Authors: Johi Jenkins
What did I get myself into?
March goes by surprisingly fast. Thierry and I
both slowly return to our regular selves. I can’t forget the show-and-tell gone
awry, but I’ve always been great at repressing things that bother me. I simply
push it out of my mind. He doesn’t take me hunting again.
Thierry’s cheerful personality returns and
sticks around when his maker is away. It reminds me of something Fiona says
about her mother when she feels like dissing her family. When I met the
Harrises, June used to go out twice a week to a gym. That lasted about a month.
Fiona told me laughing that it’s always the same; June gets on a health kick
and goes to the gym, then she’ll miss a day or so, and eventually stop going
altogether. Thierry’s attitude towards me feels a little like that. Every time
that the brother calls or comes by—without me ever seeing him—Thierry becomes
more reserved with me, but after a few days everything reverts back to normal.
I know I should address the problems at hand,
but it’s incredibly painful to think about their solution—letting Thierry go.
Especially when everything’s fine and my relationship is bliss. I keep telling
myself I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.
Spring Break is the first week of April in my
high school. During the entire month of March I plan many dates with my vampire
boyfriend for that glorious free week. Or rather, I’m daydreaming, and he’s in
my daydreams. We’ve made no plans yet. I still don’t call Thierry my boyfriend
to his face. I know that’s a sign of an unhealthy relationship, but I’ve seen
him kill people, so it’s not like I’d know what’s healthy anyway.
With only a week to go before Spring Break, one
night my uncle calls me to his study.
“Tori?” I stop mid-stride on my way to the
stairs after cleaning up my dinner dishes.
The study is really just a little room with
French doors off the living room that my uncle uses as an office. I’ve never
been inside, and I’ve hardly seen it, because the French doors are lined with
heavy drapes that allow my uncle total privacy when he wishes it.
I enter the small office. Bookshelves line the
wall that I came in from, and they’re filled with rows and rows of books that
look very old. His computer sits on a large desk with an expensive-looking
manager chair. The arrangement is such that he faces the door, the monitor
light casting a blue glow over his face. There are two chairs on the opposite
side of the desk, which gives me the feeling of entering the principal’s
office.
The whole room looks important, like a library,
which I would never associate my uncle with. He’s just not a scholarly person
in my opinion. It is a great room, and my uncle is undeserving of it.
“Yes, Uncle?” I ask.
He looks at his computer monitor while he
addresses me. “Come here and take a seat.”
Uh-oh. There was never a conversation that
turned out amazing that started that way. I walk to the desk and take a seat
across from him.
“Yesterday I spoke with your aunt,” he begins,
finally looking at me.
He pauses, and I don’t say anything, waiting
for him to tell me what he spoke about with June. But a second of silence later
I realize he’s not talking about his wife. I promptly respond how I think he’d
want me to.
“My Aunt Marie? How is she doing?”
“She’s doing alright. She says she feels a
little lonely. It must be hard, with the passing of her husband. What was his
name again?”
“Antoine,” I say.
“Antoine, yes. Well, anyway, she asked me to
send you there for your spring break.”
“Oh. Kay.” This takes some adjusting in my
chair. The news is hard to swallow; I thought she hated the thought of me.
“We arranged everything,” he says. “So I’m booking
the flight for you. I need your birthday.” He looks at the screen again.
Did I just hear that? I feel I’ve been slapped
in the face. My aunt and uncle are making decisions for me, about me, behind my
back, and I’m only finding out because the man doesn’t know my birthday. The
fact that he doesn’t know my birthday also stings a little, but if it weren’t
for that he would’ve purchased the tickets and shipped me out of here without
even asking me. I don’t know why I’m surprised, though. I should never expect
anything from any of them.
“It’s October 31st, 1995. What do you need it
for?” I’ve never traveled by air before. I don’t know what they need.
“I don’t really know. It’s just asking me for
it.” He inputs the date and continues. Usually people comment about me being
born on Halloween, but I don’t think it even registers in his mind. He just
proceeds with the booking.
I haven’t even seen the schedule. I lean
forward trying to see his screen, which is facing him and away from me.
“What days am I going?” I ask him.
“Saturday, March 30th…” he reads out loud. “To…
Sunday, April 7.”
“Saturday to Sunday? But that’s the whole week
I have off. I can’t, Uncle! I have homework to do!”
“Of course. Don’t worry, she’s not going to
make you do chores or anything like that. She has to know you need time to do
your school work. I just assumed you’d take your books and do it over there.”
“But… what about work? I don’t know if I have
that much PTO, even….”
I want to cry. No one asked me what I wanted,
and they’re handing me out like I’m four again. When my parents died my
relatives did with me as they pleased—didn’t ask who I wanted to live with. It
was okay then; they knew better than me. But now?
This
? It’s my Spring
Break!
“Don’t worry about work. It’s only part-time,
right? They won’t give you a hard time.”
“It’s not about them firing me. I
do
need to work to earn money and pay my cell phone”—he doesn’t need to know about
Thierry’s generous contribution to my account—“and eat while I’m there.”
Uncle Roland’s expression softens as though
realizing that I’m a person with needs for the first time. He says, “I was
going to send you over there with some money, Tori, so that you could buy your
food and anything else you need. But now that you mention it, I’ll add whatever
you usually make in the week.”
Oh. That’s kinda sweet of him. “Really? You
don’t have to,” I tell him, more out of habit than because I really think so.
In fact, I think he
should
have to.
“No, Tori, none of that. I want you to have a
good time, and not to have to worry about losing money while you visit your
aunt.”
“Thanks, Uncle. Really.” I can’t refuse this
unparalleled display of attention.
“She really wants this, Tori. You’ll make her
day. Well, her entire week. You know, ever since you came here, we’ve become this
huge family. Having so many people around, I can’t imagine being alone like she
is. So I feel sorry for her. I’m glad you’re going.”
“Sure,” I say, conflicted. On the one hand, he
did say a few nice things, but on the other hand, he didn’t give me a choice. I
guess if he was going to make me go no matter what, at least he’s sending me
off properly. “I’ll go. But… hey, but can I at least come back Friday instead
of Sunday? I was hoping to do something with my friend from school.”
He considers it for a second. “Okay, I guess. Your
aunt won’t mind too much. Let me change the date here,” he says, and fiddles
with his screen. “Oh! Look at that. The same price, too.”
“Thanks, Uncle,” I say.
“Thanks for doing this, Tori,” he says. Aha. He
acknowledges that I’m doing this as a favor to someone.
“Sure,” I say, and keep my thoughts safely
nonverbal.
I call Thierry when I go to my room and explain
that I found out that I’m scheduled to visit my Aunt Marie. That my aunt and
uncle arranged everything before they even asked me.
“I’m sorry, Tor,” he says. “If you want, I’ll
follow you there and meet you secretly at night after your aunt goes to sleep.”
I laugh. “That would be awesome. But no, I
won’t make you go to Galena, Ill,” I say. I call Illinois “Ill” for its
abbreviation, IL. In my mind it sounds more appropriate. “I can’t wish that on
anyone.”
Really, it’s my own damn fault for not telling
my new family that I have a boyfriend. Weird as they are, they might have at
least asked me if I had plans. I could have used teenager angst as a weapon.
But no, now my only excuses are work and school.
***
The last Friday in March I say goodbye to Kerin
at school. She’s a little sad, I can tell, because we had said we’d go out and
hang out together, which we haven’t done since that fateful Mardi Gras.
“At least you have Lynn,” I say, a half-assed
attempt to cheer her up. I’m not a fan of Lynn, but she does pretend to be
Kerin’s friend, so I put up with her.
“
Pfff
. Lynn,” she replies. “Lynn’s not
my favorite person right now.”
Aww. I may just have been upgraded to someone’s
best friend and didn’t even know.
I’ve been keeping good with my internal promise
to show Kerin that I can be incredibly tolerant, but she has not said anything too
personal to me. At least verbally. I
have
noticed that she’s closer to
me than before. We talk frequently after school, and at school I know she
spends more time with me than with that uptight bitch Lynn.
“Is Aiden coming to town for Spring Break?” I
ask her. Aiden was pretty cool.
“Oh, he is. Which reminds me, now I’m glad
you’re going out of town.”
“What? Why?” Oh crap, don’t tell me he hates me
because of Mardi Gras. Or that he loves me because of Mardi Gras. I don’t know
which one’s worse.
“He kept giving us a hard time at Mardi Gras,
telling us to not flirt with his friends, right? Billy and Whatever. The other
guy.”
“Mike?”
“Oh! Yeah, no. Mark. Mark, the ugly one.”
I laugh. “He wasn’t that ugly. He was just very…
non-desirable.”
“Definitely. So Aiden’s all, ‘It’s awkward if
you end up sleeping with my friends’—as if,
yuck
—and then he made you
also stay away from them, but then I found out it was because Mark was
interested in you, and Aiden didn’t want him to go out with you.”
“Uh… thank you, Aiden?” I say. I don’t know
what’s so bad about Aiden keeping Mark away from me.
“No, so the other day Aiden called to say he
was coming to Nola for Spring Break and asked me if you were free. I guess he
liked you.”
My mouth and brow instantly pucker into a dismayed
expression. “What?”
“I know, right? So I told him you were seeing a
guy.”
“Thanks, Kerin. I’m sorry about Aiden. I guess.
I hope he doesn’t really like me.”
“Who knows?” She shrugs. “Whatever the case, I
think he might’ve lied about us not flirting with his buddies just so that he
could ask you out someday.”
“Well, let’s see if Thierry sticks around.”
“Why wouldn’t he?”
“Are you kidding me? I have like zero power
over him.
And
he’s so clearly out of my league.”
“Don’t sell yourself short too fast, Tori.” She
says with an encouraging smile. “You’re pretty, you’re fun, and c’mon, you’re
an orphan. How hot is that?”
I laugh and push her away. Hot orphans.
That’s gotta be a first.
***
It’s only when I’m seated waiting for the plane
to take off that I notice mostly everyone is with someone, and I feel terribly
lonely. This is my first flight ever and I’m experiencing it alone. I think of
Thierry the whole duration of the flight while I stare out the window.
When we land in Chicago and exit the plane,
before I’m even fully exposed to the weather, I already feel the cold. I curse,
and realize I never acknowledged to myself that I love New Orleans weather.
This cold grayness is depressing. It certainly doesn’t feel like spring. Or a
break, for that matter, since I’m banished to my aunt’s house against my will.
I maneuver the airport following really vague
directions to reach a van operated by what has to be the smallest shuttle
service company in the world. I have to wait for an hour for the van, and by
then, there are only four passengers total. This little van takes me to BFE,
also known as Galena, Illinois. By the time I make it to Galena, three hours
later, I swear off coming to see my aunt ever again.
But when I get off the shuttle and she hugs me
warmly, I feel a lot of my annoyance recede. She seems so genuinely happy to
see me. How am I, an orphan, supposed to resist that level of fondness from a
relative? My only living aunt, no less.
“Dearest Tori,” she says, hugging me like she
loves me. The sincerity of her hug fills me with a new emotion, and I have this
sudden, terrible urge to cry. And immediately I feel like punching my needy orphan
heart in the face. My brain reminds me that this sweet lady kicked me out of
her house once before.
“Hello, Aunt Marie,” I say, almost gasping for
air, she’s choking me that much.
I manage to survive the hug, and she drives me
back to the house that was my home for that one week between Christmas and New
Year’s. I bring up my stuff inside, to the same bedroom with the same bed that
my dead uncle tried to share with me that one night he was alive.
Luckily Aunt Marie chats about life in Galena
and the weather and for a while doesn’t even mention my dead uncle. It’s late,
and cold, so she offers me hot chocolate. The magic liquid fills me with warmth
and a foolish desire to repeat this moment every night it’s cold outside. As we
chat in the living room rocking chairs, she’s unexpectedly everything that I
want in a motherly figure.
“How was your first flight?” she asks me.
“Not bad. I had such low expectations that it
felt relatively painless.”
“That’s good. And how are things with the
Harris?”
“The Harrises,” I correct her automatically,
laughing.