Nothing left to say–PC

by violet9ish

Posted to Stories on 2001-08-19 11:54:00

I had been sitting in my pajamas in the mid-afternoon, enjoying the delicious ennui of summer’s last week, until the phone rang.
I got up to answer it but my mother got there first. I suppose I am visiting home. I don’t really live here anymore, I just stop off for a week or two now and then. Home from school for a holiday or home for the gap between summer work and school.
But back to the phone…
Having already cast aside the back issues of Rollingstone I had been reading half-interestedly, I walk to my mother’s room and she glances up.
“Oh, here she is,” she says, and hands me the phone.
“Hello?” I say.
“Hi, uh…Carly?”
My best friend is on the line. Kicked out of her house for the second or third time, she’s living with some family I don’t really know. She’s just across town, but she sounds so far away.
“Yeah?”
“Uhm, could you…come over here? I need to get my stuff home, I’m moving home.”
“Sure,” I say, “Give me ten minutes or so. I have to get dressed, I’m in my pajamas.”
I can almost here her smile at the information.
“Yeah, cool. I don’t have too much.”
“Ok, see you soon.”
“Bye.”
Click.
Click.
I hit the shower fast and pull on clothes from the floor. Whatever. I grab my keys and yell “I’ll be back in a bit” as I walk out of the house into the garage. I hit the garage door opener and my dad, squinting at the summer bright peeks in from outside.
“I’m going to help Karen move her stuff.”
“Oh, ok.”
“Bye, Dad.”
“Bye”
I walk up to the semi-strange door, and it’s opened before I hit the bell. I’ve been here a couple times before. But this isn’t Karen’s house. This isn’t where I made up silly games for her sister, or where I fell asleep on the couch countless nights, only to wake up in the morning with a blanket over me.
This isn’t even where I picked up her brother for school in the mornings after the first time she got kicked out.
I go inside, and see her things in the “guest” room, plastic sacks for the most part, and a couple of boxes.
We don’t really talk much anymore. We don’t have much to talk about. I have different friends, most of whom she’s never met. I live in a city 6 hours away by car, if you speed. I go to school. She’s enlisiting in the airforce, and I’m happy for her, but I miss her already, and I wonder how well we can keep in touch.
“Let’s grab what we can and head out to the car and figure out something,” I say.
“Ok,” she says.
The mystery mother is hovering over us. She makes me slightly uncomfortable. I don’t know her, and it seems odd, hauling my best friend’s things out of a house I’m not comfortable in, making small talk with a woman I’m not comfortable with.
We haul as much as we can to the curb.
“Uhm…”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll take the top down,” to the wordless debate. My small purple convertable is probably the least appropriate vehicle for moving, but we have to work with what we have.
I take the top down, and we start piling stuff in the backseat. The trunk is full after a small box, a bag and a pair of rollerblades.
Standing back inside and assessing what’s left, we try to figure out how to make it fit.
Mystery mother is buzzing around us even more now.
“Karen, you still have some clothes in the dryer.”
“Karen, you could just make two trips.”
“Karen…”
I’m resolved to make it work, it’s do-able.
“I’m not sure what you want to do,” Karen says. “I know I’m taking advantage, but it doesn’t matter.”
We balance the last box precariously on the heap in the backseat and climb into the now insane-looking vehicle. I can’t see anything in the rear-view mirror because of the boxes, but I start the car anyway, and as we roll slowly away from the curb, I realize she’s right, it doesn’t matter.–violet9ish

The Literary Kicks message boards were active from 2001 to 2004.