Chapter 3: Denny

Enter Kirstie's best friend...

 

Summer in Rooks always brought unbearable heat—the kind that made you want to laze around indoors all day, sipping lemonade, or dive into a welcomingly refreshing bath of ice cubes. But, as it turned out, this summer was the exception.  As Kirstie stepped tentatively outside, she was greeted by a gust of frigid wind, enough to send her running for cover into the warmth of her apartment. For God’s sake, it’s mid-July! Kirstie thought with annoyance. Winter’s supposed to be long gone, d****t! It wasn’t really cold weather she minded, or at least not directly; it was the heating bills. One frosty December, her parents had come home to a $300 dollar utility bill, and that had been the start of Kirstie’s second job—they had flatly refused to pay. Now, since they had been “nice enough to give her the run of the place,” it was Kirstie’s responsibility to pay electricity and water bills. Consequently, she lived very frugally. She would fill water bottles up from public drinking fountains, shower no more than 10 minutes a night, and freeze half to death before finally relenting and turning on the heat. She got sick often—the winter cold conditions and her less-than-healthy diet made for a rather weak immune system.

                Christopher dug around in her hopelessly cluttered closet, trying to find her woolen coat, then withdrew, defeated, and sat down dejectedly in the center of the hallway. Little, angry storm clouds were forming in her head to match large, intimidating the ones outside. It had been one of those days when you wake up with the feeling that everything is wrong. Her thoughts were in a disarray—spread thin between her parents impending arrival (they were due early next week) and her alarming shortage of money. She crossed her legs and began drawing up budget plans in her mind:

                Gas for transportation would be at least fifty dollars. The electric bill would be forty, if she was lucky. Maybe she wouldn’t go anywhere, that would take care of the gas bill…did she have enough food stocked up to live on until her next paycheck? She berated herself for having spent the last of June’s paycheck on painting supplies—what a stupid, frivolous waste of money, you—

                And that was as far as she had gotten when the doorbell rang. Christopher sat on the fake wood floor, immersed in her angry storm cloud, refusing to get up and answer it. She was still in her PJs—just a men’s large flannel shirt that she wore as a night gown—and the cold was beginning to catch up to her. She hugged the oversized shirt around her, staring at the door and willing whoever was on the other side to just go away and leave her alone.

                The doorbell rang again, this time followed by an obnoxiously (or so Christopher thought) loud rapping.

                “Who is it?!?” Christopher practically screamed from the hallway, hoping they could hear it. She still refused to budge. The door creaked open, and Denny stepped inside, shutting tightly against the cold behind him. He stared at Christopher shivering in the middle of the hallway with a bemused and slightly irritated expression.

                “What the hell was that about? Just how long were you planning on making me stand out there and freeze my a*s of in that God-awful rainstorm?”

                Christopher managed what she hoped appeared to be an apologetic expression. Her insides were still tight with anxiety and frustration. “Sorry, Den, I didn’t know it was you. I was just…spacing, I guess. Sorry.” She was trying to mask her emotions with a voice in equal parts cheerful and remorseful.

                “Spacing. In the middle of your hallway with just your pajama shirt and the window open blowing goddamn icy wind in here. Seriously, Kirstie?” Denny replied incredulously.

                Had the window really been open? Damn, he’s right, Christopher realized, looking up towards their kitchen/living room where the window shutters were, sure enough, wide open. Rain was beginning to soak the carpet beneath the window, but Kirstie felt as if there were a physical barrier preventing her from getting up and shutting it. Maybe a barrier of exhaustion, after all it HAS been a week since you’ve gotten more than four hours of sleep, you know. Kirstie guessed that might be right. Suddenly she felt overwhelmingly tired. Denny was staring at her, waiting.

                “Are you going to just sit there, or are you gonna close that?” He asked, eyeing he blank stare with something that began to resemble concern. “I’ll close it,” He sighed, after an empty pause.

                Denny and Christopher had met one day when Denny had knocked on Christopher’s door, one similarly windy day, wanting to know if she would buy homemade cookies. They had both been six, and he had been saving up for a skateboard. Christopher had told him very diplomatically that her lawn-mowing job didn’t cover anything but her much-coveted art supplies, and her parents only left her enough money for food and clothing. Denny—though he could make no sense of the concept of a ‘budget’ at the time—had marveled at Christopher’s unrestricted, solitary lifestyle, and marveled even more when she had led him up the ladder and shown him the city from her rooftop. They were instantly best friends. From then on, every day after school, Christopher and Denny would watch the bustling city from her rooftop, or go over to Denny’s house, where his mom would cook for them (a completely novel experience for Kirstie).

                They had undergone the inevitable teasing associated with boy-girl friendships at an age when opposite genders were supposed to be repulsed by each other (“Denny and Christopher, sitting in a tree...” the other boys and girls would often taunt) but had laughed along good-naturedly. They had shared their friendship troubles (and later, dating troubles) with each other, and run to each other for help whenever they fell on hard times. Their friends had continued to fall under the belief that guys and girls couldn’t be “just friends,” but Christopher knew better. She loved Denny as a brother. He was possibly the only human being on earth with whom Christopher felt perfectly at ease. Had it been any other guy who had barging through her door while she was clad in nothing but flannel night top, she would have run and hid in embarrassment.

                “What’s wrong?” He asked her. Normally she would have shrugged this off with false levity, but she knew that Denny would see right through it.

                “I’ll tell you later. But before that, I want to know what brought you here in the first place.”

                “Well, it’s kind of a long story, actually.”

                So much the better, Kirstie thought. It would be a welcome distraction from her own predicaments. “I’ve got nothing planned.” She replied with a little more warmth in her tone, “Sit down, Den, and let’s hear it.”

                He took a seat next to her in the hallway, ignoring the cold, hard wood, and told her.

                By the time Denny was finished with his story, Christopher thought her own troubles were beginning to look positively trivial. His mother, who had recently re-married, had found a stash of Vodka bottles stuffed behind some unused sheets in a closet at home. She immediately suspected Denny—her rosy newly-wed, vision of her husband simply didn’t allow for the possibility that it could belong to him. Denny had never touched alcohol in his life; he was the only one of Kirstie’s friends not involved in some kind of substance abuse. His mom was threatening to send him in for counseling, rehab, or even a military academy, unless he somehow managed to prove his innocence. Meanwhile, his new stepfather, stood back in silence and watched the argument.

                “….and you would think the f****r would stand up and take some goddamn responsibility, you know? I swear to God, when I find a way to implicate him, I hope Mom kicks his as so far off the porch that he lands in a goddamn desert somewhere. Without water. Or food.” Denny was finishing vehemently.

                “Or a cellphone. We can’t have him calling for help, can we?” Kirstie pitched in.

                “Well…maybe he could have a phone. But he’d have to walk a few dozen miles before he could get service.” Denny admitted.

                “Aw, you’re too soft, Den!” Christopher laughed, feeling better already. Denny’s antics always cheered her up.

                It turned out that this was not Denny’s only dilemma, however. He moved on to a lengthy complaint about his overly-clingy girlfriend. He had been wanting to break it off with her for a month now, but couldn’t bring himself to break her heart like that—she continued to plan their marriage in the romantic future she had painted for them.

                “I’ve tried to just distance myself gently…but it’s a little hard when she’s calling every five minutes to ‘check in.’ Damn girls!” He vented in frustration.

                “Hey, now.” Christopher protested with a laugh.

                “Oops. I forget you even ARE a girl, sometimes. You sure as hell don’t act like one. Thank God.” The honesty in his voice made Kirstie laugh.

                “This is why you don’t ever go too far past the second date, Den. Will you ever learn?” She chided him. He was always coming to her with complaints like this one. His problem was quite simply that he was too nice. She loved him for it, though.

                They spent an hour going over the exact words Denny would use to let down the unfortunate girl gently—Kirstie planned most of it, as usual. Denny was too awkward in these kinds of situations. His frank, open nature didn’t help.

                Afterwards, they watched the sunset from her rooftop, and then fell asleep on her couch watching a few old movies, all their troubles were temporarily and blissfully forgotten.

                Kirstie wasn’t awake to feel him kiss her forehead or pull the blanket over her as he left for home.

Author's Note

I haven't really edited this yet....sorry. Please note any issues you find with it, grammar or otherwise. :)