Entry #655382, added on 08-14-09 @ 7:46 am EDT
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2. Shopping
Riley always walked my home from school, even when he didn’t want to. This was one of those days. We walked in silence, which was unusual for us. He was still annoyed at me for accepting Amanda’s invitation on his behalf. His silence didn’t upset me, mainly it was just irritating. I wasn’t about to speak first though; I’d never been one for breaking silences. And besides, Riley had never been mad enough to ignore me for long. So we walked side by side, neither of us saying a word. It wasn’t long before he broke.
“Why’d you have to do that, Bekah?”
“Do what?” I asked innocently, feigning ignorance. He wasn’t having it.
“Don’t play dumb Bekah, it doesn’t suit you.” I snorted, shooting him my filthiest look, but he ignored it. “You know how much I hate those things.”
“You can’t hate something you’ve never tried,” I replied flippantly, even though I’d expressed the very same opinion countless times before.
He rolled his eyes at me, and I shrugged. Normally I would have backed down, but this party I actually wanted to go to.
“C’mon, it won’t be that terrible. Why don’t you want to go so badly?”
“You’ve seen how Amanda looks at me. I’ll be lucky to make it out of there alive.” He had a point, but I wasn’t about to let him know that.
“You’ll be fine. Please don’t be difficult about this, Ry, I really want to go.”
He stopped walking, grabbing my arm and pulling me to a halt beside him.
“What’s this about, Bekah? You’ve never wanted to go to one of these things before.”
I shrugged, “So maybe I want to try new things. Where’s the harm?” His eyes narrowed and he studied my face. I met his gaze, determined not to back down.
“Why though? What’s changed?” I couldn’t lie to him, even about something so unimportant, so I just shrugged again. He stared at me for a few moments longer, and then sighed resignedly. “Fine. But don’t expect me to do this again. If you want to go to any more of Amanda’s parties, you can by yourself.” His words stung a bit, but I pushed them off, telling myself that it was worth it.
“Thanks Riley,” I grinned.
*****
After I’d said goodbye to Riley at my gate, I walked up the narrow brick pathway that led to my front porch. I got to the doorstep and rustled around in my bag, looking for my house keys. After about thirty seconds of fruitless searching, I resigned myself to the fact that they were on the other side of the doorway, hanging up in the hallway. I sighed, reaching for the doorbell.
After the third ring, my mother finally answered, my keys jangling in her free hand as she held the door open for me.
“Forget something, did you?”
“Nah, I thought I’d just stand out here for ten minutes while you came to open the door for me,” I rolled my eyes, taking the keys from her hand and storing them safely in my backpack. She laughed, turning away and walking ahead of me as I headed for the stairs up to my bedroom.
“Don’t go straight upstairs, please,” she scolded when she realised where I was going. “Tell me about your first day back at school.” I sighed, and changed my course; following her to the tiny room at the back of our house she called her study.
“There really isn’t anything to tell you, you know,” I said, leaning in the doorway. There was barely room for one person to stand in her study, and when she painted there certainly wasn’t room for two. I watched her as she moved to pick up her paintbrush, clumsily adding another paint stain to her already ruined overalls. She looked like a rainbow of paint daubs.
“Surely something’s new this year?” she asked, turning to face me. She went through the same routine at the beginning of each school year.
“Nope, nothing,” I said with an insolent grin, well aware that this would only aggravate her.
“Oh come on Rebekah,” she whined pitifully. “Any new students?”
“Just one,” I shrugged. I certainly didn’t want to discuss Malachi with my mother. She waited expectantly for more, and frowned when it didn’t come.
“A girl? A boy? Come on!”
“A boy.”
“Oooh,” she swooned, and I grimaced. She always got like this whenever I mentioned anyone of the opposite gender--anyone except Riley, of course. “What’s he like?”
“I dunno Mum, I didn’t talk to him or anything,” I replied truthfully.
“Oh,” she sighed, disappointed. “Maybe next year, eh?”
I groaned, turning away from her toothy grin. “Sure Mum, next year,” I called over my shoulder, heading for the stairs before she could stop me.
I dumped my schoolbag in the doorway of my room, navigating my way around piles of clothes to my wardrobe. I pulled the doors open and eyed my clothes critically, looking for something just right. After half an hour of trying on old outfits in the hope that they’d look new, I gave up, resigning myself to the dismal fact that I’d be going to Amanda’s party in the same clothes I wore to school. I tried to console myself with the knowledge that no one would be looking at what I wore anyway, but that just made me gloomier.
I dropped onto my bed, stretching out on top of the duvet as I considered the coming weekend. I languidly chewed the inside of my cheek as doubts began to surface about going to Amanda’s party at all. For a long time I seriously considered picking up my mobile and calling Riley to tell him that I was backing out. Sighing, I reached for my phone for about the tenth time, only to have it start vibrating in my hand. I stared at the unfamiliar caller ID in confusion; usually only Riley or my mother bothered calling me, I didn’t exactly have a pumping social life. Suddenly an impossible idea popped into my head, and I flipped the phone open, pressing it to my ear.
“Hello?”
“Hey Beks.”
“Oh, hi Riley.” I tried not to let my disappointment affect my voice.
“What are you, running? You’re all breathless.” I felt a furious blush colouring my cheeks, and was glad that he couldn’t see me.
“Whose phone are you calling from?” I asked, changing the subject.
“Matt’s, mine died,” he replied. “Look, I just wanted to apologise for what I said before. If you want to go to all of Amanda’s parties from now until the end of school, you know I’ll come with you.” A grin split my face in two, and my heart swelled with gratitude for my best friend.
“Thanks Ry, what would I do without you?”
“God knows,” he replied, laughing. “Listen, just one thing though?”
“Sure,” I said, wondering where this was going.
“You know that new student, Malachi?”
“Yeah?” I answered, swallowing the lump that had suddenly appeared in my throat.
“Just stay away from him, okay Bekah?”
“What? Why?” I asked, confused.
“He’s just bad news.”
“Oh,” I said, suddenly deflated. “How do you know that?”
“Trust me on this one, okay?”
“Okay, Ry.” I laughed, but it sounded hollow, even to my own ears. “It’s not like I had any plans to be friends with him or anything.”
“Good,” he replied, and I nodded vaguely into the receiver. There was silence on the other end of the line, and I knew he was waiting for me to speak. “Um, I’ll see you tomorrow then,” he said when I remained quiet.
“Yeah, bye Riley.” I hung up the phone and threw it to the end of my bed, fighting the temptation to call him back and demand to know what he was talking about.
I was halfway through emptying the entire contents of my wardrobe onto the floor when my mother knocked on my door, sticking her head tentatively through. “What on earth are you doing?” she asked, her eyes widening in alarm as she glanced around my room. I followed her gaze and shuddered at the thought of packing everything away when I was finished; it looked like a clothing bomb had exploded.
“Nothing,” I shrugged, attempting nonchalance.
“It doesn’t look like nothing, to me,” she replied, scrutinising me through narrow eyes.
I sighed. “I’m just looking for clothes, Mum. You know I haven’t gone shopping in almost a year?”
“I know, you always refuse when I offer to buy you new things,” she nodded, rolling her eyes. “Does this mean you want to go shopping together?” She grinned enthusiastically at me and I tried not to make a face.
“No offence Mum, but not really. Anyway, it’d be too late by the time we went anyway.” Her eyes lit up when I said that, and I knew I’d let too much slip.
“Too late for what?” She gasped, and I could see the cogs turning in her mind as a thought occurred to her. “Bekah, do you have a date?” The excitement in her voice was palpable, and I grimaced, hot blood rushing to my cheeks.
“Of course not, Mum, it’s just a stupid party. I might not even go.” I squeezed my eyes shut, wishing that she’d leave me alone.
“Oh, no, you have to go!”
I groaned, but she didn’t seem to get the message.
“How exciting, my daughter, finally going to a party…” she was talking to herself now, mumbling as she stared at me.
“I’ve been to parties before,” I mumbled, but if she heard me she didn’t show it.
“What are you going to wear?” she said suddenly, snapping out of her daze. She stepped into my room, carefully tiptoeing around the clothes that were scattered across the floor to stand beside me.
She stood staring into my wardrobe, much the same as I had just a couple of minutes earlier. From the look on her face, she was finding it just about as inspiring as I had.
“No,” she murmured after a long moment. “This won’t do.”
“It’s fine, Mum,” I said, embarrassed by the interest she was showing in my social life.
“Fine? Of course it’s not fine, Rebekah!” She threw her hands above her head with a theatrically exasperated sigh. “What were you going to wear, your ratty old jeans and a t-shirt?”
I shrugged, trying not to glance at my bed, where my favourite pair of denims and a faded grey fitted tee sat neatly folded: the only near suitable thing I’d scrounged from my wardrobe.
She sighed again, and I sat down on my bed, beginning to wonder whether it would just be easier to pull out of the party after all.
“Well, I guess we will have to go shopping, after all,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest with an expression she often wore around me, specifically when she expected me to be difficult.
Now it was my turn to sigh. “Okay, Mum,” I groaned, painfully aware that arguing with her would get me nowhere.
“Good,” she grinned, and a dried flake of paint cracked on her cheek before falling to the floor. She didn’t seem to notice. “Tomorrow it is, then.”
I watched her walk out of my room with a familiar feeling of dread that always settled over me whenever she forced her way. I was definitely beginning to regret accepting Amanda’s invitation in the first place.
Two days and countless op shops later, we still hadn’t made any headway, and the mother-daughter time was definitely starting to take its toll. I was standing in front of a mirror in yet another outfit that looked like it would be better suited to a character out of some bad 80’s sit com when my mother came up beside me, eyeing me critically.
“No, that’s not it either,” she murmured, and I rolled my eyes in agreement. “Maybe we’d better call it a day,” she said, her tone uncertain.
“Maybe that’s best,” I agreed. “I’ve always got my jeans and tee.”
She grimaced, her expression pained. I grinned, changing quickly back into my favourite overalls and hurrying out of the shop. My mother trailed behind me, the corners of her mouth turned down and her feet dragging along the pavement.
About a block from the op shop I realised that I couldn’t hear the dragging of feet from behind me, and I turned around, groaning inwardly at what I saw. My mother was standing out the front of a vintage store about 50 meters behind me, motioning frantically for me to join her. I sighed, trudging back in the direction I’d just come from, already worn out and cranky from the long hours we’d spend shopping fruitlessly.
My resolve changed though, when I looked through the shop window to what my mother was pointing at. I gaped at the mannequin in the display, or, more accurately, at the dress it wore. Spaghetti straps across the shoulders held up a modest bust that pulled tightly in at the waist before flowing out into a wide, elegant skirt of the same almost metallic purple fabric. Short enough as to not be too formal, but long enough to maintain my well preserved dignity, I knew that it was exactly what I had been looking for. I strode into the shop, shocked that I had almost missed this. The shopkeeper, a trendy woman who looked to be in her mid-to-late thirties, pulled the dress delicately off the mannequin while my mother stood behind me, almost crooning in her excitement.
I took the dress into the change room, declining my mother’s offer of accompaniment. I slipped it on, careful not to catch it on anything. I opened the door without looking in the mirror, preferring to see my mother’s reaction first, trusting her fashion sense more than my own.
Her mouth fell open, and for what must have been a full two seconds she stood staring at me, taking me in, it seemed. Then she grabbed my arm, dragging me to stand in front of a full length mirror.
“Wow,” I breathed, stunned at the way the dress seemed to hug my body in all the right places, accentuating what were mere lumps under my usual clothes, turning them into actual curves.
“Wow,” my mother agreed. We both stared at my reflection in a kind of awed silence.
“Looks good, kid,” the shopkeeper said before turning back to her magazine.
I grinned widely at my mother, ecstatic that our hours of searching had actually paid off. She smiled back at me, and I guessed she was mainly just happy that I wasn’t going to wear my jeans to the party.
“How much is it?” she asked the shopkeeper, turning away from my reflection to look at the woman.
“That one,” she began, drawing out the “O” in one so that the word lasted several seconds as she looked up the item on her computer. “That one’s 160.”
“A hundred and sixty dollars?” I asked, stricken. None of the clothes I’d ever owned have even come near to costing that much. I turned to my mother, whose expression mirrored my own. My heart sank, and I knew that so much money was out of the question. I looked back at the mirror, trying to find fault with the dress; anything that would make it less attractive to me.
“Well,” I mumbled, doing my best to convince myself. “It is a bit too short, I suppose. I wouldn’t want to show up looking like a tart.” I sighed, feeling entirely unconvinced.
My mother was silent behind me, and I turned to her, expecting to be bombarded with reasons that $160 was too much money. I was prepared, and already resigned. It was too much money to spend on a dress, anyway. Her expression wasn’t what I’d expected though, and she looked almost torn. Almost as if she was considering it.
“Oh, please mum,” I started, taking advantage whatever momentary consideration she was allowing herself, knowing that it wouldn’t last long. “Considering how often I buy clothes, it really isn’t much. I’ll start doing extra around the house, I’ll even cook you dinner.”
She sighed, but remained silent. I was confused; she wasn’t putting up any of the usual arguments reserved for when I wanted something outside of the household budget. It’d taken me months of persuading to get her to upgrade our black and white television to a colour one a couple of years ago, and that was for both of us. I understood, of course; when you’re a single mother selling your art for money and working at a day care centre, money doesn’t exactly grow on trees. I never really expected her to actually buy the dress--I mean, money like that could pay for two weeks worth of groceries--which is why I was so shocked when she pulled her wallet out of her bag and moved to the counter.
“Will credit be fine?” Her voice sounded wary, like it did when we’d just had an argument, and I realised she must have been arguing with herself.
I felt strangely guilty.
“You don’t have to do that, Mum,” I said, walking up beside her.
She turned to me, and there was a happy smile on her face. “Of course I do, Bekah. That’s what I’m here for, silly girl.”
I frowned at her, but decided not to argue the point; I did really love dress, after all.
“Thanks Mum! I’ll clean the whole house for a month,” I promised as I closed the door into the change room and pulled the dress over my head. I stood staring at it, waiting for the feeling of glee at getting such a gorgeous dress to overcome the guilt that bubbled under my skin as I listened to my mother typing her pin number into the EFTPOS machine.
It didn’t take long.
"3. Introductions"  |
© Copyright 2009 Caitlin Stafford (UN: caitstafford at Writing.Com). All rights reserved.
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