Things Worth Remembering by Jackina Stark

Author:Jackina Stark
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2009-09-30T20:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Maisey

Marcus seems content enough, watching the road and listening to ESPN. I have been listening to my iPod since we left the house. The first fifteen minutes we were on the road, I gave rapt attention to the countryside flying by the passenger window, remembering for some reason that this scenery has charmed my mother for decades. And I must admit, I love it too. Gram cannot grasp the concept. She honestly feels like she’s back to nature when she sits on her tenth-story patio balcony among the lights of the city and catches a glimpse of her hanging fern and the pot of red geraniums on the glass table next to her.

I took out my earphones a minute ago, just in time to hear yet another argument heating up on the radio—more on the steroid issue. How can that be? I gave Marcus a quick smile and returned to my tunes.

I’ve reclined the seat a little, and I’m hiding behind my eyelids. Marcus will say I slept most of the way to Indy, but he will be wrong. I am not asleep. Far from it.

I’m thinking, and how I wish I weren’t, about shopping in Indy with my mother. We used to shop till we dropped in a couple of really cool shopping malls. She and I made the trek to Indy several times a year from the time I started first grade through the seventh. We went when I was in high school too, but then Jackie or someone always shopped with us—the more the merrier.

I’m thinking specifically about a beautiful winter day that seems as long ago and far away as any in a fairy tale. I was in the seventh grade, and Mother and I were looking for a dress for the Valentine’s dance. I had confessed to Mother the thrilling fact that one of her favorite former students wanted to meet me in the gym and dance the night away—make that dance away the two hours between six and eight. I thought that was pretty nice of the guy, considering that only two months earlier my dad had refused to let me “date” him simply because that pretty much required holding hands in the halls between classes.

I told Mom I needed to look fantastic, and she understood. That shopping trip was unusually successful. We found a darling dress, grown-up but not too grown-up, and half off half price. Mom said we saved so much money on the dress I could get some shoes to go with it, my first pair with a little heel (which made me a little heel taller than my love interest), and a few accessories—a clip for my hair and a necklace I still have. Mother said I would look more than fantastic and maybe we could get out of the house before Dad noticed the heels.

Before we left the mall, we ate hamburgers and fries and shared a malt at Johnny Rockets, but the most memorable part of a memorable day was the trip home: Mom had to pull into a Wal-Mart so she could run in and throw up.

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