Under Rose-Tainted Skies(20)
I promise myself that I’m not going to hide in my room until it gets dark. Instead, I slip into the study, hit play on the stereo, and listen to Marie Miraz talk irregular French verbs.
‘Do you understand?’ Marie asks in the same condescending tone she’s been using since lesson one.
‘J’ai compris,’ I tell her. She rambles on, instructs me to follow, but movement next door has caught my attention. Luke’s parents.
His mom is on the doorstep in her nightgown. His dad, standing just outside, leans in and kisses her hard on the mouth. It looks as if he’s leaving.
He is leaving, grinning from ear-to-ear as he trots off down the driveway. But she, Luke’s mom, in complete contrast, is swiping what look like tears of anguish off her cheeks.
I shouldn’t be staring.
I wish I could offer her a tissue.
I need to stop staring.
Right. I dash to the stereo, put Marie on pause, and flee the study.
For the following hours I ferment on the couch and try to submerge myself in talk shows. I’m cringing at the sight of jilted spouses beating up their toothless exes when I hear an engine growl outside.
Ignore it.
The car pulls up next door, and I find myself second-guessing the party’s start time. It’s just before four. They wouldn’t start now . . . would they?
Ignore it.
But what if something is happening that I need to know about?
Ignore it.
Of course I can’t ignore it, because there is a certain amount of safety in knowing everything there is to know about a situation. I mean, you wouldn’t throw yourself out of a plane before making sure your pack contained a parachute, would you? I only need to hide from the party itself; the planning of it is fair game.
On bended knees, I make my way over to the window. A truck covered in dust with the words Clean me and a cartoon penis sketched on the side is parked in the road. Luke skips out of his house, greets the guy driving with a high five. It’s not enough. The driver, a casual blond mop of muscle and chiselled cheeks, pulls him in for a hug. They slap each other on the back, hard, and for a second I wonder if I might have missed one or both of them choking.
I kneel on the floor, peep up from beneath the porch windowsill, and watch as the two carry pieces of antique furniture out of Luke’s house and over to the garage.
‘What are they doing?’ I ask the air.
It clicks when Luke’s mom appears at the door lugging a big glass vase decorated with gold flowers. Blond Guy hurries over, grabs it from her, and pretends to drop it. Poor Luke’s mom clutches her chest; a look of horror flashes across her face before she realizes he’s teasing.
They’re trying to avoid collateral damage from the party; locking all the valuables away in the garage so they don’t get damaged. I don’t imagine regurgitated beer is easy to get out of vintage upholstery, and I don’t imagine they’ll be able to replace that vase at the Shop ’n’ Save either. That’s pretty smart. This bodes well for me; at the very least, Luke is a forward thinker.
The two guys laugh and talk a lot. And they keep finding opportunities to punch each other. I see bear cubs play-fighting.
At 5.37 they crash in the front yard, lie on the ground, and soak up the late-afternoon rays. Luke pulls on a pair of aviators, and my heart sighs.
The animated conversation they’re having dies when Luke’s mom walks out of the house dragging a small suitcase behind her. The weeping woman from this morning is nowhere in sight. This woman smiles as if she were walking the stage at a Miss America pageant. She’s wearing a crisp black flight attendant’s uniform and a coat of shimmering pink lipstick. She makes me think of Hollywood in the fifties. Blond Guy whistles, and Luke promptly socks him in the arm. She ruffles Luke’s hair and gives him a kiss on the cheek. I think I see her mouth the word Behave before climbing into a silver SUV. His mom is not only going to be gone for this party, she’s going to be thirty thousand feet in the air. Noted.
A little after six, a beat-up Nissan chugs into view. The guy driving is a toothpick with long black hair pulled back into a ponytail and a pair of too-big horn-rimmed glasses perched on his nose. I know him. At least, I recognize his face from my Hub feed. I want to say his name is Simon, and a few weeks back he was photographed at a football game wearing a Cardinal Cocks jersey and kissing a redhead. It’s possible we said hi while passing each other in the school hall. But that was all so long ago, I can’t be certain.
He pulls his car all the way up Luke’s driveway, and I lose sight of him. Shame doesn’t register as I crawl across the floor and over to the study. The window there gives me a panoramic view of Luke’s driveway, so I can get a better look.
Dr Reeves says that I take note of situations like this because it tricks my brain into thinking I’m being proactive about a problem. I can’t stop or control Luke’s party, but watching things unfold, tracking activity, taking mental notes, makes me feel less like I’m falling into an abyss. And that helps.
More backslapping and shoulder-butting happens, then the three of them unload giant speakers from the trunk of the little car. It’s like Mary Poppins’s carpet bag. Stuff keeps spilling out of the tiny space.
Mrs Mortimer, the leather-faced grizzly from across the road, comes out of her house as the three of them wrangle with wires and some expensive techtronic-type equipment. She folds her arms across her chest and throws disapproving glances at the boys. For a mortifying few seconds, I see myself, only with more hair and fewer face whiskers. Mom says the girls at the hair salon call her Moaning Mortimer. A shudder rips through me. I’m not old and bitter, though. I don’t hate the youth, or having fun.