Chapter Nine

"A surprise phonecall"

As I drove home I found myself thinking more and more about Katarina Stratford. I know it is lame but I was head over heels for the girl. I had felt this way about a girl once before. Her name was Chloe and she moved from Seattle two years before. We had tried to keep up a long distance relationship but she eventually found somebody new in Boston where she had moved to and I had to live with that. I hadn't thought about Chloe in a while, I thought to myself in slight surprise. I smiled to myself as I thought of the reason why.

When I got home mum was out which surprised me as she had been so vigilant about when I was meant to be home to help her clean. I shrugged it off and went about my 'getting home' business of turning on some music and wandering about the house with a bowl of cereal in my hands. I stopped in front of the living room window and looked out into the street, watching people drive along the shady street into their driveways, and saw mum's Ford drive into the driveway. She saw me in the window giving her a questioning look and she smiled and waved.

When she burst into the house through the front door right next to me she exclaimed, "sorry I'm late!"

"Wa oo ee?" I asked her, mouth full of Captain Crunch cereal.

"Don't talk with your mouth full, Patrick," she admonished me with a wave of her hand as she set down her handbag.

I swallowed the offending cereal and tried again, "where have you been?" I asked her again more clearly.

Mum looked vaguely at the clock before turning back to me with a snap, "what? Oh! I went to the supermarket after work to get dinner."

I searched around her handbag for any sign of grocery shopping but there was nothing. I felt compelled as her son to ask her where this aforementioned shopping was.

"Uh, where is it then?" I asked her suspiciously.

"What?" she asked me.

I rolled my eyes, this was getting boring, "where's the shopping?"

Mum watched me for a moment as though formulating an answer in her mind before she said airily, "oh, they didn't have anything good. Let's order in tonight." And with that she grabbed her handbag from where she laid it on the sofa and walked up the stairs.

I decided to ignore my mother's temporary absence of sanity and merely wandered up the stairs after her, heading for my bedroom.

Later on, when the pizza had been ordered and we had sat down to eat, Mum still seemed a little spacey. I decided to ignore it, mainly due to the fact that it could be due to something I really didn't want to know about. I had lived in the same house with only a female long enough to know that you don't go prying when it could be something you don't want to hear.

After dinner I left Mum to flick absentmindedly through a magazine while I went upstairs to finish off some homework that I had been putting off for too long.

By nine o'clock I had almost finished my sonnet for literature class. Well, I was pretty close to almost finishing it anyway. Okay, I was reclining back on my computer chair trying to balance a pen on my nose. Anyway, the phone rang and I leapt to get it in case it was Kat.

"Hello?" I said into the receiver, hoping I sounded sophisticated and manly.

"Verona? You got a cold?" came the slightly high-pitched voice of Bratty, a mate of mine who didn't go to my school. In all actual fact, I wasn't really sure where he went. Or how old he was for that matter.

"Nah, mate," I told him as I threw the pen onto the desk, "just manly. What are you up to?" I asked him quickly before he could make any sort of comment about my current self-proclaimed state of maleness. Or lack thereof.

Luckily, Bratty wasn't interested in my manliness. "I need a favour," he told me matter-of-factly.

"No," I declined immediately. I knew what Bratty's favours were likely to entail and had no desire to indulge myself in the idea that whatever he wanted me to do this time would be any different to last time.

"Awww," Bratty whined through the receiver, "come on, man! It's not that bad, I promise."

"No," I repeated flatly, reaching for the pen again and resuming my earlier attempts to balance it on my nose.

"I need someone to drive to California with me," Bratty continued, refusing to give up his efforts to get me to do something illegal with him.

"Get Trey to go with you," I suggested as the pen fell to the floor. I bent to pick it up as Bratty rejected my suggestion.

"Nah, he got busted again. His dad barely lets him out of the house now."

"CJ?" I recommend one of the guys I met through Bratty but I could almost see him shaking his head.

"Sorry, man, it's you or nobody."

"What do you need in California?" I asked him warily, "and why do you need me to go with you?"

"I'm picking up a car," he told me in a low voice and I could tell that someone had just walked into the room that he didn't want to hear about his plans.

"Stolen?" I asked in the same low voice, leaning back to make sure my mother was nowhere in sight. Even though I was in my bedroom I had left the door open and she could be walking past.

"Yeah," my fears were confirmed and Bratty continued, "you in?"

"I'd get to drive the legal car back, right?" I asked him cautiously. Even though I had declined so adamantly in the first place, there was no denying the thrill of doing something illegal.

"Course," he told me as though it were obvious, "my house, 6am Saturday."

I nodded to myself, "okay." Realising that if we hung up I would have to go back to doing my homework, I stalled for a little bit and started more of a conversation. "So, uh, heard from Arturo?"

"Yeah. He called me from California a couple days ago. Said he was going to come back next week but he needed to get some cash first."

I shook my head. I didn't want to know what Arturo would do for cash and I said so to Bratty who laughed, "yeah, I didn't ask either." After a moments silence he asked, "so where you been, Verona? I haven't seen you at Mickey's in a while."

Mickey was a friend of ours who pretty much threw a party every night. If you wanted somewhere to stay or even live for a while, you'd go to Mickey's place. Nobody knew where he got the money to host so many parties and nobody felt the need to ask any time soon. Most of the guys there were like Bratty and Arturo who basically did whatever they wanted and nobody had seen them at school for a while.

And then there was me. I live with my mother, go to school almost regularly and I have a strange accent. Oh well.

"Yeah, I've been busy," I told him, not wanting to go into detail.

Bratty accepted this and yawned, "well, I've been up since yesterday so I think I'll hit the sack. Catch ya, Verona."

I was about to hang up the phone when I heard his voice again.

"What?" I put the receiver to my ear again.

"I said, I have something else to ask you. Friday night can you go to-"

I laughed, "nah, man. Sorry."

I heard him pleading with me as I hung up the phone and laughed to myself. I knew what was happening Friday night and I had no desire whatsoever to involve myself in it in any way.

Just as I lay the phone down and went back to my homework the phone rang again. I picked it up and said immediately, "Bratty, man, I told you I wasn't interested-" But someone cut me off.

"Patrick?" a voice sounding scarily familiar spoke my name, "is that you?"

"Who's this?" I asked almost fearfully. I couldn't tell why I was so afraid to know the answer but something in my subconscious told me I did not want to know who this man was.

"Son," the man laughed a little, "it's Dad."

I almost dropped the phone in shock. It slipped from my hand a little and as I put it back to my ear all I heard was.

"I'm out of jail and I'm coming to Seattle."

Wow, his dad. Hmm, what could happen here..... Also, think about what could happen in California! I am really sorry if it is totally impossible to get to California in the space of 12 hours but I am from Australia and have no idea how long it takes to get from Seattle to California. For all intensive purposes lets just say that this is total fiction and in fictional stories, anything can happen! REVIEW!!!!!!!!!!

PS – apolloskiki? Yes, some Aussie's really DO speak like that. Problem?