Word Prompt: Shower
Plot Generator—Phrase Catch: Back to normal
Something True
Shower
Last Winter
Her mom seemed to be carrying herself with a new air ever since Bella started showing a willingness to hang out with her. Her face looked brighter, her eyes more awake, and her posture straighter. All this, Bella noticed, when they simply went to lunch. On the day Bella asked her mom to take her to the store for new tights, her mother positively beamed.
She insisted that Bella get some shoes to go with the tights.
Bella didn't think too closely about why she purchased more tights when out shopping with her mom, or why she saved her best-fitting dresses for Mondays and Fridays. She knew why she was doing it, but she didn't like dwelling on it. It was the same reason she both loved and despised Fridays. Fridays meant an afternoon that could sometimes stretch into evening in Mr. Biers' classroom. But Fridays also meant two whole days until Monday came around.
Bella found herself stopping in the girls' room to touch up her lipstick between the last school bell and ten after three when she met with Mr. Biers.
"Light showers all afternoon, I hear," Mr. Biers said, coming away from the window when Bella stepped into his classroom. He moved to help her out of her coat and hang it up. Bella didn't know that he would be repeating this action an hour later. Or that the second time he did it, her heart rate would increase by double.
"Do you think you'll need a ride today?"
"If that's okay," she said, taking a red pen from her backpack and a seat at her desk.
They set to work grading papers, Mr. Biers turning a desk around to face Bella, his feet up on the chair in front of him. Bella thought this might be the only time he relaxed at school, and there she sat, anything but relaxed.
She peered up at him. He was loosening his tie and undoing his top two buttons. He caught her gaze and they smiled at one another before both dropping their eyes to paper.
They shared his umbrella on their way to his car. Bella listened to the sound of the rain drumming overhead. It was all she could hear.
In the car she sat silently, her hands tucked flat under her thighs.
"I've got some essays I'd love help with editing before Monday. But I hate to give you homework as an assistant."
"It's okay. I like it." And she did like it. It made her feel like she was doing something meaningful, something more than just being a student.
"They're at my house, a few blocks down. Do you mind? I won't be a minute."
"Go ahead," she said, looking out the window, folding her smile into her mouth.
"You sure?"
She turned to him. "Yeah."
Minutes later he swerved into his driveway. "Come on in," he said.
He unlocked his front door, swung it open, and let Bella walk into the dim room first. From behind, his hands came to her shoulders. Her heart sped. Her breathing stopped. He slid her coat down her arms and hung it from its hood on a brass coat stand. It was so full he had to double hers up over one of his own coats.
She was left with goosebumps. "Cold in here," Bella said, rubbing her arms.
A familiar feeling wafted over her. It reminded Bella of when she was ten and would go with her mother to her client's house—only instead of feeling anxious in a repulsed way, she felt anxious in an excited way. Though it was more like the lacings of excitement, cloudy not concrete, and on the outskirts of her self. It was similar to using a flashlight in place of a room lamp in the dead of night. You could understand some of your surroundings some of the time, but you weren't quite positive what lurked in the shadows, in the corners.
"I'll just be a second." He left her in the living room.
His house was smaller than her parents', and it only looked partially lived in, or perhaps as if Mr. Biers only intended it as a temporary home. There was a mess of papers, open books, and used coffee cups on the carpet in front of the sofa where a table might normally sit. His bookshelves were made of stacked cinder blocks and raw, unsanded plywood.
Bella ran her finger along the spines of his hardcover books. He had so many. Five bookshelves full in this room alone.
Along the wall behind the sofa was a big, dark fish tank. The water looked murky. She could barely spot the two Betta fish swimming around in it.
"Your fish tank is dirty," she called.
"Thanks." Mr. Biers was a foot behind her, holding a stack of papers in front of him. "Ready?"
Next to the sofa, under a table lamp was a framed picture of a woman. Bella picked it up. Red, curly hair that fell almost to her elbows, freckles, and a nice, friendly looking smile that brought her eyes to a squint. "Your wife?"
"Someone else's come March. She invited me to the wedding." He chuckled, taking the frame from Bella and putting it back on the table. "Don't know why I still have this. She didn't take it with her, and I guess I didn't take it down."
"She's pretty," Bella said. "Is she a teacher, too?"
"A librarian."
"In Forks?"
"Port Angeles. Makes good money. Better than a teacher's salary, I can tell you." He handed her the papers and then brought her coat to her. She alternated the papers in her arms as she slipped into her sleeves.
"Just edit," he said. "And then if you can order them by which ones are the strongest to which ones need the most work, that would be great."
"Are you sure I can-"
"I wouldn't ask you to do it if I didn't trust you."
Following him to the door, she held the papers tight to her chest.
Home in her room, she pored over the essays right away, finishing as many as she could before Alice's sleepover.
After midnight, as the other girls talked about and dreamed about teenage boys, Bella thought about and dreamed about a man. Of course, she could never tell anyone what she was thinking, but she was used to keeping secrets. She was an expert at not only keeping them from leaving her lips, but she had also perfected the art of keeping them from showing in her face.
The next day she would ask her mom to take her to the Port Angeles library. She needed to do research for her contest entry. It wasn't a lie, she told herself. Not exactly.
...
In her mind, Bella had built up the library to be beautiful. Gleaming cherry walls; antique tables and desks with gold-lit lamps; ladders that rolled along walls of books to reach the ones on the highest shelves. In reality the building was ordinary looking with bright fluorescent lighting. The floor was just like her school's cafeteria tile. If she reached up, she could touch the top of every shelf. The beige checkout desk reminded her of a discount store.
But behind the checkout, she recognized the woman from the picture immediately. It wasn't hard with hair as long, curly, and red as hers. When she got close enough, Bella noted that according to the badge on her shoulder, her name was Victoria.
"Never mind," she told her mom. "She looks busy. I'll find what I'm looking for myself."
She led her mom to the computers, typed in a search for her topic on the value of higher education, jotted down some titles and numbers with a half-pencil, and sent her mom off in a search. Bella, following Victoria as she swished by in her skirt, went on a search of her own.
Under the flickering light in the poetry section, Bella pretended to look for a book as she listened to Victoria and the electrician discuss faulty wiring. Bella knew it wouldn't happen, but she wished Victoria would mention Riley Biers. There was no way in a hundred years that Bella would ask her about him.
Victoria's voice did not match her face. She spoke in a higher pitch than expected, young sounding. If Bella were to close her eyes and just listen, the woman would sound like a teenager, like one of Bella's friends. When that thought churned her stomach, Bella realized that she had come all this way not only to get a look at her, but to find a reason to dislike her.
Her mother came looking for her, handed over the books, and Bella filled out a form so she could check them out. It was Victoria, with a smile too sweet and hair too shiny, who scanned the books. Bella tailed her mother out of the library with two books she didn't really need and no reason at all not to like the woman. She shook her head at herself wondering why she would wish for something like that in the first place.
On the way home, as she looked out the window, unexpected and inexplicably, her throat clenched up and her eyes welled with tears.
Why, she asked herself, had she gone there at all? And why do people do things that they can't explain, even to themselves?
Beside her, her mother was humming to the radio.