Little Wonders (chapters 2&3 posted, chapter 1 re-writte

Chapter 3: Everything You Want Me to Be


There were voices in the kitchen. I opened my eyes, only slightly, and tried looking through the now fogged up lenses of my glasses. I barely moved, still feeling Jenna hanging around my waist. She breathed slowly, carefully, and snored softly every so often. I laughed almost, listening to her. She spoke unintelligibly in her sleep, and at first I put the voices off to just her speaking nonsense.

Then I heard Julie Philips.

My eyes widened and my back tensed, knowing the harsh voice all too well. Unlike her daughter’s, which had a slight dreamy, breathiness to it, Julie’s was sharp and too the point. I hated it, but when Mrs. Philips spoke, you listened. Just like Hitler, I thought, a slight bit of amusement with the grim meaning. She spewed nothing but poison with whatever she said.
I strained to listen, making sure not to move too suddenly and wake Jenna. If she heard her mom’s voice I knew she would panic, and when she panicked she couldn’t breathe. I bit my lower lip, letting out a breath I hadn’t known I’d been holding and closed my eyes. There was nothing to see, and so I just listened.

“Where is my daughter?” Julie hissed, stamping her foot lightly on the tile of our kitchen floor. Mom squeaked slightly, and by now she’d have her arms crossed defensively over her chest or be rubbing her forehead. Charlie, in some sense of the word, would become our… Well, there’s no other word for it except our protector. He’d be standing slightly in front of my door and in some way between Julie Philips and Mom.

I smiled at the thought, opening my eyes into slits. The moonlight was dimming slightly from behind a tree, casting ghostly shadows across the floor. If Jenna were awake she would have been preserving them in memory for future reference. I knew Jenna all too well to know that if anything were strangely beautiful, or beautifully ugly, she would draw it.

“Jenna’s asleep,” Mom said, whispering as low as she could, as if trying not to wake me. I smiled at her, now. From the time she had me, I don’t think she changed from the scared little teenager. Her voice always had some sort of childish worry in it, struggling to sound somewhat adult. “We’ll send her home when she wakes up.”

“I want her now,” Julie hissed again. There were quick footsteps following her speaking, and in a way I knew she’d walked towards Mom. I tenses more, gritting my teeth, wanted to think that Charlie was doing the same. Julie mumbled something I couldn’t hear, then made a small grunt. “I will drag her out of that bed by the hair if I have to. You aren’t her parents, you won’t keep her like you are.”

Mrs. Philips was getting angry by this time, I didn’t have to see her to know that. She had the shortest fuse of anyone I’d ever had the displeasure of knowing. “Where is she sleeping? With that boy of yours?” She murmured, probably looking around the kitchen in disgust.

Mom squeaked in shock and revulsion. Somehow, though she and Charlie hadn’t been the most virtuous people when it came to pre-marital sex, she acted like it was some alien concept that she just couldn’t grasp. “Julie, you’re making it sound like they’re…sleeping with each other,” she gasped, trying to wrap her mind around this somehow foreign word of teenage sex and pregnancy. In a way, it amused me. There were pictures of Mom, no older than Jenna, with a huge stomach and Charlie on her arm looking guilty.

“Wilbur is more responsible than Charlie and I were, and you don’t give your daughter the credit she deserves. Jenna is a wonderful girl,” Mom said, confidently. I would have given just about anything to see my mom’s face just about then. Usually, she looked stupid with a goofy grin or air-headed smile on her face. Mrs. Philips must have looked appalled.

“I want my daughter now,” she hissed, sputtering over her words as if the wheels didn’t quite click and my mom like that was something she hadn’t expected on. I heard Charlie sigh deeply. By then I could only imagine what he looked like. Did he look like he wanted to protect my mom? Me? I could only hope, and in that hope I could be content.

“You’re ruining her life, Julie.” My throat closed and a sense of pride washed over me. It was Charlie. In all my life, never had he said something so…fatherly? I guess that was the phrase for it. I couldn’t help but smile and laugh, clasping hard on Jenna’s hands.

But then I heard someone turn hard on their heel. I could only guess it was Mrs. Philips turning to face Charlie.

“Do not tell me how to raise her, you poor excuse for a man. Don’t either of you preach about responsibility when that boy is as illegitimate as any other bastard with a single mother and just because both of you live under the same roof doesn’t account for anything without a ring your finger,” she spat, tripping over her words as she spoke with venom.

The next thing I knew, my bedroom door was slammed open, knocking a book off the shelf, the room was flooded with light, I was temporarily blinded, and Jenna screamed when her mother grabbed her by the elbow and dragged her out of the bed onto the floor. But she didn’t seem exactly surprised, just not expecting it to be thrown down so hard.

In a blurry minute, I’d jumped out of bed and stood in an uncomfortable spot between Mom and Charlie, Jenna and Mrs. Philips standing in front of us. I didn’t look Mrs. Philips in the face, but kept on looking at Jenna, whispering, “I’m sorry,” over and over. She just rolled her eyes and shrugged. It wasn’t in a, “Yeah, whatever way,” more of a, “My Mom’s a bitch, don’t worry about it” kind of way.

Jenna squeaked when Julie pulled her closer harshly. She looked like she was about to go limp and just lay on the kitchen floor, which would have been typical Jenna, but instead she dropped a shoulder and cocked her hip to the side, glaring at her mother.

Mrs. Philips turned to my mom, smirking. “I can raise my daughter myself,” she said in a matter-of-fact way and turned her nose up at Mom and Charlie. “We don’t need your help. We are doing just fine.” And with that, she turned, pulling Jenna along with her out the front door and paraded through the dark streets.

From the corner of my eye, I saw Mom bit her lip and heard her whimper. Charlie held onto her shoulders and led her back into their bedroom, and somehow I made myself fall into step behind them, marching back into my own room, if only to lay there awake in the night with nothing but the ceiling or moonlit morning to keep me company.

Walking back into my room, I kicked the book that had fallen from my bookshelf, and, picking it up, my breath froze in my throat and my eyes prickled lightly. It was Charlotte’s Web.

_______________________________
“Why didn’t you come home?”

Jenna sat at the kitchen table, looking around her own kitchen and mentally comparing it to the McCarthy’s. She rolled her eyes at cobwebs in the corner of the room and rolled her eyes at the need for a mouse trap in the corner of the room where a small rat hole was always getting bigger. Crumbs were on the floor, swept next to the yellow garbage plastic can along with small pieces of cereal from a week ago.

Mrs. Philips slammed the table, making Jenna look up at her in surprise. “Answer me when I talk to you, Jenna,” she said through clenched teeth, her eyes wide. “Why didn’t you come home instead of running around with that boy? He obviously has his parents fooled, you know. He’s just as bad as them. Look at his name! Named after a pig. That shows you how much restraint they think he has…”

“He’s a good guy,” Jenna said quickly, boldly. She pressed her lips together fiercely and stared up at her mother. She breathed hard, looking away and crossing her arms, shivering. “If someone’s bad, it’s me. I got in bed with him. It’s not his fault.”

Mrs. Philips looked taken aback, staring down at her daughter. They looked so much alike, in her eyes. Of course, she never looked past the red hair and green eyes that made her look like a Christmas tree, otherwise she was a copy of her father. She had his slightly square chin with the hint of a cleft, the gap between his two front teeth, and the small slant of the eyes that made people guess stupidly that she was a red-haired Asian girl.

That was one reason Mrs. Philips detested looking at her daughter.

But at this time, her face softened as she leaned closer in on Jenna, smiling contentedly. “Sweetheart, you’re a good little girl,” she said, her voice coated in sugar and something honey like, too sweet for the woman using it.

Dark chocolate, Jenna thought, amused. She sounds like dark chocolate. Sweet at first, but bitter once you get down to it.

“You’re such a good girl,” she said again, stroking her red hair and the curve of her throat in one motion. She smiled then, looking dreamy as she looked at the long hoodie her daughter was wearing. Jenna had taken off her pants and thrown them over the back of a chair when the walked in. Now, for a second, Mrs. Philips could pretend that Jenna actually wore a dress. The hoodie went down to mid thigh, after all. A short dress, but a dress none-the-less.

“You’re everything I want you to be,” she went of, a hint of a laugh crawling from her throat as she spoke. The bitter chocolate was almost visible in the air when she spoke.

Jenna breathed in hard, staring at her mother softly, and pressed her lips together hard. She smiled now, and looked away for a mere second before turning to look back up at her mother. Jenna laughed now and crossed her arms over her chest. “Mom,” she said, making her mother look at her hopefully. “Tell me everything you want me to be. I’ll be sure to be as big a disappointment as possible.”

Jenna stood from her seat, turned on her heal, but not before shooting her mother a certain finger that got her chased into her room.

Chapter 2



“You really don’t mind me staying here for a while?” Jenna asked for the millionth time since Mom told her she could stay in the guest bedroom until she wanted to leave. In our Sophomore year, after Jenna had become a normal add-on to the McCarthy family, we got a bed, dresser, curtains, and mirror in the guest bedroom. Because we never really used the bedroom for anything but storage, we gladly gave it to Jenna and were able to partially break my mom’s pack-rat habits. There was still stuff from when Mom was certain she was going to have a girl instead of a boy. A plush pink rabbit sat lazily on Jenna’s window sill, one black button eye missing.

Charlie looked at her over his paper and rolled his eyes. “Like I said earlier, welcome home, Jenna,” he laughed and folded the paper over and set it aside. Mom smiled and walked around the table, setting a plate of pizza in front of everyone before sitting down herself.

“We love having you here, Jenna,” she said, completing the normal ritual of making Jenna feel like she belonged in the family, though she looked nothing like us. Though Mom was blonde and the poster child for the Arian nation, Charlie and I were both tan with dark almost black eyes, thick eyebrows that drove Mom insane, and long black hair. Mine was longer than his, though, and pulled back in a low ponytail that Jenna loved to pull whenever I wasn’t paying attention to her.

I smiled at Charlie from across the table and took a bite out of the pizza. At times, he was nothing more than a boyfriend who hung around the house, acted more like an uncle than like a dad to me. Took me to parks, movies, played baseball with me, but there was that sort of emotional detachment. At other times, it would be like Mom and him were actually married. They’d be all cozy and snuggled up on the couch, and somehow I’d end up right in the middle of both of them.

In those moments, I seriously thought about calling him Dad.

Dinner passed with nothing but the norm. The usual how was your day and fine, thank you along with embarrassing stories told from childhood and then Jenna told about how she somehow got away from her mom before being forced into a white eyelet lace dress with strappy Greek-styled sandals.

I could only imagine her prancing down main street with a floppy straw hat and bag that she could probably live in, it would be so big. I could just see her chewing gum, chatting on a pink cell phone, her ringtone being some annoying pop thing, and a little Chihuahua in the bag, looking irate.

I laughed to myself, making Jenna look at me questioningly. I waved it off, she shrugged, and went on making me sound like the savior of the year. “So he’s like your Superman to your Lois Lane or something?” Charlie mumbled, smiling at her. Jenna smiled wide, and I laughed again at the missing tooth. She never got in trouble for it, since she hadn’t fought during school. She may not have been extremely book smart, but she had common sense.

“Well,” Charlie said, grabbing his plate and taking it to the sink, “it’s nice having you here, Jen.”
She looked up, almost surprised, and smiled at Charlie again, winking. He turned up one corner of his mouth and patted her on the head once he passed her by. She stuck her tongue out as he looked back before walking through the threshold into the living room.

Jenna and I began to stand from the table, plates in hand, when Mom made a small noise to stop us and grabbed our plates from us. “Don’t worry about these,” she said, swallowing a large piece of pizza and yanking the plates toward herself. She turned toward me. “Wilbur, go help get Jenna settled.”

Settled, I thought, stopping when she said it. It sounded so final, as if she never intended on Jenna leaving. I shrugged and grabbed Jenna by the shoulder, steering her toward the little room we kept for her, fully furnished, all for her.

It took Jenna no time at all to get settled into her room again. It was kind of small but not ‘crawl space under the stairs’ sort of thing. Her bed was a really light colored wood with this thick quilt comforter that my aunt Chloe had sent me when she had somehow gotten it into her head I’d turned gay since the last time she’d seen me.

In the corner, the first thing Jenna ran for, was a half finished drawing in charcoal, white charcoal, and every type of graphite she could get her hand on. It was a strange drawing of a woman smiling, and all her teeth had faces, and she had about ten large, black, glassy eyes. It wasn’t one of Jenna’s more disturbing things, though, so I couldn’t complain.

Once she was done with whatever it was she was doing, Jenna flopped on the bed, laid out spread-eagle and glanced around the room as if she were someone finally coming home from college, but sprang up again quickly and began raiding her dressers, trying to find something. Once found, she jumped up with a mismatching bright orange shirt and black and red plaid pajama pants.

I winced at the plaid and groaned. Just that year, our band had had a Scottish theme and the poor drum line had to wear kilts, even the boys. Those marching had to were a plaid sash, clipped to their uniform by a single safety pin. If you were to ask them later, especially the boys, they’d tell you there was nothing safe about the pins.

“I’ve seen enough plaid for one lifetime,” I said, leaning against the wall of her room. She wrinkled her nose, knowing exactly what I was talking about and snickered slightly under her breath. Jenna knew exactly how much I hated plaid by this time; I’d been a water boy for the football team and had to see it every game.

“Plaid is a staple in the fashion scene as of this decade,” she mumbled, slipping the pants on, right in front of me. I can still remember her underwear; powder blue that said ‘Midnight Rodeo’ on the back, black lace lining the top. Jenna never minded undressing in front of me. Turning around to stare at the mirror behind her, she put her hands on her hips, puckered her lips, and turned her nose up. “Get used to it, darling.”

I snickered. She did her stupidly fake French accent at the moment she said darling. “Come on, Fluffy, Mom will freak if I stay in your room too long,” I mumbled, throwing a ball at her from across the room. She squealed when it hit her.

“Remember, Wilbur, remember I am a lady,” she said, puckering her lips again, swinging her hips as she walked out beside me. I noticed The Diary of Anne Frank on her bed and rolled my eyes, tossing it onto her night stand before following after her. Ever since freshman year after we did a unit on the Holocaust, she’d been obsessed with every sort of book that had to do with the subject. She told me she once watched Schindler’s List five times in a row.

“That’s it,” I called after her, flipping her in the back of the head when I caught up to her. “No more quoting Anne Frank or Mrs. Van Daan for you.”

She turned her head slightly to the side where she could see me and groaned. Walking into the living room and falling down in front of the fire, spread out like she’d just fainted, she turned her attention to Mom and Charlie, who were all cozy on the loveseat. “Ma’am, your son is a spoiler of all things fun,” Jenna said, yawning widely.

Mom smiled at her and then glared mockingly at me. Jenna kicked up her legs and rocked to an upright position. “I’ll bet he doesn’t even believe in the Easter Bunny anymore, does he?” she said, looking disgusted. Mom shook her head and Jenna gasped, sarcastically, before laughing again.

I won’t lie to you and say that Jenna’s laugh was like a thousand birds singing or was the same pure sound of church bells, because it wasn’t. It was more of a raw thing that she never seemed to learn to control, something that just came up as hard as it could and she couldn’t do anything about it. Whereas other girls could keep it to a series of giggles or something, it was always extremely funny to Jenna, which in turn made it seem even funnier to the rest of us.

Charlie, who was nearest Jenna, kicked her playfully in the back, making her nearly roll over her head. I could suddenly see a strange Cirque du Soliel act in my head and laughed. She turned around quickly and stuck her tongue out at me. She turned over on her back, her knees in the air and staring at the ceiling.

“You should paint the ceiling like the Sistine Chapel,” she mumbled, staring off to a place we couldn’t go. Mom stared at her questioningly and rolled her eyes, smirking.

“The Sistine Chapel?” Charlie asked, and I was tempted to smack myself in the head. He was a great guy, really he was, and if I didn’t look like a mini-me, I would have questioned paternity. Jenna looked up, making sure he was serious, and, sadly, his face was as serious as Jenna was shocked.

She began making small circular motions with her finger, trying to make sense out of it for him. “The…church with all the pictures of the angels on it,” she said, propping herself up on her elbows. Charlie looked perplexed and nodded, looking away in deep thought. I knew where I got my lack of being able to learn from.

Mom sat up, patting Charlie on the shoulder and moved around the room, walking slowly if not anxiously. It was almost as if she were pacing. “Jenna, sweetheart, do you need to call your mother?” she asked tensely, and to this Jenna bolted upright, swinging her legs under her. She swallowed hard.

“Do you want Hurricane Katrina coming through your home?” she answered, and none of us commented on her use of metaphor. It was all too true. Julie Philips was a force to be reckoned with when it came to her daughter, even though Jenna would always say Julie hated her and that the feeling was mutual. Sometimes I wonder if it was just on Jenna’s side, but then I remember how much Mrs. Philips detests me and forget about it.

Mom sighed, shrugging, and waved it off, sitting back down with Charlie. Jenna made herself stand, but then flopped back down into a chair-and-a-half we had in the corner where I was sitting. Making sure she was comfortable, she got herself as close as humanly possible to me.
I caught Charlie smiling at us from across the way. I smiled back, quickly, and turned back to some movie on TV, though I don’t think I watched it. I was too distracted by Jenna after she grabbed my hands and made me hold her around the waist. To this day, I can’t really remember if I was uncomfortable, or if was so natural I just couldn’t think.

The movie lasted a long time, I remember, up till ten thirty and Jenna was fast asleep, or just acting. Mom walked over to us and nudged her awake, pushed my hair back to get my attention, and kissed my forehead. Jenna looked up groggily and buried her face in a pillow by head.

“Come on, guys,” Mom whispered, pulling on my arm. “It’s late. Get to bed.”

I propped myself up on my elbow, making Jenna groan and roll over on her side. “Why can’t I sleep on the chair..?” she asked unintelligibly. Charlie walked over, smiling from ear to ear. Jenna nodded her head to the side and smiled at him.

“Because, that’s where I’ll be sleeping if Fran gets mad at me tonight,” he said, flipping her in the ear. He turned his attention to the loveseat and laughed. “I don’t think I’d fit on that, do you?”

Jenna shook her head and made herself get up, wobbling on her feet. I got up a second after her, feeling the wall to the door between the living room and the kitchen. Jenna had always made fun of me, saying that sleep made me blind. It made her paralyzed from the waist down.

Mom walked by me, kissing my forehead again, saying, “’Night, sweetie.” I waved her off, mumbling something that she translated as “I love you, Mom,” which is probably what it was supposed to be. Charlie just patted me on the shoulder, which was his way of saying what Mom said, but in the ‘man way’, as he said the first time I asked. I was five and he was trying to look tough, which he did at the time. Now, he just looked stupid saying it.

I caught a quick glance of Jenna stumbling into her room and then heard a loud thud. I rolled my eyes, knowing she’d probably fallen against the wall or missed the bed on her way down. Not bothering to switch the light on, I felt against the bookshelves and posters that lined my walls, nearly knocking over my own easel in front of my bed.

My own bed was a lot like Jenna’s, except it was tucked into the corner of my room under a tilted window. Moonlight sifted through the checked window, spreading across the room like fairy dust, as Jenna would say. I crawled like a hermit under the black comforter and red sheets of my bed, covering my head with a pillow. Somewhere in the back of my head, I was telling myself I would suffocate if I kept it over my head all night, but realized I was too tired to care, but moved it enough to where my nose was partially uncovered.

_______________________
I don’t remember falling asleep. But I remember waking up.

The hallway light we always kept on flew into my room through a crack, catching a little doll eye of a plush rabbit that was stuffed between a Neil Gaiman novel and Cornelia Funke. I rolled over, pushing the pillow off my head after realizing it had stayed on for three hours, I realized after turning to the goblin green glowing alarm clock by my bed.

“Wilbur?” I groaned in the darkness, turning on my stomach, trying to comprehend who might be waking me up in the middle of the night. There was a shuffling of feet across the room, and then another whisper. “Wilbur, are you awake?”

I turned over on my back, propping my head up and squinting, in hopes that maybe sleep hadn’t deprived me of my eyesight for once. Wrestling against the tangle of red and black, reaching for the glasses I reluctantly used, but obviously needed. My eyesight wasn’t terrible, but it was bad enough where I should have worn them every day but refused. Then there was the laugh when I slipped them on. It was uncontrolled, though muffled now by hands.

“Jenna?” I whispered through the darkness, only barely noticing the red hair through a halo of light shimmering through the door. She quickly turned, shutting it behind her and moving into the moonlight. Something wet shined on her face, and now I felt bad after then realizing how harsh I’d probably sounded.

Dropping to her knees, she shuffled across the hardwood, moving books and papers out of the way until she was by my bedside, her head resting between her crossed arms. She had her lips pressed together and shuddered, her eyes darting from me to my hand by her elbow.

“Hey, Wilbur,” she said in a quiet, airy whisper. I made a small hum and patted her on the elbow to show her I was listening. She swallowed and wiped her face with one of her hands, leaning her head to the side. “Can I sleep in here?”

I sat up quickly and looked around awkwardly. Sighing, I didn’t know how to tell her, “No, you can’t, now wipe off your face and go away.” I didn’t have it in me. I scooted over, patting the empty space. She smiled, crawling into the space and pulling the covers up over her. It reminded me of the last time she’d slept with me, and that time Mom and Charlie weren’t exactly happy about it.

They lectured me on not doing anything with her no matter how many times I assured them she’d had a bad dream and wanted someone to sleep with. My mom said then, “There isn’t much to do, Charlie. My dad warned you about not doing anything with me and then nine months later Wilbur popped out. Just don’t be stupid, sweetie.”

Before I could tell Jenna to keep her distance, she had her arms wrapped around my waist, and I found myself drifting back into sleep, not caring, but not before clasping my hands over hers. I could feel the smile spread across her face and burry her face into my back.

“Wilbur?” she whispered again, and I mumbled something, keeping my eyes closed. “Thank you.” I opened my eyes, only slightly in surprise, then smiled and tightened my grip on her hands.

Billy wrote:Nice work - it's well written, the characters make sense, and it's got the right level of description in it. Just a couple of typos:

“No, I don’t think so. My mom would somehow just know I was there and steal me back from him,” she said, dropping her arms across her chest to where was holding the strap on her messenger bag.

That should be where she was.

she might have been done and her hands blackened from the granite

Should be graphite, not granite. Granite's a really hard rock.

Anyway, it's still really good, and I'm looking forward to reading the next part.

Nice work - it's well written, the characters make sense, and it's got the right level of description in it. Just a couple of typos:

“No, I don’t think so. My mom would somehow just know I was there and steal me back from him,” she said, dropping her arms across her chest to where was holding the strap on her messenger bag.

she might have been done and her hands blackened from the granite