The Pink Portrait, Ch. Ten

Ten

Monday’s here and so is the first day of my last year as a high school student. After waking up and showering, I choose from my Burberry selection. When I go downstairs I see that my mother has taken care of breakfast.

I inhale deeply. “Hash browns, sausages, toast…” I leave the sentence hang.

“And my famous homemade banana nut muffins,” says my mother proudly.

“Jeez Louise, Mother, did you get any sleep last night?”

“Well, I did have to wait until I knew for sure that you would not wake up to the smell of these scrumptious treats,” she laughs, though I can see how tired she is. “I’ve probably been up since…one-thirtyish.”

“Oh, Mom, please go back to bed,” I plead.

“Don’t worry, I will,” she reassures. “After you eat and leave with a basket of muffins I made for your friends.”

I try to give her a hard look, but we both crack up. “It’s going to feel strange not going to school with Ales,” I say. Since last year, she had been going to Westland career center next door to Ash Grove high school where we both go. Well, used to go, now it’s just me.

“I’m sure it will, honey,” says Mom sympathetically as she sets my breakfast plate in front of me. “But you still have Pasha, Talia, and Jimmy.” I smile. Those three girls were always like a pack to me.

“They will be happy to see me,” I say, almost to myself as I take a bite of hash brown. “I’ve barely kept in touch with them since returning from Norway.”

My mother blinks several times. “Those ladies are going to murder you.”

“Mm, no more than usual,” I reassure, waving my fork at her. “They will probably try to smother me with their combined femme fatale wiles and…”

“…and force you into doing something both fun and foolish,” my mother completes, a smile building up in her steadily worsening sleep-deprived face.

“Like putting itching powder into the football players’ girdles,” I say without thinking.

My mother shakes her head. “Oh, God what did I do to earn a master of mayhem?”

“I love you too, Mom,” I say singsong. “Now go back to bed.”

“Who will clean up from breakfast?” the alarm in my mother’s state of remission is as clear as a flesh wound. “You’re certainly not doing it; you need to go pick up the Swann squad and get to school,” the “Swann squad”, one of many names given to my tight-knit clique. Also, the way she says it, she is pretty much willing to act as a wall between me and the dishwasher.

I grumble. “Okay, do the dishes and then go back to bed.”

My mother exhales and stares up to the ceiling. “Even in remission, my son treats me like I am a vulnerable as a puppy.”

“You love me.” I grin and gaze intently into her eyes. Eventually, she is no longer able to resist looking into them and letting her features soften a considerable degree.

“Finish your breakfast and get out of here, you goofball.”

I do as she requests and finish my breakfast. I grab my large messenger bag, the basket of muffins and my keys and I am out the door. It’s a beautiful morning even though the sun hasn’t come up yet. However, it is a little chilly so I don’t put the top down on the Caddy. I start with Jimmy on my list of people to pick up as her house is the closest.

Before long, the scenery steadily progresses from the beautiful trees that surround my home to the crops that blanket Ohio farmland. I have lived here long enough that I can distinguish whose farmland is whose. I don’t know every farmer in town, but I guess it helps that one of my best friends is the daughter of one of those farmers. I turn off the main road onto a gravel driveway. Just as the sizable Wyant architecture farmhouse comes into view, I see a sign. In big, bold letters, it reads,

Forget the dog, but beware of WIFE

Oh, the dog. A wolf mix named Myung. The dog is far from vicious, but Jimmy’s mom can get…I’m not sure if “vicious” is a strong enough term to describe how she can get with an unwelcome visitor. I’m pretty sure she once chased out a burglar with an antique sword that, despite my language skills, I can never pronounce the name of. As I pull up to the house, my friend, Jimmy comes bursting out the door with Myung in tow. I stop the car and get out to meet her partway. She knocks me off-balance as she practically jumps into my arms. Thankfully, the Caddy was behind me to break the fall. Myung barks as he tries to join the hug.

“Kieran!” she squeals. “I missed you so much! How was Norway? Was it fun? Did you ever take your new friend on a date? How was your cruise? I’ll bet it was fun.”

“Jeez, Jimmy, let me breathe,” I laugh as I steady myself. “Haven’t you been reading my emails?”

Jimmy breaks away from me enough so she can smooth her nearly waist-length dark brown hair and can up look into my eyes. Out of all my friends, she is the only one shorter than me. “Of course I read your emails and I remember all of our Skype chats, but do you expect me to believe that that was all you had to share?”

I think for a minute before I respond. A though comes to mind. “If you’ll let go of me, I’ll not only show you my sketchbook, I’ll even let you get first dibs on the muffin basket.”

She shouts something in Korean gleefully as she breaks away from me and searches my car. She finds the muffins before she gets my sketchbook out of my bag. I kneel down and say “hi” to Myung as Jimmy looks through my sketchbook. Last time I saw the lovable pooch, he hadn’t even reached his full size yet.

I inspect him. “Myung, why didn’t you tell me you’d gotten so big?” in response, I guess, he whines and cocks his head. I hadn’t had a dog of my own since my Pug, Sara, died when I was thirteen. The white coated dog with cloudy gray marking on his face and tail was a gift from me to Jimmy for her sixteenth birthday when I found him all alone wondering in the woods. If it hadn’t been for the veterinarian’s input, I would have thought the puppy was a full-blooded wolf. Personally, his most handsome and mysterious feature are his eyes; the left one is a pale blue and the right is a sort of blackish brown. They were the subject of one of my paintings that ended up on Jimmy’s bedroom wall.

The only sounds Jimmy makes as she looks through my sketchbook are the rustling of the pages themselves and her chewing. “Karrie, you are god when it comes to art. If these sketches and marker paintings are meant to be a brochure of Norway, you have successfully made me want to visit the Land of Vikings.” Are there any of my closest friends who do not refer to Norway by that seemingly derogatory name? “I also want to meet Kirsten. What did you say her favorite sport was?”

“Polo,” I reply. I check my watch. “We better get going before Talia has something to complain about before we even have lunch period.”

“Okay, let me take Myung back inside,” says Jimmy.

“Do you want to see if your mom or dad want a muffin?” even as I speak, Jimmy take the basket and runs back inside with Myung in tow. He’s probably just hoping to get a piece of muffin. A minute or two later, she comes back out without Myung.

“They love your mom’s muffins as always,” she says. “Though, I think they are more excited to have one of your apple pies.”

Oh, my apple pies. None of my friends have had any since the year before last. My mom might have been kind enough to send me a shipment of apples from my apple trees, but I wasn’t as kind when I chose to not send any pies back home. I instead shared them with my new friends in Norway.

“Well, my apples should be ready for picking in a month or two,” I say. “Now get in; we have pick to pick up the rest of our pack.” Jimmy giggles and jumps into the front seat of my car.

“My iPod?” she asks hopefully.

“Fine,” I say. “Though you better turn off VIXX before Talia gets in the car.”

“You really think that that’s going to happen?” Jimmy gives me a sideways glance that is as unbelievably cute as it is funny.

“Probably not,” I agree. “Hey, she likes them better than One Direction.”

We laugh. “Let’s go.” I turn the key over and the Caddy roars to life in the pre-sunrise softness. Jimmy plugs in her iPod after sifting through her song list, she settles on “Life is Beautiful” by Vega4. The blue LED lighting in my car pulses slightly with the music.

This song has a tremendous amount of meaning for me. When my mother came down with cancer, the lyrics to this song brought me back from a very dark place. Then when I found out that she was in remission…that was just the cherry on top. I just hope that her cancer does not return.

“I can’t believe we’re seniors!” says Jimmy, interrupting the music. “We need to start brainstorming what we do when we graduate.”

I roll my eyes. “You and Ales both—planning too far ahead.”

“Why, what did she do?”

“She started making me get up earlier ten days before school even started,” I grumble.

Jimmy laughs. “What would we all do without that crazy Italian?”

“Get a good night’s sleep?”

She laughs harder and I can’t help but join her. We come up towards Talia’s apartment complex and after parking we get out and lean on the hood as we wait for her.

“How’s your mother doing?” asks Jimmy as we wait.

“She seems to be doing really well,” I answer happily. “She’s definitely moving around a lot more, especially since she’s not carrying that ‘I am about to die’ aura around her as much—if at all.”

Jimmy lets out a breathy laugh and takes my hand. I grasp it back. “I couldn’t be happier for you, Karrie.” I let go of her hand and I wrap that arm around her shoulders and she follows suit.

“Thanks, Jasmine,” I breath softly. Her grasp around my shoulders tightens affectionately.

“What do you think I am—a desperate lonely girl hoping to get a little attention out of a pathetic sext?” oh, boy, here comes Talia. Coming down the stairway of the complex, we see the tall, curvaceous blonde that we love. I don’t know who she is arguing with on the phone, but sounds like the dick was hoping to get a visual of her unclothed body. If he had any sense at all, he would know that that kind of thing would not only dissolve her ardor for him, but invoke her anger as well. Not to mention mine and all of our friends as well.

“Here’s a thought, you miserable twit, how about you grow a pair be a gentleman? Oh, wait that’s right, you’re nothing but a jock that thinks he’s at the top of the food chain and he can have any girl he wants. Now, I have to go, because the only decent man besides my grandpa has arrived and he is so much better than you in every way—hotter too. And it’s Ta-LEE-ah!” She hangs up the phone and shoves it back in her purse. After stopping about six feet away from me and my car, she regards me thoughtfully…if not a little critically.

“You are really, really pale,” she says, almost worriedly.

Well, that is one effect of spending a school year in a subarctic climate that dominated Tromsø, Norway and the area surrounding it. Now, it is my turn to observe her up and down. I carefully inspect her form, her clothes that consist of a silky black waistcoat with shiny chrome studs along the collaring over a white fitted sateen shirt, a skirt, and knee-high high heeled boots, and her hair that she has tucked behind her ear on one side. “You are really, really gorgeous,” I say in what I hope is an equally worried tone. “Even with that haircut.”

Talia does not say anything for a minute or two. Soon, her angular features are given a little more color as her thin red lips break into a broad grin that I swear brings a little brightness into the gloomy morning and pulls me into breathtaking hug.

“Don’t ever leave for that long again, Kieran Swann,” she hisses into my ear and I return the hug a little tighter.

I chuckle. “I missed you too, you crazy blonde,” I’m lucky that she even lets me call her “crazy blonde”. I don’t want to think about what happened to the last guy who called her that. “I really do love your hair by the way; when did you cut it?”

“A few weeks ago,” she answers, removing herself from my arms. “I felt I could use a little change from my long wavy locks.” As she speaks, she flips her hair in a suggestive manner. Even as her hand falls a bit shorter than I am used to, I still have nothing negative to say about her golden locks which are not even wavy anymore so much as they are sleek and straight.

“Well, your favorite stylist is back in town.” I gesture with open arms as I speak.

“Are you kidding me? I don’t let anybody else touch my hair.” Talia runs her hands through her hair, a little over-protectively.

“But you obviously sought professional cosmetology when you decided to cut it.”

She glares at me, which I only beam at. “Smartass.”

“You know you love me,” I say as she moves on to Jimmy.

“Don’t push your luck, K. Swann!” I can only laugh.

I get back in the car and start it as the two of them play catch-up. As they follow suit, I hear them discuss each other’s summer.

Jimmy took a trip to Oahu where she got a chance to learn how to surf—although “God-awful” are her words to describe her performance. She took several pictures while she was there including ones of the Arizona Memorial. I was going to have to see those pictures before long. Oahu wasn’t the only island she visited; she also visited the Big Island where she took even more pictures. She made it clear that she had to empty to memory card onto her laptop a couple of times. Beside her trip to Hawaii, she also went to the Ohio State Fair where her horses won her a couple of rewards, for which Talia and I told her how proud we were.

Talia, on the other hand did not leave the mainland. She didn’t even leave Ohio. Most days were helping her grandpa take care of her grandmother, who came down with the flu. The only time she did go anywhere was when her grandpa forced her out of the apartment making it very clear that she wasn’t welcome until she did something fun. Well, her “something fun” was driving to King’s Island where she went on a few rollercoasters, albeit reluctantly. She is just about as uncomfortable with rollercoasters as I am, if not more so. 

Several stakes of the Mormon Church that she belonged to went to Kirtland to visit the temple in that area that she attended as well. She says her time there was very spiritual. Her final trip for the summer was going on a whitewater rafting trip with that apparently ill-fated romance that Jimmy and I heard her argue over the phone with. She says that she no longer likes the guy, if she ever did at all, but she enjoyed the rafting trip. Mostly since the poor fool fell out of the raft. He didn’t drown, obviously, but she enjoyed seeing him abashed.

I wish I could have been with them both. I can’t make everyone agree to go on the same trip.

“Did you give Nigel Payson a good beating?” asks Talia.

“Oh, God, is anybody going to let that go?” I ask no one in particular.

“Probably not,” answers Jimmy. “You accidentally made a hero out of yourself and I bet that if you don’t ask Pauline Marek out, she will ask you.”

“The way you put it, I might as well skip all efforts to be a gentleman and friend to her and take her to second base,” I snap.

“You do that, I will lose all respect for you,” warns Talia. “I meant what I said to that jerk over the phone; please don’t make me regret it.”

I gaze at her through my rearview mirror. “I would never do that to you.” My eyes return to the road, but not before I see the ghost of a smile pass through Talia’s soft blue eyes. I can always force a smile out of her.

“So what’re you going to do if you see…her?” asks Jimmy.

All the color drains from my face. “Her” is not Pauline Marek; “her” is a ghost. “I’d rather not talk about it,” I say slowly and firmly.

“Ow!” she exclaims. Talia must have reached forward and smacked her in the back of the head.

“Ladies, there is no need for violence in my car,” I say steely.

“Yes, Daddy,” Jimmy and Talia say as one. I laugh and they soon follow. Before long, we come across Pasha’s neighborhood—which also might the most affluent in town—and all falls silent while I try to navigate through the more or less narrow streets. We come across Pasha’s house and it is not an easy one to miss, at least for me anyway.

Out of all of my friends, Pasha’s house is much more modern design. I never cared for some houses looking like nothing more than a combination of cubic blocks stacked on top of each other in sometimes irregular patterns and dimmable glass. The saving grace of Pasha’s house is the fact that her parents take interest in her ideas for how to fill the interior.

The exterior might spell out a love for modernism and the sparing of no expense, but the interior is a piece of art that I can never fully put into words or canvas. Pasha’s draws her inspirations from the Victorian era and from the classic literature that is the bulk of her reading material.

We park in the large driveway that has the capacity of nine cars and the three of us get out and walk up to the door. Given that only the first specks of sunlight are smearing the horizon, Pasha’s dad would still be asleep as he really did not have to wake up until eight o’clock. Not wanting to wake him up, I select Pasha’s house key from my keyring and quietly open the door.

If I had any thought that Pasha’s dad would be asleep, I was woefully wrong. As soon as I step past the threshold, my nose is struck by the smell of coffeecake.

“Oh my,” exclaims Jimmy. “I thought the man would be asleep.” And she voices my thoughts. Definitely not the first time she has ever done that.

“He insisted on making breakfast for me and our clique on my first day as a senior,” I turn my head to the stairs and so do Talia and Jimmy and we simultaneously let out exclaims of joy at seeing our best friend.

Her figure is very slim with a slightly angled nose, almond-shaped brown eyes, high cheek bones and small, but expressive lips.

Pasha is probably my biggest competitor as to who is more fashionable. While I am normally daubed in Burberry, Michael Kors, Alexander McQueen, and Geir Ness, Pasha is a stickler, if not a budding endorser for Dior and all manner of vintage and Gothic fashion that even I find difficult to keep up with.

Today, Pasha is wearing a silky white Dior sleeveless blouse, with a black jeweled necklace that somewhat matches the black feather headpiece in her dark hair, which currently sports bangs just barely long enough to touch her eyebrows. I knew that she had bangs from the selfies she’s sent me recently, but even my iPhone hardly does her justice. Out of all my friends today, she is the only one who is not wearing a skirt. While Jimmy is wearing a miniskirt and Talia’s skirt is just above her knees, Pasha is wearing skinny jeans with shiny black high-heeled boots over them.

We meet her halfway as she comes down the stairs to say hello to us—well more to me than to Jimmy and Talia. The two of us embrace, almost emotionally. If anything, Pasha is the most emotional out of my friends. Judging by the way that she is embracing me, I’m getting the feeling that she is saying more than just the “I missed you so much” that I have received so much but in very unique ways respective of who was expressing it.

“Is something wrong, Pasha?” I ask tentatively. She doesn’t respond, but just embraces me tighter. Probably feeling the same concern as I am, Jimmy and Talia lay comforting hands on her.

“Bad breakup,” says Pasha’s dad, coming into the entry hall with a cookie sheet. He and Pasha share many features including pierced ears, minus his closely trimmed beard and tinted glasses. His prescription is way worse mine. I don’t necessarily need my glasses to see, but Pasha’s dad? Oh, my goodness, he might as well be a few steps from being legally blind.

“Breakup?” I repeat. Talia growls angrily, which I know not to take as a good sign.

“Remember that Jake boy we told you about through our emails?” she asks as she takes slice of coffeecake from the tray.

“Yes, he seemed like a promising guy,” I reply, removing myself from Pasha long enough to grab a slice myself. The room falls dead quiet. I think I get the message. “Oh, God, what happened?” I return to the stairs and sit next to her.

In answer, Pasha removes her blouse. My hands and face begin to shake with anger as I see a faint black and blue bruise starting from the back of her ribcage just below her bra strap to just above her stomach.

“What…happened?” I demand, hardly being able to contain my anger.

“Jake was an abusive ass and this is what I got for breaking up with him,” the anguish in her voice prompts not only me to put an arm around her so she can rest her head on my shoulder, but Jimmy to come and take her hand. I see her squeeze it back. “It doesn’t hurt as much anymore, but he said he hoped that it would make me think twice about putting on my cheer uniform. But I’m still wearing it. Bruise or no bruise.”

“I’m going to destroy him!” hisses Talia. I look up and I see her leaning against the wall with her arms folded.

“Isn’t that my job?” I ask.

“No, I’m pretty sure that it’s mine,” declares Jimmy.

Pasha lets out a shaky laugh, which is good. “I love each of you for caring so much, but Daddy already filed a restraining order.”

“Yes, but it was more or less tricky since the son-of-a-bitch goes to school with all of you,” Pasha’s dad chimes in. “Plus it did not happen on school grounds, so all I could get arranged was making sure that he stays at least twenty feet away from her and have them placed on opposite sides of the room if they end up having some of the same classes.”

“What would you like us to do in the meantime?” I ask.

“I would like you to keep my daughter company when you can, make her feel safe again, and if you see the brat…” everyone leans in a little to hear what he has to say. “Please do something violent.”

We all laugh a little.

“It’ll be our pleasure.”

“Good, now the four of you get out of here and let me get back to bed.” Pasha’s dad gently weaves through us on his way back upstairs, stopping only to give his daughter a kiss on top of the head that she returns with a squeeze to his forearm.

I stand up and offer my hand to her. She smiles and takes it. As she stands up, her hand soon finds its way to the crook of my arm and we head out with Jimmy and Talia in tow.

“Kieran?” asks Pasha.

“Yes?” I answer as I grab her messenger bag from a table near the front door.

“Have you been working out? Your arms feel bigger.”

I chuckle. “I was wondering when someone would notice; my friend Kirsten talked me into working out.” It’s perfectly true. I went into Norway having average muscle weight, and I came out, not necessarily beefy, but much more toned.

“Do you have abs?” asks Jimmy.

I roll my eyes and remove my arm from Pasha’s grasp so I can lift my shirt.

“Ooh-la-la!” she cries, hungrily.

“Great!” exclaims Talia in anguish as she opens the door. “Is there anything that is not different about you?”

“I still love you,” I point out, hopefully as we walk out. “I’m still handsome.” I reach over and lock an arm around her. “I can still turn your grumpiness into a masterful work of art that even you can’t say anything negative about.”

She raised an eyebrow as she glances sideways in my direction. “And you’re still as charming as you are sweet.”

“You love me.”

“You know I do.”

We laugh and Jimmy and Pasha join in and soon the four of us each have and arm around each other.

“So, what do you say, ladies?” I ask as we approach my car. Are we going to start this day off with fizzle…or bang?”

“Are you kidding me?” Jimmy giggles. “Bang, hell yeah!”

“Talia?”

“Fine,” she replies rolling her eyes. “Just not ‘Prolog Auf Erden’ again.”

“Fair enough, let’s see what Pasha’s music has to offer, what do you say, Pash?”

She gives me a look and gives a toothy crooked grin. “Love to.”