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My senior year, Lorna and I met again. Antonio Tavarez had killed himself early my junior year (drove his Lexus into a tree). I suppose that’s why Lorna didn’t come then.
It was a Sunday night right before a big geometry exam and I had spent the greater part of the weekend studying. It was my second time taking the course. I had given up halfway through the previous semester, much to the disappointment of my parents.
Anyway, I was turning off my lights, about to climb into bed, when there was a knock on my bedroom door. I figured it was my mother coming to offer me the luck of the Irish, as she often did before important days. Imagine my shock to find Lorna on the other side.
“Please don’t tell me you were about to go to sleep.” She crossed into the room and closed the door behind her. “What are we? Ten?”
“I have a test tomorrow.”
“Point being?”
I watched her as she took a seat on my bed and looked around. She looked like she was dressed for school or how she dressed for school anyway. She had on a tight, black mini dress, covered by a tiny denim jacket and was wearing the pink Timberland boots. Her hair was pulled into a low ponytail and she wore gold hoops.
She gestured for me to sit next to her and I did.
“I thought you were dead,” I said, because it seemed reasonable.
“Don’t be rude.” She grabbed my hand and touched her neck with it before sliding it down the length of her body, into her lap.
“Does this feel dead to you?”
I took my hand back and covered the Judas in my boxers. She looked down and smiled.
“Guess not.”
“Why are you here?”
She frowned at me before getting up and going over to my closet. She grabbed my jacket from its hanger and then picked up a pair of Wellcourt sweatpants from the floor.
“You should really clean up a little…or do you want everyone to say you were a slob?”
She threw the pants at me and I put them on. I followed her as she opened my bedroom door and stepped out.
We passed my parents room and my mother called out. She had hearing like an elephant.
“Robbie, I thought you were going to sleep.”
“I was.”
She came to the doorway of their bedroom. She was wearing the Wellcourt sweatshirt I had outgrown since my freshman year. Her curly hair was everywhere and I was a little embarrassed with her looking that way in front of Lorna.
“If you’re not going to sleep then I’m going to vacuum.”
I looked at Lorna and she nodded.
“That’s fine, mom.”
“Alright, Robbie.” My mother turned back into the bedroom. “Don’t stay up too late.”
“Okay.” I followed Lorna downstairs to the kitchen.
“Those are nice knives.” She nodded to a set on the counter. “Real clean. Stainless?”
“I guess.”
She opened the fridge and scanned it.
“Ooh lala.” She pulled out a bottle of my parents red wine. “The good stuff.”
“Don’t make fun of my family.”
“I wasn’t.” She turned to face me, still leaning over into the fridge. “Sorry.”
She handed me the bottle and turned back to the fridge. She held out a finger as she searched for something. Finally she settled on a Tupperware container of leftover lasagna from dinner. She put it in her backpack, then took the wine from me and put that in there too.
She stood up, turned and brushed my shoulder as she left the kitchen and opened the front door.
I glanced up at the stairs and turned back to Lorna.
“Where are we going?”
“The roof.”
At that moment I heard the whur of the vacuum cleaner being turned on. My mother’s feet shuffled softly across the floor as she pushed it. I followed Lorna over the threshold and closed the door behind me.