by Hotcheri
He came striding in to my room that same night, just as I was prepping myself for bed. I had my milk and cookies by my bedside table and my iPod was plugged into the dock, playing Queen. The vibe I was going for was relaxed. Dad stormed in and ruined the whole atmosphere. At least that wasn’t a surprise.
“We need to talk,” he all but growled, hands gripping a dossier.
Deciding that I needed to be seated for this one, I perched on the side of my bed, looking up at dad with a somewhat cynical look on my face. “Okay?”
He stood near the door nervously, shifting the dossier to one hand and pulling at his tie with his other hand. I was nervous too, come to think of it. I couldn’t remember much of what had happened before the rupture but I knew we’d exchanged some harsh words. Filled with anticipation, I gripped the underside of my bed, hoping that he wasn’t about to restart that argument. We hadn’t been alone in the same room together since I woke up and I wasn’t sure if his coming to visit me when mom, Hope and Faith had long gone home was a good thing or a bad thing. But I knew I was about to find out.
What dad ended up saying shocked the hell out of me.
He threw the dossier onto my bed, evidently going for the theatrical approach. That type of bull didn’t sit right with me. Couldn’t the man just tell me what was up? I was already feeling slightly groggy, I didn’t need to try and process what message dad was trying to send me as he stood in front of me, waiting expectantly for my input.
Trying to hide my yawn behind my hand, I asked, “What's this?” as I gestured to the dossier.
“Your new school documents. Pamphlets, your transcripts and everything you need to know about your new school.”
Sighing, I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. “Oh, great. When am I starting?”
“In two weeks.”
Yup, dad definitely looked nervous. His eyes kept darting from one thing to another, never resting on me and never staying still. I wondered briefly what was up before focusing my attention on what he had just said. I started school in two weeks.
FML.
“I hope it’s not in the boonies,” I joked. While I knew that hardly any private schools in NYC would take me on, I wouldn’t put it past dad to not even try to get me into a private school and just ditch me in the Louisiana Swamps (like literally, in the Louisiana Swamps).
Finally looking at me, dad deadpanned, “It’s in Britain. Surrey, to be exact.”
My eyes felt like they would pop out of my sockets, they were that wide. “What?” I said, my voice coming out as an almost whisper because I had to have heard him wrong. Britain. As in England. As in the United Kingdom. As in across the Atlantic Ocean.
Yeah, I had to have heard him wrong.
“Your plane tickets are in there too,” dad said, pointing at the untouched folder that still lay on my bed. “Don’t lose them.”
I stared up at him, trying to read his expression, to figure out if he was just messing with me. “You’re sending me to a school in the UK?”
Forget about the culture shock, I just wanted to know if he was actually serious!
“I warned you about acting up at school,” dad started, his hands clasped behind his back as he settled into the whole pacing thing. “You didn’t listen. No private school on the East Coast will take you, Luke.” He stopped, looked at me, a holier-than-thou look on his face. “I had to look elsewhere, Luke. Believe me when I say that I have your best interests at heart.”
I wasn’t buying the lines he was spewing. My mind was going a mile a minute as I tried to find faults with his master plan. Almost immediately, a major flaw popped into my head and I glanced up at him, an ‘aha!’ expression on my face.
“But school’s out in June! Why send me off now when I’ll only be there for a couple of months before schools out over there?” I asked, a plaintive note seeping into my voice as I got more worked up. “And why the UK?”
Not that I had anything against England, after all, my mom was from there. But dad knew as well as I did that their schools were completely different to ours. Why the hell didn’t he just send me to California?
His eyebrows bunching together, dad said, “Luke, I told you that you needed an attitude adjustment.”
“Not in those words,” I grumbled, just loud enough for him to hear.
Continuing like he hadn’t heard me, (what else was new?) dad said, “Your erratic behavior in the past six months have made me decide that time away from New York will do you good.”
“But I’ve changed,” I cut in softly, running a hand through my hair as my shoulders slumped dejectedly. “Can’t you see that?”
No matter what dad and I talked about, we always ended up having this same conversation about how I was changing for the better but he was too busy thinking about number one to realize.
A (gasp!) compassionate look in his eyes, dad said, “I know you may think that you’ve changed for the better ever since you got expelled, but I’ve had more experience with people than you have, son. And I know full well that personality wise, people don’t change just like that.” He fixed me with a level stare. “Especially you.”
“What do I need to do to prove myself to you?” I asked in a small voice, all the fight trickling out of me.
Sighing, dad told me, “Luke, I don’t want to argue with you, especially in your condition.”
“Dad-,” I cut in, but he was on some kind of roll and he just talked over me, nose pointing imperiously into the sky.
“I need to get you away from your influencing factors.”
Now running both hands through my hair, I was that frazzled, I asked, “What are my influencing factors?”
I didn’t drink, smoke, party all night or do drugs anymore, hadn’t for over a year, not since Shane died and I realized I had to reevaluate my life. So I was as curious as hell to hear what dad deemed to be my ‘influencing factors’.
“Ahmed and company. That blonde girl. Joanna.”
I let out a laugh which didn’t have a shred of humor in it. “I thought you loved me hanging out with people with money,” I exclaimed, rubbing his snobbishness in his face.
“They are bad influences on you, whether they have money or not,” dad replied, trying to act like what he was saying wasn’t hypocritical.
“I don’t even talk to them since I got expelled! What makes you think that I’ll start hanging out with them again when I get out of the hospital?”
Solemnly, like he had a PhD in figuring all this out, dad said, “I don’t want you succumbing to temptation.”
I rolled my eyes, glad that the meds I was on were strong enough to dull all the righteous anger I would have otherwise been filled with from hearing dad churn out all his self-righteous bull. My blood pressure didn’t need to soar any higher, thank you very much.
“Why the UK?” I asked quietly, staring at my hands as I tried to come up with a loophole. Unfortunately, nothing came to mind.
“That’s your mother’s decision.”
Quickly, I looked up at dads words. “Huh?”
“She’ll be opening a practice in Surrey and keeping an eye on you at the same time.”
Frowning, I said, “What? But she hates it there!” Something was going on. Why would mom suddenly decide to leave behind her calling to set up an office in suburban England? “And she’s going back to New Orleans when I’m better.”
Dad shook his head, a grim expression on his face as he resumed pacing. “Not anymore, she’s not. She’ll be taking care of you.”
My eyes narrowed at the way he said the last part. Like there was absolutely no room for discussion, which meant that mom had pretty much agreed to whatever decision dad had made. But why? The answer dropped into my mind with ease and I sighed. Of course. A common tactic of the conniving business man. “Dad,” I said firmly, waiting for him to make eye contact before I continued. “Did you bribe her into doing this?”
His next words threw me off, so condescending and utterly pompous was his voice.<
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“I made her an offer that she couldn’t refuse.” He stared down at me. “Anyway, you wanted to bond with her, now’s your chance.”
Did he never understand? He actually thought he was doing me a favor? Sure, I wanted to bond with my mother, but not this way! This just seemed too forced for my liking, catering to what Lucas Astor senior wanted without much regard to anybody else.
“But she’ll hate me for this,” I whispered, my body growing cold.
I never thought that my acting out would impact so many people on so many different levels. I ran a shaking hand over my face, trying to slow my heart rate with deep breaths. Was this it? I had to leave behind everyone and everything I loved and all because I tried to be a total degenerate to get my dad’s attention? Well, I had certainly succeeded at getting him to pay attention, but at what cost? Now my mother was giving up her dream, not to mention her whole life, for me. I wondered what the hell dad had offered her to get her to agree and groaned as the sudden answer hit me.
He’d offered her me.
“No. I won’t hate you, Luke.”
I gasped as mom walked through my room’s open door, her hair flowing down her shoulders.
“Mom, I don’t want to go. Don’t do this,” I pleaded, starting to get to my feet and groaning with pain as my head pounded. With a grunt of frustration, I sat back down, my hands clenched into fists. “Don’t give up your life for me.”
I knew I sounded as melodramatic as a soapie actor but I couldn’t help myself.
Mom smiled serenely as she sat down next to me. “I’m not. Well, I am, but it’s for the best.” She stroked my forehead as she went on. “I’d rather practice medicine in and office in Surrey and have you near me than be out in New Orleans knowing that you’re here. Your dad has had you to himself for all these years. Now it’s my turn and if I have to go into private practice to have you, then go into private practice I will.”
“There you go, everything’s settled,” dad exclaimed, a mock hearty note in his voice as he clapped his hands. “Get some sleep and read up on your new school in the morning. I pulled a lot of strings to get you into Charterhouse and I don’t want you to mess it up.”
I knew full well what that look on his face meant. Case closed, class dismissed. That could only mean one thing. I was going to the UK in two weeks’ time. How the hell was I going to break it to CiCi?
Dropping a kiss on my cheek, mom whispered, “Goodnight, Luke. I’ll be here bright and early to explain more.”
***
Making things right with a specific ex friend was only part of my preparations to leave NYC. The bigger and most important part was telling CiCi I was leaving. I still hadn’t done that yet (I know, I’m a horrible person). My flight was just over a week away and I still couldn’t muster up enough courage to tell her I would be gone for a year. That’s right, I would rather apologize to Ahmed for punching him than tell CiCi I had to leave due to my own stupidity. My one-way trip had only started to sink in when I had to explain to Faith why people were packing up my stuff at home. I was only taking a couple of cases of stuff with me, the rest was going into storage. Having to hold Faith as she cried wasn’t something I ever wanted to go through again.
“But I need you,” she kept wailing, as I soothingly whispered in her ear, wanting to cry myself. “You can’t leave me, Luke! I need my big brother!”
Yeah, that was tough.
Ahmed picked up on the second ring, sounding disoriented. Oops. Guess I shouldn’t have called him at 7am on a Saturday. Ahmed wasn’t a morning person.
“Yeah?” he said, his voice raspy.
Swallowing nervously, I said, “Hey, Ahmed, it’s me. Luke.”
There was a short silence and for a moment I thought he had hung up on me. “Astor?”
I grinned at the familiar nickname. Nobody but Ahmed called me Astor. “Yeah.”
“What the hell, dude? What happened to you? You just disappeared off of the face of the world and- is it true that you’re in hospital?”
“Yeah,” I said slowly.
Ahmed sucked in a breath. “What happened, dude?”
Pointedly, I replied, “If you’d really wanted to know I think you would’ve found out by now.”
Okay, so I wasn’t calling him to start something else, but I couldn’t help feeling slighted that I had been MIA for two and a half weeks and nobody knew what had happened to me. Even though we’d been fighting, it still rankled to know that my so-called friends didn’t really care enough to find out why I’d been hospitalized.
“I tried, man,” Ahmed said slightly petulantly. “We all tried to find out what was up, but you know how the grapevine at school is! Can’t trust it. Robyn wasn’t talking, so I couldn’t get the scoop from her. I called your cell phone a couple hundred times- nothing.”
“Why didn’t you ask Celsi?”
I couldn’t help feeling heartened by hearing that Ahmed had tried to find out where I had gone and what had happened.
“We tried but she blew up at us.” Ahmed let out a shaky sounding laugh. “It was scary, dude. She went all super saiyan on us. Called us fake and phony.” He laughed again and I chuckled, imagining it in my mind’s eye. You did not want to get on CiCi’s bad side. I had found that out the hard way. “It was pretty impressive, but yeah. What happened with you?”
“I had an aneurysm and it ruptured.”
“No way!” Ahmed sounded shocked.
I nodded sagely, even though he couldn’t see me on the other end. “Yup.”
“And- and you’re okay now?”
“All things considered, yeah. I’m pretty good.”
His voice was tinged with awe as he said, “Wow. That’s incred- you’re incredible, dude.”
“Thanks, Ahmed.”
“Jeeze, I had no idea!”
“Yeah, I’ve had the aneurysm for a while now. That’s why I was getting all those headaches,” I explained.
“Why didn’t you tell us?” Ahmed asked.
I sighed. “Ahmed.”
“I guess we would have been jerks about it, huh?” Ahmed answered sheepishly.
Tugging a hand through my bed head hair, I replied, “That’s what I thought.” Hesitantly, I continued. “Speaking of jerks, I- I wanted to say sorry for the whole fight club incident. I’m sorry, dude.”
“You mean the battle royale?” Ahmed laughed. “That was my fault. I shouldn’t have baited you.”
“I shouldn’t have swung at you.”
“But I should have tried to tell the truth to Principal Herman,” Ahmed protested.
I snickered loudly. “Dude, you told so many lies that I thought your nose was going shoot off!”
“I’m sorry, bro.”
“It’s all good.”
And just like that, it was all forgotten.
“I guess I was pissed coz you were changing,” Ahmed said slowly.
I raised my eyebrows. “I was?”
“Yeah, man. You know we only started hanging out and becoming tight right before Shane’s accident, when you were the badass, pissing off daddy dearest left right and center.”
Nodding, I said, “Yeah.”
I remembered those days with a pang of regret. If I had done things differently, who knows where I would have ended up?
“Shane and I didn’t get along coz he was such a good guy when we started hanging out. You were more like me, selfish, inconsiderate, and stuck-up.”
I sighed. “I remember that.”
Boy, did I!
“When you started hanging out with Celsi you started changing just like Shane did. You reminded me of him.”
That gave me a jolt. “I did?”
Ahmed chuckled. “Yeah. And it pissed me off coz you were changing for the better and everybody noticed.” He sighed as I listened intently. “I wanted you to stay the same as me. Party all night, drink all day, and never mind what the haters say. But you started to care and you started to blow us off for Celsi and it made me mad coz I wa
s jealous. I envied you, Luke. I envied how you could just change for the better without looking back.”
“So that’s why you tried to cock block me,” I said lightly.
“I didn’t want you to be happy, I guess. Especially with my little sisters best friend. I was a hater, Luke. But now- I’m over it. I’m happy for you. Seriously.”
My mind reeling from Ahmed’s revelation, I said, “I don’t have much time to be happy with her, though.”
“What? Why?”
Briefly, I told him about my dad’s plan for me to finish school in Surrey, of all places.
“When do you leave?”
“Next week.”
A sharp intake of breath. “Shit.”
“I know.”
Hesitantly, like he was sure I would say hell no, Ahmed asked, “Can I come visit you before you leave? I have a sudden desire to hear you say ‘pound it’ one more time.”
“Anytime, man.”
Celsi’s Point of View
The weekend found me at the El Hamed’s penthouse hanging out with Shazia and Robyn as we watched a couple of sappy movies. Ah, there’s nothing quite like a girls night out. We were trying to get in our fair share of bonding in preparation for my trip to Los Angeles. I was starting to get excited about it myself, even though I couldn’t help being nervous. I’d never travelled outside New York and now I was going all the way across the country to stay with the father I had just met and his fiancé. I was scared. What if she doesn’t like me? What if I don’t like L. A.? But I tried to keep all the negativity in check because I had no idea what was in store for me. The power of positive thinking is a force to be reckoned with.
Anyway, I really didn’t have anything to be stressed over right now. My face was almost back to normal, people had stopped looking at me like I was Rihanna V2 and my boyfriend was awake. What more can a girl ask for?
Shazia sank onto a body pillow with a bag of popcorn in her hands. She glanced at Robyn, who was busy texting on her new cell phone.
“Who are you texting?” she exclaimed, thumping her fist on the floor.