Chapter 3
I woke up the next morning to a persistent thumping sound. It took me a moment to realize that it was somebody slowly, continually bumping into my bedroom door. I rolled out of bed and stumbled to the door, opening it with a grumpy growl.
"Surprise, Shrimp!" Water splashed in my face, and I stood, sputtering in dazed annoyance as laughter rang through the house. It took me a moment in my bleary state to register my older sister standing in front of me in slippers and a robe, holding a now empty-glass.
"Liss!" I smiled, smacking her with a hastily-grabbed pillow. "I thought you weren't coming back until this afternoon!"
My sister took the pillow to the face with aplomb, and promptly reached out to give me a noogie. I danced aside, only to smack my ankles painfully into the wooden chest under my bed that held most of my Mountain Man re-enactment clothing. Swearing and wet, I settled for grabbing my own robe and pushing past her out of my room. "What brought you back early? Out for good behavior?"
"Done with finals early and decided to just do a long drive from Wichita in one hell-day rather than two." Liss--fully six inches shorter than me despite her childhood nickname for me--bounded up the stairs. "I've got coffee going if you want some. Mom and Dad were pissed that you got home late last night."
I scratched the back of my head in embarrassment. "It was just supposed to be my friend's art exhibition, but I ended up taking a walk in Breakenridge park."
Liss raised an eyebrow. "A walk? At night? By yourself?"
Hoping that I wasn't blushing, I nodded confidently. "Just wanted to do some stargazing," I answered.
My sister snorted and opened the fridge. "You better have a more believable alibi than that when they wake up. I got you up early so you could run it by me first. Sounds like it's a good thing, too."
I blew out a breath. "Really? That bad?"
Liss smirked. "Was this 'walk' blonde or brunette?"
Now I definitely blushed. "Uh... that's... that's none of your--"
"Oh my God!" my sister shrieked, and began to laugh. "I can't believe it! You dog!"
"Will you shut up?" I hissed. "It was sort of a spur of the moment--"
Liss was laughing too hard to listen. After some sobbing, guffawing gasps, she finally straightened up enough to fix me with a stern look. "You were safe, right?"
"Jesus, Liss," I sighed in exasperation. "Of
course
I was safe. What sort of dude do you think your little brother is?"
"More of a lothario than I thought," she replied. She had somehow produced a pair of English muffins and was liberally smearing them with jam. "Did the art exhibit really get you so worked up? I didn't even know you had a girlfriend! What's her name?"
I snatched one of the English muffins. "Her name is none of your business," I muttered through a mouthful. "You wouldn't know her. Probably wouldn't. She would have been a freshman when you were a senior, and not in sports. More of a... sort of a hippy-witch type."
"When do I get to meet her? Is she coming over while I'm here on break?" Liss led the way towards the den where our TV sat on an oaken cabinet. She sat squarely on the remote and swore mildly, before extricating it and using it to turn on the TV.
I turned a series of possible replies over in my head. The facts would sound crazy. A lie wouldn't help anybody. So finally I decided to play it cool without stretching the truth too much. "It was sort of a one-time thing. Her choice. We're going to stay friends."
The concerned frown on my sister's face told me I had not improved the situation. "Matt, that doesn't sound like you. What's going on?"
"Don't tell Mom and Dad," I began. "I know they were both hippy Flower Children, but... I don't know. I think they'd take it wrong." And then I told her an abbreviated version of the story. Very abbreviated. No details.
Liss only interrupted me once, in the middle. "Holy shit! You mean those rumors from back when I was in junior high were true? There really
is
a secret coven of warlocks and witches doing rituals in the middle of the night out in the foothills?"
"Uh... sort of." Even in my own ears it sounded stupid. "But that really makes it sound more sinister than it is. It really was just a bunch of strange but friendly people dancing around under the stars."
"And screwing," Liss emphasized.
"Well... yeah. Some of them. But it was individual couples. Not a full-on orgy." My neck was getting strained from all of the looking over my shoulder I was doing. Despite being a legal adult, I still lived in moderate fear of getting yelled at by Mom when she was in a mood.
It was nearly fifteen more minutes before we heard the telltale sounds of movement and a flushing toilet from upstairs. By then, I had more than finished my story, and Liss was cautiously on-board with helping to cover for me. Once she had satisfied herself that I hadn't been drunk or doing drugs, and that my worst lapse in judgment had involved wandering alone through dark woods at night, she found the whole thing sort of funny. My dad was the first one down the stairs.
"Matthew James Baker, you nearly scared you mother to death," he said. His words were harsh, but his tone was mild. "You better have a good explanation for not getting back by eleven without so much as a phone call."
My cover story involved hanging out with Sascha after the exhibition, talking about music at a Waffle House until I realized how late it was. They clearly realized that there was more to the story, but more or less bought it. Dad rolled his eyes. "You spent all that money on a new suit, and then didn't even bother to get a nice watch to go with it? Now I know what to get you for Christmas, at least."
The rest of the day was spent putting up Christmas decorations and decorating the tree. Mom made cookies, and we frosted them in the evening, just like when we were kids. Liss and I played Sonic the Hedgehog, trading back and for the controller as we talked about her college classes, my senior year in high school, and my plans for college.
"Still planning on majoring in music?" she asked, deftly navigating Sonic though a checkerboard loop on the screen.
I shook my head. "Finally gave that idea up. I'll minor in music if I can. Otherwise, I was thinking English."
Liss snorted. "At least your plans to be poor throughout your adult life haven't changed. What are you going to do with an English major?"
"Write," I shrugged. "Maybe journalism? Be a world-famous author?"
Liss sighed and passed me the black plastic controller. "Well, it took me until this year to decide I really wanted to do Macroeconomics. Maybe you'll come to your senses." She nodded to herself, as if that were all sorted now. "So what are you up to these days, Shrimp? Still working at that CD store?"
I nodded absently.
Disc Divers' Delight
was a tiny secondhand CD and cassette tape store in a strip mall not far away. I had mainly started working there because of the employee discount and the access to all sorts of new music that I might not have stumbled across otherwise. Still, working a few shifts a week gave me money enough to play.
"Still doing your cowboy thing?" Liss pressed, seeing that asking about my part-time job was a conversational dead-end.
"Mountain Man," I corrected her. "Early pioneer stuff. A few generations before cowboys were a big thing. And yeah, I'm still doing it. Meetups every couple of months, and Bowie knife practice every other week."
"Jack still in on it?" she asked.
"Yep. We even got a new friend into it--Cary." I smiled just saying her name.
"A girl? Pretty unusual for a girl your age to be interested in your pioneer stuff," Liss observed. "Where on earth did you find her? And why aren't you having weird witchy-warlock sex with
her
?"
I elbowed her and explained how we had met, and how we hung out at least once a week now. Liss stayed quiet for a bit. Long enough that I shot her a glance as my cartoon hedgehog on screen gasped and blew bubbles in the water. "You okay over there?"
Liss shrugged. "A little weird," she said. "A married grown-up lady hanging out with a couple of teenage guys pretending they're Daniel Boone? You said she has kids?"
I frowned defensively. "It's not weird. A lot of the guys in our group are older adults. It's rad. And she's cool as hell. You'd like her."
"What do Mom and Dad think?" Liss's tone was still somewhat guarded.
"They're cool with it. They gave her some weird looks when she started hanging out with us, but they treat it as totally normal now." I took a deep breath, noticing that my temper was starting rise. Deliberately, I talked myself down internally and handed the controller back. "I get it. It sounds weird when I say it out loud, but it's totally not."
Liss digested things. "Huh. You've gotten more mature."
Not sure how to take that, I let her play in silence and munched on a few Fritos.
Christmas was great. We played games, had some old family friends over, and exchanged gifts while wearing the tacky oversized Christmas sweaters Grandma Baker had sent from Kentucky. Liss splurged and got me Mortal Kombat for the Genesis so I could play at home, and my parents stunned me by getting me riding lessons so that I could do a better impression of a Mountain Man at the next Rendezvous.
Of course, I got Jack and Cary some little things. They both came over the Thursday after Christmas for movie night (since Friday was New Year's Eve, and we'd all be busy.) To wrap up the year we decided to watch
Batman Returns
, which I had gotten for Christmas last year. Cary had voted for
High Road to China
or
Out of Africa
. Jack had dismissed the latter as a "chick flick" and Cary couldn't find the former when she went rummaging through her tapes.
Liss flopped down near us and promptly began to hog the popcorn in the way that Jack often accused me of doing. She spent as much time murmuring questions to Cary--which was an annoyance, since Cary had taken her accustomed spot on the couch between Jack and me. So Liss kept leaning over me and talking while I was trying to watch Michael Keaton woo Michelle Pfeiffer (and get his butt kicked by her).
Finally, around the time Danny DeVito was knocking a supermodel off the top of a giant Art Deco skyscraper, I huffed a sigh and said, "Here--just switch places." I scooted over next to Jack while Liss and Cary took up the other half of the couch. Jack promptly farted and gave me a giant shit-eating grin. "Welcome to this side of the couch," he chuckled.
"I actually dressed up as her for Halloween," I heard Cary murmur to my sister, indicating Catwoman on the screen. "It was scrunchy and uncomfortable. I don't know how Michelle Pfeiffer managed to look so good while feeling like that."
Whatever they talked about, it resulted in a couple of chuckles from both of them, and eventually Cary followed Liss upstairs for a refill on popcorn. We paused the movie and Jack stretched hugely. "Only one semester left. Hey, how did things go with the witch-girl? Sascha?"
I felt myself flushing, but shrugged. "Pretty well. I think we'll be hanging out again sometime soon."
