Young Writers Society

The Summer of Briars- ChapterOne

Martha Cavanaugh opened her eyes wearily as she heard the thumping.

“Up early this morning.” She said softly to her husband.

“Too damn early.” Andrew replied.

“I should probably go check on her. “ Martha waited for a response but did not find one. Her feet hit the floor and broke the utter silence of the house. Her knees popped as she walked down the hall into her daughters room.

She reached for the door handle and then blushed in remembrance of the fact that the door had been removed some months ago. Even as she stepped through the opening, Lilac still slammed her head into the wall in the same rhythmic pattern as she always did. One loud thud followed by three more quiet ones, then the process would be repeated exactly sixteen more times before she would stand up, appearing unfazed by the whole dilemma, and request her breakfast of four boiled eggs and two strips of bacon.

“What set are you on?” Martha asked Lilac in vain. “Twelve isn’t it? I do believe its twelve.”

Once again silence filled the house. Martha leaned against the wall and waited.

Asher Cavanaugh lay on his bed through the silence and the thumping and the sound of his mother’s voice with the uttermost stillness. His clothes were on the floor, drenched in summer night’s sweat and the odor of cigarettes and pot. He blinked only occasionally, for the high of last night wasn’t quite past him yet. The red tracks in his eyes made the green irises seem like some fiery cosmic entity. It hadn’t been too much of a party, about thirty or so people, mostly guys, with a few thirty packs and six ounces of Reggie. It had been at Matt Connelly’s house, his barnrather. His parents acknowledged the fact that you only graduated high school once, or at least that’s what his mother said after a few hits on the bong. Deena was pretty hot for an old lady but Asher’s eyes kept drifting somewhere else. Fucking Matt’s mom wouldn’t be a bright idea, Matt was a big guy and he got the gene from his father. Besides, the mutual staring with Aimee Parker gave Asher more pleasure than he could’ve expected from seducing a forty year old woman, which would’ve been easy, considering how she rubbed his shoulders and called him every pet name she could remember in her dramatically altered state.

When Asher’s bones decided that they were capable of movement, he slipped into the shower to wash off the night before.

“Maybe you’d like your eggs scrambled today?” Martha smiled at her daughter. This was an ongoing joke, although Lilac never responded to it. It was Asher who had said it first, on their eighth birthday. Asher ate cake for breakfast but Lilac refused to change her diet. He told her it was a special day and that she should change things up for a bit. So she did it, with a gentle and cautious smile. But was the only day that she allowed her breakfast a bit of variety. Martha and Asher would ask her every day and every day she would shake her head or smile coyly, all except for her and her brother’s birthday, that day the twins would eat scrambled eggs together. But today was not the special day and Lilac was not even in the mood to smile, even shake her head for that matter. So Martha boiled the eggs in silence and put on some toast for Asher and sat next to her as Andrew walked in with Asher, his hair still wet from the shower.

“Morning.” Martha said cheerfully. The men grunted in reply. Andrew walked over to the pantry to retrieve his coffee while Asher popped his half-done toast out of toaster, mumbled something about going to Neal’s, and then walked out the front door.

“He didn’t get home ‘till nearly four this morning. You outta say something to him Andrew.” Martha said, draining the water from Lilac’s eggs.

“Shit Martha, he’s nearly eighteen, he just graduated high school. Let him have a good time.” Andrew replied in a grumpy tone.

“Did you smell his room?”

“A little weed never hurt anybody.”

Martha didn’t bother with a rebuttal. It was no secret to her that her husband kept a bit of bud in his toolbox out in the shed. Nor was it a secret that Asher occasionally sneaked out to smoke a gram or two with his old dad. Martha tolerated it; in a way she felt it was none of her business. There had always been two families in the house, the girls went one way and the boys another. Lilac with her and Asher with him. But Asher and Andrew had seemed distant lately; a silent frustration between the two of, or maybe a tension would be a better word. Either way nobody seemed to know what exactly it was. Lilac had seemed to be wilting in the summer’s heat also, her moods had become sadder lately, but Martha took little notice to this due to the fact that Asperger’s patients often displayed this sort of behavior, or so the doctors said. Once again, silence filled the house.

Asher kept his hands in his pocket as he walked through the field. Taking the road probably would’ve been easier but this was the way he knew, the shortcut he and Lilac found when they was still little enough to climb through the barbed wire fence. But nowadays he crawled over it while Neal held down the metal thorns. They exchanged muffled greetings, the hangovers still evident even at an hour till noon.

“Katy is coming over later.” Neal spoke, in his soft tone. “She’s bringing Naomi with her.” Neal smiled at Asher. “I thought you might like that.”

Asher smiled back mischievously and elbowed his friend in the ribs. He couldn’t remember a time when Neal wasn’t in his life; he had been there every moment. His mother used to say that maybe the two were the true twins and Lilac had been given to the Cavanaugh’s by mistake. It wasn’t a very kind thing to say and Ms. McCullers later admitted she regretted the joke at all, but the boys, being just seven, were elated at the proposition of them being twins. They openly fantasized about the idea and at one point, declared it to be true to a very confused teacher who later made a few phone calls home. Lilac suffered in silence through the whole ordeal, still attempting to tag along with the two, even after they had told her that she wasn’t their sister and that she should spend her time trying to find her “real” parents that had been so uncaring as to leave her at the hospital. The fun all ended after Lilac came home bawling to Martha who explained to the boys that there was no way that they could be twins because their birthdays were five months apart and also because Neal had blue eyes. “No Cavanaugh ever had blue eyes.” She had explained gently. “Not a single one.”

The boys sat on the ground and leaned up against the porch, joking about last night until Katy’s grey Camry pulled up in the driveway. They both stood up, smiling as the girls stepped out. Katy had brown hair, the kind that sometimes looked blonde, with eyes as blue as Neal’s. She was tall, nearly taller than a man and she was bronze skin and legs that made other girls jealous. She was a Cali girl, through and through, and she didn’t change that just because her father got transferred to the South. Naomi held a much different appearance. She was petite with the body of a dancer, a ballerina. She was black, the only black girl in the whole town. Her skin was a medium color and her hair was long. She was a quiet girl and she went along with Katy diligently. Before Katy came she was a loner, a pariah, but nobody could tell you why. An outsider might tell you it was a racial issue, but her brother Danny enjoyed great popularity, even becoming prom king. She smiled at Asher in the quiet way that could only be expected of her. He smiled back.

Lilac and Martha sat together at the table while Andrew was perched on stool at the bar.

“Got a call from up in Derby. The AC is completely blown. Damn idiots ran it too hard.” Andrew said, facing the wall.

Martha turned around to look at his back. “What time will you get back?”

“I don’t know. Don’t wait up for me either. I might head over to Lee and Sharon’s later.”