Awakening Foster Kelly

by Cara Rosalie Olsen

  “Oh, that’s a load of flabby chunks and you know it.” Emily rolled onto her back, waving a hand in the air. “You’re not seriously trying to convince yourself this is about guilt, are you? Because, you would have to be a complete moron to have missed that he is completely into you, Fost. I know it. Jake knows it. We all know it.” Vaguely aware that Emily had just called me a moron, the thought was there and gone, replaced with something much graver in a matter of seconds.

  “What?” It was a whisper; nothing more. My stomach clenched as if it were a bolt and Emily’s words the wrench. We stared at one another, saying nothing, and Emily growing more amused by the second.

  On her stomach now, she asked with genuine disbelief, “Seriously? You didn’t know? Fost! The guy spent the last six days using his lunch period to go around to all your classes and collect your homework. I have more friends than I do hair on my head, and not one of them would do that for me unless I specifically asked.” She lowered her chin, smirking fiendishly. “You didn’t ask him to do that, did you?”

  Flummoxed, I could not speak. I couldn’t even breathe, actually. I laid a hand on my chest, rubbing small circles. “But . . . we’re just . . . friends,” I whispered. This is what heart palpitations feel like, I thought.

  “Yeah, and I’ll grow to be six feet tall,” again, that deep belly laugh.

  For the next minute or two, or five . . . I didn’t really know, I continued to stare, without really seeing anything. An argument was waging war with my sanity; a rational, methodical voice assured me Emily was mistaken; she couldn’t be certain about the things she’d said, and likely only did say them because, well, that’s the sort of thing Emily did. She was all about reaction—that was for certain. However, the second voice was a whimsical thing indeed, full of folly and incredibly diaphanous. Still, I heard her. Not only did I hear her, I allowed myself to believe her—even if only a little. She floated to the rim of my eardrum, giggling with mirth and forbidden whisperings. Everything went still and quiet as dawn, as she prepared to speak. Two words, this was all she said: It’s true.

  “Okay, well. . .” Emily rose from the bed, pausing on her elbows, angling her head like a small, animated bird. “I can see I’ve just Nagasaki’d you with information the rest of us have been talking about for days.” She went to her knees then, and laughed once, a short breathy sound. “Oh, Fost, I won’t lie, your face right now is kind of awesome; like a question mark exploded. It would seem my work is done here for the day.” She inhaled and sighed, smiling with self-satisfaction as she reached over to pat Rhoda on the head. “Take care of your mommy, okay? She’s having a mild episode, but it’s nothing to be alarmed about. When she comes around, tell her I’m sorry I couldn’t stay longer, but that I met a boy today who might actually surf as well as I do. We’ll find out tonight if the rest of him doesn’t suck.”

  After that, I felt—more than I saw—her bounce up from the bed, all signs of lethargy having vanished with the onset of my “episode.”

  “See you tomorrow, Fost.”

  “Tomorrow.” Absently, I nodded my head. “Okay . . . bye, Em. Thanks for coming over.” I swiveled, turning my body toward the doorway, still feeling far away and outside, as if I was watching everything and speaking from inside a translucent bubble. Laughter carried her all through the hall, down the stairs, and out the front door. I heard it slam shut, and jolted, coming awake.

  A second later my phone buzzed. It was a text—from Emily. I had to read it three times before I understood what she saying.

  I’m thinking late August, at the beach, Rhoda can wear one of those little pillows.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  My eyes flicked toward the clock again—making this about the four hundredth time in the last hour—5:55. Five minutes until six. My nerves felt like a million little bug zappers, buzzing each time I stopped moving, shooting sizzling crackles straight up my spine if I allowed myself to think for too long. I closed my eyes, trying to fill my mind only with the music playing softly in my ears. It didn’t work.

  On a positive note, I had quite easily talked myself through and out of the possibility that Dominic might be interested in me beyond the denominator of circumstantial friendship. Standing in my closet, I came to the full knowledge of that absurdity. The relief was strong; so strong in fact, it had brought tears to my eyes as I changed into a pair of worn, soft blue jeans and a equally soft fuzzy white sweater, threaded with glittery strands. What had I been so worked up about? I wondered. Even if—and really, how much of that was perception and coincidence—it appeared that Dominic had gone above and beyond to help me while I was sick, there must be a perfectly valid, reasonable explanation for this. Or else, where had the phrase, “appearances can be deceiving,” come from?

  I could see why Emily, and even Jake, had believed this with such unwavering resolve. To them, it was simply the way things worked; more often than not—actually, it was never not—the person in question was very much interested in pursuing a relationship. As if provoked, Emily’s laughter rose forth in my mind, immediately followed by pursuing a relationship innocuously mocked back to me.

  “It’s just a date, Fost,” she had said, when I asked her about someone she had met over the weekend. “It’s not like we’re getting married.” Wasn’t that exactly what she had intimated in her text to me, though? Why? Again, I worked to close off that portion of my brain, sealing like a Ziploc bag one click at a time, and focusing solely on the music. It was unnecessary and sadistic to allow myself to be bothered with nonsense. The pragmatist in me was confident that as far as tonight was concerned, I had nothing to be worried about beyond the normal—which would be plenty, I was certain.

  Between the time Emily had left, and now, I’d spent most of it panicking about his impending arrival. It wasn’t until fifteen minutes ago I was struck with banal epiphany of needing to decide on a room for us to occupy once he was here. And food, maybe? I really had not the slightest idea of what this visit entailed. It was altogether possible I was getting way ahead of myself. Dominic had in fact said the words “dropping by” which to me signified a brief stay. If this was true, then wouldn’t it likely make him extremely uncomfortable to find out there were snacks and beverages waiting for us? On the other hand, would he see me as inhospitable and rude if I didn’t have at least the bare minimum prepared? In the end, I decided there was no harm in being prepared. If he did intend only to stay for a moment, then he would never have to know what waited beyond the foyer.

  With the decision made, I set out to thoroughly inspect each room in search of finding the most suitable environment for us, keeping in mind a venue that would best accommodate “friends.” The banquet hall was not remotely a possibility, and neither was my bedroom for various reasons. Moving quickly through a corridor, I continued to assess my options. Knowing my parents would likely be in the kitchen at this hour, preparing dinner or sitting together in front of the bay windows drinking decaf coffee, I crossed that off the list of potentials. I came to stand at an archway of the room closest to the front door. For all intents and purposes, it made the most sense. Should he decide he might like to work on our Senior Piece, the piano would be available, and with the exposed beams, the acoustics in this room were better than others. I gave the space a once over, scrutinizing the starch white couch, the suede love seat arranged at an angle over the gray, white, and gold rug. Tucked into its corner, were charcoal and yellow accent pillows, both tasseled and bejeweled.

  “No,” I said aloud. It was a lovely room, neat, well-decorated, inviting, but also with a formality not conducive to casual conversation. Still, it was a disappointment to rule out the room with the piano. With one last cursory inspection I made the decision, after my eyes came to rest on the glass china cabinet filled copiously with glittering bobbles and heirlooms. Yes, that’s what it felt like, I thought with a sudden awareness: an antique shop.

  The next room up for deliberation was the library. I already knew Dominic enjoy
ed reading as much as I did, and other than my bedroom, this was by far my favorite place to spend hours in leisure. On the walls were large framed paintings, and from the ceiling hung flickering chandeliers, their foggy bulbs original and ambient. Acquired with the house, the exact age of most of these artifacts were unknown, though certainly not from this century. Their tarnished veneer was authentic as was their medieval influences. Splitting the room in half was a very long, very old, waist-high bureau. It had at least forty tiny drawers, each adorned with a brass ring. There were mid-read books spread all along its surface. One I hadn’t picked up since last weekend still lay open, a fine rip zigzagging at the bottom from where I had turned the page too quickly. Stationed all along the bureau were silver-plated candelabras, in them, candles that mourned in the form of waxy tears. Some had been recently replaced, I saw, and others on their last few ignites, no more than a couple inches tall. The wax had spilled over the sides, hard, as if a winter wind had blown through and frozen it. Where they had dripped on the aged wood, hard puddles had formed in milky, amorphous pools. The effect suited the room with as much congruity as the decor, so none of us felt inclined to removing it.

  Directly in front the bureau was a buttery faux leather sofa, flanked with two matching recliners, and a large oval table. Like everything else, it was antique, with sturdy legs in the shape of paws and topped with sparkling glass boasting a time when the people lounging around it wore not jeans and sweatshirts, but corsets and smoking jackets. On the far wall facing the door, was a wood-burning hearth. A house of ivory surrounded the rictus, smooth caramel stones beyond that extending toward the thirty-foot ceilings. Tucked away inside the chimney was a flue in the shape of a lion’s head.

  Very few people knew of the lever concealed in one of the bookshelves, behind the facade of encyclopedias. Spread around the room like wallpaper were endless works of both fiction and non-fiction, their secrets less mysterious, in the form of rarity and diversification. As a family of book collectors and connoisseurs, it wasn’t so much a hobby as it was antiquarian passion. The literature amassed and cherished covered every genre, from classic Herman Melville’s Moby Dick to Bram Stoker’s Dracula, to Medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, and art such as original Kurt Vonnegut and Ralph Steadmen prints, and my father’s sacrosanct first printing of Carl Anderson’s The Physical Review, which chronicled the discovery of the positron and the first known particle of antimatter.

  After almost breaking my neck on the rolling ladder in an attempt to reach Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist, I’d then decided to stay within the lower five rows—which was likely more books than I would ever be able to finish, about three of the twelve thousand. To date, I had only read about three hundred. This didn’t include the multiple, nearly exorbitant, reads of my Jane Austen novels.

  For whatever reason, I had decided against the library, settling at last on the living room. The most unassuming of rooms, it was painted in a soft sage, with friendly Kinkades hanging on the walls. In the way of furniture, it provided massive bean bag chairs and a beige U-shaped couch positioned in front of a rarely used, mounted T.V.

  When I opened my eyes, still doing my best to let the music drown out my worries, I looked at the clock, and with utter dismay saw that it had only been one minute since I’d last checked. I should have stayed right where I was at—sitting on the staircase—but instead went into the living room to check things one last time. The next four minutes were spent in a battle for my life. I’d plopped down on the couch, wanting to make sure that we would be comfortable here, and instantly disappeared into a giant crevice between two plushy cushions. I struggled to extricate myself, but couldn’t manage to gain purchase. I stopped struggling, faintly hearing the gongs of the Grandfather clock. Well, I suppose that was one way to eradicate some time. It was now six o’clock, and I was buried, being eaten alive by my couch.

  Wonderful.

  Time was rapidly waning and I still hadn’t finished setting up the food. Hastily, I ripped into a brand new bag of pita chips, wincing at the anticipated pop. They did pop. They also exploded, spraying into the air like a confetti canon, and now it began to rain pita chips. I heard the sounds of suppressed laughter coming from the doorway behind me, and turned around to find my mom, lips pressed together in a purse.

  “It could have been much worse,” she said optimistically, and began walking toward me. Rhoda lumbered in after her, wasting no time in gobbling up the scattered chips, and working more efficiently than our vacuum. “Think if it would have been salsa or olives.”

  And while I knew she was right—that really, a bag of wasted pita chips wasn’t all that calamitous—I wasn’t feeling entirely reasonable just this moment. I’d been apprehended by a couch, sweated right through my sweater, and now had nothing in the way of snacks to offer Dominic. That had been the very last bag.

  “Mom,” I began, closing my eyes and mastering every bit of composure I had, “he’s going to be here any second, and I have no snacks, a messy room, and crumbs all over me.”

  “Are you sure there’s none left in the bag?”

  I gave it a light shake, then dumped the remnants of chips into the bowl. We both stared at the result—a portion fitting for a not-so-very-hungry squirrel. This was incredibly funny. Not to me, of course, but my mother could not contain herself and bleating laughter burst from her mouth. Her eyes watered and face reddened. I followed her hand with my eyes as it reached into my hair and retrieved a chip. She brought it to her mouth and tossed it in. Her expression turned musing as she chewed. Smacking her lips together with approval, she smiled.

  “Delicious,” she said in enthusiastic murmur. A slow, tentative laugh began in the pit of my stomach, purled inside my throat and sprang from my unwilling lips. I thought it was possible I was crying, but I couldn’t be sure. My mother cupped a hand around my cheek, wet eyes glistening. Then she proceeded to groom me like a mother chimp. I made no attempt to stop her. On the contrary, I was thankful she was there just now, and not only because I needed help with the harder to reach crumbs. We continued to laugh; first her, then me, then the both of us, a cyclical merry-go-round of absurd hilarity.

  Behind me, brushing off my shoulders, she asked softly, “It’s okay to be nervous, baby. I’ll bet he is, too.”

  I took a deep breath, looking down. “I don’t think so.” My hands had begun to tremble lightly. “I don’t think he gets nervous.” I laughed, and not surprisingly it sounded nervous.

  “Everyone gets nervous,” she disagreed, moving facile hands up and down my spine, patting gently. “Even those inherently confident personalities like Emily and Dominic. It’s only that they’ve learned to harness it, turn it into something else.”

  “I wish I knew how to do that,” I said. “It would definitely make things a little easier.” Around him, I almost added, but didn’t.

  She squatted, picking pieces of chips off me, careful not to rip the threads of glitter from their stitches. “Mm—easier isn’t necessarily better, or more helpful,” she countered. “Nerves are like sensors; they tell us when something is dangerous, when something maybe isn’t completely right.” She rose, placing her chin in the slope of my shoulder. “They also tell us when something is very important.”

  The doorbell rang.

  I shook so hard, I saw spots. “He’s here.”

  Almost immediately my mother’s hands came up wrapping tightly around my torso. “Deep breath,” she whispered.

  “But I still need to clean this up,” I replied, casting a frenzied glance at my feet.

  “You don’t worry about this,” she told me, squeezing me once and releasing her grasp. “You just go answer the door, and I’ll take care of everything else.”

  I whirled around. “Are you sure? It’s my mess, I should clean—”

  “Foster.” She cut me off with my name, though it was not said sternly or peremptorily. It was spoken with great understanding and compassion.

  “Thank you,” I whispered, a
nd dashed for the door.

  “Wait-wait-wait!” She whispered after me. “Come back!” I was wearing only socks, and skidded to a halt on the slippery marble floor. I clutched at a small table against the wall and ran back toward my mom, barely catching myself before sliding past the doorway.

  “What is it?”

  “Your hair.” She raised a hand to point at her own silky smooth tresses, spilling in voluminous waves from the pink bandana. No stranger to the aberration on top of my head, I wondered what my mother thought could possibly be done to help the untamable entity that was my curls.

  “Yes?” I asked anxiously, bouncing up and down like a pogo stick. “Is it worse than usual?”

  She shook her head, laughing. “I didn’t have a chance to get to it. Looks like you’ve been playing in the snow.”

  I ran to the mirror hanging on the wall, and gasped. She was right; it looked exactly as if I had gone walking through a blizzard. That, or was suffering from acute psoriasis. Tiny yellowish, umbrageous crumbs covered my whole head, inconspicuous as white paint splattered on a black wall. It took a few seconds to remove one crumb and there were hundreds just like it. Shamefully, I whimpered.

  “I’ll never get them all,” I said, the woe as plainly obvious as the crumbs.

  The day had already begun to catch up with me long before six had arrived. The House of Hope, my completed homework, Emily, Dominic . . . all these were shocks, coming one right after the other and I simply felt drained. Panic and pure exhaustion threatened to capsize my tenuous claim on equanimity. I sucked in a jagged breath and thrust my fingers deeper into my scalp. As soon as I did, however, they were being gently but firmly captured and dropped. My mother’s hands replaced mine, taking hold of both sides of my head. She pulled me toward her, so that I was bent forward, and began to shimmy her fingers up the back of my head, starting at my neck. My face felt tight from the sudden blood rush, but I cared very little, only that she didn’t leave me with bald spots—or like a victim of electrocution. She was careful not to rip through the curls, working carefully, but efficiently.