Taking Flight (7 page)

She pursed her lips and stared back at me, but I could see the corners of her lips threatening to turn upward. “Not quite.”

“Awesome.” I pointed to the building we’d parked in front of. “So you said these burgers are good, then?”

*   *   *

They were.
Really
good. I ate all of mine and then some of Cammie’s, who was so amused by my appetite that she even offered to get a couple more burgers to go. I turned that down for financial reasons, feeling self-conscious. I knew my dad had more than covered the cost of taking care of me when he’d written a check to David, but I had a strong feeling Cammie was using her own money to pay for us, and I felt bad about that. Especially given that she didn’t know I had a lot of money waiting for me back in Los Angeles. Maybe I’d reimburse her if I ever got the chance.

We went to one of the local parks after that. It stretched about a half-mile long and housed seven or so fields, some of which were used for baseball, others for soccer. There was a gas station across the street from the park, so we left the truck there, went inside and got ice cream from a bin near the cash register, and then walked to the park. There, we circled the perimeter of the track for a while, occasionally stopping to watch at some of the fields where amateur baseball games had been started.

“Did you ever play sports?” Cammie asked me as we walked. I shook my head. I’d done a little gymnastics at around four years old, but that didn’t really count.

“Not really. Did you?”

“Just cheerleading.” She cut my next statement off before I could even open my mouth. “It
is
a sport.”

She looked so indignant that I couldn’t help but grin, so I hid my mouth behind a frozen Snickers bar on a stick. “Of course it is.”

“George Bush was a cheerleader,” she told me, as though this was supposed to sway my opinion. I chuckled.

“Well, that wasn’t exactly the best strategy if you wanted to try and change my mind. If he can do it, anyone can.”

She scoffed, but I could tell she wasn’t actually upset. “Right. I forgot you’re from Los Angeles. Well,
my
parents voted for Bush and for Romney.”

“Don’t you know you’re not supposed to talk about politics when you’re first getting to know somebody?” I asked, and regretted it as soon as I’d said it. Cammie didn’t really react, but I knew the cliché I’d actually been thinking of was the one about first dates, and I knew it was possible she’d make the connection. I cleared my throat and rushed to continue our conversation. “Okay. I can give you cheerleading if you give me gymnastics at age four.”

She laughed at that. If she’d noticed my awkward comment, she’d ignored it. “Deal.”

Her phone buzzed, suddenly, and she dug through her purse for a moment before pulling it out and looking at it. “Oh, shit. We really lost track of time. Scott wants to know where we took his truck; he’s gonna be pissed.” She groaned, and then told me, “We should go.”

“Alright,” I agreed, trying to keep up even as Cammie quickly pocketed her phone and tossed the remnants of her ice cream into the nearest trashcan.

We were halfway back to Scott’s truck before I realized that she’d cursed.

Twice.

Chapter Five

Scott wasn’t happy with Cammie when we got back. I took longer to get out of his truck than she did, and so I wound up watching from the driveway as she met him on the front porch and he held his hand out expectantly. She pressed his keys into his palm a little too roughly to appear totally compliant, and he went back inside just as I reached the porch.

“Why’d we take his truck if you knew it’d piss him off?” I asked her curiously. She didn’t seem the type to try and purposely antagonize anyone. Or the type to break rules.

She rolled her eyes. “I don’t get my family sometimes. They say they want to make you feel welcome, but when I actually try to show you around, I’m in the wrong. It’s so stupid.”

We went inside, then, to find David and Wendy waiting in the living room. David swept Cammie aside without so much as a real greeting, and Wendy and I stood together awkwardly. I tried to pretend I couldn’t hear them arguing in the other room, but their voices carried through the wall just loudly enough that I could make out a few bits and pieces of their conversation.

“…confidential information,” David’s low rumble of a voice explained as my eyes found my feet uncomfortably.

Cammie’s retort followed a moment later, a little louder and easier to hear. “Well, she seems fine to me!”

I cleared my throat and looked at Wendy. “Can I use your phone, please?”

*   *   *

Caitlyn answered on the sixth ring. “Hello?”

“Oh, thank God,” I sighed out, forgetting for a moment that Wendy was listening to my end of the conversation. “Hey.”

“Lauren!” she practically shouted when she realized it was me. “Oh my God! Are you okay? What’s going on there? Are they listening to you right now?”

“Um… kind of, a lot of stuff, and yes, but not your end,” I answered hastily. “I’ve had the weirdest weekend of my life.”

“Are you acting like a little shit?” Caitlyn asked knowingly. I could picture the grin she’d have on her face as she spoke.

“I went outside to a stable yesterday,” I admitted, ashamed of myself. “And rode a horse. But no church! I put my foot down on church.”

“Girl, what foot? Because from where I’m standing, both of your feet are missing, along with your
spine
. Why’d you ride a horse? Gross.”

I glanced to Wendy, who wasn’t looking directly at me and pretended to busy herself with inspecting one of the kitchen countertops. A small frown was visible on her lips. “I got talked into it.” I could feel my face reddening slightly; I knew Caitlyn well enough to realize what her next question would be.

“By who? Definitely not the dad. One of the kids?” There was a pause that stretched on for a little too long as I struggled to formulate a response, and then Caitlyn was laughing so hard that I was worried for my eardrums for a moment. “Oh my God! Oh, Lauren. They have a daughter, don’t they?”

“Shut up!” I hissed, throwing Wendy another nervous glance. “I didn’t say that!”

“You didn’t have to!” She quieted down nonetheless, but I could hear the amusement in her tone as she asked, “Okay, so give me a number one to ten, then… wait, no. That’s too obvious if they’re listening on your end. Let’s do one to twenty-five. Is she at least a twenty?”

“What even-?” I scoffed, and then rolled my eyes. “I’m not answering that! Seriously, this is not what I wanted to talk to you about.”

“I don’t see you sharing any other news that’s actually good,” she observed. “I’m just trying to focus on the positive.”

“There’s none of that here,” I insisted. “What about you? Are you done being weird?”

“Weird? I’m not weird.”

“That’s debatable.”

“You know what I mean. Not any weirder than usual.”

“You were weird at the airport. When I said goodbye.”

She sighed, holding off on a response for a moment. I heard the creak of the leather couch in her living room as she shifted. “I’m always weird about that. Doing gay stuff with your gay best friend is weird. I’m cool now, anyway; that’s what you were asking, right?”

“I guess,” I replied, but nothing felt resolved. I let out a breath. “I guess I just miss hanging out already, is all. I’m sorry I wasn’t around more back when… I was around to
be
around.”

Caitlyn was quiet for a long time again.

“You there?” I asked her eventually.

“Yeah. I’m just thinking. Maybe Georgia could be good for you in some ways. At the very least, it’ll make you realize how much you take L.A. for granted.”

“I doubt it. We’re still getting out when I get back, right? Like we’ve always planned?” I asked her.

“Of course. We’ll get a dog and an expensive apartment in a new city and be totally gay together, only not gay at all. You just have to get through this, first.”

“Okay. I miss you.”

“Miss you too. Stand your ground.”

“I will.”

I heard the smile in her voice as she replied, “Bye, Lauren. Call me again soon.”

“Bye,” I started to say, and then changed my mind and quickly interjected, “Hey, Caitlyn.”

“Yeah?”

“Twenty-five,” I breathed out, and then hung up the phone with a grin, cutting her off before she could react.

Wendy still looked vaguely perturbed as she took the phone back from me, and David and Cammie came back into the living room area just a few minutes later, after I’d taken a seat on the couch with the intent of trying out the television again. Cammie looked frustrated, David, disgruntled. She gestured for me to follow her upstairs, and, confused, I rose from the couch and obeyed. Whatever she wanted, it probably beat spending time with her parents.

She shut the door behind us once we were alone, then rounded on me with her arms folded across her chest. “So… Dad says since you’ve only been here for two days I can’t be taking you around town without letting them know where we’re going first.”

“Okay,” I said. I’d been expecting something like that after what I’d overheard. Cammie thought I seemed relatively normal compared to the Marshall’s past visitors, and David knew I was nursing several bad habits and still feeling the effects of a close death in the family. I wasn’t stupid; I knew that he’d probably told her I needed to be kept close to home and that she’d wondered why exactly that was considering I seemed totally okay.

Cammie was surprised by my nonchalant response. “Wait, you’re okay with that?”

“I’ve gotten nothing but orders since I’ve been here,” I told her. “What’s one more?” I moved to sit on my bed, and she stared after me with disbelief.

“Okay… can I ask you a question?”

It wasn’t nighttime yet, but I reached for my mp3 player anyway as I replied, “I guess. If I can ask you one.” I was still curious about her art supplies, and although it’d only been two days since I’d gotten here, I had a strong suspicion that she planned to never mention them.

“Why are you here?” she asked. “I’ll even take just the bare minimum. No details.” She sat across from me on her own bed and crossed her arms again. “Drug addiction? Kleptomania? Neglectful parents?” I must have reacted to her last suggestion without realizing it, because she paused there and stared at me. For a moment, she looked like she felt sorry for me, and I felt my jaw tense with aggravation. Pity was the last thing I wanted. “I guess that would make sense,” she admitted eventually. “If you didn’t do anything wrong…”

“That’s not it,” I cut her off. Neglectful felt like the wrong word. Neglect implied purposeful lack of care. I didn’t feel neglected. I felt… I don’t know. Something else. But it wasn’t neglect. “I’m here because of myself. And it’s none of your business what I did.”

I knew I sounded snippy, but I preferred her thinking badly of me to thinking badly of my parents. She didn’t understand what life was like for them. How different it was from how she and her parents lived.

Cammie’s voice was softer when she next spoke. “I’m just trying to understand. You just seem… really nice. I mean—”

“Really nice people can still have problems. They could even be worse than the mean ones,” I told her, rolling my eyes. “At least you know exactly what you’re getting with the mean ones.” I cranked up my music and lay down, then, tuning her out. My question could be saved for another time; she’d pissed me off and I was done with this conversation.

If she replied to me at all after that, I didn’t hear her.

*   *   *

David drove Cammie and me to school the next day. Collinsville High was a much smaller school than I was used to. It had a parking lot in the front and another in the back, and was made up entirely of only two buildings: a main building with two floors and interconnected hallways that formed three diamonds, and then a second building that mostly just contained the gym.

Cammie went straight to class, as things were still a little tense between us, but David showed me where his office was and then helped me get my schedule. I didn’t look at it at first, only following his verbal instructions to get to my first class: Intro to Business.

My teacher was an old woman with a voice that reminded me vaguely of a parrot, and as she found me a place to sit, she reassured me that I’d have no trouble catching up with the rest of the class.

Intro to Business, as it turned out, was not nearly as useful as it sounded. It was a typing class. We sat in our chairs, backs straight, for ninety minutes, literally using a computer program to copy a sample business letter word for word. When we were done and it was printed out, we were allowed to get on the internet for the rest of the period. It was a complete bullshit class.

Once I’d finished my letter for the day, I finally took the time to look at my schedule. After Intro to Business was Music Appreciation. Following that was Home Economics, and then my last class was Health.

I stared down at the schedule for a moment, taking it in, and then abruptly raised my hand. It took a moment for my teacher to notice me. “Yes, Lauren?” she asked.

“Can I be excused? It’s an emergency.” That was the code David had told me to use if I ever needed to come see him, so I was immediately given a hall pass and sent on my way to his office.

He was scribbling something onto a notepad at his desk when I knocked on the door and then entered without waiting for his response. He barely got out a “What’s wrong, Lauren?” before my schedule was tossed onto his desk and I was glaring at him.

“What is this?”

He took the paper into his hands and stared, his eyebrows furrowed. Then he looked back to me, confused. “Your schedule. Is there a problem?”

“Of course there’s a problem; do you think I’m an idiot?”

He set the schedule down, concerned, and motioned for me to take a seat. “Of course not.”

I remained standing. “Then why have I been given four classes even an untrained monkey could ace? I’m not stupid just because I had bad attendance, and I don’t plan on being treated like I’m stupid.”

“I don’t think you’re stupid,” he repeated, sighing. “You’re entering Collinsville High halfway through the semester, Lauren. There are certain classes you’d have a lot more trouble catching up in.”

I bit my lip, trying to find a hole in his logic. I didn’t mind having easy classes, honestly. It was the fact that they’d all been chosen for me that was the problem. Like it’d been expected that I’d bomb anything else. “So give me one real one, then. I don’t care which of these you replace.” I leaned down and prodded the schedule still on his desk. “There has to be something.”

He watched me for a moment, gauging my expression, and I kept my own gaze firm. It wasn’t about the class, really. It was about proving I wasn’t who he’d assumed I was.

“Let me get this straight,” he finally began. “You don’t want to work on our family’s farm. You don’t want to go to church. Generally, you seem to want to skate through your seven months here as quickly and easily as possible. And now you’re asking for harder classes?”

“I wouldn’t have to if you hadn’t treated me like a dumbass,” I snapped, folding my arms across my chest. “But you did, so yeah. Give me a different class.”

“Look, Lauren, I really don’t see how that can be done. You’d probably need a tutor that could be available several times a week to help you with assignments, and I don’t feel comfortable letting you meet up with someone that often when the majority of your time right now is supposed to be spent at our home.”

“So have them meet me at home,” I suggested. “My dad can afford to pay for tutoring. I honestly don’t really care what you have to do. I’m not letting you pigeonhole me into an incompetent problem child that needs to be babied for seven months. Sorry.”

“That honestly wasn’t my intention,” he insisted, but he could tell by now that I wasn’t budging. He let out a deep sigh, rubbing at his temples. “Alright. You’ll need to be tutored by someone you know, who won’t have trouble meeting up with you at home…” he trailed off, and then sat up a little straighter, like he’d had an idea.

“What?” I asked him. He moved to access his computer.