Chapter Six- Darin (Part Three)

Sorry for late update, brain has been fried lately, and school is starting tomorrow. So less updates probably :( Hope you enjoy this!

 

Darin

 

 

            Claire and I had parted ways for the evening. I left in my graffitied truck, and she went somewhere else. I thought I would be able to see Rhia when I was driving back home, but she was nowhere in sight. When I pulled into my driveway,  I had a sick feeling in my stomach. Home, I would have never thought, had become the last place I wanted to be. In fact, I wanted to be anywhere, any place, but home. Before Jared died, home was the only place I stayed.  It was hell. Mom, dad and grandpa weren't back yet, and I couldn't remember seeing Michelle at all that day at school. She must have put in contribution in the graffiti, and like she contributed her part to the world she decided that she deserved to stay home. I got out of my car, and pulled my ten pound keys out of my pocket to unlock the front door of our home. I swung it open, and yelled up the stairs,

            "Michelle! Michelle are you home? Michelle?" I called out. I heard a grunt from upstairs, along with the opening and closing of a door. My sister stood at the top of the stairs, her hair splayed in different directions (bed head must have been a strong gene in our family), and her eyes bloodshot too.

            "Stop yellin', goddamn. Do you have to be so loud?"

            "You put crap all over my car, and I want you to wash it off." I felt my jaw tighten. Michelle simply snorted at my demand.

            "You're asking me to do that? No way-I don't have time."

            "That's what you say to everyone about everything. But you know, you have time to sleep at home all day, or sleep around with different guys. Yet you don't have time to clean up what you're responsible for?"

            "Nope. And shut up! You're starting to sound like dad, EW! Oh, and that stuff, on your car, is a pain to get out. So have fun doing it without me. Mom is going to love coming home to see that piece of crap you call a car with profanity sprayed all over it." She paused for a moment, and jeered,  "I'm sure those rich, stuck up country club b*****s are gettin' riffs of all the things we're doing down on paper, ready to reveal it to mom."

            "I actually wouldn't be surprised if that's the case." I agreed. They always would try so hard to point out each, and every one of our flaws, confronting mom on what she should do with us.

            "Hey look, we agree on something..." She paused, and for a moment, she seemed to have satisfaction played upon her mannerisms. Shaking out of her temporary state of satisfactory, she snapped back into her old tone, "Whatever, I'm going back to bed." She yawned, and began to walk back to her room.

            "Hey, what are you going to do about all these days you're 'sick'? Kind of hard to get away with."  I stated. She bit her lip at my question, and raised her eyes in thought. There probably wasn't much for her to think because she didn't have much of a brain.

            "Guess I have to make sure that I'm the one going out to the mail box to get the mail in case some kind of notice shows up." Her face softened slightly like she cracked open the answer to an unanswerable question. "Plus, my freaking brother just died. why can't those idiots just get off my back? Oh-and you better not tell mom, dad or grandpa, or I swear...I don't even know what I'll do to you. But it'll be bad." I wanted to yell at her consistently,  but she was too hopelessly stupid to even deal with. She to her bedroom.  I was then left with nothing to do. I wasn't going to do my homework. I hadn't done any of it in the past three days. I walked to the living room and sat down in the chair which my grandpa usually sat in. It was old, and creaked each time I rocked back and forth. My feet touched the floor lightly, and ascended up as the chair moved back. It was one of those chairs when rocked too far back, it felt like it was going to totally fall off. I made sure to keep  my rocking steady.

            Our house was easily the most extravagant of those in the First Estate suburb. It was old, and stretched far back, standing tall at two stories high.  The exterior was of a light blue color which contrasted with the white shutters. Columns touched the wooden floor of our wrap around porch, and stretched up to the house's neat overhang.  The interior was mainly lightly colored wooding, and floral rugs were randomly laid down here and there. The living room where I sat had green wallpaper with little peach flowers spread evenly out in a balanced pattern. Collectible plates hung above the sofa. There was usually a family photo centered between the old plates, but, like rest of the pictures,  was gone too. Many vases lined our mantel, along with a Rhett and Scarlett O'Hara figurine, and small vacant picture frames above the fireplace in proportional arrangement. The house was never really updated, ever. Mom refused to go with the latest trends, because they'd be out in five years. The orange, green, and yellow colors weren't necessarily her thing.  I didn't really like them either, I thought they were rather obnoxious and ugly.  It was like the fashion designers got lazy and decided to go with only a few main colors. I didn't really care because I thought fashion was just lame in general.

             Mom went out shopping with dad all the time, even though she kept trying her best to avoid the current fashions, and she would make him carry all of her shopping bags and would often have him  sit on an empty sofa while my sister and Jared and I just wandered off to explore. Shopping always gave me a huge headache, so did staying in one store for so long around all the same surroundings. Jared would often venture off to the nearest bookstore around, and I would occasionally join him. I never really liked books, and reading a book by Hemingway felt like the biggest waste of time, ever. But Jared would always preach about how good of an author Hemingway was, as did many of my English teachers. I thought Hemingway was just like any other author except he randomly became famous. This went the same for artists. Because some random painting could become famous in an art gallery, yet it would look like any of the other ones hanging around. Hemingway's books annoyed me with all their constant melancholy, and the fact that he made lessons drawn out, and more complicated to understand than they really were. I bet in real life he was an emotional crybaby, making everything worse than it really was. I already had to deal with enough stupid people and hard situations in life, so why would I want to read about it? I thought The Lord of the Rings books were stupid too. Why read about things that don't exist? Elves, strange monsters and trolls and such;  I couldn't comprehend why anyone would want to read that sort of nonsense. Perhaps a small child or someone whose brain that is not  fully developed. Because anybody with a functioning brain would think :Why waste time on something non-educational?

            My current state reminded me of one of Hemingway's characters in  melancholy. Sitting and staring at the floor was what I did for two whole hours. I wanted to be elsewhere. Somewhere far away. I didn't care if it was mental or physical trip, I just needed to be somewhere besides where I was. This overwhelming weight of emptiness suffocated me, and I could feel it, stuck there smothered by my ribs, surging through my chest. I stood up, very slowly with my knees shaking. I had to leave.  If I didn't I was surely to vomit.

But I couldn't.  Even moving around was becoming a struggle.

I sat myself back down , my mind filled with apathy. My thoughts were quiet, but my memories were loud and clear. Scenes of my past played in my head like I was recalling parts of an old movie. My eyes stared at a piece of dirt on the rug next to my left foot. I saw Jared playing basketball when he was on the eighth grade team. Mom, dad, grandpa, Michelle and I sat in the bleachers cheering for him. His first basket that he made was in the second game he played. It was  a three point shot. After the scoreboard changed, it showed their team in the lead. He jumped up with joyful smile on his face. Mom cringed with embarrassment, hiding away her face as it flushed red, people around her including my dad and grandpa, laughing in amusement. Michelle sunk back complaining.

             '"This is so stupid," Michelle ranted. "Who cares. I hate it here. I want to go home. Those boys smell."'  I sat quietly, envying the skills of the other players, but not my brother.  Jared was clumsy and tall like a giant troll. He often knocked people down unintentionally, and they soared like they were rag dolls. When he realized his faults, he always put the game aside.  Jared offered his hand for them to stand back up, accompanied by a polite apology. In doing this, sometimes someone would pass the ball his way, resulting in his head getting bonked, and mom hiding her face. He was never very good at basketball, or any other sports, so I couldn't understand why he was so giddy all the time when he played. Like me, he had absolutely no athletic skill, but intellectual knowledge made up for that shortcoming. With some of these memories, I almost believed I could go back to that time; like nothing had occurred between where I was on the couch, and my past. Some of the words spoken in my reflections of the past never changed. Each time I thought of a particular scene, it never alternated; everything was concrete. The tone of everyone's voices, their movements, their gestures, the sounds, the atmosphere, and the way I felt. If I wanted to, I could change the way someone said something, and mess with their wording. However there was one thing I could not change, and it was the feeling I had from that particular memory. Whether it was happy, sad, or proud,  it would always come back to haunt me.

            Jared had just received his high school diploma, and he decided after a few days that he wanted to go fishing. Much to my surprise, he told me to tag along. There was a stream about five miles from us full of trout, and from my dad's experience there, we assumed we were sure to catch something. We sat on a rock next to a towering pine tree,  the creek stayed where it was bubbling over the stones and rocks going to a reservoir, or a lake. The May weather was chilly still, but the view of the mountains and trees made the chill oblivious to me. A peace surrounded us, accompanied by the sound of an occasional car passing by. The cars didn't take away the feeling though, they made it more compensated in a way.

           "What is it you plan on doing again?" I asked, frustrated I hadn't caught any fish. Jared reeled in his line, and put on new bait, concentrating on how he put the worm on the hook. He cast it out once again.

            '"I'm thinking about being an attorney,"' He said with uncertainty. '"Well, it'd be nice to go to Yale or some other Ivy League school of course for that. But even we don't have that kind of money."' His face curved downward in disappointment as he bit his lip, staring at the water.

            "Is it really that expensive to go there?"

Jared scoffed,

            "Definitely. Plus mom and dad have to pay for you. Oh, and Michelle. But, I highly doubt Michelle will go to college. It'd surprise me if she even graduated high school. They'll probably spend an equal amount of money on drug rehabilitation and counseling." He turned his head towards me, '"You should be fine though. You're smart. Probably even smarter than me."' I was shocked at his words. Usually they were insulting, and belittling.

            "You think so?"

            "Yeah. If I didn't think so I wouldn't say anything. Just don't go partying in high school or college, like I did. I'm an idiot. I brought my GPA Junior year from a 3.9 to a 3.0. You don't even want to know how mad mom got about that." I shuffled my feet in the rocks, moving them around to make tracks.

            "I don't know what I am going to do with my life."

            "You have time," he said. "I don't really care where I end up. As long as wherever that is, I am happy. You should wish for the same thing."

Neither of us caught any fish that day: I had expected to, but I didn't leave disappointed. I was fully satisfied and content even though I had caught nothing.  Instead, I caught something better.

            The door front door opened, and I bolted up straight in the chair. Mom came into the living room with large bags, and a look of exhaustion. She blew a piece of hair from her eyes, and took her hair down from her tight bun. Dad came in right behind her with an old fashioned newsboy hat, and set it on the table.

            "Where is your sister?" my mom asked directly.

            "Hello to you too. She's upstairs."

            "Have you done all of your homework?"

            "Yes." I lied with a straight face.

            "Good."

            "Where did you go?"

           "To Mary Ann's in Denver. She wanted to see me after-" mom paused. Mary Ann was our disabled aunt, who was even more snobby than even my mom. "Anyway... Oh, and why was your car all marked with that profanity? Do you know how bad that makes me look? Anyone could have seen it. Get off your butt, and go wash it off. Now." She demanded with irritation.

            "Mom, Michelle's the one who did it while I was asleep last night. I wouldn't waste my  time putting all that stuff on there. I asked her to take it off, but she refused, of course. She's so stubborn. Maybe you should do as your friends at that country club suggested and send her to some kind of boarding school." I informed her. Mom's face scrunched up, and she put her hands on her hips, giving me a look of pure malice.

            "You do as I say right now. I don't care who did it, it's on your truck, and your truck is your responsibility." I felt tremendous anger towards her. I wanted to yell aloud things that she did that continuously offended me, and belittled me. She made me feel like I was nothing. Dad stood behind her,  looking mouse-like and quiet, shrinking back into the foyer, and making his way slowly up the stairs. Within a few seconds, I heard my dad yelling at my sister.

            "Bring that godforsaken pot down stairs! Go, now!" My sisters footsteps scurried down to the foyer, and she looked like she had seen a ghost. Mom turned in her high heels, clicking as she walked towards Michelle.

            "Where did you get this?"

            "Uh-um. Nowhere."  Probably one of boyfriends

            "What were you going to do with it?" Her voice raised.

            "Sell it." She realized the fatality of her answer immediately after she said it.

            "That's even worse than smoking it!" My dad yelled.

            "I-I didn't mean that. I lied."

            "Oh, so now you're a liar? That's great. Just great. I've raised a liar." Mom cut it angrily.

            "I know what we should do," Dad started walking into the living room, and up to the fireplace. "Burn it." Mom's eyes grew large, and waved her arms, shoving me out of the way to make her way to dad.

            "No, no, no Jack! You're going to get the entire neighborhood high!" She ripped the drug from him, and stomped over to the kitchen, throwing it away in the trash.

            "Are you serious Michelle? What level of stupid have you stooped to? I mean, really? Jared dies, and you do something so disgraceful as drugs? Oh my God.." Mom scratched and pulled at her curly mop hair in anger. Michelle's knees stuck together like glue, and looked down at the ground with remorse in her eyes.

            "I- I'm sorry..."

            "Don't tell me your sorry, because I know that you're not. You'll just do it again. But I bet you when you do, it won't be at home. Am I right?"  Michelle said nothing. I wanted to stick up for her, but I was still mad about my truck, and the blame going on to me. "Clean your brothers car. Now."

            "But-

            "I don't care how long it takes, or how long you have to stay up to do it. Go clean it right now." Michelle began to cry, and got a rag from the linen closet. She glared back at mom before going out, and she slammed the door behind her.

Author's Note

Good, bad, the ugly :) thanks guys I love you.
I have to thank KillerWithWords for helping me edit this, you're awesome!

Reviews

[KillerWithWords]

Fantastic chapter, as usual. There's a lot i have to say on this. I was thinking about making a message, but i'm already here. Here are my two categories of opinions/critique:
i] Structure:
1) I think you should break the paragraph where you describe Darren's house into two paragraphs. the first the description. the second when he begins narrating.
2)This chapter i fantastic but needs an edit. I'd be more than glad t edit this for you. Hbout you give it a lookover, fix the mistakes that you find and then send me the piece in a message (attach it as a word doc o i can use fancy notes and colored words).
3) Your doing a fantastic job with Darren's somber thoughts, i can really feel his depression.

ii] Style:
1) I really liked how Claire graffiti-ed Darren's car. She really is an a*s and you do a great job making me hate her even more.
2) You don't even realize how masterfully you've created Darren's mom. She is a classical 70's feministic housewife. Her smugness and order fits in with that time. (Fact: many of the upper middle class white women were obsessive about their children during this time. They would be freakish about breathing down their backs. Maybe have Darren overhear Claire ranting this to her friends over the phone...)
3) You described their house really well. I couldn't think of a better name than the one you chose..



GREAT JOB RACHEL! (Stands while clapping).

[Rachel Hanne]

Thank you! And yes, I am very aware it needs to be edited :) Go ahead, you can edit it if you like! Darin's mom was a little tough, but it seems I pulled through so yay! Thank you so much, this is a great review :D I shall send you the chapter in a message

[InsanityWriter]

:D Awesome chapter, once again. (; Please write more!!! :) I love it!!