And I thought, Yes, you do. Every day so far except Sunday.
But I said, “Oh yeah? Guess I’ll have to alert the Neighborhood Watch. They don’t appreciate riffraff roaming around on their streets.”
Trip grinned as he let me out of the truck. “Yeah. Just try it, Dummy.”
I gave him a light backhand on his arm in answer.
Before I led him up our front walk, I jumped up and grabbed a leaf off the tree at the curb. It was something I’d done a million times, but I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought to skip that little ritual for one, stupid day. I was a little embarrassed as I shrugged and offered a brief explanation to Trip. “Sorry. Superstition.”
He laughed. “You do that often?” he asked. “Maul trees in your spare time?”
“Just that one,” I answered, before playfully admitting, “Every day, actually!”
Even though I was laughing, I was feeling pretty skittish at the thought of being alone with Trip for the next few hours. My father usually didn’t come home from work until dinnertime and Bruce had freshman football practice every day. Knowing this, I had made a point to do a quick cleanup before leaving for school that morning in order to make sure the house would be presentable in the afternoon. Living with two men is a constant study in maintainable hygienics. My father wasn’t so bad, but Bruce was an absolute slob. After he split for the bus stop, I was met with a destroyed bathroom-soaking wet towels and clothes all over the floor. Hello? Ever hear of a hamper?
Thank God I’d taken care of Bruce’s discarded boxer shorts, however, because Trip hit the bathroom the second we were inside the door. I utilized the time during his absence to pull a couple of Cokes out of the fridge and settle myself at the kitchen table.
I had my English notebook lain out and was tapping my pen against the page in front of me as I read the booklet of requirements for the project. Basically, we were supposed to give a report on our assigned scene in a “style of our choosing”. We were to focus on the motivations of each character and interpret Shakespeare’s language into our present-day vernacular.
Here are the questions we needed to answer in our report:
? What do your characters want? What are they trying to say? How do they go about achieving their goals?
? How are you like/unlike your assigned characters? What traits do you share? What traits are completely opposite from you? Would people who know you agree with your assessment?
? How would your characters like living in Norman, NJ? How would your characters dress and speak differently if they were living here today? (Please utilize a visual aid for this portion of your project.)
I was pondering investing in some posterboard for the visual aid aspect of our presentation when I realized Trip was taking an awfully long time in the bathroom.
Oh, dear God. Please tell me he’s not pooping in there.
My suspicions turned out to be unfounded when I heard a noise coming from down the hall.
I moved down the hallway to my bedroom where I saw Trip standing at my dresser, giving the once-over to all of my things.
Thank God I made my bed that morning, but what if he’d gone snooping through my dressers or something? I had a brief recollection of the set of pink, flowery, days-of-the-week cotton panties that were shoved to the back of my undies drawer. I never wore them, but couldn’t bring myself to throw them away. They were a gift the past Christmas from my Aunt Eleanor, who always used the excuse of having four sons to buy the cutesiest, girliest things possible for me. They were so, so, so very uncool. My reputation would have been destroyed.
“What are you doing?”
He looked up just then and smiled. “Just checking out your room. It’s the best way to get to know someone, don’t you think?”
“Yeah, I guess. Or, you know, maybe you could just ask them stuff.”
I watched as he ignored me and picked up one of my glass atomizers. He gave a quick squirt of Anais Anais in the air and took a sniff. “Nice.” He put the bottle down and rifled through a dish of change, coming up with a guitar pick. He held it up, impressed. “This yours?”
Yeah, right. My cousin Jack tried to teach me only a million times, but I was a total sped. I could never get my fingers to bend just the right way and it got so frustrating that I decided it just wasn’t worth it. “Nope. My cousin’s.”
He tossed the pick back into the dish before noticing my jewelry box. He ran a finger across the intricate lid, saying, “This is pretty awesome, all the carvings. It looks old.”
“It is.” I don’t know what prompted me to continue, but I added, “It was my mother’s.”