Hello! Sorry I took longer than usual to post this time - hopefully this will be worth your wait. Thanks to peaches500 for reviewing, you're awesome:)
I should say first that this will be one of the few times I will post only one chapter. I'd planned on posting the usual two, but I've been poking along in writing them, and the next one's still unwritten. So, since I figured you'd waited long enough already, I decided to go ahead and post this one. Plus, it's the longest one so far, and it's also pretty deep. It touches on someone I've until now completely left out.
I must warn you that this chapter does not end very nicely. But PLEASE don't think I've betrayed you - I'm still an optimist (as implied in my profile). The next two chapters will be brighter. :)
Meghan followed the other girl up the stairs. The breakfast had been delicious, and now she was going to change clothes for the day. However, Faye insisted, not before she was to get an extensive tour of the house that she'd been too tired to recieve the night before.
She had already been shown around downstairs, where she saw a very elegant sitting room, painted a sage color with cream chair-railing around the walls. The furniture in that room was traditional, but did not look old. Meghan thought the room was very sophisticated, and a good place to read a book.
The kitchen walls were a spicy bright orange color. It went well with the vibrance of the deep red dining room, and it was a very fitting color for cooking.
Now she pushed herself up each stair, trailing after Faye.
"Up here is the bog - I mean, bathroom, and my two brothers' rooms, and the master bedroom. I imagine you're not too interested in seeing Anthony's room..."
Just as Faye uttered those words, the door to a room down the hall went abruptly shut. Apparently, someone had beaten them up the stairs, and wanted to convey a clear message that his room was off limits.
Faye made a face while Meghan stood in confusion.
"Right, just as I thought. Don't worry about him, he's nothing but a wanker."
The tour guide led Meghan further down the hall.
"I'll show you the bathroom. It's very pretty. Mother and I decorated it one day, and oh, we had so much fun! The wallpaper in there is just gorgeous, you'll really like it. And we found the loveliest little soap dish in a china shop just down the road..."
Meghan let Faye go on and on, while she checked for herself. It really was a rather charming little bathroom. It was decorated in light blues, with a navy paisley design on the walls and a periwinkle diamond pattern on the shower curtain. She looked at mentioned soap dish, and agreed with Faye that it was indeed quite lovely. It was white, with a sweet little china goose in a blue bonnet perched on the edge. In it sat dainty little molded soaps in the same blue color, each one shaped like flowers.
Meghan nodded as Faye rambled on. She was led into yet another room.
"This is Jacob's room."
This room looked every bit like a kid's room, and Meghan grinned. There was an obvious theme: fire trucks. There was a fire truck mural on the wall, a fire truck bedspread, and toy fire trucks all over the floor. Even the bed itself was shaped like a fire truck. Though Meghan was sure she'd gone fire truck crazy, the room was still very sweet.
"Dad made that bed for him." Faye said.
Through the ramblings, Meghan heard that remark. She gazed lovingly at the carefully crafted wooden bed that was painted red, black, and yellow. What a wonderful piece of furniture that was.
The tour at its end, Faye turned back and walked toward her bedroom.
"Do you think you'll remember where everything is?" she asked with a chuckle.
"I probably will. Hopefully, I won't get lost." Meghan answered.
Faye laughed as she opened her closet.
"You can change in the bathroom." she said. "And then I'll help you unpack."
Meghan flipped open a suitcase.
About fifteen minutes later, she came out of the bathroom, her hair in a messy bun. She sported a bright blue peasant top, along with faded denim flares.
Faye was also dressed, in (what else) pink. She wore a pink and white striped tank top with a rose-colored skirt. Even her flip-flop sandals were pink. As for her hair, it was done in the same two braids as before.
Three drawers were open on a very large dresser.
"You can use these drawers for some of your things." she said. "The rest you can put in there." She pointed to the closet.
Meghan was happy with that plan. She started to put some socks in one of the drawers when Faye cried out in excitement. Meghan jumped.
"Look! Oh, my, isn't he adorable?"
Frazzled, she looked where Faye was pointing.
There sat Benny, the fat orange cat, right in the suitcase, on top of the rest of her socks.
Seeing as above mentioned housecat had taken residence in also above mentioned clunky old suitcase, I was forced to move on to another peice of luggage while Faye struggled to contain her overjoyed thrill.
This case held the miscellaneous things I'd packed for pleasure and to remind me of New York and all that jazz. I decided that this stuff would go in the second drawer, and possibly the third drawer, if there wasn't enough room in the second drawer. I withdrew some CDs along with a CD player to play them on, last year's yearbook that I'd brought to show off, my favorite novels, and so on. I also put in the drawer my spending money (which still had yet to be converted into the appropriate currency), and some informational guides, such as The Tourist's Guide to London, English Etiquette for Dummies, How to Keep from Unknowingly Making Offensive Actions and Ticking People Off In Any Country, and The Complete Dictionary of British Slang Terms. I made a mental note to look up the term wanker.
Though I was pretty sure I knew what it meant.
I continued to place things into the drawer. Faye had finally been able to calm down, and was now helping me transfer the objects. Of course, she was brimming with curiosity. As I placed in a handheld Blackjack game, she spoke up behind me.
"What's this?" she asked.
I looked to see her holding up a thick little blue book.
"Oh, that's a photo album. You can look at it if you want -"
Faye was already sitting down with the book open. I smiled and went on unpacking.
"Oh, my!" she exclaimed. "You look so much like like your mum."
"Huh?" I walked over and sat down next to her. The album was opened to two pictures side by side, from my 15th birthday party. Faye was pointing at a blonde woman who had her arm around me in the picture on the right. I laughed.
"That's not my mom. That's my aunt. Her name's Elizabeth. Everyone calls her Libby, though." I pointed at Mom's face in a picture of all four of us on the opposite side. "That's my mom."
"Really? Well, you do have her hair."
That was true, I did have my mom's hair. And I guess it's true that I look like Aunt Libby - believe it or not, people say that all the time.
My hair is, like, a super dark brown, almost black even. It's really wavy - not curly, but wavy - almost like it's been permanantly crimped. It's a different color than Daphne's - hers is more of a chestnut. I'm also about half a head shorter than Daphne, because my mom's very petite. And like Mom, I have hazel eyes. Aunt Libby has blue eyes, Daphne has brown.
Other than that, there aren't many physical traits I inherited from my mom, and people are always mistaking me for being Aunt Libby's daughter. They say that we have about the exact same facial structure, except that my eyes are bigger and my jaw's more defined and junk.
"Who is that?" Faye questioned, pointing to a laughing girl who sat on one side of me in the left picture, smearing chocolate cake on my face. My mom sat on my other side.
"That's Daphne. She's my cousin."
"She looks very lovely."
Also true. Daphne looked lovely, in her own unique little goofy way. In that picture she was wearing some very frayed denim flare jeans that were torn in places, a long, flowy black top, and a fuzzy orange sweater we found at the thrift shop next to Crazy Wong's TV Emporium. That was her style, sort of hippie-rocker-anything goes. Her mom's like that too, only more hippie and less rocker and a lot more skirts. The long and flowy kind, of course.
Me - I pretty much like any style, as long as it isn't depressing and morbid. Like this one girl Myra at our school (her real name is Katelyn, but she won't let anyone call her that on account of it being too "happy"), she wears nothing but black, all the time, complimented by skull patterns and these fake fangs she had put in her mouth. I could never do that. I mostly prefer to dress in nice colors that are bright but not over the top or flashy. I'm a bit more girly then Daphne, but I'm certainly no Britney Spears. She and Louis Vuitton and all those losers can go bite some twigs.
And Mom? Her style is actually pretty chic and sophisticated. She's a lot more into fashion than I am, but in a refined and tasteful sort of way. Like she actually knows what she's doing when she coordinates an outfit.
Faye turned the page.
"Who are they?" she asked. I looked at the picture, where she pointed at two people - a man and a woman, who were gracefully aged but full of vigor, and really looked about ten years younger than they actually were. The woman was plump but not fat, standing in a light pink jogging suit with her grey-streaked auburn hair flowing in the breeze. The man also grinned, with perfectly combed over white hair on his head. He was fully decked out in a yellow and khaki golf outfit.
"They're my Nanna and Grampa Shore." I told her. "They adopted my mom, when she was five."
Don't bother asking me anything about that, because I wouldn't know (another thing my mom really prefers not to go into). I just know that with me and my grandparents Shore, it's a love-is-thicker-than-blood kind of relationship, which works more than perfectly.
And let me tell you, they're pretty hip grandparents. They're extremely active. They went skydiving just two months ago, and bungee-jumping a year before that. And they ride their bikes together every day. They're environmentalists, too. A recent purchase they made happened to be a hybrid car, and they've got solar panels on their roof.
Patricia Shore (Nanna) is also a huge fashionista (or at least thinks she is), and somehow has a certain way of attaining new stuff from Prada, Dior, Juicy, Dooney & Bourke, and others before it even hits the market. Don't ask me how that is, either. I mean, even Grampa (his name is Russ, by the way) has no idea where she gets it all. The only thing he really cares about is that it's coming out of her pocket, not his.
And if you ask me, I don't think she has to pay as much, either.
Faye kept turning pages, and I explained more pictures of my family, as well as some of my friends. She saw a picture I took of Mom one night in a green facial mask, one of Aunt Libby singing at my math teacher's wedding, one of me & Daphne in one of those teacups at Disneyland. As she turned to one of us all trying on kimonos, she laughed another joyful laugh.
"Your family is very silly, isn't it?"
I smiled.
"That's an understatement. We went bowling in those kimonos."
That made her laugh even more, and I did so along with her.
For a long while, Benny watched us from his position inside my suitcase, while the other case and the two open drawers remained doormant and untouched. I told the bowling story and more, spilling out long tales with each picture to this girl I barely knew. The photos certainly weren't in chronological order - it went from Daphne and I at age seven running through sprinklers to us picking flowers at age three to us at our junior high graduation. Each time Nanna popped up, she had a different hairstyle; she changes her hair a lot. Nanna's morphing hair always makes me laugh, and it made Faye laugh, too.
More and more, it seemed like either Faye was coming more down to Earth, or I was getting more perky, because looking at those pictures took away the awkwardness I'd felt between us before. I found myself no longer talking in my dry, polite way as before, but now talking as I always did in New York , however rambling or obnoxious it was. And Faye certainly noticed. She asked more questions, questions I was now more interested in answering.
"So you live in an art studio?" she asked me.
"It used to be an art studio. Not anymore though. But there still some old paint splatters on the walls. We could paint over them, but we actually think they're kind of cool. They have sort of a history, so we've kept them the same."
"Your aunt can sing?"
"Oh, yes. She has the best voice in the world."
"Your grandparents skydive?"
"They sure do. And they cliffdive."
"You have chinese lanterns in your bedroom?"
"Mmm-hmm. Mrs. Chang gave them to Daphne and I for free, because there are tears in the back. But we put Scotch tape on them, so now they're okay."
With every discription, Faye became more intrigued. She told me stories, too, about how her dad met her mom in Ireland, how Jacob had almost been born in an elevator, how her uncle Wallace had once been chased by a pack of weasels and they'd caught the whole thing on film. When we were done with this album, she told me, we would look at one of hers.
I was still laughing about the weasels when Faye asked another question.
"Who's this?"
I looked at the picture, a picture that had been taken at a portrait studio. There were three people in the picture. The first was a beaming brown-haired woman in a white sweater, eyes sparkling. One of her hands rested on the shoulder of the second person, a little girl with the same wavy brown hair pouring down to her elbows, a tooth missing in her joyful smile. She sat in a powder blue dress, with a silver heart locket around her neck.
The third person, the one Faye was pointing to, was a handsome man with golden hair and the most warm, gentle, loving kind of grin you could ever see. The US Army uniform he proudly wore was clean and crisp, and a bright band of gold gleamed on the ring finger of his left hand. That strong hand rested on the little girl's other shoulder, and the man's eyes shown with compassion for two people he loved very much.
I found myself twisting my eyes away, facing another direction, reaching up to finger a smooth, silver object that rested on my chest. I felt my throat compress, lock up my voice...I had to remind myself to breathe. I knew that the kind person next to me was waiting for me to respond. I knew also that the same kind person that sat next to me would become nervous if I didn't respond. So I made myself take in enough air to free my throat, make me regain my senses, my calmness, my control. And then I told her.
"His name is Aaron." I breathed. "My father."
Well, sorry about the damper. But believe me - it's not what you might expect! ;)
Next two will be up soon, if I can get my dead lazy back end up to write them lol
Peace out
-rf-