Living Virtues

Chapter 67: Living Virtues

 

 

 

           

           

            Yesterday felt like heresy compared to the horrible days he’d been having consistently ensuing the end of his high school career. He took a flat iron to his hair once more and got out of the house for coffee at the gas station. He lugged around his binder full of CDs and pressed play on one. He noticed he was low on oil and took the car back home and put some in. Then ran up to David’s to see if he was home. He wasn’t. Trevor didn’t know where to go. He called Jamie and no answer. He tried texting that Alex guy and didn’t get anything back right away. It was not starting off well. No matter, he had the car and a while to kill. No way would he let the opportunity go to waste. It was a little past ten and he got back near the outskirts of the city near Jamie’s. He couldn’t decide if he should just go there or what. He turned down his road and started coasting along. It was easy to get tripped up by the turns that way. He wondered why so many roads around here were like that, then remembered that the land was called the foothills and it made them very unpredictable.

            “Where did he I go now?” Trevor sat for several minutes in Jamie’s driveway. He didn’t have an iota of a clue if Jamie was even there. He waited and waited. For what seemed like close to an hour, but was actually more like twenty-six minutes. He went up to the door regardless and rapped on it more than a few times. The barking of dogs and their being drawn to it and scratching and clawing at the door followed soon after. He wasn’t sure what to do with himself. He pressured himself to stay put as long as he felt appropriate. The course of twenty minutes passed he sat on the steps there. He finally gave up and ascertained he wasn’t there. That was when he saw a car pull in. He swept himself off the porch and into a position of heightened sensibility. He didn’t want to seem caught off guard. In several steps he came to see that it was the same girl he’d seen with him at the party. He stood aback and watched her park, being very hesitant to decipher if she’d seen him or not. He couldn’t finally see that she saw him and stood there intermittently. He fostered the idea that he could make it to his car without actually making conversation. It didn’t work out. He got three steps closer to his car and she got out. Assumedly that she thought he was going to talk to her as soon as he made a movement. Which turned out to be the case, he lingered off to the right and walked up to her. “Hey man, what’s going on?” she said..

            “Looking for J, where is he?” he asked. “I don’t know, he said he’d be here.” She told him.. “Ah, well I was gonna leave if he didn’t come to the door.”

            “Whatever you think you should do.” She said.. “May I ask your name?”

            “It’s Laurie. My name is Laurie. Nice to meet you.” She reached out in concordance. He shook her hand. “How’s it going this fine day.”

            “Fantastic, actually, I think he’ll be here momentarily.”

            “You think so, ehh?” he posed. “Yeah… I’d imagine so.” She kind of laughed. He waited moments to speak again. “So as I was saying, my name is Trevor.”

            “Right.” He’d said it before but he wasn’t sure if she heard him or if he even said it aloud at that. “What do you think of him?”

            “Who?” she blurted. “Jamie, obviously.”

            “I happen to think he’s quite nice, though he avoids me many times.”

            “So like… he’s done that many times.” He asked. “Indeed so.”

            “Where do you think he is?”

            “I’d have to say I don’t have any idea.”

            “Umm. Well I’ll wait here a while longer. Where did you come from?”

            “My mother.” She chuckled in an implacable disposition. “No, but from near downtown right now, I’m not sure how long I’ll be there.”

            “Probably forever I’d suppose. No one ever gets out alive.” Trevor poked mockingly. He kind of subdued himself with his own cruel humor. It was in bad taste. But she laughed anyway, probably not understanding what he meant by it exactly. “Do you… know if he… still likes music? It’s been a long time since we’ve played together. I wouldn’t expect him to just quit though.”

            “Of course he does. It never stops. He turns it on and doesn’t turn it off till the sun goes down.” She said. Sort of wearily. It was integrating. He stepped back to his front car seat and took out a piece of paper, then went back over to her. He asked for his current phone number and for the sake of discrepancy he slapped it down with a pen he’d gotten also.

            “Shall I bid you adieu?”

            “No, I was kind of waiting to see if could get him around. I need his help with something.”

            “Oh, wow, what would that be? If you don’t mind me asking.”

            “Let’s just say I have a couple things to take care of.”

            “I see. Shall we wait?” He closed with an mhmm, and it was settled. For an hour he sat in his car and she stood outside leaning against her vehicle. It wasn’t overly hot on the October afternoon. Enough sun shining through to make for heat to perspire though, if exhibited to for too much time. He hardened his leisure and tuned the radio for just a minute or so, trying to find something to occupy himself with. Most of it was empty. He compromised with something, a consort of new rock that caught his interest to a degree. It intensified then ended and he turned it off, he couldn’t let his battery die on him. It was a good thing his cell phone was still charged. He clashed at his button keys for seconds on end to type what he wanted to say to somebody. It was nearing four o’clock and Trevor was getting acquitted with the way he wanted to either get Jamie or get out of here. Like a knot on a log he festered in the four seater with no telling how long it’d be before he returned. He got out of the car and moved to Laurie’s first car window, she rolled it down in front of him. “How do you usually get ahold of him?” he asked impatiently. “With text message usually.” she said with a quip. “Haven’t you texted him?”

            “Yeah, I’ve been texting him this whole time, but he’s been bullshitting.” she said.. He was surprised by her crudeness. Trevor was the type to take it in sovereignty, always.

            “How come he’s doing that?” Trevor asked in an accent that almost made him questionable. “um… you probably don’t know do you…” he surmised. “Yep. Pretty much.” She replied.

            “Let me get this straight… he doesn’t have any answer for you about where he’s at.”

            “Uhuhh. He can’t tell me a damn thing, and at that he frickin’ told me he’d be here at three-thirty.”

            “Unbelievable.” He said in really not the most outspoken of ways. Trevor didn’t really care that much except for the fact that he had to stay or go. Impudence was the best term to describe it. Right then he fastened his seat beat and took a few other precautions before starting the car. A white van that he recognized to be his family’s went in to the driveway and stopped. It shut off and out jumped Jamie. All by himself with his mom, he walked instantly into the house with bags of food in his hands. For a second, Trevor wondered if he noticed them both sitting there. Then he thought he had to have. He held for minutes and then stepped out to find him walking out of the house as soon as he did. As Jamie proceeded to her car, Trevor did also. It was easy to wager they’d been shopping for a great portion of time. He hoped it didn’t offend Laurie when he spoke to her. Though she seemed pretty indifferent if anything. For the longest time, he sat outside for him to come out and say he was available. It didn’t matter that he had nothing to do, he didn’t have a schedule or what-have-you but that it was impeccably boring. The period of time felt like a lifetime. He’d chosen this to be what he was doing today and that was it. For the matter at hand was unclear, he did have some vision of what could be perceived as fate. Trevor knew there was more at stake here than that place in hell and space rocks falling from the sky. That had to be it and there had to be more.

            “Hey hey.” He said. “Hey there.”

            “Good afternoon. What’s going on?” was his first question. “Not much currently. I may need your services again.”

            “Services? That’s a lavish way to say it.”

            “I know. Heh.” Trevor half-giggled uncannily. He hopped right to the chase and made him listen about the ghoul he slayed and how he was healing up recently. Though really he lied, he healed himself about twenty something hours ago. He shot off about leaving to go to check out his college. What Jamie said just then made it difficult to repeal. Similarly he had a haunting ideology about him that made Trevor amass with paradoxal feelings. He knew there was something to what he’d been saying all along. Though Trevor found he had the same groundings to begin with. Living up to his expectations, Jamie went off on how he couldn’t resort to telling him not to apply, but if he did that he should be wary of what he was going to branch out with that. He opened up about how he had a relative who’d gone through the college system and entrusted his future to what he would do with it. Having finished and gone out to work, he underwent countless aptitude tests and placements and turned into a corporate economical experiment. If at all he gained a salary, he could still be liable to secede back from there. Hurtling off a figurative hillock when his life reached a plateau and he took a lot of damage to his internals from everything like cheap junk food, pain pills, and cigarettes, which were also the stuff keeping him afloat “So to speak.” He closed off. Just like that Trevor became much more of aware of the incursions to what life had in store, still blind to the precautions that could be used to maneuver around these. Jamie got quiet after he finished up. It took him all of fifteen minutes to say all that.

            “How about it.” Trevor asked sharply. “What?” he looked unraveled at this point. “You gonna come with me?” He was in fact changing the subject. “Yeah, I guess let’s go.”

            “Alright, go get your coat.”