Someone Else's Fairytale (10 page)

“Hey, Chloe, it's Jason. Just calling to wish you luck. Class starts tomorrow, right? Hope you've got at least a couple fun ones. Anyway, just saying hello. Talk to you later.”

That message was on my voicemail when I finished work Sunday night.

On Tuesday was my first Media Studies class, one of my only non-science classes. Matthew had talked me into it. He and I found seats near the front of the lecture hall and he turned to scowl at the hordes of students packing in behind us.

“Well,” I said. “Watching movies and television for credit, you know?”

The professor, a harried looking man in a tweed suit, stepped up to the podium. “Hello!” he shouted. “Everyone quiet. Quiet now! All right, welcome to the most grueling class you'll ever take. Not a joke, people. Every film, every television show, every commercial we watch, you will write a report on, and you'll need to log your own media consumption habits, including internet, every week.”

“And that,” I said to Matthew, “probably just cut the class size down 75%.”

Matthew's eyes, however, had lit up. He was an English major. Essays and reports were his life.

“This morning we begin with YouTube. We're going to look at their copyright policies, their business model, and some of their top videos, beginning with Smosh and LonelyGirl15 and then Justin Bieber.”

There was a collective groan. We were all a little old for Justin Bieber.

“Get out your notebooks, people. I also do quizzes without notice.”

I already had my notebook out and took a deep breath. This was not my kind of class at all, but Matthew, on the other hand, looked like he was in heaven.

On Saturday night, I woke from a deep sleep. “Chloe? Chlo? Wake up. Please?” Someone had my shoulder in a death grip and was shaking me.

I pulled away and rolled over, my sheets twisting around my waist. I was in my bed, in my bedroom, and it was dark. No one else should have been here to bother me.

“Chloe?” It was Lori.

“Hmmm?” I groaned.

“Please. Your mom's here, and she's, like, freaking out.”

In my exhaustion, it took a moment to process that. When I did, I extracted myself from my covers and sat up. A frame of light showed around my partially open door. Lori sat on my bed, still fully dressed.

“What time is it?” I whispered.

“One. Charles and I just got back. She was in her car in the driveway.”

One o'clock
on a Sunday morning. “Okay.” I dug my legs out of the tangle of sheets and got to my feet. “What's she doing?”

“She's just crying.”

I opened my door and blinked so my eyes could adjust. I could hear my mother now, sobbing like someone had broken her heart.

“I'm going to go to my room, okay?” said Lori.

“Yeah.” I cleared my throat, smoothed my pajamas, and padded out to the front room. Mom was on the couch, wearing a sweatsuit. Her face was devoid of makeup and her blond hair was disheveled.

“What's going on?” I asked.

“Oh! Oh, honey!” She blew her nose in a tissue. “It's... it's... it's...”

“Breathe,” I said. I sat down next to her on the couch. “Now talk.” I tried to keep the annoyance out of my voice, but with her, it was always hard. Especially at times like this.

“It's... it's...”

“Mom.
Just talk.”

“I'm trying!” she wailed.

“Did Dr. Winters call?”

“Huh? No. No. Nothing like that.”

“Some other guy-”

“My windows are broken!” She hiccupped another sob and buried her face in her tissue. Her shoulders heaved.

“What windows? On your car?”

“No.”

“On your house?”

“Yes!”

“What happened?”

“Someone broke them!”

This late at night, I did not feel like working this hard to put together a puzzle of events.
“Mom.
Come on. Just talk. Who broke your windows? What do they want?”

“I don't know!”

“Which don't you know?”

“Either.”

“Will you just tell me what happened?”

“I was-was home, talking on... and... a rock came through the window, and someone broke the kitchen window too, and I got down on the floor. I didn't see who it was.”

“Did you ask the neighbors if they saw?”

“No.”

“Did you call the police?”

“No.”

“What time was this?”

“I don't know. A while ago.”

“How long? Was it dark when it happened?”

“Yes, but I don't know what time. I just waited to see if there were any more rocks and then I came here, but the lights weren't on, and-and...”

“So okay, you left the house, with a broken window. Any idea if the people are coming back? Maybe going to break in?”

“Oh! Really? I don't know. I don't
know!
” Her voice rose to a shriek.

Lori's voice, which had been talking softly in her room, went silent. I heard Charles laugh nervously.

I went to the kitchen, grabbed another box of tissues, and threw it at my mom. “I'm calling the police.”

She dodged the tissue box rather than trying to catch it. “I was so scared. It was awful.”

“911,” answered the operator on my cellphone.

“Hi, I'd like to report someone breaking windows in my mom's trailer home.”

“Who was it?”

“Don't know. Not sure if there are any witnesses. I wasn't there.”

“Can you put your mother on the phone?”

I looked over at Mom, who now lay on her side, a throw pillow clutched to her stomach. She still sobbed, like a little girl who'd lost her puppy.

“Probably better if you just talk to me. I'm coherent.”

Half an hour later, I stood outside Mom's trailer home. Its white siding flashed blue and red, the reflection of the police car lights. Two cruisers were parked out in front. The air was chill and I shivered even with my windbreaker on.

“No forced entry,” one of the cops said. “Just looks like vandalism.”

Another cop strode up from the direction of the neighbor's. “No one saw anything. They heard the breaking glass, but just assumed someone had dropped a dish or something. They say it happened around ten.”

“This been a problem before?” The first cop asked me.

I shook my head. “No.”

“Well, no one else in the neighborhood got hit. Your mom get in a fight with anyone recently?”

“Let me get her.”

Mom was seated in the passenger seat of my car. She'd stopped crying, but her eyes were huge. Even if she'd been my age, the expression would have looked immature. On an almost forty year old woman, I thought it looked like she was missing a few marbles. “Mom, come out,” I ordered her. “Talk to the cops.”

She scrambled to obey and came to stand right beside me, her eyes still wide.

“Ms. Hanson,” said the first cop. “Do you have any idea who this was?”

She shook her head. “No.”

“You sure?” I said. “Who've you been dating recently.”

“No one.”

“No one – no one or no one you think would do this? Come on, Mom!”

“Could you calm down please?” the cop said.

“No one who would do this. I've been talking to a guy on e-Harmony...”

I rolled my eyes.

The cops exchanged a look. “All right,” said the second one. “Tell us all about that.”

“He's in
North Dakota
.”

It was all I could do not to grab her by the shoulders and shake her. E-Harmony! Her extramarital affair with my father hadn't worked, out, so then she'd jumped into a series of other similar affairs, and now she'd turned to internet dating. Great.

I paced around while the cops examined the house for clues, packaged up the rock (which I doubted they'd bother to fingerprint) and wrote up a report.

I didn't get home again until five.

When I woke up again, it was to my phone ringing. My bedside clock told me it was eleven. I grabbed my phone and cleared my throat a bunch of times before answering, “Hello?”

“Oh, did I wake you up?”

Dang it! My voice had still given me away. “Um...”

“It's Jason.”

“Hey.”

“I didn't mean to wake you up.”

“It's okay. Just had a weird night last night. Someone vandalized my mom's house.”

“Oh, really?”

“No big deal. Broken windows. Probably just some kids.”