Fainting

Chapter 19 - Allison

Jason didn't actually call me yesterday. I just wanted to postpone any other conversation Mark and I might have until we were talking in person and not over the phone. In person conversations are more valuable and often more fun.

Jordyn and I still didn't tell Jason that we know about him and the girl from Monterey Bay Skydive – Claire, I think her name is. We're trying to decide how polite we should be; our two options are thus: we tell him we know – still have to figure out how we would do that – or wait for Jason to tell us. That's obviously the nicer option, but we're his siblings, so we're not particularly nice to him. Sorry, Jason. Serves you right.

The next morning as Mark and I are munching on popcorn – cause who doesn't like popcorn for no reason at ten o'clock in the morning? – he tells me why Jenn was in town.

"She was here to find me a girlfriend. She claims that because I'm twenty-two, I should be dating. Isn't that messed up?"
I barely caught the end of that because I'm laughing too hard. "No way," I choke out.

He looks confused. "What?"
"Jordyn has a habit of setting me up with random boys. The other day she set me up with boy number four in about two years. A little less."

Mark starts laughing too. "That's hilarious. She just finds random boys and gives them your number?"

"Pretty much."

After we've been calm for a few minutes, I suggest that Jenn and Jordyn should meet.

"How come?" Mark says, chewing.

"Well, they both have a desire to see their siblings dating and married, through no selfish reasons or others that don't benefit one of us of course."
He shakes his head in agreement. "Only thinking of us. How caring our sisters are."

"Yes, very caring sisters we have. So they should meet to talk about their caringness."

"But if they meet, they could conspire against us with all their caringness."

"Then we conspire against them."

He looks thoughtful. "There's an idea."

I look around. "Where?"

He doesn't miss a beat. "There," he says, tapping my head.

We catch each other's glance and start laughing again.

After another few minutes of calm, I ask what he does for work.

He thinks for a minute. "Well, the other day I had an interview at MCL – I've always wanted to be a lawyer. And for the past almost four years I've been helping out family friends. I don't know why they pay me when I babysit, cause at this point I'm family, but they seem to feel a need to do so. And then I volunteer at the hospital, but I don't really get paid in money. I get paid in happiness."

I smile. "Happiness is all one really needs in life."

"Hear hear." He's silent for a moment. "What do you do?"

"If someone who works at Cade's needs to be covered for a shift, I'll take over. I babysit around the area, which slowly adds up, and I'm trying to find out what job I want to do that circles around kids. Not a teacher." I recall something he said about what he does. "You said for four years you've been helping this family. When did you graduate?"

"This past semester. I've only done seven semesters, not eight."

I sigh. "Lucky. That last semester was the worst. My whole class was so excited to be done that they didn't take anything seriously."

"But, if you were to end a semester early, your class would be excited about that being your last semester," Mark points out.

"Oh, yeah. That wouldn't work."

"Well, it should be a surprise last semester," he says after a moment, and I nod in agreement.

Can't argue with that solution.