Someone Else's Fairytale (38 page)

A couple of weeks later, while I was cramming for a biology exam in the evening at Jason's house, someone pulled up in the driveway. A moment later, I saw Jen walk past the front window and I got up to let her in. She already had her hand raised to knock and looked baffled for a moment.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hi. Jason here?”

“Yep!” he called out. He'd been sitting on the couch, with Steve's old Securities Law textbook. I now knew how he filled his brain with so much random knowledge; he studied every spare moment he wasn't working, working out, or talking to me. He capped the highlighter in his hand and set it aside as he got up. “You hungry?”

“I'll make you something,” she said, absently. She walked right through the front hall and back to the kitchen.

“Hey.” Jason tailed her. “That is not what I asked.”

“Do you have a moment?” She sounded exhausted.

“Sure.”

I went back to my studying. Whatever had Jen so distraught was none of my business.

Jason's floors were all tile and hardwood, though, so I could hear their conversation clearly a room away.

“I'm out of ideas,” said Jen.

“About?”

“Kyra. That girl's going to kill me.”

“Kyle know you're here?”

“He's taken her a on a long drive. Up through the Jemez. I don't think this'll work any better than the last three times, but at least it keeps her tied up for a couple of hours.”

“What's going on?”

“She's in love with this guy. Name's Nate. No good, does nothing, good looking-”

“Like me?”

“Please, I'm not in a joking mood.” There came a clank, like someone putting something down on the stove.

“Jen, you don't need to cook-”

“It's what I do, okay?”

“It's your job. Take a break.”

Water ran in the sink. “I've got to get her out of
Albuquerque
. I wish there was a military school in
Alaska
I could send her to-”

“I'm sure there is.”

“But she'd probably just run away from it. She's almost eighteen. She will be eighteen in less than a year. Our options are dwindling, and I'm so afraid she's going to get herself pregnant.”

“You talked-”

“Yes, yeah. She's on the pill. Doesn't stop me worrying. At that age, people just don't know any better.”

My mother sprang to mind.

“So you want me to help? You need money for tuition in
Alaska
?”

“No.”

“Just tell me what you need. And you really don't need to be cooking right now. I'm not hungry.”

“Maybe you can talk to her.”

“She hates me. You've noticed that, right?”

“No, she hates me. She thinks I've got a double standard because I've put up with you all these years and tell her she needs to stop it with all the guys. But she knows you're not screwing around anymore, so maybe you can say something that'll get through to her.”

“I don't think she and I have the same problems, Jen. She's throwing her life away. I never did that. Can't understand it at all.”

“I know, that's the problem, isn't it? I can't understand it either. At her age, all I wanted was to get into culinary school.”

“Her mother won't help?”

“Her mother hasn't returned any of our phone calls or emails for six months. Not even Kyra's.”

The two fell silent while Jen continued clanking around the kitchen. After about ten minutes, Jason came back into the front room. “You want pasta primavera?” he asked.

“Sure.” I got up.

“Don't ask me why she's cooking. Do I do that, just start acting when I'm stressed?”

“I don't know, do you?”

“Pretty sure I don't.”

I had to agree there. Jason was the most undramatic person I'd ever met in his personal life. Jen was arranging pasta onto plates when we returned to the kitchen. “I gotta go,” she said.

“Jen,” said Jason.

She gave him an awkward hug. “Thanks for letting me vent.”

“Hey-”

“I'll talk to you later.” She bustled out of the kitchen, continued out the front door, and was gone.

I looked after her. “She really stressed?”

“Yeah.” He looked at the plates of pasta and frowned. “And I'm not hungry. Are you?”

“Not really.”

A little over a week after that, I was on Jason's service porch, hefting my laundry from the washing machine to the dryer. I still felt a little guilty, taking advantage of his facilities like this, but as he pointed out, he couldn't exactly come to the laundromat with me without creating a mob scene.

“Hello?” I heard Jason say in the kitchen. I glanced through the door and saw that he had his cell phone to one ear. “Hmmm? No. No. Whoa, what? Slow down.”

I tore off a fabric softener sheet and tossed it in with my clothes, pressed the door shut, and started the dryer. The whoosh of its motor drowned out Jason's words for a moment. But when I went into the kitchen, he was frowning. “What can I do? You want me to call someone or... something?” At the sight of me, he took his phone from his ear and tapped the screen.

“-don't know!” came Jen's voice on speakerphone.

“She's still a minor. You can call the police and have her brought home, right?”

“And have her hate me.”

“She can't move out of your house at seventeen, Jen.”

“She just did!”

“Well, what can I do?”

“Nothing. I'm just calling to stress. I'll figure this out.”

“Where's Kyle?”

“On the phone with her. He's doing his best, you know?”

“You talked to Mom and Dad?”

“Yeah, yeah, they just told me to 'hang in there'. You know how they are.”

Jason looked over at me. “Okay if we go over to Jen's house?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Chloe and I will come over. Don't cook anything.”

Jen's house was a sprawling ranch style in the foothills, not too far from Sandia Tram. We pulled into the driveway at the same time Kyle and Kyra did, and walked into a scene of pandemonium inside.

The house reeked of cooking smells. Spice and tomato sauce and warm bread. Jen's kitchen wasn't quite as state of the art as Jason's in LA, but it was several grades better than the usual home kitchen. Despite Jason's admonition not to prepare anything, she had a basket of crisped tortillas and a spinach artichoke dip set out for everyone. The other smells, I surmised, were left over from dinner.

Jason and I came in the front door and Kyra came storming in through the back. She burst into the kitchen and screamed, “I hate you!”

“Fine,” said her father. He followed behind at a more sedate pace. “But you will live at home until you finish high school.”

She whipped her purse off her shoulder and made as if to throw it, then caught sight of me and froze.

To say I felt like an intruder was an understatement. Everyone else looked at me. In a gesture of defeat, Kyra tossed her purse on the counter and shoved both hands into her pockets. She was wearing a short little denim skirt and cute sandals. I couldn't help but notice the similarities to how my own mother dressed. Mom had probably looked cute too, at seventeen.

“Hi, Chloe,” she said.

“Hi,” I said.

She glanced around at the rest of her family, shuffled her feet, then marched out of the room and down the hall.

Everyone turned back to look at me.

I took a hesitant step after her, then, because it seemed to be what everyone expected, I followed her. It felt like a real intrusion to go back down the back hall of Jennifer's house, but it was easy to find Kyra's room. The door was shut and the light was on inside, making a thin strip of brightness at the bottom of the door. I knocked. “Kyra?”

“Yeah. Come in.”

I opened the door and found Kyra sitting at a desk, staring out the window at the twilit scrub brush and desert expanse outside. The house was set quite a ways back from the road, but had no landscaping. The girl's bed was neatly made and her room tidy. The walls were painted a powder pink and decorated with framed photographs, mostly of landscapes.

“You probably think I'm really stupid,” she said.

“Honestly? I have no idea what's going on and feel like I don't belong here at all.”

“Me neither. Jen hates me.”

“Hardly.”

“I'll never be good enough for her.”

I didn't have any well thought out answers to that one, so I just went to sit on the bed.

After a moment, Kyra turned around, and I saw there were tears in her eyes. “What are your parents like?”

“Um... my mother was your age when she had me, and my father was a philandering loser. Really, your situation is much better.”

“You coulda gone to the Academy. You're smart.”

“Even if I had a full scholarship, Mom wouldn't have driven me. Jen may be a little neurotic sometimes, but it's because she cares.” I didn't feel like I was saying anything Kyra didn't already know. I was at a loss. I knew nothing about how to talk to a teenager.

“So because I'm lucky, I should just be happy?”

“You've got a lot of people who want to help you be happy. If you could do anything, what would you do?”

“I don't know.”

“What would you try?”

“I don't know.”

“You still like your drama class?”

“Set design.”

“You want to go with Jason next time he does an interview? Or a photo shoot?”

“Maybe...” Her eyes lit up a little. “That'd be kinda cool.”

“Or see a movie shoot this summer?”

“That would be way cool.”

“Means putting up with Jason, though.”

“He's different now.”

“Is he?”

She nodded. “He used to be, I dunno. Really shallow. Thought he was all charming and funny all the time. Now he's just... himself.” She looked at me as if I should appreciate the significance of this.

“He's a good guy,” I ventured. "And he cares about you."

Kyra pulled open a desk drawer and tugged out an artist's portfolio. “Do you want to see some pictures I took on our trip to Elephant Butte?”

“Sure.”