Finding Hope in Texas (18 page)

“Can I ask you how she died?”

“It was cancer,” she said nonchalantly. “She
was already at stage three when they found it, and even a decade
ago the medicine and therapy wasn’t near as good as it is today.
Hope, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I’m just sorry for your loss.” Why
was this happening, right now? We weren’t even talking about my
life, my loss. How could I be so self-centered?
Pull yourself
together, Hope.

“I guess I would’ve been more of a wreck than
I am now if it would’ve happened later, when I got a chance to know
her better. Dad said she was a lovely wife and a wonderful mother.
His loss was a lot more than mine. I was just two. He knew her
since high school. They got married in their freshman year of
college. It’s strange thinking of him as someone in love.” She
paused as if I needed clarification. “Well, I know he loves me and
all, like a father should, but I don’t think he has ever been out
on a date since he lost her. That’s thirteen years.”

“She must’ve been a very special woman.”

Lizzy smiled. “I think he feels that he was
the special one to catch her.” She looked down and continued to
eat.

The whole conversation made me sad. Why
couldn’t I, who had gone through such a traumatic experience,
discerned that Lizzy, too, had seen grief? Or worse yet, why
couldn’t I have read it in Mr. Peet’s sarcastic don’t-give-a-crap
attitude? He had already seen how horrible this cruel world could
be on someone and had survived. But it had probably changed him. I
imagined him as a nice young man, a good student through high
school and college, starting his little family when the weight of
the world came crashing down on him. It had to have made him who he
was today, the bitter, mordant man that found his only joy in
breaking away from his life and portraying the life of some long
dead soldier from one-hundred-and-fifty years ago.
Jeez, was
this going to be me?
Would I ever find happiness in this world
again or just try to escape into, oh crap, escape into my classics,
where I already knew the story was going to end in some happy way?
Where was my freaking Tom Sawyer?

“Lizzy.”

“Yes.”

“You know the pamphlets that Jody made up
about me?”

“Yes.”

“They were true.”

“What?”

“They were true in a sense that my family is
dead. My mom, my dad, my brother, they all died in a car accident
back home, back in New York.”
Why was I saying this? Why
now?
She didn’t need my pain in her life. She didn’t want to
hear my sad story while chewing on some overcooked stir-fry. “Mags
is my aunt, my dad’s sister. She brought me down here. She is the
only family I have left, but we don’t even like each other.” I
could feel the tears pooling in my eyes and start running down my
face. “She just wants me for my parents’ money. She wants to buy
some old antique store with it until she finds the next piece of
scum to get hitched to. And I would give it all to her if I could
just get my family back.”

I lifted up my tray and slammed it back down
against the table, stood up, and stormed out of the door. It was
hitting me, all of it, again. Jeez, I had lost it with Mags over
the weekend and now I was losing it with the only friend I had in
the world. Why did she have to bring up her dead mother?

I ran down the corridors of the building,
probably catching the attention of every class that was going on.
Surely some teacher or assistant principal would stop me in the
hallway and send me back to ISS. Maybe it would be Jody, the little
harlot’s mother? Then I could really tell her what I thought of her
daughter, of Texas, of my whole messed up life. But no one did. I
could’ve run right out the front door and not have been impeded.
Instead I found a closet, a janitor’s closet full of mops and
buckets and chemical sprays and ducked inside. The
punched-in-the-gut feeling came back, and I bent over to have my
sob fest. My breath was gone and I gasped for air as if I was
drowning. Finally, I hit my knees and held my face in my hands.

It had been just about a month since their
deaths and I wasn’t much better off than I was while being held by
those police officers who came with the news, but that seemed like
only yesterday. In a way, time was moving fast, bringing me to
Texas, confronting my first bully, even parading me through the
downtown streets of Ft. Worth in a way-too-short in the collar hoop
skirt. But contrary to that, time had moved so slowly in dealing
with the pain of it all. Even in Texas, things reminded me of my
family. It wasn’t the scenery or the lifestyle down here; it was
what people said and how they were. Inadvertently, Lizzy had cut
right through my heart today and didn’t mean to. Mags did it just
by being my dad’s sister. Even the Civil War soldiers reminded me
of death. Wasn’t there like a half-million of them that never made
it home to their loved ones? And my life was coming apart from the
loss of three.

Even with Jason, the stunning, yet sad
display of a man, it was like looking into a mirror, seeing my own
pain grimacing in his face. What was hurting him so? It was more
than his leg, although the limp was bad enough that it had to have
caused some pain. But there was something deeper than that, past
the physical pain that was tearing him apart. I just had to find
out what. From his looks alone, he should’ve had the world at his
fingertips, not spending the weekends playing Civil War army man.
What had damaged him that I couldn’t see?

Mrs. Appleton would have my head if I came in
late again. What was my excuse? That I had a nervous breakdown as
Lizzy and I discussed our dead family members? For that reason
alone, I decided to stay in the closet until the bell rang again
and it was time to go to computer technology. If I stayed any
longer, I was sure the fumes of the cleaning chemicals were going
to do me in anyway.

Regaining control, I did my best to make
myself look at least presentable for the next class, not that it
mattered, anyway. The teacher mostly sat behind her desk,
monitoring our use of the computer through her own. “Stop looking
at Facebook” or “Stop playing games” was what we usually heard from
her from time to time. She was gracious enough to send our daily
assignment by student email, which was much more
technology-oriented than just writing it on the white board, and
another reason she didn’t have to stand up and do any real
teaching. My guess was that she was trying to tackle the 32,000
games of free cell before teacher’s retirement set in.

Anyway, I learned early on what happened to
your work saved on the computer if you were an enemy of the
Secundas
, so I kept my work on a flash drive. Plugging it
in, I continued on my project: create a power point of at least ten
slides of something you really loved. Was it wrong that I chose my
family? I introduced them with the picture of us, the same one that
haunted me every morning when I woke up. But on the computer screen
it was different, like we were still together, like if I turned
around they would be there on the couch watching a movie or
discussing their day. Yes, we actually discussed our day like some
1950s children. They weren’t just in a little frame next to me as I
lay down to go to sleep; they had been blown up and were alive,
smiling at me and I at them. The slideshow went on, starting with
my dad and his work, my mom and how they fell in love, Tyler and
all of his amazing accomplishments, then me. I was the end of the
line, the last of our little family.

We were back in the old gym for P.E., but
when I got there, Jody and the gang were absent.
Good
was my
first thought. Did I care what happened to them? Not really. As
long as they were away from me, I couldn’t complain. Needless to
say, that the class went by quickly without any so-called
accidents, giving me some more time to reflect upon my life and if
I really wanted to stay down here in the Lone Star State. There
wasn’t much to miss if I decided to move home. Lizzy and I would
remain friends on Facebook, Jody would definitely be happy, and
Mags—what about Mags? She would probably have mixed feelings about
it all. On the positive side she wouldn’t have to deal with me
anymore. On the negative, she would think she was missing out on
her antique store money. Maybe I should leave and then send her a
check for a down payment with a note saying, “Here is your money.
Now go to heck, Aunt Mags.” Childish and mean, yes, but definitely
funny.

Was there much use in staying, though? I
would probably miss seeing Lizzy. Facebook was great for every
other teenager that just stared blankly at a computer waiting for
someone to request being their friend, but not me. Mr. Peet’s class
would certainly be something not to miss out on. Was it the
reenacting that helped him bring history to life in the classroom?
I mean, the word was right in there: acting. Or maybe it was the
death of his wife that caused him to act the fool and have fun,
knowing that life was short and you might as well live it up when
given the opportunity. Maybe that’s what I should’ve been doing? My
parents’ life was short, and my brother’s life was even shorter.
Wasn’t it my job now, the only one in the family, to live life
for
them? Mr. Peet still had Lizzy to think about, at least
for the next few years until she went off to college. But me, I had
no one and there was no way I was going to look after Mags and her
antique store.

So Lizzy was all I had to stay for, even
though in the next year and a half I would move off the college,
anyway? Sounded like a very short list.
But what about
Jason?
Should I stay around and try to get to know him
better?
I mean, I had fallen into his arms twice now and each
time he was there to catch me. But wasn’t he just so, well for lack
of better terms, messed up?
Jeez, that’s the kettle calling the
pot black
. But really, how could I ever get to know someone who
would hardly speak to even his closest friends in reenacting, who
spent his weekends going around to crappy antique stores looking
for wooden buttons? Was it really worth my time to try and delve
inside him and see what made him tick? He was at least cute and
might be just fun to gaze upon, even if he didn’t say a word. Every
woman’s dream, right? But all I knew was that he was ex-military,
had a limp, and was a Civil War reenactor. The only way to find out
more was to go to a reenactment. It looked like I was going to
Madisonville in a couple of weeks.

As class released, I hurriedly dressed and
went off to Mr. Peet’s room, hoping to find Lizzy. I was in luck
when I opened the door to find them at their usual sitting areas,
him grading papers and her doing her homework. Lizzy gave me a big
smile and stood up to greet me.

“Hope, I’m sorry for what I said in the
lunchroom. I’ve been feeling so bad about the incident. It wasn’t
my place to pry into your life.”

I shook my head and waved her off. Mr. Peet
looked over his shoulder at the two of us, but didn’t
interfere.

“Lizzy, don’t worry about it. I just had to
get some fresh air. You let me get some things off my chest that
I’ve been keeping bottled up inside and I thank you for that. But I
was wondering if I could ask for a favor now.”

“A favor? Sure. Anything.”

“This hobby of yours, reenacting. How do I
get started in it?”

“Oh,” she looked back at her dad for a
moment. “Well, you just come to an event. We try to help people
with their clothes for the first few times, you know, so you don’t
have to go out and buy everything at once. We’re going to
Madisonville in a couple weeks.”

“Yeah, but if I wanted to buy something for
myself, where could I do that?”

“Well, you can always look at the sutler
stores online to find what they are selling.”

“A what?”

“Sutler. S U T L E R,” Mr. Peet spelled it
for me from across the room, like I was a dimwit.

“Thanks, Dad. Anyway, they have all sorts of
stuff, from dresses to undergarments to parasols and whatever else.
But you don’t need to buy anything, Hope.”

“I’ll just browse some for now.”
Another
lie
. “But, you don’t mind if I go with you?” Lizzy looked at
her dad again. Mr. Peet rose from his chair and stood behind the
podium, becoming master of his domain once again.

“I’ll need to talk to your aunt about it,
Hope. I’ve only taken one other student and his parents didn’t
care. But you know, with the

whole–”

“Yeah, the whole male teacher-female student
thing, right?” He smiled and nodded. “Okay, well I’ll give you her
phone number tomorrow, if that’s okay. She opens the antique store
this Saturday if you want to come by and see her then.”

“Antique store? Which one?”

“Oh, no.” Lizzy sighed, rolling her eyes.

“What?”

“You just excited dad’s history bug. I swear
to you, it’s contagious.”

I smiled. “I’ll find you the exact location
of it and give it to you tomorrow.” They both nodded and said they
looked forward to seeing my aunt again, whether that was true or
not I didn’t know. I looked at Lizzy to continue the conversation.
“I guess if I can survive Jody and her gang, then I can endure a
weekend of camping, right?”

“Well, you missed the exciting part at lunch
today. The principal, Mr. Franklin, came in and berated their table
today right in front of everyone. Told the whole little
Secundas
group to head to lunch detention and that they were
going to have ISS for the remainder of the week.”

“
ISS? Why did he do that?”

“I don’t know,” she leaned in to whisper.
“But they looked highly ticked off when they marched outta
there.”

That must have explained why they were not in
P.E. last period. The wheels in my brain began to churn, trying to
guess why they might have been in trouble. Whose path did they
cross to bring them down? But knowing the school, the rumors would
spread that evening and I would probably overhear the gossip the
next morning. Oh, boy. I thanked both Lizzy and Mr. Peet for
allowing me to go with them again, thinking at least it would get
me out of the house for the weekend, and at most, I could possibly
get to know Jason, the loner on a motorcycle. I skirted out of the
room to meet Mags, who was waiting patiently at the curb, the
heater blowing heavily to warm the inside of the car.