his Jewish identity has always been one of the inconsistencies in the show. That and how can such a big house not have a spare room for Ryan in the main house while his ex-girlfriend is in the pool house.
The usual disclaimers apply. I don't own the O.C. or any of its characters. They belong to FOX and Josh Schwartz's entourage.
Seth moved the food around his plate, not very hungry. He still couldn't wrap his mind around what Mitch had told him. So he wasn't Jewish after all. He wasn't even sure why it made a difference, but it did. It wasn't like their family was one of those Hassidic families he'd seen in New York when visiting Nana Cohen. He didn't wear the long curly ear locks, or the furry hat and long black silk coat. That had never been what being Jewish was all about. Yet it felt like part of his identity had been ripped from him when Mitch had so casually observed that he wasn't Jewish because Kirsten wasn't Jewish.
No one else at the table paid much attention to Seth's lack of an appetite. Sandy was busy describing his latest pro bono case at the law firm. A teenage girl had been arrested for prostitution and Sandy was trying to get her into a group home instead of Juvie. Ryan was peppering Sandy with questions, trying to figure out of he knew this girl, because earlier Sandy had mentioned she had lived in Chino for a while. But Sandy wasn't giving away her identity.
The baby started to cry. Kirsten looked up from her plate, a tired expression plainly written on her face.
"I'll get her, Kirsten," Ryan offered, jumping up from his seat.
Seth looked up from his food. Ryan was always the first to help with the baby. It was no secret that Christina preferred Ryan to Seth. Whenever Seth held his little sister, she cried and squirmed, nearly jumping out of Seth's firm grasp. But when Ryan held her she was still and quiet as if she felt safe and secure in his arms. Seth wondered why she didn't feel that way in his arms.
Two minutes later, Ryan returned cradling Christina in his arms. He cooed at her, and she gurgled, obviously pleased to see her big brother.
"Let me have her," Seth insisted, stretching out his hand.
Ryan complied and handed over the baby. "Hey Hope," Seth said, using his sister's middle name. It was a name Ryan chose, but they didn't use it much. But suddenly, Seth preferred it to Christina.
The baby started to wriggle in Seth's grasp.
"What?" he asked in a singsong voice. "I'm not good enough for you? I'm your big brother. The biggest brother. The smarter one too."
"Wait till we take our SATs," Ryan joked. "Then we'll see who's smarter." As the words leapt from Ryan's mouth, he couldn't believe he was saying that. Before he had met Sandy's, he would never have entertained the idea of taking the SATs. Now he was competing with Seth about who was smarter.
"Ryan, my man, you got the beauty and I got the brains. That's how it works in a family."
Christina let out a wail.
"How come you don't like me?" Seth asked. He stood up and walked her back and forth, but she didn't stop crying. He tried bouncing up and down, but the baby wouldn't calm down. Instead her howling grew louder. Ryan stretched out his hands, offering to take the baby back, and Seth reluctantly handed her off. She quieted down almost immediately.
Ryan noticed Seth's crestfallen look. He hadn't missed Seth's quiet demeanor since the beginning of school. Even if Sandy and Kirsten hadn't noticed. They were a bit out of it since the baby's birth. The baby kept Kirsten up half of the night and then she tried to stay up during the day so that she could do some work for the Newport Group and run a household. Her attention was divided six different ways. Ryan suspected that Sandy wasn't kept up half as much, but when he wasn't working he was trying to lend a helping hand to Kirsten so that his wife wouldn't be so overwhelmed.
Things had definitely changed a lot in the Cohen house over the summer. They weren't nearly as attentive to Seth and Ryan's everyday activities. During the summer both Ryan and Seth had missed curfew countless of times. Neither Sandy nor Kirsten had noticed. Most of the time they had been dead to the world, catching five minutes of sleep while Christina Hope slept. But Ryan sensed that Seth missed his attentive parents. Maybe that was what was bugging him. He just didn't know how to help his brother.
Seth sat back down and poked at his food. When the baby was quiet, Ryan handed her to Kirsten and sat back down and finished his food. Ryan's plate was clean, but when he looked up he saw that Seth had barely eaten.
"Seth, you want to do something tonight?"
Seth shook his head.
"Come on," cajoled Ryan. "It's a gorgeous night out. Why don't we invite Marissa and Summer over for a night swim?"
Seth shook his head.
"That sounds like a good idea," Sandy interjected. "You guys should do it, before the school work starts to really bog you down."
"It already has," Seth said blandly. He stood up, knocking the edge of the table, spilling some water that sloshed over the edge of a cup. "I've got tons of reading for AP English. My teacher wouldn't accept Neil Gaiman's Sandman as real literature. Now I have to read Cry the Beloved Country."
"At least it's a good book," offered Kirsten.
Seth gave a small smile. "I'm grateful."
At least he has some of his sarcasm back, thought Ryan.
"You're a fast reader," Ryan insisted. "You could give up a couple of hours."
"You're only young once. Go ahead, invite the girls over," said Sandy.
"I'm not in the mood! Okay. God," he said, fleeing from the table, "Can't anyone take no for an answer." Seth was shouting now. "I don't want to see Marissa. I don't want to see Summer. And I don't want to take a damn swim!"
Sandy, Kirsten and Ryan watched with mouths open as Seth stormed out of the room. Christina, aware of the tension in the room, whimpered in her mother's arms. Kirsten stood, placing her the baby over her shoulder and patting her back hoping to calm her daughter, yet anxious to run after her son.
"Sandy, go after-"
But Kirsten didn't have to finish his sentence. Sandy was already halfway up the stairs to talk with his son.
"Something bothering you?" Sandy leaned on the door of Seth's closet.
Seth was sitting up in bed, his long legs stretched out straight on his bed. He was twisting Captain Oats, a toy horse he kept on his night table, in his hands. Seth wouldn't look at his father.
"I'm fine Dad," Seth answered, avoiding his father's penetrating gaze.
"No you're not. Mom and I might be a little overwhelmed with the new baby, but we're not blind. Something's been bugging you since school started."
"It's just senior year."
"I think it's more."
"I don't think so."
"So now you're reading my mind?"
Sandy ignored him. "Are you and Summer fighting?"
"The world doesn't revolve around girls. Just leave me alone. Please."
Sandy threw up his hands. "If you change your mind, we can talk."
"Yeah. Whatever."
As soon as his father was out of the room, Seth swung his legs over the bed and went to his computer. He flipped it on, tapping his fingers while it booted up. As soon as it was on, he connected to the Internet and logged on to his e-mail account. There was a message from Mitch waiting for him.
From: Frecklejuice98@yahoo.com
To: Cohendude@msn.com
Hey dude, you okay? I didn't mean to bum you out today. People tell me I have a big mouth sometimes.
Seth hit the reply button and wrote:
From: Cohendude@msn.com
To: Frecklejuice98@yahoo.com
U were just telling the truth, right? No big deal. Don't make a mountain out of a pile of dirt.
Seth didn't wait for Mitch at the start of lunch. He went straight for the pier. He dumped his book bag behind him and hung his legs over the water. He leaned back, using the knapsack as a pillow. He had walked through the day as if he were walking under water. He let his mind wander back to last year and wished things would go back to the way things had been. He couldn't believe how much had changed with two new additions to his household.
"Hey dude." Mitch sat down next to Seth. "How's it going?"
"It's… fine."
"You look royally bummed."
"It's just family stuff."
"I know what you mean."
Seth turned his face towards Mitch and raised his brows. "What's with your parents? Why are they living in on separate coasts?"
"Divorce. New York isn't all that big, so Dad decided he needed to go to the other side of the country to get enough space between them."
"Why didn't you stay in New York?" Seth was a little curious about Mitch, but mostly he just wanted to distract himself from his own problems.
Mitch took out a cigarette and offered one to Seth. Seth looked at the pack. His parents had been working on getting Ryan to quit for a year now. For the most part they had succeeded. Ryan only used cigarettes to calm his nerves, which weren't as frayed as they had once been. They would have conniptions if he started to smoke. That was if they noticed he started to smoke.
Mitch started to put the pack away, but sitting up, Seth grabbed a cigarette. He took the lighter in Mitch's other hand and lit up, inhaling sharply and the smoke went down his throat. He coughed hard and Mitch smacked Seth hard on the back.
"So tell me more about why you moved to the O.C.," Seth said in a raspy voice.
"I couldn't stand my mom's latest husband. Actually, he wasn't much older than my brother Aaron. Aaron's a senior in NYU. The thing is, my mother's latest boy toy, actually got into the whole stepfather thing. It was really creepy having someone ten years older than me telling me I was late for dinner."
Seth laughed. "So you took off because of your new stepfather."
"No. Mom pushed me out because of my new stepfather. One of our fights got sort of physical and Stepdaddy actually landed in the emergency room. What a wuss."
"How hard did you hit him?" Seth took another drag of his cigarette. He was already getting used to it.
"I broke his nose."
"Wow."
Mitch shrugged. "It was an accident. But I wasn't welcome there anymore, so I'm stuck at my dad's."
"You don't sound happy about it."
"My dad and I don't exactly get along."
Mitch didn't hear the bell, but he noticed students scrambling back to class. Seth didn't spot the change of activity and Mitch didn't tell him about it. He lit another cigarette and inhaled deeply.
"My dad didn't exactly want his problem child hanging around now. He's too busy wheeling and dealing. As he put it, he's too busy to deal with teenage angst."
"That hurts." At least his parents had never said as much, even if they couldn't be bothered to pay much attention to him lately. Though Sandy seemed to have really cared the night before. Seth knew he hadn't given his father a chance.
Mitch continued to tell Seth of his troubled home life until Seth glanced at his watch and noticed the time.
"Shit," Seth said jumping to a sitting position. "We missed like two classes."
"What's the big deal?"
"They call home."
"So."
That stopped Seth for a moment. So what? What would his parents do? What would the school do? It wasn't like he was cutting out the entire day. If he went back to class now, they probably would assume it was a clerical error. His parents might never find out about it. Not that they would notice anyway. Lately they were so wrapped up with Christina and even Ryan that they barely noticed their first-born son.
"I'm going back to class."
"Yeah. We should do that. Do you want to come to my place after school? We could hang out?"
"Yeah. Why not."
Seth didn't come home until after dinner, though he had never called home to tell anyone where he was. He slipped into the house and up to his room without anyone noticing. After dumping his books in his room, Seth knocked on Ryan's door.
"Hey."
Ryan looked up from his books.
"Where were you? I was looking for you after school."
"I went to a friend's house."
"I intercepted a call from the school when I got home."
"Huh?"
"The school called to tell Sandy and Kirsten you missed two classes after lunch. I told them you had eaten something that didn't agree with you and you had been in the nurse's office."
"Thanks. You think they'll catch on?"
"If they bother to check. But you're lucky, they didn't ask Sandy or Kirsten to come down to school tomorrow."
"I guess I'll deal with it if they figure it out."
"So where were you?"
Seth shrugged. "I didn't hear the bell. I was just hanging out."
"You're being secretive," Ryan said.
"What can I say? I learn from the best. I'm a man of mystery." Seth banged the doorframe and said, "Thanks for covering for me." And he went back to his room half expecting his irate father to be sitting on his bed waiting for an explanation, about the day's events. But no one was waiting for Seth in his room. No one even realized he was home.