Starburst

by Jettie Woodruff

  When he reentered the kitchen, Alley was there in very short white shorts and a light pink tank- top that showed her midsection. She looked up to him with an annoyed look and grabbed a bottle of water and a granola bar from a bowl on the island.

  “I can make you some breakfast if you want,” he offered.

  “I’m fine,” she replied with a malicious look and disappeared back up the steps.

  Trevas never saw her again the entire day. He watched a cooking show and made a delicious chicken stir fry recipe from one of the shows. He called up for her to come and eat but only got the same answer. “I’m fine,” she called back, and Trevas looked out around midnight when he heard her in the kitchen warming up food.

  Sunday was the same way. He saw her in the morning to get a granola bar, and then she came back down around four and went to her dad’s office with a book and closed the door. He tapped on the door about an hour later, and she opened it, annoyed that he was bothering her.

  “I have supper ready, please come and eat,” he begged, and she almost told him to get lost until she smelled it and decided that she was hungry.

  “I’ll be out in a minute,” she stated.

  Trevas had them both a plate on the table. He made shrimp with spaghetti noodles in a white sauce, sautéed asparagus and homemade French rolls.

  Alley took her plate and walked upstairs.

  “Well that went well,” he said out loud, and she turned to look at him with a cold glare and continued back to her room.

  Trevas ate, cleaned up the mess and noticed that she had left the light on in the office. He went in and looked at the opened book on the desk. When he moved the mouse he noticed that she had been trying to find help for a trigonometry problem, and he was impressed. “Well she’s not a dumbass,” he said out loud and then felt like a dumbass himself when he looked up to see her standing in the door.

  She didn’t speak to him, gave him a dirty look and slammed her book.

  “I might be able to help you,” he offered, and she snickered.

  “I’m sure you couldn’t,” she stated smartly.

  “Try me,” he countered. She hesitated briefly and reopened the book, flipping through the pages. There was no way this guy could answer a division problem let alone a trigonometry one.

  “Number twenty four.” She slid the book across the desk, crossed her arms and stared at him with a clinched jaw.

  Trevas looked at the crossed arrows, reading the problem, and asked her where her formula calculator was. She opened the desk and tossed it to him, sliding it across the smooth desk. He studied it for a few minutes and scribbled on the notebook.

  “Start from the initial side on the horizontal axis, positive direction, then rotate 435 degrees in the negative direction to locate the terminal side which is in quadrant four,” Trevas explained and although she was impressed, she wasn’t about to let it show and it still didn’t help her understand it. She was taking the final the following day, and that was what she was worried about. If she couldn't figure out how to do it then the answer really didn't matter.

  “That didn’t help at all,” she told him bluntly.

  Okay try to remember that 435 degrees = 360 degrees + 75 degrees.”

  Alley stared down at the notebook that he had been scribbling on, looked back to the problem in her math book and then to him. “Hmm,” she said, intrigued and realized how he had gotten it.

  “Thanks,” she said, scooping up her things and leaving him alone.

  “You are welcome,” he said to himself again. He hurried out and called up the stairs to her. “What time do you have to be at school?”

  Alley turned on the steps and gave him that, ‘don’t talk to me look,’ again. She twisted her mouth to the side, and he smirked amused at her. “Seven thirty,” she shot down to him, spun on her toes and continued upstairs.

  Trevas watched some sports and turned in around ten at night. He was up before Alley and made her an egg sandwich and had it on the island. He was just getting ready to yell up to her when she emerged, wearing a plaid blue and green skirt with a button up short sleeved white shirt, which also showed her midsection from the skirt riding low on her hips. She had on the same white converse sneakers from the night before and an army green back pack thrown over her shoulder.

  I don’t remember school uniforms looking like that.

  Alley grabbed a granola bar from the bowl on the island and ignored him or didn’t hear him from the earphones shoved in her ears, when he told her the sandwich was for her. She continued to the side door leading to the garage and got in the backseat of the black, dark windowed SUV.

  “Ten thousand dollars Trevas, ten thousand dollars,” he told himself and followed her out.

  He made her take out the earphones long enough to tell him where he was going.

  “Corner of Franklin and Matthew,” she answered irritated.

  Trevas drove in silence the twenty minute drive and occasionally glanced at her frozen expression as she listened to the MP3 player and stared blankly out the window.

  Trevas watched her goaded reaction as he followed the line of traffic to the front street of the catholic school, scoping out the surroundings.

  “Is there a problem Ms. Fletcher?” He asked, after watching her take the earphones out and storing the MP3 player in her bag, rolling her eyes at and shaking her head at him, looking around to get a feel of their surroundings.

  “Nope, you’re all alike. This is fine,” she told him.

  He parked in front of the school and got out and opened her door, and again she was agitated with him.

  “I don’t need you to follow me to the door. I’m pretty sure I know the way from here,” she snapped at him, walked past him and glared at him again when he continued to follow her up the concrete steps, to the door, along with the other security, escorting teenage girls to the door.

  Trevas called Chase as soon as he was back on the road. “I just wanted to tell you that I officially hate your fucking guts,” he told him as soon as he answered, and Chase laughed.

  “So it’s going good, uh?” He joked.

  “This girl is evil Chase. I don’t think I can do this for one week, let alone six or eight.”

  “You can do it, I have faith in you.”

  “No you don’t. I’m the rookie. I got this job because no one else would do it and you tricked me into.”

  “I didn’t trick you. I just didn’t give you all the facts. You make it through this Trevas, and I will give you your pick with the next one.”

  “I’m holding you to that,” he demanded. “I think I need to go to Hawaii or Fiji or someplace tropical. I’m not kidding you Chase, this girl is such a little bitch.”

  “I know… I had coffee with Kim Lipscome this morning. Hang in there, you got this,” Chase tried to reassure him, and he groaned.

  The first thing that Trevas did when he arrived back at the house was go to her room. He wanted to see what he was up against. He opened her bathroom door, and the first thing he noticed was a wet towel and a pair of skimpy panties on the floor. He closed the door quickly and left. He opened her closet and was surprised by her choice of clothing. She mostly had jeans, concert t-shirts, hoodies, and of course her school uniforms. There were four pairs of shoes. A pair of blue sneakers like the pair she had worn to school, two pair of flip-flops and a pair of high-heeled dress shoes that he was sure, she had never worn.

  Her room didn’t look like a teenage girl’s room at all. It was done in olive green and gold. The bed was neatly made, which also surprised him, in an olive green satin comforter with gold trim and matching pillows, lined the top. There were no teenage posters, magazines or CD’s. He noticed the laptop on the desk and wondered why she had come down stairs the night before to use her dads. He quickly found out when he powered it on, and it was slower than molasses. He thought for sure it would have been password protected but was pleasantly surprised when it was not.

  He was surprised again when he
didn’t find a facebook account. He went into her history and laughed when he had seen that she had googled his name, although the only thing that she found was an article about him returning home from his tour in Afghanistan in his local Utah paper and his phone number and address. She’s probably plotting to kill me, he thought. He clicked on the twitter account, also in her history and had to laugh again when he read her post. She only had one friend that she followed, and it wasn’t anyone that he was concerned about. It was someone that went by the name of Shakespeare, and he or she was from Alabama. He almost felt guilty when he read what she had written.

  Alley Cat – “We have a friend of a friend staying here for a few weeks and he is so freaking hot”

  Shakespeare – “What does he look like? How old is he?”

  Alley Cat – “He has dark messy hair that is so damn sexy, he is tall and is built like something that just walked out of a magazine. I would guess him around twenty five, twenty six maybe.”

  Shakespeare – “Is he nice?”

  Alley Cat – “No… he’s a dick,”

  Trevas laughed again. That was the extent of the conversation about him and then she was asking her friend about how to do the math problem, but he or she didn’t know. He pulled up a term paper that she had started on, and read through it a little. It was on the Greek philosopher Socrates, and he was impressed with her writing.

  Trevas knew that she would probably throw a fit, but did some maintenance on her laptop, and after two, hours had her computer running ten times faster.

  He put on a pair of swimming trunks and swam a few laps in the long narrow pool, and had to jump out when his cellphone rang. He had a peculiar look on his face when he saw that it was Nicholas Fletcher.

  “Evans,” he answered.

  “Do you have any idea where my daughter is?” He asked angrily.

  “I dropped her at school at seven thirty sir?” He replied, and hoped that she had not escaped.

  “She is sitting in the principal’s office, waiting for someone to pick her up because she just got suspended for three days for smoking. Where did she get cigarettes Trevas?”

  “I assure you, I don’t know sir. She must have had them from before. She has been nowhere.”

  “Could you go get her and keep her out of trouble, please,” he begged. “I’m in Fiji in the middle of a take, and I do not want another call that has anything to do with my daughter getting in trouble. Am I clear Trevas?” He asked, before hanging up.

  “Yes sir, I’m on my way there now.”

  “Son of a bitch,” he yelled, grabbing the towel and heading back inside. He threw on the black attire and pulled up to the front door thirty minutes later. He had to go in and talk to the nun principle, and listen to her talk to him as though he was her father. She told him that she had a term paper due on Wednesday and that they were going to allow her to do it, and she could email it to her teacher. She told him that she could come back to school on Friday and that she still had one more English final to complete. Alley sat slumped in a chair beside of him with one leg perched over the other while her foot moved rapidly up and down.

  Trevas walked out in front of her, not security protocol at all, but he didn’t care. He was pissed, and she knew it as she followed him out. He opened the front passenger door for her, and they stared at each other briefly, both with angry expressions. She didn’t protest the front seat and got in. She pulled the MP3 player from her bag, and he grabbed it away from her. She narrowed her eyes with an malicious look but didn’t speak.

  “Where are the cigarettes?” He asked, with an angry tone.

  “I don’t have any. I got one from someone else,” she insisted.

  He grabbed the army green bag and opened it up. He pulled the green pack of menthol cigarettes out, crushed them in his hand and tossed them to the street while she glared at him.

  “What the hell Alley?” He asked as he pulled out into the traffic. “You may be a spoiled little rich kid, but I need my job. Some of us have to work for a living, besides you are way to pretty to have those things hanging out of your mouth.”

  The last part surprised her. “Can I have my MP3 player back now?” She asked with her attitude tone.

  He took it from between his legs and handed it to her, and they rode home in silence as she stared vacantly out the window.

  Alley of course went straight upstairs to her room, Trevas mixed a drink and went to the pool. He sat on the end of lounge chair and ran his fingers through his hair, dreading the next six or eight weeks and prayed that it was six and not eight.

  “You look like an idiot dressed like that by a pool,” he heard her say, and looked up to see her perched with her elbows on the side of her balcony.

  “I was in the pool before I had to come and bail you dumb ass out,” he rebuked.

  “My dad would fire you if he heard you talk to me like that.”

  “Oh, what a pity that would be,” he said, in a smart tone, looking up to her. “Somebody needs to take a belt and beat your little ass,” he added.

  “Whatever,” she said, flipped him her middle finger, turned and went back inside.

  Trevas lost himself, and the stress in a well prepared meal. He used his laptop and watched a cooking video and made a beautiful orange glazed salmon, green beans with pancetta and shallots with a spicy Napa cabbage noodle dish that he twisted into a circle on each of their plates. The meal looked like something that would have been served in a five star restaurant, and he proudly took a picture of the two well-dressed plates with his cellphone.

  He went up and knocked on her door, letting her know that he had supper ready, and of course he ended up wrapping hers in saran wrap because she was fine and wouldn’t come down.

  “I’m fine,” he mocked in a whiny voice as he placed hers on the shelf in the refrigerator. He ate his, and his taste buds loved him for it. It was delicious and once he was done he wrote the recipe down in a notebook that he carried in his bag.

  Trevas watched TV in the living room and never saw Alley again, since their encounter by the pool. He felt bad for what he had said to her, but after thinking about it more, he decided that he didn’t feel bad at all, and somebody did need to put the spoiled little brat in her place.

  Trevas woke up around midnight when he heard her warming up food. He pulled on a t-shirt and his jeans and went out. He sat at one of the stools on the other side of the island, and she looked at him cautiously.

  The microwave dinged, and he knew it was a matter of time before she took her plate and stormed back upstairs, but she didn’t and he was surprised.

  “This looks amazing,” she told him and bent to take a fork from the dishwasher.

  “I’m sure it was better when it was fresh,” he assured her.

  “Hmmm, I don’t know about that,” she stated as her taste buds discovered the exquisite taste.

  “You can sit down,” he told her nodding to the stool beside him and wondered what the terrified expression was about that had flashed across her face, briefly.

  “I’m fine,” she stated again, and he snickered.

  He got up and slid a stool around to her, and understood why she hadn’t stormed off to her room or why she wouldn’t sit on the stool next to him.

  She was standing on the other side wearing a short white tank-top and mint green panties, barely covering her hairline. He turned his head quickly.

  “Shit, I’m sorry,” he said, and didn’t know whose face was more red, his or hers.

  “If you will just turn around for a second I will go to my room,” she offered.

  “No…eat your food, besides. I can’t take much more of keeping my own company. I’m not used spending this much time with myself.”

  Alley flipped a switch under the island and an electronic checkerboard was revealed.

  “Wow, that’s pretty cool,” he laughed when he moved the black checker back and forth with his finger, and it made a swooshing noise. “Are there any more games?” He aske
d.

  “You don’t like checkers?”

  “Yeah, I was just curious,” he replied. “Do you want to play?”

  “I don’t care. It’s not like I have to get up for school or anything,” she answered.

  “Yeah, I kind of think that was the plan all along,” he told her and she ignored the statement.

  “There are more games. This was just the one that it was on when it was closed out last. Who do you normally spend your time with?” She asked, getting back to his previous statement.

  “You want to ask questions? Let’s ask questions,” he said, and she looked at him with a careful look and narrowed eyes. “For every jump I get, I get to ask you a question, and for every one you get, you get to ask me a question.”

  She pressed her lips together and twisted them slightly to the side.

  “Ladies first,” he added, not giving her time to say no, and she pulled the stool closer and sat down. She moved a checker and took another bite of the salmon.

  They didn’t talk while they both planned their moves and tried to jump each other. Alley continued to eat her food and then pushed it away once she had eaten every bite. She pulled one leg up, and Trevas had to make himself turn away when he noticed that he was staring at her bare leg, pulled to her chest.

  Alley got the first jump. “You can just answer my first question,” she stated.

  “Who do I usually spend my time with?” He repeated the question. “I work a lot, so I spend my time with famous kids like you.”

  “I am not famous,” she stated, matter-of-factly.

  “You know what I mean,” he countered.

  “What do you do when you aren’t working?” She asked.

  “That’s two questions,” he replied and ignored the last one until she got the next jump again.

  “I cook, sometimes go out to a club, workout,” Trevas had to smile when he noticed the expression after saying that he worked out. She kind of nodded her head, and raised her eyebrows, as if she was saying ‘obviously.’