Arcadia's Gift(7)

“Only you would do homework on a Friday night,” Lony complained, stalking back to the living room.
I went to my bedroom and spread my textbooks across the bed. I took studying very seriously, but then, I had to. I wasn’t one of those naturally gifted people who absorb knowledge without trying. I make good grades, but I need to work very hard to do it. College was still two years away, but I really wanted to get accepted to a school out of state. I had been thinking about someplace in New England, but recently, California sounded good, too. Really, I just wanted to get out of Iowa. Dubuque’s not so bad, but I didn’t want to spend my whole life here, either. I reached for my French book and set to work.
The sky turned a bruised purple outside my window. I’d finished my French and history and was working on trigonometry when my dad poked his head in my bedroom door.
“Hey, Bug,” he greeted. His work clothes were a bit dusty from hanging around job sites all day, and his eyes looked tired. My dad is a general contractor who builds homes and small commercial buildings. He’d been sleeping in the guest room ever since the big announcement was made. Not the most comfortable bed in the house.
“Hi, Dad. What’s up?” I asked, trying to act casual, but not quite succeeding with the knot in my throat.
“Just got home and it looks like everyone is gone except you and me.”
“Yeah, Lony is cheering at the game tonight. Mom went to see her. I don’t know where Aaron ran off to. I heard his truck leave about an hour ago.”
My dad leaned against the door frame. He was still a handsome man, even if his waist was a little thicker and his hair a little thinner. His almond-colored eyes were exactly like mine.
“It’s Friday night. Are you just going to do homework?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I shrugged, closing my book. “Do you have something else in mind?”
“How would you like to go to a movie with your old man? We can see anything you want as long as it’s not a tear-jerker.”
“I’d love to.” I’d always been a daddy’s girl.






 
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Chapter 4


My mother got her way, and Saturday morning found me packed into the car with Lony and on our way to the mall. The official orders from both of our parents were to stay gone all day, but Dad said I could stop by his new place Sunday afternoon to help him settle in.
It’s not like I hated my sister or anything…we just had nothing to talk about. It’s not like when we were little and inseparable. Then, she’d been my best friend, more than that even. We finished each other’s sentences and spoke in a secret language all our own. When our parents finally moved us into separate bedrooms at seven years old, it was six months before I stopped sneaking into Lony’s bed after our parents went to sleep.
High school ruined everything. The summer before freshman year, puberty struck with a vengeance. We each gained five inches of height and added the perfect curves to compliment our slender frames. Lony loved her new body. She relished in the attention it brought her from boys at the public swimming pool. She would parade back and forth in front of the concession stand in her striped bikini, giving coy glances to the boys as she passed. I was slower to accept the changes. I’d always been more athletic than Lony, competing in cross country and track at school and gymnastics on the weekends at a local club. But the growth spurt had knocked me off my rhythm. That summer I spent almost every day at the YMCA reacquainting myself with my body and its limits. While I was too bulky to stay competitive in gymnastics, I was running sprints like Hermes. By the time school started, I was in great physical condition, ready to compete for a shot on the Varsity track team. Lony was ready to compete in a whole different way…she wanted the title of Most Popular Girl in School, and was willing to step on anyone to get it.
Since we had an entire Saturday to kill and the Dubuque mall was pathetically inadequate, Lony crossed the bridge spanning the Mississippi River into Wisconsin, heading toward Madison. Three hours later, I sat outside a dressing room reading a comic book on my e-reader while my sister modeled a seemingly endless series of homecoming dresses for me.
“You really should go to the dance. I mean, it’s Homecoming. Isn’t that like a right of passage or something?” She’d been badgering me the entire ride up to Madison about my lack of interest in school activities.
“You don’t give yourself enough credit,” she rattled on. “I know like five guys who would take you if you wanted to go. If you were desperate, you could even ask Shawn. Not very romantic, but at least he can dance. What do you think of this one?”