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 Posted: Wed Apr 12, 2006 12:59 pm
Nick began to pick up things behind the bar. His cat jumped on his shoulder. "Hey buddy!" he said petting him and giving him a peanut.
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Posted: Wed Apr 12, 2006 1:10 pm
!!S.hauna!! Isabella unpacked her suitcase and put her few clothes into the white dresser. She picked out a pair of jeans and a white t-shirt, she wanted to match her house on her first day of working on the farm, then went to the Supermarket to get some seeds.
(Momiji's at your house... She just knocked on the door.)
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Posted: Wed Apr 12, 2006 8:02 pm
Answers the door. "Hi." Wonders if the visitor will notice that the house looks the same on the outside as it does on the inside.
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Posted: Wed Apr 12, 2006 8:58 pm
"I have some pictures for you." Keely's dad handed her a beaten, leatherbound album no bigger than her back jeans pocket with a heart-shaped metal lock on it. "That's from our high school days."
Keely debated wether to just put the album in her pocket and ignore him or to just look at the pictures. She opened the album and instantly wished she hadn't. The picture was of her mother standing in front of a big high school in Washington, smiling and throwing a book in the air. Her hair was short, black, and spikey, the same as it was the last time Keely saw her. She was wearing faded jeans and shirts with logos of old bands Keely had never heard of, that was the same, too. At the bottom of the picture it read: Evana Grows Up.
"That was our first day of high school. Your mother didn't want me to take that picture because she claimed she had a bad hair day." Keely wasn't listening, she was already flipping to the next picture, hoping this was the kind of album that ended after only a couple of pages. There was Evana wearing a tennis uniform pretending to hit Keely's dad in the head with a racket. Her hair was still short, she was wearing less eyeliner than usual, and her black eyes were looking not at the camera but the person taking the picture. Keely never knew her mother to look directly into a camera. She always joked that the camera would steal her soul.
"We took up tennis in high school." Keely saw picture after picture of camping trips, proms, dances, parties and Evana's old friends who had either moved away or died since high school. Keely recognized all of them. Claire, George, Marty, Marlene, Chester, Faire, and Ingrid had all helped to raise Keely. They were her aunts and uncles, until Ingrid and Chester moved to Philidelphia, Marty was transfered to Europe, Claire got married then divorced several times and lost touch with Evana, and Marlene and George got married and moved to Texas where they too stopped writing to Evana. But Keely remembered them.
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Posted: Thu Apr 13, 2006 12:48 pm
"I was wondering if you have any eggs to sell..." Momiji said.
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Posted: Thu Apr 13, 2006 2:27 pm
((Can I show movies at the bar?))
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Posted: Thu Apr 13, 2006 6:44 pm
The wedding picture was what made Keely slam the album shut and weep. Evana was standing underneath an archway of white wood with roses twined around it, her hair long for the first time in her life and in a bun behind her head circled with smaller roses. Keely had seen this picture many times when she was looking through some of her mother's old pictures in a cardboard box underneath her bed labeled, 'My Secrets'. Keely had also found old diaries in there and even a few candy wrappers that smelled of chocolate. The picture was hard to see because Evana got married at night.
"I've had that picture for a while."
"Why?"
"Because Ev..your mother said she didn't want it anymore."
"Why?"
"You know why, Keely. We both know why."
"Why did you?"
"Why did I what?"
"Why did you?"
"Keely, I can't read your mind. What are you trying to say?"
"Leave?"
A long pause followed that. "I left your mother at the hospital when you were born because..because I realized that I had no job, no money for college, no scholarship since your mother and I skipped the last weeks of school to head for our wedding so I never graduated. I had no future. I got scared when the doctors told me I had a daughter and handed you to me. I admit, I never looked down at you but I heard you stop crying and paniced. I gave you back and ran."
"Horrible."
"Keely, I know. Evana gave me back everything I ever gave her then she moved to another part of Washington and moved on. She acted like she didn't need me so I went to New York."
"Then she died."
"Coming home from the supermarket, I know."
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Posted: Fri Apr 14, 2006 6:53 pm
"I don't have any eggs, sorry. I don't even have a chicken." Looks back into her house, feeling self concious about it. Her house was the same color with the same theme throughout the house. She would have to change that really soon..today.
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Posted: Fri Apr 14, 2006 7:06 pm
Keely buried her head in her hands and sobbed for a few minutes. She didn't hear her father make one single sound. 'No wonder my mom never tried to get him back, he's a total jerk!'
"Evana used to say that when you make a mistake, often apologizing doesn't help matters. Allowing the person time to heal, if it was a bad enough fight for that much damage, does a lot of good. I followed her advice for seventeen years and look where we are."
"Yes. Look." Keely growled, forcing her voice not to sound broken but angry, poisonous.
"Keely...I understand that your eighteenth birthday is next year and you would much rather live with your friends than with me. That's understandable, of course, since I haven't ever met you but..you'll have your own house...a cottage on my property here. Sound good?"
"Explain."
"You'll have a kitchen, a big bedroom, a guest room, a couple of bathrooms, a living room, and there are outlets in every room so that you can have tv's in all rooms if you want. Sound good?"
"Fine."
Keely's dad looked relieved. Stupidly relieved. As though he could buy her off with some stupid little cottage and make up for leaving her mother with an infant, even if it was all those years ago.
"And here we are."
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Posted: Sat Apr 15, 2006 6:04 am
"Oh, okay." Momiji nodded. She looked at Isabella's face and smiled. "It'll look good someday. I promise." She turned and left.
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Posted: Sat Apr 15, 2006 8:57 am
The house was made of made of bricks but had been painted black with two stories and a covered front porch. The windows weren't windows on the second story but glass double doors, perfect for jumping out if you wanted to kill yourself, thought Keely sarcasticly. What disturbed her was how black this house was. The front door, the windowsills, the beams holding up the black shingled ceiling on the black floored front porch that wove itself around the house to the black patio in the backyard. And there were no windows at all on the first floor.
"Like it?"
"No."
"Oh, wait until you see the inside." Keely's dad sounded cheery and ignored his daughter's negativity. "Lets go in, you'll love it."
Keely got out of the truck and walked very slowly up one black step to the porch, noticing there were snarling gargoyles lining the edge of the porch all around.
"To protect from evil spirits." Keely's dad explained, looking confused. "You've never heard of gargoyles."
"Yes."
"Oh." Keely's dad opened the front door and stepped inside with Keely ten steps behind him. Keely was wondering why the room looked like a closet and realized it was a coat room. Surprisingly, everything in the coat room was white including the tiles on the floor and the walls and the coat racks. There was a white door straight ahead so Keely ignored her dad putting his coat up and went straight into the house. The living room must have stretched straight from the right side of the house to the left because it was so huge. Paintings of old people Keely had never heard of hung on every inch of the black paneled walls. A couple of couches covered in white sheets stood huddled together along with chairs and coffee tables. Keely realized that all the lights were shaped like candles and hung from brackets in between the paintings.
"Charming, huh?" Keely's dad sounded like a nerdy art collector who'd just entered the greatest museum in the world.
"No." Keely answered flatly.
"Lets go see your cottage, then."
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Posted: Sat Apr 15, 2006 9:16 am
Isabella went to the Supermarket and bought tons of cans of paint, planning on doing the outside of the house first.
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Posted: Sat Apr 15, 2006 10:16 am
Momiji sighed as she walked down the road. She decided to go to the supermarket to get some eggs. When she got to the eggs, she jumped back in alarm. She reached inside her pocket and got five dollars: all the money she had. She looked at the egg cartons. They were $6.50. "So much for making cakes." Momiji muttered, and turned around. As she walked down the road, she saw Isabella carrying a lot of paint cans. "...Hey." Momiji ran up to Isabella. "Need help?"
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Posted: Sat Apr 15, 2006 10:20 am
"Yeah..thanks." Hands Momiji a few cans then has an idea. "I need some help painting, too. I'd pay you..how does a hundred bucks for the inside then a hundred more for the outside? I'll be painting too so you won't have to do it all yourself. Sound good?"
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