First, let me say that the names of the women involved have been changed to protect their identity. Should this story get out, it’s not right that their reputations should be ruined, over a required class project.
Second, my story may be more torrid and salacious than would be normally acceptable. In some parts it is quite explicit about activities of a sexual nature. I’m not trying to cause trouble, but you were the one that insisted the story be true and engaging. Truth be told, this is what I was engaged with over the holidays. So I will tell the story honestly and to the best of my ability, and let the chips fall where they lay.
Third and finally, I want to say for the record this isn’t a fair assignment. Nobody who reads this is going to believe it, even though I swear to its 100% veracity. Even if they were to believe it, I’ll probably get a zero because of the subject matter. Like that’s my fault? It’s what happened! If I somehow were to get a pass on the subject matter, and word got out, I’d be ruined. Everyone would think I was a sneaky, immoral, sick, and opportunistic bastard.
I’m not sneaky.
I hadn’t meant to eavesdrop on Mom and Teri. I would even argue it wasn’t my fault. I had every right to be where I was, when I was, doing what I was.
‘Where I was’ was lying on the couch in the family room. ‘When I was’ was the middle of the afternoon, December 11th, one day before school was supposed to be finished. I had no exams the last two days, and took off for home a day early. ‘What I was doing’ was napping, due to my lassitude from packing up and driving five hours home from college, to start my Christmas break.
Such decisions are what lives are made of.
If this was one of those stories, I’d probably have walked in on Mom with her black boss, our slimy neighbor and her secret lesbian lover, in a menage a quatre. I would have had to use my national champion karate skills I learned as a Navy Seal to kick some butts, my underworld minions would ship her off to a Mexican brothel, and I’d utilize my recent lottery winnings to do various and sundry nefarious things to those who had led my mother astray.
Oh. Never mind. That’s what Dad would have had to do, but Dad’s gone, five years now. I forget sometimes that not all of a father’s duties trickle down to old first born, only son. Although a few more of them have lately, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
This is not one of those stories, and I’d appreciate it if you stopped trying to get me off track. Like I said, it was not my fault. I was minding my own business.
It was the sobbing that first pierced the veil of torpidity that enveloped me. I was about to speak up, but I held back. My sister is one of the least emotional girls I’ve ever met. My football coach (Second string, outside line-backer. No superstar here, sorry, this is non-fiction) used to say ‘suck it up.’ Baby sis had lived with enough pain and heartache to last a lifetime. She endured it all, never letting it show. When it came to ‘sucking it up,’ she could give a Dyson a run for its money.
She was in the car when Dad had the accident. She was trapped in her seat, both legs badly broken. She had to lay there in agony while she saw the light fade from his eyes. The last words Dad uttered was to tell her he was sorry, and to tell Mom he loved her. Teri was 13 years old, and missed an entire semester of school, spending the time with doctors, in hospitals, in surgery, and undergoing extremely painful physical therapy. The next semester she was almost kicked out of school for refusing to wear shorts for P. E. until the school principal saw the scars. She received a waiver. Her sophomore year she was bullied horribly. She kept it a secret, and endured the pain privately, until I found out.
When moms and dads find out something like that, they go to the teachers, the principals, the school board, and the parents. I went to the school bathrooms, male and female, and dealt with things personally, out of public view. Second string linebacker, remember? I might not have been a great athlete, but I was big and strong, and very angry. Hurting my sister after what she’d been through wasn’t right. Eventually all the miscreants involved agreed. They lamented their actions. I did get suspended, but it was only for three days and worth it.
My sister endured. She was tough, and kept her emotions bottled up. She had stopped crying after Dad’s funeral. I had never seen her cry since. Hearing her sobbing like that made me keep quiet. I didn’t want to embarrass her. Not my baby-sister.
You’d think she’d be happy. She was nearly done with high school, she’d been accepted into the college of her choice, and she had her first steady boyfriend, a popular student-athlete. Life was looking up for her.
Or so I thought. From the sound of things, nothing could be further from the truth. I heard the crying and Mom’s consoling words. I’m sure they figured they were alone in the house, there’s just the three of us, and I wasn’t due home for another day. I stayed quiet, and I listened. If somebody had hurt Teri, I’d have to do something about it. She might be a pain in the ass, but she was my pain in the ass.