Chapter Thirty-Four

Parker

“You called!” her pleased voice hit my ear like a happy, familiar song and I grinned, too. To tell the truth, I had forgotten about Theresa’s phone number tucked in the back pages of my notebook until I had come upon it while writing earlier in the day. At first, I had simply tucked it back and then decided instead to use it. I needed to get my mind off of whatever it was I had seen in the cemetary. I had noticed over the time we had become friends that Theresa was good at getting my mind off things, even if she didn’t know she was doing it.

“So how do you like it there?” she asked. “Is it as bad as you thought it was going to be before you left?”

“It hasn’t been bad, actually,” I said. “Everyone’s really cool. Yesterday Isaac and Zac showed me around a little bit. We went to my grandmother’s grave and I put flowers there. I’m having a pretty good time.”

“Considering you were practically clinging to Gina’s skirts before you left,” she added for me.

I felt myself blush and laughed a little with embarrassment.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to embarrass you,” she said.

“No, it’s fine,” I said. “It’s true anyway.”

She laughed. “And did my discman make the trip okay?”

“Oh, yes,” I said. “Here’s something you can tell your Hanson loving friends: the headphones to your discman--your discman--were on Taylor Hanson’s head. The Taylor Hanson.”

“Oh my gosh, really?” she said. “What was he listening to?”

“Tori Amos. He was just curious as to what I was listening to,” I said.

“What did he think?”

“He thinks I have girly tastes in music,” I replied, not wanting to go over his actual reaction.

She laughed again, “Well, you do,” she said. “Ever since you’ve been hanging around me, Beth, and Kim anyway.”

“Ever since I’ve been hanging out with Gina, you mean,” I said.

“That’s true, too,” she said. “What will really freak out my friends, though, is the fact that the Hansons have a call to my house on their next phone bill.”

“Yeah, but they can worship your headphones. They’ll never see the phone bill.”

“Is there any of his hair on the headphones?”

“Maybe. It’s tough to tell. I can always steal his hair-care utensils and pull the hair off those and bring it back to you,” I offered.

“We could sell it on ebay,” she said.

“Starting at twenty bucks a hair,” I said.

“Parker, this is ebay. You have to start at a hundred at least,” she said. “We could split the profits fifty-fifty.”

“Sixty-forty,” I said. “Seventy-thirty if I get caught doing it.”

“Fine, fine,” she grumbled.

We paused for a minute.

“So, how have you been?” I asked.

“Bored,” she said. “I have all this work to do for those honors classes I’m going to be in next year. Six books to read and a major essay. Ugh.”

“Overachiever,” I said.

“Aren’t you in any honors classes?”

“Honors English,” I said. “I’ve pondered the idea of Honors Social Studies, but I don’t think I’d like it very much after observing what you guys went through with that huge UN project last year.”

“That was awful,” she said. “I take it you have the summer reading list that Mr. Stewart handed out?”

“Yeah, somewhere,” I said. “I think it’s at home.”

“Oh. When are you coming back?” she said.

“A couple weeks before school starts. I’ve got time. I’ve already read Tom Sawyer,” I said. “Besides, I can always get a summary of all of them from you.

“Not likely,” she said. “I’m in the middle of a A Farewell to Arms and have yet to find a plot. All I can make out is the guy has fallen in love with some nurse and that he got his legs blown off and that’s about it.”

“He got his legs blown off? Isn’t it called A Farewell to Arms?” I said.

“Nyuk nyuk,” she said back, knowing I was kidding. “Good one.”

“Well, if you hang around the Hansons too much, your jokes start to get corny,” I said.

“And do you say the word ‘actually’ a lot?” she asked. “Like Isaac in all the interviews?”

“Nah. I guess he’s a little more articulate in real life,” I said. “Actually, I wasn’t actually thinking that he said actually a lot, if you actually know what I mean.”

“There’s another corny one!” she laughed.

“Oh give me a break,” I said. “You stay here for a couple weeks and see if you don’t come out a cornball.”

“I would gladly stay there a couple weeks and risk becoming even more of a cornball than I already am,” she replied.

“No orgies,” I said.

“What?” she said back. “Why not?”

“They’re quite delicate. It might be bad for their reputations,” I said.

“Is that why they’ve got a gigantic picture of a pansy in their garage?” she said.

“What? What pansy is this?”

“The one from the ‘MMMBop’ video?” she said. “I read somewhere that they had it hanging in their garage.”

“Oh. Haven’t noticed.”

“You’ve been in their garage?” she squealed and I wasn’t sure if she was kidding.

“Yes. It’s quite fascinating. When you go in there, you get to hear them practice and stuff,” I said.

“Turd,” she replied.

“Thanks,” I said. “Well, I suppose I should stop before the phone bill gets so expensive they make me pay it myself.”

“Parker, they’re rich,” she said. “I’m sure it doesn’t matter that much to them.”

“You might be surprised. I think they forget they’re rich sometimes,” I said, leaning up against the wall and staring out the doorway to the kitchen just as Zac was coming through the dining room. “Wait, I have someone here who wants to talk to you.”

“Who?” she said.

“Hold on,” I said. I covered the mouthpiece with my hand and waited for Zac to come near enough to talk to him quietly. “Zac, someone on the phone for you.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”

“Yeah,” I said, handing him the phone.

“Who is it?” he asked.

“How would I know?” I said with a shrug, walking out of the room as he put the phone to his ear.

“Hello?” he said.

I waited quietly in the dining room, listening.

“Hi...,” he sounded bewildered. “Who is this?”

Pause.

“Oh. Hi, Theresa,” he said. I peeked in. He was blushing furiously. “It’s Zac Hanson.”

I laughed, walking away. Yes, my work there was done.

“Having fun?” a voice said as I walked into the living room.

Surprised, I started and looked to see Annie standing awkwardly in the middle of the living room.

“I didn’t see you there,” I said.

“Yeah, I’m easily missed,” she replied. “What evil thing did you do to poor Zac?” she asked. “You look pretty pleased with yourself, whatever it is.”

I grinned devilishly at her. “I was on the phone with my friend Theresa. When everyone was up in Rochester at my house, she and Zac struck up sort of a friendship. Like they like each other. So I’ve been teasing Theresa and now I get to tease Zac.”

“So you put him the phone with her in the middle of your conversation?” she said.

“I told him it was for him,” I said with a shrug.

“That’s pretty good,” she said, smiling. “I used to do stuff like that to my friends all the time. Including Diana and Walker.”

“Taylor’s parents, you mean?” I said.

“Yup,” she said. “Speaking of which, do you know where they are?”

“Uh, I think Mrs. Hanson is in the backyard doing something in her garden,” I said, pointing with my thumb over my shoulder.

“I see,” she said. “What happened to your hand?”

“Huh? Oh,” I said, noticing the black ink up and down the side of my hand that had come from dragging it across wet ink while writing in my notebook. The joys of being left-handed. The whole word is backwards. “Just writing.”

“You’re the lefty,” she said.

“Well, I don’t know about the lefty, but yes, I’m left-handed,” I said. “Why?”

“No reason,” she said, laughing a little. “So you like to write?”

“A little,” I said.

“Are you any good?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “I’m not at the stage where I’m letting other people read what I write yet. But I guess I’m not too awfully bad at it.”

She nodded. “What do you write?”

“Stories sometimes,” I said. It wasn’t completely true. I had written maybe three short stories since I discovered my general like for writing. Mostly, I wrote in that journal, but I wasn’t about to tell her that.

“I see,” she said. “I’d like to read something sometime, if you don’t mind.”

“Sure,” I said, slightly surprised by her offer. “What did you need to talk to Mrs. Hanson about?” I asked, wanting to get off the subject of my writing. It was something I still wasn’t quite comfortable with.

“Oh, I was just going to tell her that Reese and I wanted to have kind of a cook out at our house on Saturday,” she said. “You know, invite everyone to our house for once since we’ve been coming over here quite a bit lately.”

“Oh,” I said, nodding.

“That sounded enthusiastic,” she said with a laugh. “Not very fond of picnic food, are you?”

“You’ve never been to one of my aunt Nadine’s cook outs,” I said. “Someone always leaves with food poisoning. It’s usually me. I don’t know what she does or what she does it to, but it must be something.”

“Well, I think it’ll be pretty safe,” she said.

“I hope so,” I said. “No offense, it’s just that I’m a bit scarred.”

“I understand completely,” she said. “Well, I suppose I should go propose the idea to Diana. Zac’s heading this way and he looks pretty red.”

Grinning, she walked away and I turned to meet Zac coming up to me, the phone back on the hook.

“I’m going to kill you,” he said.

“She didn’t scream the entire time, did she?” I said curiously.

“No, we actually had a pleasant little conversation...”

“Then I think I deserve to live another day or two,” I interrupted with a smile, walking away.

“I’m am so going to get you back,” he called after me.

I just laughed evilly over my shoulder.

I'll still love you if you don't write me. *sniff*
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Five