Matters of Circumstance

Ashley Andrews

All Rights Reserved © Ashley Andrews

Farrah O’Brien looked at herself in the mirror and grimaced. Those ungainly lumps were getting bigger and harder all the time; they were almost down to her waist now.

If she knew what was going on with her back she would have fixed it by now, you know?

It had started last week as soreness between her shoulder blades. She had initially chalked it up to stress. A huge English paper had been due in a dew days and she had procrastinated on it—it happened to everybody at some point in their schooling career. But then she finished the paper with confidence, the deadline passed, and the ache continued. Her shoulders had been hot and pained, as if her very bones were on fire. No matter what massage machine she used, or how she rolled her shoulders, the discomfort would not abate.

Then the granulomas formed.

As if to isolate whatever was going on in her back, hard lumps had developed. They surrounded the soreness exactly, but the problem was they kept getting
bigger,
not smaller. And yes, granuloma was the medical term for it. Farrah had looked it up.

She was a regular high school girl—this shouldn’t be happening to her!

Farrah poked at the right granuloma cautiously. It was hard and unrelenting, like some kind of super egg. It was also hot enough to rival a fresh pot of coffee.

She withdrew her hand fast, disturbed on a very deep level.

Should she tell her parents about this? Things had only been getting worse, but what if she was back to normal tomorrow? What if she made a big deal out of absolutely nothing? She didn’t want to do that. Farrah trusted her parents, but they were always working so hard, and always so tired at the end of the day. They did so much for her; she didn’t want to give them anything more to worry about.

No, she wouldn’t tell them unless things got really bad. She was a little scared right now, but it wasn’t life threatening or anything. That was right, she was strong. She could handle it on her own.

Farrah glanced at her cell phone for the time. She needed to eat breakfast and go to school. Act like everything was dandy and all that.

She clipped a bra on, and then threw on a t-shirt and an oversized hoodie. Those sweaters were godsends—she usually didn’t wear them unless she had to, but they were the only things that hid the lumps on her back.

It was February, anyway. Nobody could fault her for still feeling chilly.

“I still can’t believe junior year is almost over,” she said to herself as she tromped down the stairs to the kitchen, where both of her parents were already eating and drinking the discount Joe’s Joe coffee Farrah had bought two days ago. It paid to work at a coffee shop that wasn’t Starbucks or Dunkin’ Donuts. She could actually drink what she sold.

“Hey Farrah,” her father said with a teasing smile. “Sleep in?”

She grinned back and plucked an apple out of the fruit bowl in the center of the table. “Just a little.”

“I bought some mini-wheats yesterday,” said her mother without looking up from the newspaper. “They’re in the pantry.”

“Great! Thanks.” Farrah took a huge bite out of her apple as she went into the kitchen. While she was chewing and going about fixing her cereal she got a text message from her friend Ruby.

‘can u bring me food? i 4got brkfst this morning. ;P’

This happened often, but Farrah was just glad that her friend liked to eat. Ruby was a bit of an airhead. When she said she forgot something she usually meant just that—and if she didn’t, then nobody could tell the difference until much later.

‘sure thing’
Farrah texted back, As soon as she put her phone down another text came in.

‘dude did u fall asleep last night? U suddenly stopped talking.’
That was Dalton, another one of her friends. Farrah was pretty sure he hadn’t actually spoken on the phone with another human being in the last three and a half years, his texting addiction was so bad.

Oh well. She didn’t have unlimited for nothing.

‘haha yeah. Sorry ‘bout that. See you at school?’
she texted. Using full words and proper punctuation in texts was, quote/unquote, “a nasty habit” but her phone had a keyboard so Farrah felt like she didn’t exactly have an excuse to half-ass words.

‘yea totally. hugs!’

Dalton maintained that such dialogue got him in touch with his sensitive side and thus made him more attractive, but Farrah personally thought it made him seem fruity. He wouldn’t listen to her about it, though, so that was his own problem.

Farrah finished breakfast trying to roll her shoulders as little as possible, something she was a little proud of accomplishing. Then she had a great discussion about prom dresses with Andrea Barbados on the bus to school. Well, it hadn’t only been with Andrea (when the girls around them heard what they were saying they all decided to add their two cents), but it had started with her.

Now she was at school, and so far things were status quo. She hoped they would stay that way.

“Farrah, Robin’s throwing a huge party this Friday—are you coming?”

“Hey Farrah!”

“O’Brien, how’s it going?”

“Oh Farrah, I was wondering if you could tell me if Ruby’s really dating Michael…”

For whatever reason, once she had entered high school Farrah had gone from relatively well liked to popular. It seemed that everybody knew her name, everyone had something to say to her—people even thought she was pretty! Farrah couldn’t understand why she was suddenly so well liked now when nothing about her had changed, but she took things in stride and was nice until she had a reason not to be. Being suddenly liked was much better than being suddenly hated, after all.

It made it a little awkward that she was suddenly rejecting hugs, though.

“Sorry, it’s nothing personal,” she said when Ruby tried to embrace her in appreciation for the fruit Farrah had brought her. “I just think I’m might be coming down with something. I don’t want to give it to anybody.”

Or there were freaky lumps on her back that she didn’t want anyone to know about. You know, the usual.

“Oh, fine.” With her full mouth and big, soulful blue eyes, Ruby could craft a brilliant pout. She displayed it now as she looked at her friend. Then her expression changed. “Oh yeah! Have you heard about Robin’s party? Sounds like it’s going to be ah-maze-ang! You’re definitely coming, right?”

“I—well, I don’t know. If I have work then I can’t.”

“Oh, Farrah…”

“That’s such bullshit,” proclaimed their friend Michael as he marched up to them. He was quite the specimen of man, Farrah thought: nice frame, fiercely loyal (if a little blunt), great face and hair. The only problem was that he tended to be the same height as or marginally taller than most females, a trait said females didn’t exactly love.

Right now he was also shooting her a matter-of-fact look that made her a little uncomfortable. “You’re freaking seventeen, Farrah. You’ve got to live a little.”

And if anyone found out about her back she probably wouldn’t be living too well anymore. Ostracism would be the least of her worries.

“Yeah, and I also need to pay for college,” she retorted good-naturedly. “Sometimes give and take is inevitable.”

“That’s what scholarships are for. Write a pretty essay, maintain a decent GPA, and tada! Free money for your schooling convenience.”

“Ah, shut up Michael. A job is a job—I can’t bail because of a party.”

“Whatever. I’m just saying—you’re going to miss out if you don’t go.” The bell rang, and he poked her shoulder as he whisked off to homeroom. For her part, Farrah had to work really hard to keep herself from wincing.

*****

Joe’s Joe Café was a pretty popular place, although Farrah suspected that this was partially because most of her school knew she worked there and wanted to see why for themselves. The shop had quality product, though, so most came back.

The owner and founder of Joe’s, whose name was actually Nancy (go figure), thought Farrah was absolutely indispensible, and that wasn’t only because she could make a good cup of coffee (“I’m telling you, you
need
to go to community college. Where’s all my clientele going to come from if you leave?!”).

“Farrah O’Brien, how are you?” said a boy she didn’t recognize as he came up to the counter. He was about six feet, she was guessing, and wearing a Led Zeppelin hoodie and fashionably ripped jeans. His hair was wavy, dirty blonde, sort of in his eyes but not really. He had a light tan, though she couldn’t guess where he would have gotten it at this time of year. Probably natural.

“Getting along just fine,” she replied, accustomed to being spoken to familiarly by people she didn’t know. “Yourself?”

“Can’t complain. Can I have a white chocolate cappuccino? With a shot of coconut, too?”

It was kind of a strange order for a guy, but she knew better than to say as much.

“Sure thing. What size?” she was already putting the information into the touch-computer register.

“Uh… medium?”

She tapped the computer screen. “Okay, that’ll be $4.75.”

He retrieved a five-dollar bill and dropped the leftover quarter into the half-f tip jar.

It wasn’t much, but Farrah’s policy was that anything extra deserved a nicer-than-usual Customer Service Smile. “It’ll be ready in a couple of minutes. Pick up counter’s right over there.” She pointed to it, since she had never seen him here before and he may not know.

“Yeah, okay.” But he didn’t go even when her co-worker Shellie handed him his drink. He just leaned against the little strip of counter between the order and pick up bars, sipping his coffee and watching her enigmatically.

Finally Farrah got fed up and asked during a small lull between orders, “Is there something wrong with your coffee? You keep making the same face.”

“Nah, the coffee’s fine. I’m just wondering why you’re wearing a jacket when this place has decent heating.”

“Well,” she said, taking a damp rag and swabbing the counter. She meant to look thoughtful, but in reality she was stalling in hopes of coming up with a brilliant excuse. “I guess I could ask you the same question. That looks like a pretty warm sweater you’re wearing.”

Evidently amused by her evasive dialogue, he smirked. His teeth weren’t dazzlingly white or straight—he actually had a snaggletooth on the far right—but they weren’t bad, either. He had probably rejected the opportunity for braces in middle school. “Yeah, but I’m leaving soon. What’s your reason?” he said glibly.

“Poor circulation?” Which wasn’t true, but since he didn’t know her he wasn’t in a position to see through her bluff. Another customer was also approaching the counter, so Farrah turned away and said, “Hey. How can I help you?”

Six people and approximately $35 later, she saw the guy in the hoodie offering a small slip of paper roughly the size of a business card. She didn’t take it, merely stared. “What’s that?”

He put it down on the counter and slid it over to her. He looked her dead in the eye, as well, forcing her to privately acknowledge that his were a nice shade of blue. They weren’t pool-blue, like Ruby’s, but much darker, like the deep ocean. “First of all, I can tell that you’re in pain. Don’t even tell me I’m wrong. And secondly, you look like you need someone to talk to. So when you decide that I’m not some creep that’s out to sabotage you, here’s my cell. Let’s talk sometime, ‘okay?” Then he grinned, a winning expression on a fairly attractive face, despite the snaggletooth.