Introduction
It has been a very strange year, but exciting at the same time. Really a complete turn around from last year. I am in my third year of college, and had to move back home. The circumstances that led to this included my roommate disappearing one weekend and leaving me with rent and all bills. I replaced him but with a roomie who wanted nothing to do with me. Then my best girlfriend from high school fell in love with some guy from Chicago, they got married and moved away. I ended up dating my roommate-who-disappeared’s girlfriend, and when he came back she went back to him. Needless to say he ceased being my roommate or my friend. So in about a month I lost my roommate, my best friend and my girlfriend. Did I mention that school is very stressful and I have a shit job. I needed to be in a ‘safe’ environment. I needed to save some money, and like all good twenty something’s I moved back home for awhile. This also allowed me to quit my job.
My parents are semi retired and are gone most of the winter, and really most of the time. They have a big house which is a long way from school, but I can take the bus or drive and the cost is way less than trying to maintain an apartment. Then there is my sister. She is one year younger than me but two years behind me in school and she never left home. She was always one of those people who was very into herself, very sensitive, just very cautious in relationships and with strangers. She took a year off from school, basically just laid around the house, before starting at the same college as me. This meant that in addition to saving money on living expenses we would probably save money commuting as well - maybe.
I always got along with my sister, and really we were falling into an exactly similar state of affairs that occurred to us once before, but when I was about ten and she was nine. My parents moved us to a very small, isolated little town and we found ourselves having nothing in common with the kids our age. Neither of us knew anybody nor did we really want to, and so we had only each other. This circumstance had brought us very close. We used to play every manner of games, monopoly, tickle, hide and seek, house, it was all fun, great memories. We sometimes crossed a few boundaries probably, but at the age we were it was always quite innocent, and in the absence of our parents (even then) we made up for the lack of affection in our lives with each other. Holding hands, watching tv with our arms around each other, just physically close, that sort of thing.
My sister is thin, very blond, large blue eyes that can look right into you, very pretty - unusual looking. Pretty quiet if she doesn’t know you but a real talker when she does. Naive, innocent, but sarcastic. Small breasts and thin waist, long legs but not tall, very beautiful from behind. That was the setting of my home coming.
When I arrived she helped me move my car load of stuff and get organized. She was very excited to have me back home. Lots of questions and wondering how long I was going to stay. It wasn’t very long that the comparison was made to ten years prior. “Just like when we lived in that horrible little town.” We reminisced a lot and it was this reminiscing that set the whole year in motion. Our many games were fondly recounted, some of which I could not remember at all.
The Quarter Game
The first few weeks Laura even made me many nice dinners, and we set up a regular little family - which included mom and dad when they were there. We did our homework, had some days when we could commute to school together, and we liked to watch movies in the evening like old times. One of those evenings after cleaning up, we put the DVD in and sat on the couch. “Have I told you how much I missed you last year,” she slid over to me and just wrapped her arms around me. “About a hundred times. This is working out though, it was really a hard year.” I leaned against her and put my arm around her, stroked her hair a little. I had totally forgotten how good she smelled. “Me too,” she said. “I pretty much lost track of everyone I was close to.” She looked at me, “I haven’t been very close to anyone since college started. Everyone from high school has moved away.” We started the movie. After just a little while, she said “Do you remember when we used to watch tv and I would hide a quarter somewhere on myself and you would try to find it.” “No, I don’t remember that, oh wait, yeah. Most of time we could never find it.” “That’s because it would slip out while we were searching.” She reached in her pocket, held up a quarter, “well here’s a quarter.” My memory of this game was totally innocent, but this time after ten years, there was a change to the equation somehow. I felt my mouth go slightly dry, my heart raced a bit. “While we watch the movie,” she added. “It’ll be fun. Just like before.” Yeah, uh, just like before. I paused the movie.