Chapter Thirty
"I got in!" squealed a voice from the front door. I ran downstairs, to where my big sister was jumping up and down in excitement.
"Where?"
"To Brown!" she exclaimed, flashing me a letter. I squealed, and we hopped and hugged some more.
"Oh, I'm going to miss you so much!" I said sadly, amongst our excitement.
"Oh, you too! I'm going to have to make new friends, I've never had to do that!" she said.
"You'll be fine, miss school spirit. Did you have a good day?" I asked as we walked into the house arm in arm.
"Yeah, you?"
"No. I stayed home. I've been throwing up all day," I admitted. She wrinkled her nose.
"Sucky. You know I'm late? I hate being late, it upsets the entire time when I'm waiting for it to happen," she complained. We spent a lot of time bitching about our periods, or lack thereof.
"Ew. I hate that, too. Isn't the pill supposed to make you regular?" I asked.
"Yeah, but I went off it. Weird reaction thing," she explained. I nodded.
"I should go on it," I said distractedly.
"Oh my God! You and Sawyer..?" she asked in excitement.
"Maybe," I admitted.
"Hey, I'm having a major ice cream craving. Come with?" asked Lauren, striding into the kitchen. Lauren, who couldn't hold a grudge for longer than a day.
"I'm sick," I explained.
"I'll go," volunteered Jenny. The two of them walked away together and Jenny began to tell Lauren about Brown.
I was going to miss her. In a tacky, Seventh Heaven type way, Jenny was my best friend. There was just over a year between us, and when we were little we'd been all we had. For better or worse, we were permanently melded together. She and I would always have each other to hang out with at parties, confide secrets, bitch about our parents. I didn't need someone who lived somewhere else, I had my Jenny. Even before I'd had Sawyer I'd had Jenny. Lauren had always been jealous of our relationship. She had every reason to be.
My feet led me to a shelf of photograph albums, and I picked up one at random. I smiled as I saw my parents-so young. And Jenny, with her hair long and curly before it had straightened, and my halo of blonde curls and my big smile. I smiled at the picture of too two year olds and a three year old at the park. We were playing in the sandbox. Daddy had taken the picture. Nathan was watching us play, his back to us, and Mom and Haley were posing together, each about five months pregnant. I dimly remembered that day.
We got older and older in the photographs. I saw Jenny with a mouthful of braces, myself starting first grade, Lauren with a homemade haircut. I smiled at a picture of Mom and Daddy on their wedding day. Why weren't Haley and Nathan with them? There was another picture of me, tiny and red after the cesarean.
I caught my breath as an older photograph fluttered out. It was taken in the early nineties. Two eight year olds had their arms around each other. One was a girl, the other a boy, but it was hard to tell. The boy was pretty and blonde. The girl had boy short hair, was wearing a loose t shirt and shorts and was grinning. The only thing that was feminine in her were her large, lovely brown eyes.
I flipped the photo over and the names caught my eye, in vaguely familiar cursive-Haley and Luke. Aunt Haley and Lucas Scott, they meant. That was Haley? She was so very girly, she always had been. And with Lucas Scott, who was such an ass. Had he been good back then? They looked like best friends. How long had that lasted? Could friendships like that ever really last? Mine hadn't.
"Hard to believe, isn't it," said Mom, walking into the room.
"Yeah," I admitted.
"They were best friends for years, like siblings. This was before Nathan came along, of course," she said.
"Why of course?"
"I guess Haley couldn't fit both of them in, and they didn't get along so well for a while," said Mom. I knew that history in part.
"And I guess the whole running away thing didn't help," I added.
"Never does. Hey, are you wearing perfume?" she asked, sniffing.
"Uh, deodorant," I said, looking at her quizzically.
"Huh, smells kind of strong. Doesn't matter. Oh, look at this!" she exclaimed. A pregnant, eighteen year old Mom looked at me from the photo, and equally pregnant Haley at her side. They both wore matching dresses.
"This was Karen and Keith's wedding," she explained.
"How many months along were you?" I asked, squinting.
"About five. You tried to come out that day," she told me.
"Really? What happened?"
"Oh, I had to go to the hospital and stay on bed rest. It was boring," she admitted.
"What happened with Laure?" I asked.
"Not much. Your daddy freaked out a lot, but we both survived," she said.
"He must have been nervous," I said.
"Yeah. He had a lot of trouble back then-after we got married we had love trouble, and he worried sometimes I'd pull a Nikki I think, and we always worried that Jenny would get taken away," explained Mom.
"You should have seen her apartment. It was awful," I said, shuddering at the memory.
"I can imagine," she said, kissing the top of my head and pulling me close.
