Chpt. 7: Trial and Tribulations
"You'd like to think you were invincible. Yeah. Well weren't we all once before we felt loss for the first time." -Dashboard Confessional
Gar swished around his ice water, listening to the sound the cubes made on the Styrofoam cup. Something sounded different about the lunch table. It wasn't noise, but lack of it that startled him.
"Where's Terra?" he asked. The remaining four others looked up from their lunches.
"She went home for the weekend," explained Kori, after chewing up a surprisingly solid bite of Yukon Gold Whipped Potatoes (in honor or the school's Western Exploration Day).
"Poor thing has to get braces," added Rob. He had forgone the potatoes, but was nibbling at something called Covered Wagon Gold Nuggets (chicken) with Continental Divide Fried Okra (okra).
"Ouch…" said Gar, remembering when he'd had braces, grades five through seven, thank goodness only for two years. "How long does she have to have them on?"
"She didn't say." That was Raven that time.
"Hmm," hummed Gar.
It was Saturday, so the school population was out of dress code and out of class, and was exceedingly hot for October, even in California. Kori had broken out her cutoffs again for the occasion, and even Raven had forgone the long pants and donned a pair of athletic capris and a T-shirt. Gar was somewhat disappointed that his newfound girlfriend had been too in denial of her beauty to wear shorts, but she had made a promise that as soon as the heat got unbearable, he might just catch sight if her in something outrageously skimpy, possibly involving garter belts and see-through lace.
If only she weren't being sarcastic.
They had been going out for a week and a day now. The sudden announcement of the couple status had been shocking at first to their posse, especially to Vick, who was the only one who had no idea what was going on between the two adolescents, but the shock had now faded. Rob had even made a few jokes that alluded to making out, which didn't bother anyone but Kori, who was slower to get them, despite having been Rob's official girlfriend for, say, two months or so. She had definitely seen the wild side of things, or at least according to what Terra had accounted to having seen one day after a pep rally.
Gar was just about to get up to throw away his trash, when his cell phone rang. The student population was allowed to have their phones on when they weren't in class, so the boy's ringtone of Hips Don't Lie (Vick's idea of a joke. The nerve, to steal a poor boy's cell phone in the middle of the night…) rang loud and triumphant.
"Hello?" Gar said into the phone.
"Hey, kiddo! Long time, no see!" It was Matt, Gar's cousin. Technically, they hadn't seen each other since Matt had dropped Gar and his sister off at the beginning of the year, but they had talked a few times since then.
"Hey, Matt," answered Gar, getting up from the table. Phone in hand, he walked across the lunchroom to throw away his plate. "What's up?"
"Well, I was planning to drive down to see Hannah, so I decided I'd drop in and visit you and Tem since it's the weekend and all," said Matt.
"Awesome!" replied Gar. Matt, his legal guardian, was by far one of his favorite people in the world. He had just about every electronic gadget known to man, and he drove a blue PT Cruiser. That's just plain cool, Gar had said when he's seen it for the first time. Hannah Diutullio was another one of Gar's favorite people. She was Matt's girlfriend of three and a half years, and she was tall and muscular from seventeen years of soccer, and she made utterly phenomenal vegetarian lasagna. It was amazing. It was a wonder of the man-made world. Gar couldn't live without it. Even Temperance, who hated alfredo sauce, loved it as much as anything.
"When are you gonna get here?" asked Gar as soon as he was finished daydreaming about pasta.
"This evening," answered Matt. "I'm leaving in about half an hour. Tell your sister I'm coming, 'kay?"
"Will do," said Gar before they said goodbye and hung up. He had a new feeling of joy now that he knew he would see Matt in the next twelve hours. He couldn't wait to introduce him to Raven!
This is Raven, he would say.
My God, she's gorgeous, Matt would reply honestly once Raven was out of earshot.
I know, Gar would say loud enough for Raven to hear and wonder what he was saying about her in that voice. This would lead to some making out later that night, possibly down by the lake, on a bench away from everybody else. Gosh, the excitement was building already.
It was actually a few hours until Gar could single Temperance out to tell her of their cousin's surprise visit. To be honest, he didn't try to find her until about 3:00, and when he did spot her, she was with her entourage of punk-ish, Etnie-wearing, eighth grader outcasts, so he opted to wait until they were on their way to dinner to talk to her."When?" was all Temperance said. Gar was slightly annoyed, but proceeded to tell her the projected time of arrival.
Matt didn't show up. He wasn't late; he just never showed up.
Reluctant to give up on waiting, Gar had sat awake in the guys' recreation room until midnight, watching some pointless football game. Only on the TVs in all the dorm building, there was some bizarre anti-profanity chip built into them. The chip would recognize all sorts of obscenities, ranging from actual swear words (replaced with "darn" and "shoot" when necessary) to words like butt (replaced with "hiney", or even "rear"). The word in question here was "ball", replaced with "roll". Rob had been the one to discover this, when watching the Food Network. The sausage balls had been replaced with sausage "rolls", dictated in a mechanical, lifeless voice. Now, rather than football, Gar was watching "footroll".
Anyways, when Gar finally trudged up to his dorm room and fell asleep in his bed amidst the heavy breathing of Vick and Rob, it was only to have restless dreams of Matt being kidnapped at a 7-11 by the side of the highway while taking a short stop to buy a Mountain Dew, or Matt getting snowed into his Steel City residence by freak weather.
The next morning, Gar woke with a horrible sense of foreboding, of no light at the end of the tunnel. It reminded him if sixth grade midterms, only minus his math teacher's Whoppin' Stick™ , which he actually threw out the second story window the next semester.
Maybe it was the tragic lack of blonde at the table, but breakfast seemed a lot less fun, and a lot more healthy without Terra's dinosaur fruit snacks and overly processed snack cakes and Dr. Pepper for breakfast. However, Raven had talked to her just that morning on her cell phone. Apparently, Terra was in excruciating pain, and was having to be fed through a straw. She had gotten the sudden urge for fruit snacks in the middle of the night, and had ended up spending the rest of the night on the couch with a chunk of garish green stegosaurus hanging partially out of her mouth. That had definitely taught her a lesson. On the other, less painful end of braces, Terra had gone with a hearty orange shade of bands, so that when people grimaced at photographs of her, she could think they were looking at her orange-tinted teeth rather than her lack of cleavage and her stringy hair and stick-like arms.
"What is it with girls thinking they aren't pretty?" asked Rob. "Terra's plenty gorgeous. None of that stuff is true."
Squirt, went something pink and glittery in Kori's hand. A joking frown materialized on her round face.
"That's gross," said Rob, laughing, as he wiped the Shinyliscious brand lip gloss off of his cheek.
"Remember that time in seventh grade when we put Kori's mascara on Gar?" asked Vick, and the friends burst into peals of laughter at recounting the incident, which required several napkins and quite a lot of makeup removers. The incident, not the recounting.
Gar had almost recovered from that morning's sense of foreboding when the intercom clicked on and, in a static voice, the office secretary said, "Temperance and Gar Logan, please report to the office immediately."
The laughter at the breakfast table vanished as Gar stood up. Across the room, Gar saw his sister rise from her spot amongst her friends. The two met at the cafeteria door. Temperance looked about as apprehensive as Gar felt. Her black tank top, darkly lined eyes, and mangy, army green pants looked tragic and overpowering on her tiny, almost emaciated figure.
"D'ya think it's about Matt?" she asked, her voice quivering. Though she dressed herself in black and hung out with the punk kids, Temperance had never in her life been sent to the office, so she knew it must be important. "Is he here finally? I thought you said he was coming yesterday…"
"I don't know, Tem," said Gar, silencing the girl. "I don't know."
The two arrived at the office, which was in the Administration Office, in about a minute and a half. They didn't talk on the way there, not until they reached the front desk, asked why they were there, and were sent directly back into the principal's office.
Principal Childs was a skinny, bespectacled, middle-aged man with young children and lot of colorful ties that made younger children like him and older children detest him. The Logan children were utterly neutral.
"Have a seat," he said, gesturing the two towards a pair of uncomfortable-looking chairs with tacky seat coverings. Gar and Temperance followed his words, but didn't get comfortable. Gar stared at his feet, and Temperance fiddled with her skull and crossbones necklace (She'd gotten it from a theme park, but she still loved it). Gar hated that necklace. Although it was his sister's favorite piece of punk apparel, it made him think of the piratey souvenir shop where it had been purchased.
"Your cousin was driving up here to visit yesterday, am I correct?" Mr. Childs asked, twiddling his thumbs annoyingly. Gar twitched.
"Yes sir," he answered. Mr. Childs nodded. The office clock ticked impatiently.
"There was… an accident," continued Mr. Childs, and each word felt like a bullet. Temperance let in a sharp intake of breath, and Gar nearly bit his tongue off. This was expected, though, wasn't it? That was what Gar had imagined, deep down, that there was some accident. A bad thing. Gar rubbed his arms. Why was it so dang cold in here?
"Matt's car was hit by a speeding teenager coming across a bridge, late last night," the principal continued. "He was killed when the car was knocked through the railing and into the creek."
The bullets had turned to ice. Temperance was breathing in deep, wet gasps now. Gar felt his mouth fill up with blood. Matt was dead. Matt was dead. Matt was dead. Gone. Poof, right into thin air. Bye-bye. Au revoir. What ever that was in Spanish.
The boy's mind was racing now, going a mile a minute over all the last words, all the childhood memories, random things like that time at a family reunion when a 13-year-old Matt had accidentally locked Gar in the basement with the seriously homicidal cat, or the two weeks that Matt and his parents had spent with the Logan family in the Amazon, and Matt got bitten by a spider while bathing and had to be rushed to the village hospital in nothing but a towel. Was it really true? Would Gar never see him again? It seemed cruel and uncanny. Matt was too alive!
Temperance was crying now, in big, unladylike sobs that seemed to shake her entire body. Her brother couldn't blame her. Instead of scorning her for her childish behavior, Gar put one arm around his sister. She didn't argue, and actually leaned her head into Gar's shoulder, getting her smeared mascara on his white T-shirt.
"According to the papers he signed when he was made your legal guardian, upon his death you two are to be sent to live with his girlfriend, a Ms. Hannah Diutullio."
Gar felt his collapsed heart soar at this sentence. Even Temperance, despite the whole crying thing, looked up, her eyes piggy and rimmed with grey smears. She would need a definite makeup check after this was over.
"Really?" the girl asked. Her voice was wavering still, as though she may burst into tears again.
"Yes," answered Mr. Childs. "You will be sent home tonight for a week to move into her house in Madison, and attend the funeral. Everything is taken care of. Don't worry."
Don't worry, mused Gar in his head, nearly making him smile. What was there to worry about, he asked himself sarcastically.
Gar was sitting on the floor, folding clothing items into his suitcase, with the dorm room stereo belting out Eminem when Rob and Vick returned from running.
"Where are you headed?" asked Vick between breaths. He sunk down onto his bed, beside where Gar was seated.
"Madison, CA," Gar answered. "I'm leaving once I'm done packing."
Rob sunk down beside Vick and hit the pause button on the CD player. "Mind telling us why?"
Gar bit his lip and stuffed a pair of boxers into is suitcase. The worried stares of Vick and Rob were starting to bore into his brain. "My cousin - my legal guardian - was killed last night in a car accident. Me and Tem have to move in with his girlfriend down in Madison."
Here goes, thought Gar. All over again, just like at the beginning of the school year, only that was his grandmother.
Instead of apologizing, Vick embraced the boy. Gar felt his heart sort of bulge, and the tears well up in his eyes again. Vick was like a big brother to him, like Matt. Well, since Gar had never had a real brother, he wasn't sure how it felt to have one, but Matt seemed to score pretty close to one.
"How long?" asked Vick.
"A week at the shortest," Gar replied, looking down at his clothes.
"We'll miss you, buddy," said Ron after some hesitation.
"Yeah," said Gar. The tears were starting to sort of bubble over the sides of his eyelids. "Ditto."
The first thing about Hannah's suburban residence was how incredibly messy it was. Perhaps Matt had merely been a neat-freak compared to his laid back girlfriend, but Gar still got a weird, claustrophobic feeling whenever he walked by a rug with the edges folded up, a pretty table with a few dozen truckloads of magazines cluttering it's top, or a closet that was less of a place of storage and more of an avalanche just waiting to happen. Temperance seemed to feel the same way; Her brother had caught her grimacing at an empty Coke bottle balancing dangerously on the arm of the sofa.
Hannah lived with her two younger brothers, Adam and Remy, so that promised a frustratingly cluttered residence. While Adam was a college freshman, Remy was only a high school sophomore, and had taken it upon himself to act like Gar was at least five years younger, not one. This generally included just verbal provocation whenever the Logans were visiting, but now that Gar was staying for an extended period, there was no telling how far the bullying may go.
Since a 24-year-old girl, a college boy, and a high school boy tend take a lot of space to stretch their legs out comfortably without problem, the Diutullio house was reasonably large, its layout involving two normal levels and a full-fledged, finished basement. The latter of the areas was to become Gar and Temperance's new quarters. There were two bedroom sized areas, a bathroom, and a large rec room, all fully furnished for the enjoyment of the family and, now, the Logans. Temperance had been assigned the off-white-painted, seashell decorated office, which housed a comfortable futon, and Gar was left with the jungle green, disinfectant-smelling room with the lumpy sofa and the buckets of old Mad magazines.
The funeral was on Tuesday, at a small chapel near the house. Gar noted that there were few people actually related to Matt present. In fact, the only actual relations beside Temperance and himself and Matt's mother (Gar's Aunt Judy) were Gar's Aunt Mia and Uncle Teddy and their young children. Mia was the youngest sister of Gar's father, and she and her family lived in Nevada now, on a cattle ranch. They looked surprisingly chipper to be at a funeral.
The service hadn't rolled on for more than about half an hour. Matt's mom had delivered the eulogy, which had proven to be quite short. Considering that Matt had grown up with his dad after his parents divorced, there weren't very many family stories or fond, childhood recollections. The most vivid memory Judy Logan could remember was the time when her husband accidentally punched Matt off the family boat when they went to the Everglades on vacation, giving him a black eye and a horrible cold from floating around and inhaling so much water while his parents tried to find the life preserver, and eventually had to blow up the entirely deflated intertube they had stashed under some crap.
Now, at about 7:00 AM on Tuesday morning, as Gar lay perched on his makeshift bed, with the sun rising outside, he realized that in the whirl of the past days, he had forgotten to do one thing: tell his girlfriend where he was going.
Gar's mind raced. What time did Raven usually wake up? Would she be angry if Gar woke her up? Of course she would, all girls need their beauty sleep! Except for one who just plain doesn't sleep…
Terra was already wide awake and sipping on a can of Dr. Pibb (all the dinky grocery store near her apartment building sold) when her cell phone rang. Her dad had stayed late at his office last night (meaning he'd not come home at all) and Terra's sister, Kirstia, who was fast asleep in the back bedroom, could sleep through anything, despite her restless pregnant state. The babies were due anytime, so while her husband worked extra to get all his hours in, Kirstia was crashing at the Markov home, putting Terra on the sofa.
Anyways, her Star Wars ringtone didn't wake anyone except for Princess Mononoke, Terra's scraggly cat, who was dozing on the girl's feet.
"Hello?" answered Terra, picking up the phone and not bothering to use hushed tones. She was shocked to hear a male voice respond. Guys never called her, for some odd reason.
"Hey, Terra," said Gar's voice. "You awake?"
"Uh-huh," she answered. "What are you doing? It's, like, the middle of the night."
Gar glanced at the clock. It was 6:58 AM. "How are you're braces doing, Metal Mouth?"
"Fine, I guess," Terra replied, getting up off the couch. Princess Mononoke hissed at the sudden movement, but Terra ignored her and continued into the kitchen to toss her Dr. Pibb. It had gotten flat. Clicking on the florescent light above the sink, Terra leaned against the counter. The sun was just starting to show outside over the tops of the neighboring buildings. The early morning work traffic was beginning to sound like its usual hurricane force.
"Can you do me a favor?" asked Gar's voice.
"Sure," said Terra, her eyebrows raising in question. This was potentially dangerous. Hopefully it wouldn't involve eating anything hard or chewy, or Terra would have to decline, since there was the slight chance of losing a few teeth.
"I need you to call Rae at some point and tell her to call me tonight or this afternoon or something, 'kay?"
Terra was baffled. "Why don't you just tell her yourself? You'll see her in, like, half an hour, won't you?"
Terra heard Gar take a deep breath. "No, I'm in Madison, CA, like, two hours south of school. My cousin died, and I have to move in with his girlfriend, so I'm here for the week to get settled. And as far as I know, Rae has no idea where I am, or if she does she didn't hear it from me."
"Gosh…" hummed Terra in sympathy. "You and Tem have really had a hard time with this family deal, haven't you?" Gar let out a laugh in response.
"So you'll call Raven, or talk to her when you go back tonight, okay?"
"Sure thing," answered Terra, and the two said goodbye and hung up. Left alone in the kitchen, with only the mewing of Princess Mononoke in the den, Terra picked back up her phone and dialed Raven's cell.
"Rae, you're phone's ringing!"
Raven had been combing her hair in front of the mirror when Kori's shout snapped her out of her reverie (about Gar, of course). Sure enough, perched atop Raven's bed, her purse was playing Eye of the Tiger (the result of letting last year's track team play with her phone at practice).
"It's… Terra!" Kori read excitedly as she fastened her tie and threw the phone at her violet-haired roommate, who caught it quickly and flipped open the top.
"Hello?" she answered, walking into the bathroom for privacy as Kori continued with her tie.
"Rae!" squealed Terra, nearly busting Raven's eardrums. "Guess who I just talked to?"
"Uhhh…" Raven was speechless. "Henry VIII?" she guessed. They were studying him in World History, and all of Terra's friends were shocked to learn that one of England's most memorable kings was as ravenous of an eater as their blonde companion.
"Your boyfriend, silly!" replied Terra into the phone.
"You talked to him?" Raven was somewhat outraged. Why had he called Terra and not his own, beloved girlfriend?
"He's in Madison, CA," Terra went on to say.
"Yeah," interrupted Raven. "Rob told me that when I first saw him on Sunday. He said Gar had already left. His, umm, cousin died, right?" Without saying anything to me, his girlfriend, Raven thought angrily.
"Yeah. He had to leave really quickly," Terra's voice said. "But he's up if you want to call him, okay?"
Raven felt her heart flutter at the thought of getting to talk to Gar. It had been, what, two days already? Way too long.
No more than thirty seconds later, Raven was punching in Gar's cell number on her phone. "I'll come to breakfast in a minute, Kori," she called as the redhead traipsed out the door and into the hall.
Ring. Ring. Ring. No one was answering. This wasn't good.
Ring. Raven looked at the clock. 7:03. Terra had said Gar was awake…
Ring. Ring. Raven pressed the end button on her cell phone and sighed, looking absent mindedly out the window. Where was he? She dialed again and, this time, waited through all the rings until Gar's voicemail played.
"Hey, this is Gar. I'm not here right now, so leave a message after the beep. Beeeep."
Raven forced out a hurried message. "Hey Gar, it's me, Rae. Terra told me to call you, but you didn't answer, so I left this message, obviously. Just… get back to me when you get this message. I… I love you, And I'm sorry about your cousin." Raven paused. "Bye." With a flurry of reluctance, the girl stuffed her phone back in her purse and dashed to catch up with Kori.
"Gimme the milk."
Gar shuddered and turned to face Remy, who was standing directly behind him, like the shadow-faced dictator he came off as.
"You're blocking the fridge, dorkus," Remy repeated, shoving Gar aside to grab the 2 milk on the door shelf.
"Hey, no pushing," barked Hannah the table, where she sat reading the newspaper and prodding her fork at a stack of waffles. "Need anything?" she asked Gar kindly, ignoring the look of disgust she received from her youngest brother.
Gar shook his head in response and proceeded to reopen the refrigerator and continue preparing his bowl of Cheerios. He was delighted to find that Hannah had purchased soymilk expressly on his part.
Mornings at the Diutullio household were chaotic. They rivaled a world war in amount of violence. Gar couldn't count the amount of times he had been insulted, shoved, or mocked by Remy. These remarks or actions were usually followed by a warning from Hannah, though Remy was prone to ignoring these.
Remy Diutullio was disgustingly good-looking for someone with such a repulsive interior, and a negative outlook on anyone lower than him on the social ladder. He had dark, straight hair about down to his ears, that swung lazily into his eyes in an annoyingly handsome manner. He was tall and lanky and skinny, but muscular as well, boasting long legs. He appeared perpetually bored and haughty, but handsomely so.
Adam Diutullio, on the other hand, whom Gar hadn't yet seen on this trip, was heavyset and blonde, with his nose constantly buried in a sports magazine. He had once advised Gar not to sit on the coffee table, since it had once broken under the weight of their dog, and Hannah made Adam repair it himself, but that was pretty much their only communication.
Gar waited until Remy had left the room to take his seat at the table with Hannah.
"Sometimes I can't wait until he moves out," hissed Hannah. Gar nodded amiably and shoved a spoonful of cereal into his mouth. It tasted like his sleeve.
"I feel guilty, you know?" she continued. "I'm his 'mother-figure' now. But I can't help it. He's a pig." Gar had to smile at this. Hannah was one of the farthest things from a "mother-figure" Gar thought he would ever see, with the possible exception of Terra. Having played soccer since she was seven, Hannah had legs built like that of a man, and her skin was deeply tanned, combining with her golden blonde hair to create that Barbie look. Despite the stereotypical blonde-babe exterior, however, Hannah was an awesome cook, and a Nazi when it came to being in charge. Or when it came to Remy, now that Gar reflected on it.
Temperance came upstairs not long after this, looking rather grouchy and disoriented, dressed in all black even for sleeping. Seeing someone familiar jogged Gar's mind and reminded him to, for some psychic reason, check his voicemail. Unfortunately, it was at this point that Hannah asked for some help with her laundry (Adam and Remy sure had some weird stains on their white undershirts), since there was so much of it. This took a good hour and a half, as they were interrupted by Remy, who was in a desperate search for his car-keys (they were in his backpack).
By the time they finished, it was about 9:00. Gar thought at this time to check his phone, but Hannah announced that they were taking a trip to Lowe's and Bed, Bath & Beyond to get Gar a real bed and to make the two's new rooms feel "more like home". After finding Gar a decent bed and spending half an hour trying to decide on the width of the windows in Temperance's room (for the curtains), the three ate an early lunch at McAllister's Deli. While they were waiting for their food, Gar reached for his phone in his back pocket, but remembered that he had left it on his bed, or rather, his sofa.
It was 11:45 when they got home, and the first thing Gar did was begin to dash down to his new bedroom. However, Hannah stopped him at the top of the stairs to get him to help her unload the pieces of the bed from the back of her 4 - Runner. Once they got it downstairs, into Gar's room, and set it all up, mattress included, it was well after noon. When they had to move the sofa out, Gar tossed his cell phone onto the nightstand without a thought about checking his messages. By the time they had the entire task finished, with no help from Temperance (who was, incidentally, lounging upstairs watching MTV), it was 1:16, about half an hour after the end of Gotham Prep lunch hour, and about twenty minutes before the break between classes. Finally, after about six hours, Gar checked his phone, in the safety of his new room.
"Hey Gar, it's me, Rae. Terra told me to call you…" Gar grinned ear to ear at Raven's voice; Terra had told her! Give that girl a medal! Unfortunately, it was fifteen more minutes until Gar could actually call the girlfriend in question without getting her detention from their biology teacher, Mrs. Gammel. All he had to do now was wait.
1:18. Gar, feeling a growl in his stomach, lifted himself from his bed and traipsed upstairs to find something to eat.
1:20. After selecting a bag of caramel Rice Cakes, Gar slouched onto the couch with his sister to watch MTV.
1:26. Repelled by the sight of Mariah Carey in something resembling a bathing suit with diamonds encrusted in the spandex, Gar got up to return the bag of Rice Cakes and got distracted by Hannah, who was preparing her famous vegetable lasagna for dinner.
1:31. After talking to Hannah for exactly five minutes, Gar returned to his room and leafed through a Cosmogirl of Hannah's that had been stashed under the now-moved couch.
1:35. Gar started to dial Raven's number, but decided that the clocks at school might be a few minutes off from those here. Slumping over on his bed, Gar decided to wait another minute or two.
1:35:59. Gar, no longer being able to wait, dialed Raven's number, his finger's shaking.
Ring, ring, ring. Gar's heart was racing. Was this how a heart attack felt, Gar wondered?
She picked up on the fourth ring. "Hello?" Gosh, thought Gar. She even sounds gorgeous.
"Hey, Rae," said Gar, attempting to sound cool and collected, but most likely ending up sounding obese and female. "It's me. Gar." Like she couldn't read her Caller ID.
"Oh, hey." Raven had a smile in her voice. "I'm so glad you called. How are you?" Gar was about to answer, but Raven seemed to feel the need to correct herself.
"Well, duh, you aren't fine or anything, but still, how are you?" she said quickly. Gar laughed a little.
"I'm fine now," he answered softly.
"Good," said Raven, her voice sort of trailing off.
No one said anything for a few moments; no one needed to say anything, really. It was funny how they could do that, just sitting there not saying anything, but having the phone there to monitor the other's breathing, keep making sure they weren't alone.
When someone did speak, it was Raven again. "I was worried about you, when Terra called me this morning," she said. Gar could hear the bustle of the Gotham Prep hallways in the background, so apparently class was dismissed by now. It was, by the clock, time for band, and quite a good thing that Gar had called when he did. Just the thought of him having called while Raven was in the bandroom subjected his mind to thoughts that completely redefined the term "Truth is stranger than fiction".
"So how are… things?" It was obvious Raven was trying to get Gar to talk to her, maybe come out of his state of shock (Oh, what a nice thing for a girl to do), so Gar tried to humor her.
"Fine," he said. "You would hate my new brothers. All-American, body-building athletic-types. Well, Remy is more into punching me into walls than playing sports. But Adam's totally into the whole Sports Illustrated and protein supplements thing. I so fit in."
Raven gasped falsely. "Are you being sarcastic?" she wanted to know jokingly. Usually she was the one who made these kind of comments.
"Maybe you're rubbing off on me," suggested Gar.
"That sounds vaguely obscene, like perhaps a part of my body has become permanently stuck to you as a result of too much physical contact." This sounded kind of obscene in itself to Gar, but knowing Raven, he could assure himself that all perverse comments said by her were one-hundred percent deliberate. She was, after all, in band and, above that, on drumline, the mother-ship of perverse remarks.
"That sounded kind of sick…" replied Gar, stating the obvious.
"And I meant it that way, too," Raven retorted. Gar was about to come back with some sort of comment, possibly regarding to the commonly-heard-of loss of virginity in the bandroom closet, when his girlfriend interrupted his thoughts.
"I have to go," she said. "I'm nearing the bandroom, and it sounds like Scott's at it again with the whole camera thing, so I'd better go in there and hold Fizzy down before she does something else drastic again, okay?"
"Yeah, sure." Beast Boy tried to sound cheery, and "chipper" (A term his English teacher used), but it came out monotone and sort of hoarse.
After a brief goodbye, Gar pressed the "Off" button on his phone with about as much fury as he could ever muster, and threw himself down onto his bed for pretty much no reason at all.
"This is all Matt's fault," he hissed at thin air, dropping the phone onto the floor where it came to rest under the dust ruffle next to some dust bunnies. Gar felt as though he might sneeze.
"What's Matt's fault?"
Instead of sneezing, Gar yelped sharply and tumbled off of the mattress, propelling the cell phone further into the dusty, cave-like space. He hadn't seen his sister until now, but she seemed to appear quite comfortable in his doorway, picking at one of her fingernails as though she had been there for several geological ages. Instead of being clad in all black, she was just sporting an outfit made mostly of black. This outfit consisted of some black pants and a grey, long-sleeved T-shirt from some church or another. The eyeliner had come to be ever-present, along with the rather painful-looking and crude studs in her ear. Though Gar hadn't the heart to tell her so, he had always thought that the whole Goth/punk look made her appear as though she had just found out she was diagnosed with an incurable disease, and she had made some sort of Anti-Color pact with herself and gone into a deep depression due to the horrible shock, since she was just going to die in a couple of months anyways.
Well, that was just his opinion.
"Come again?" From his new, accidental position on the floor, Gar turned to face Temperance, his eyebrow raised.
"I said," she replied, coming to stand further inside her brother's room, "What are you saying is Matt's fault? You heard me."
Gar pushed himself up off the floor and shrugged. "I don't know. Having to come here, I guess. And now I can't find a good time to talk to my girlfriend, which isn't good because we've only been going out for-"
"You mean, that Gothic girl?" Temperance said casually. This was the meaning of the phrase "Pot calling the kettle black", Gar reasoned, but decided, in his best interest, not to say anything.
"She isn't Gothic," Gar argued in Raven's defense. "She just has purple hair… And a couple more piercings on her ears than some people."
"So you've never seen the one on her bellybutton?" Temperance appeared shocked at the fact that no, Gar hadn't ever seen Raven's bare abdomen.
"No… Why would I?" Gar hoped his younger sister wouldn't answer this.
"I don't know," she responded, much to the triumph of Gar's hopes. "I had PE with her last year, and we all had to change in one room, so I got a pretty good look at that girl all au naturel…"
"Not what I asked," interjected Gar as quick as his lips could move. "Just, what did you say about her bellybutton?"
Temperance giggled in a way her brother had never heard her laugh before. "Sorry, it's just you sounded so funny… 'What did you say about her bellybutton?'… Okay, yeah, it's pierced. Her bellybutton's pierced. Just one of those little studs with the silver balls on the end, you know? Nothing real fancy."
Gar was slightly taken aback by the fact that he had known Raven for more than three years (Even if he was MIA for one of them) and had never known this. Why did his sister know something about Raven that Gar himself didn't know? Well, sure, Gar knew tons of stuff about Raven that Temperance didn't (He was, after all, the girl's boyfriend), like the time in seventh grade that Raven got her butt stuck in the bandroom trashcan, and they actually had to break the can to get her out, or, for example, what kind of underwear Raven wore (Gar only knew this after an experience a couple of days ago when Fizzy pantsed Raven just as Gar was walking through the door. And what did Gar have to say about this traumatic happening? Well, he never knew Raven was so fond of cherries. Or Victoria's Secret, for that matter.)
"Do you two kiss?" Temperance said, changing the subject as she came to rest on Gar's bed. Why she wanted so badly to talk to her brother, Gar had no idea, but he didn't quite oppose the thought. If it weren't for his sister, after all, Gar would be wallowing in loneliness alone rather than wallowing silently in the company of said sister.
"Yes," he answered truthfully. "We do. Why wouldn't we?"
Temperance didn't answer. "Do you do more than kiss?" she wanted to know now. Gar got her meaning immediately and grimaced.
"We go to a private boarding school, Tem," he responded. "We aren't even allowed in each other's dorm buildings, much less dorm rooms. So what do you think?"
"Just don't be fathering any little nieces or nephews any time soon, 'kay?" Temperance said as a last statement before leaving Gar alone, staring at the ceiling again.
"So did you talk to the boyfriend yet?"
Raven watched warily as Terra eyed a slice of pizza and slapped it down onto her plate, splattering grease onto the red tray and possibly onto Terra's white school shirt. It was dinner at Gotham Prep, and the blonde had returned to school only an hour before, sporting the already-famous orange braces. She had been right; the bands did make her teeth look vaguely orange.
"Yeah," answered Raven. "I left a message this morning, and he called me back after biology."
Terra took a piece of strawberry shortcake from the desert table and nodded amiably. Apparently, her three days without the ability to eat properly had rendered her starving, and she was making up for it by stuffing her face at every chance she got, or at least while she was still too doped up on painkillers to notice how bad each bite hurt.
As Terra took her tray to the table, Raven took to her next task: deciding between shortcake or poundcake. Actually, they looked similar, and probably tasted identical, but Raven liked thinking that the food here was better than it actually was. She was just picking up the poundcake when a voice behind her, like ice, stopped her in her tracks, and she was overwhelmed with the smell of perfume.
"Do you really need that?" Maya wanted to know. Her Lumaini boots clicked as she traipsed up to the desert table, leaving the scent of her perfume in the air.
"Hello, Maya," Raven said through clenched teeth. The poundcake in her hand was shaking from her concentration on trying not to go psycho and slice Maya's face clean off her body.
Maya gave Raven a fleeting smile. "Likewise," she replied. "But really, think about it." He fingers uncoiled and took the plate from Raven. With spite, Raven watched as Maya set the cake down on her own tray. "Don't want to get any more pudgy than you already are." With that, the girl clicked away, back to her own table, her newly acquired cake in hand.
"She just called me fat," Raven hissed, sitting down beside Terra a moment later. Terra looked over her shoulder at the girl in question, and her blue eyes narrowed.
"That snake," the blonde muttered. Across the room, Maya, accompanied by Carina and Shauna (her cronies), threw a sort of death glare at Raven, who immediately whipped around and began vigorously slurping at her iced tea.
"Don't look at them," she whispered to Terra. "Don't let them know you care what they think." Terra did as told, but only because she didn't want her grease-smothered pizza (the best kind out there) to get cold.
Though she was trying to do her best to not let Maya's remark get to her head, Raven still found it rather hard to take a bite of her salad, as the lunch ladies had been sadly out of lo-cal Italian dressing and she had had to resort to the good but fully fattening 1000 Island dressing instead. Was it her imagination, or could Raven almost see the calories?
"Hey Metal Mouth," Rob greeted Terra, sitting down beside her. Terra narrowed her eyes at him, but couldn't actually respond without spraying Rob with the chewed up cheese that wasn't already lodged in her brackets.
"Smile for us," commanded Kori as she and Vick took their seats at the table. Kori had never actually had braces (her teeth were perfect the way they were, the lucky duck), so she had always been under the impression that having such a thing was a brave and painful undertaking.
"Do they hurt?" Kori asked in amazement as Terra showed off her new appliance-filled mouth.
"Not anymore," Terra answered coolly, all the while subtly attempting to remove another string of gooey American cheese from underneath her wire.
"Not when you're all whacked up on Ibuprofen, they don't," Rob muttered,receiving him a death-glare from the metal-mouth in question. "I'm just saying," he added quickly. "Anyone on painkillers is a scary thing, but you on painkillers…"
"Good point," said Vick, wincing slightly at the thought. "Kind of makes me lose my appetite…" He motioned at the large pile of high-carb and high-calorie foods set in a colorful array on his plate.
"How do you eat all that?" Rob wanted to know, glancing down at his single hamburger and one serving of fries.
"You okay, Rae?" asked Kori, looking over at Raven, who was sipping on her iced tea and ignoring her salad.
"Maya Parrish called her fat," Terra said bluntly. Kori gasped.
"That… that…" Kori either couldn't find a word to describe Maya, or couldn't say what was on her mind. It was probably the latter, as the redhead's mind worked rather like the TVs in the boys' dormitory building (Strangely, the girls seemed to be trusted without the extensive bleeping), not allowing her to say anything that could possibly be harmful to any young ears.
"That witch!" Kori finally went with, either as a substitute or an actual insult.
"Funny," commented Terra. "That's what Maya usually calls Rae, here."
"She's the witch," Raven said finally. "She doesn't have any business teasing me about my hair."
"Seriously," agreed Terra. "You aren't the one who has to drench her hair in Tres Semme to make it look halfway decent."
"Just ignore her, Rae," suggested Kori. "I mean, you aren't fat, so just don't listen. Maybe she'll back off."
Too bad none of them knew how wrong Kori could be.
"How do you feel about going back to school tonight?"
Gar couldn't help from beaming as Hannah passed him the lemonade pitcher from the fridge.
"Really?" he asked excitedly. "Tonight? Like, before dinner?"
"Sure." Hannah looked a little surprised that any teenager could be so excited to return to school.
"Noooo!" Temperance wailed in pretend hysteria from her seat at the kitchen table. Gar put his lunch down in the place beside hers and took a sip of his lemonade.
"What time, do you think?" he asked Hannah, who passed him a bag of Lays in response.
"How does 5:30 sound?" Hannah offered. "That'll give you half an hour to get to dinner."
"Perfect!" answered Gar, tossing the chips onto the table. "I'll be right back."
Without hesitation, he darted off to the basement stairs and nearly tumbled down them, he was moving so fast. Gar was in his room, searching for his cell phone, before two seconds had passed. He found the phone on his bed, and started dialing. With luck, Raven hadn't left lunch yet.
Ring. "Hello?"
"Raven!" Gar sighed with relief. He could hear the lunchroom in the background. "Hey! I have good news."
"What?" Raven's voice was higher pitched than usual.
"I'm coming home tonight, before dinner!"
"Oh, Gar, that's great!" Gar could hear his girlfriend smiling, almost. There was a long pause before Raven's voice came back, saying, "Okay, I'll see you tonight. I've got to go now. Terra's about to tear me apart to talk to you."
"Okay, see you later," replied Gar.
"Bye."
Raven pressed the Power button on her phone.
"You didn't let me talk to him!" wailed Terra, her brow furrowed.
"He had to go eat lunch," lied Raven, only guessing it was lunchtime for him, too. Her heart felt like it had grown about three sizes just in the minute or so that she had been on the phone with Gar.
Terra had was about to open her mouth to complain, when the end-of-lunch bell rang, or more like, "blared like a siren". Before she could hear anymore out of her blonde best friend, Raven was on her feet and headed out of the lunchroom, her purse in hand. She had already taken the liberty to throw away her trash and clean up her part of the table, all so she could make a quick escape to biology. After yesterday's incident with Maya, Raven had been, whether or not she was conscious of it, trying her hardest to avoid another confrontation of the sort.
The stairs to the second floor were empty when Raven reached them, since no one had arrived there yet, it being only half a minute after the end of lunch. Unfortunately, no sooner had the girl climbed the first five stairs than a bone-chilling noise reached her ears: the click-click of three pairs of outrageously expensive shoes.
"I think that the pasta salad totally gave me some sort of allergic reaction," said the sort of squeaky voice of Carina. "Do I look… puffy?"
"I'm loving that lip gloss, Maya," said Shauna. "It's so you."
"Thanks," answered Maya, with a sigh that might have said, "I tire of you telling me how lovely I am."
Raven hurried up the stairs as fast as she could without tripping over her Birkenstocks, but it apparently wasn't fast enough.
"Carina, Shauna," said Maya. "I believe I left my bookbag by the lunchroom. Will you two go and get it for me?" Shauna and Carina uttered their answers and dashed back off to fetch their ringleader's bag, leaving Maya and Raven alone in the stairwell.
"Why so fast?" Maya asked, her voice saccharine.
Raven stopped in her tracks.
"You know, Rae," said Maya. "I thought that back in September, when I warned you to stay away from Gar, you understood the gravity of the situation… I know now that it was silly to think such a thing of you."
Raven turned to face Maya, furrowing her eyebrows. "You really thought I'd stay away from him?" She almost had to laugh.
"I'm not just a girl who knows what she wants," Maya said with a half-smile. "I'm also a girl who gets what she wants, understand?"
Raven's mind was moving at a mile a minute. "You mean, you didn't want me to be with Gar just so you could seduce him and have him all to yourself? You sicko… Do you really think he'd-"
"With the right persuasion," Maya interrupted. "But think about it, Rae. You couldn't even keep your own parents. Do you think you'll be able to keep your little boyfriend much longer?"
Raven seriously would have hit Maya right there if the stairwell door hadn't opened at that moment, bringing in an influx of students, ages 11-18, all hurried to arrive at their next class in reasonable time. In moments, Maya had disappeared back down the stairs, out of sight. Fingering the handle of her purse, Raven turned on one heel and climbed the stairs two at a time, away from Maya as quickly as possible.
"So what time did you say he should be here?"
Raven looked down at her cell phone again. "5:30. He's almost ten minutes late…" Terra snorted with laughter.
"Yeah, Rae," she said lightly. "And I'm sure if you were traveling from someplace three hours away you would be totally on time!"
"I'm not worried," argued Raven. "I just really want to see him is all."
"Riiight…" nodded Terra with a wry smile.
"And you would know," Kori countered. "You haven't ever even had a boyfriend."
Terra took a moment to consider this. "True…" she said quietly.
Due to the unbearable anticipation of getting to see her boyfriend again so much sooner than she had thought she would, Raven had been extra jumpy in the dorm room, getting up to check the window overlooking the parking lot every thirty seconds, and Kori and Terra (but mostly Kori) had opted to take their roommate on a brisk walk to get her mind off of Gar. This hadn't really worked, though, as Raven began checking her cell phone every so often to monitor the time. Instead of walking, they had had to settle with sitting on a bench next to the visitors' parking lot, where Hannah's silver BMW X5 (Gar had described it to Raven earlier in a phone conversation) was nowhere to be spotted.
"Twelve minutes late," muttered Raven after a couple more minutes of waiting.
"He'll be here Rae," Kori assured Raven.
"Oh, she's just excited," Terra said jokingly to Kori. "Her furnace is alight," she added, remembering a line from the movie, In Her Shoes, which their Health class had watched only a few days ago so they could learn first hand about the dangers of desire and sex and stuff like that. No one had really learned much from it, unfortunately. All the girls just spent the whole time making fun of Rose and Maggie's step-mom and marveling at the fact that the school was letting Coach Durbin show them a movie with so many bad words in it.
"Rae, is your furnace alight?" Terra asked Raven just as a car pulled into the parking lot; By the looks if it, it was indeed a silver BMW X5.
"Gar!" yelped Raven, hurrying over to where the car was swerving into a parking space while Terra and Kori, still on the bench, mocked her exclamation.
Temperance got out of the car first and, seeing Raven, called out, "Gar, you'd better hurry before your girlfriend wets herself with excitement." Raven didn't even have time to be angry, because the second Gar was out of the car, she had left her spot on the curb and had her arms around his neck like a noose.
"Whoa," marveled Temperance, turning her head from the curb to where her brother and Raven stood. "Did you, like, teleport or something?"
"It's so good to see you!" Raven said after the two had finished hugging.
"Good to see you, too," laughed Gar.
"How cute," commented Kori, still seated on the bench. "Don't you think?" she asked, turning to Terra.
"PG-13 is more like it," observed the blonde. "Whoa, now that is some intent tonsil hockey…"
"Terra…" If Kori hadn't been used to Terra's choice of words, she might have been shocked. Instead, she just laughed and stood up, beginning to head back to the dorms now that Raven had been reunited with her beau.
"I really ought to get myself a boyfriend…" Terra muttered as she followed Kori up the front walk.
Chapter 8 will be a while, since I've only just begun, and I have no idea how to make the plot turn out the way I want it to. If you've ever seen the episode of Kim Possible (I loved it way back when it first came on) when the cheerleading bus breaks down and they're running around that camp with the sea monster guy or something like that, then this next chapter's kind of like that (with the bus and the breaking down and the spooky woods, at least). I'm trying to make it funny, though, not spooky.
-Gizmobunny