Double Clutch - Реинхардт Лиз - Страница 9
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Our kitchen was awesomely designed. It was open, with the kitchen and dining room connected, and the entire front wall had nice big windows so you could see our wide front yard and the thick tree line that bordered the edge of our property. Our house was on a tiny, quiet back road. Only half of our road was even paved; half of it was still dirt and loose gravel. It always cracked people up that we still lived on a dirt road, but I liked it that way. It meant that not many people chose to use our road, and that was fine by me. I loved living in a cozy, tucked-away place.
I came in through the garage, kicking off my Chucks at the door.
“Hey Mom!” I pretended that I was surprised to see her standing there. “Oh, were you waiting for me?”
She didn’t say a word, just came over and grabbed my face and pinched my ears.
“Ow!” I squeaked. “Mom, what are you doing?”
“You’re frozen.” She shook her head. “You’re going to get frostbite. This isn’t going to work, Brenna. I can’t believe it’s this damn cold and we’re only in September. Winter is going to be miserable this year.”
“I just need to wear a hat. Mom, I like riding my bike. You should be happy. At least I’m not some obese lazy teenager. Imagine if I weighed four hundred pounds and you had to home school me because I couldn’t fit through doorways at school.” I grabbed an apple from a bowl on the table and crunched down on it. “You’d be sad,” I said around the bite.
“I’ll be sad when you’re hit by a car or your ears turn black and fall off from frostbite. Do you want a sandwich?”
Mom wasn’t big into cooking, and since we’d moved back to the States, she’d been even worse. In Denmark, I’d been around all day to help with cooking and cleaning, but now it all fell to her. It wasn’t that my mom was lazy or anything like that. She just got bored doing things all by herself.
“Yeah. I’ll make them. You go relax,” I offered.
“That’s okay, baby. I’ve been relaxing all day. Thorsten switched schedules with another guy today, so he ran some errands and I had time to myself. He‘s got to go back in tomorrow, though.”
Thorsten worked on the show Saturday Night Live on NBC, so he had to commute to New York City and stay overnight. I only ever saw him in the morning most of the time, and sometimes on Sunday. I had been really worried about living with him for a whole year in Denmark, but he’s a laid back guy, and we got along really well.
“I had a good day. Some of the girls from elementary school saw me and they were nice. Do you remember Meg and Kelsie?”
“The girl who was Annie in your school play?” she asked, and I nodded. “And of course I know Kelsie. It’s too bad she has such a low hairline. She could be very pretty.”
I rolled my eyes, but she didn’t see me. “My classes seem pretty good. I’m reading Lord of the Flies now.”
Mom groaned. “Didn’t you already read that one?”
“Yeah. It’s not so bad. It’s always cool to see what a new teacher says about things. And I ran cross country today. Apparently I beat some unofficial school record for most laps in a period.”
“Wow.” Mom raised her eyebrows. “I didn’t know you were such a fast runner.”
“I’m not.” I examined my apple quizzically. “I think I have endurance. I mean, I wasn’t sprinting. Coach Dunn wants me to try out for the cross country team.”
“That might be fun.” Mom looked at me from the corner of her eye to see if I would agree.
I took everything out for sandwiches and was setting it all on the counter. I took a plate, put one plate in front of Mom, and we started to make our sandwiches, picking through tomato and lettuce and all of the meats.
“It might be.” I shrugged. “Doesn’t it seem like they always want you to live at the field or track or whatever?”
“I guess they think practice is important.” She shook a finger at me. “You don’t have to, Bren. You need to develop your ability to say no.”
This was another of my mom’s favorite lecture topics. She was always reminding me that it was my right to say no whenever I didn’t want something. Not in a corny ‘say no to drugs’ way, or even ‘say no to sex,’ just no in general. Like ‘no’ when someone offers you food you don’t want or ‘no’ when your friends want you to go get your nose pierced with them, or ‘no’ to a teacher who asks you to be her assistant if you don’t want to be. Saying no was actually a pretty hard trait to get a good hold on, especially with someone like Coach Dunn willing you to say yes.
“So.” Mom took a bite out of her turkey and Swiss with extra tomato. “Any boys hanging around?”
I shrugged, praying that my cheeks didn’t get red. “I guess. You know, I’m the new girl, so there’s always that.”
“Just remember, it’s better to date. Don’t get yourself hooked up with one person.”
Mom was madly in love with her high school sweetheart, who got her pregnant and then acted like a jerk. Mom severed contact with him, gave me her last name, and didn’t even acknowledge him on my birth certificate. She raised me alone until she met Thorsten, and I think she stuck with him mostly because on their first date, when she told him about me, he asked her to bring me on the second date.
He took us to a great pizza place and then we saw a kid’s movie at the drive-in. I sat tucked between the two of them like I was their daughter already. Mom had stars in her eyes from that day on. Thorsten was in, and he knew it, but I know that’s not why he did it. He just thought families were nice and important and he, my mom, and I made a good instant one.
“I’m not even interested, Mom. School is going to be crazy enough without it. But I think Kelsie and I might start hanging out again.”
“Good girl,” Mom smiled. “You always had a good head on your shoulders.”
I helped her clean up the kitchen and then went to my very purple room to think for a while. I thought about Saxon’s incredible eyes and his brilliance and the way he could match every joke I made. I thought about Jake and how humble and cute and sweet he was. It was a little embarrassing that I couldn’t think a little more about my classes and schedule, but how could they hold a candle?
I got out my binders and put everything in order. I hole-punched my worksheets and put those little color-coded tabs on my folder partitions. In short, I reveled in my dorky love of organizing my school supplies. I did my homework pretty quickly and was in the process of taking notes on Lord of the Flies when I heard a light knock at the door. I expected Mom, but it was Thorsten, looking uncomfortable. He didn’t really hang out in my room much, so it was always a little weird when he appeared out of nowhere.
“Hey, Brenna.” He couldn’t hide his eager grin. “I know your birthday isn’t for a few weeks, but I wanted to give you this so you could start the school year right.” He handed me a messenger bag.
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