| THREE |
CONVERSATIONS
"Hi."
It was simple. It was two letters, one syllable. It was the perfect conversation starter, too. It was the most effective way to ensure that a conversation started. Even if it was a little one.
To everyone else, what had just come out of Isaiah's perfectly shaped pink mouth was just a simple greeting. To Karim, it was the perfect way that he knew Isaiah could pick through the metaphorical ice surrounding his mystery girl. But to Isaiah, it might as well have been nothing but silence, because Nameless Girl didn't even look at him.
At all. Not even a glance.
So much for Karim's oh-so-logical plan.
Isaiah didn't know what that feeling in his stomach was. It was completely unfamiliar to him. It was tingly; he thought that was because he was around her. But it also made him frown. It made his heart slow to a stop but beat faster.
What was this? The flu? Isaiah didn't know, but it made him feel like he wasn't in his element, so he knew whatever it was, it had. To. Go.
He cleared his throat and stood a little taller than his lengthy height, making his voice just a teensy bit louder. He never felt nerves, or anything akin to nervousness, but he had a little feeling in his too-quickly beating heart that this could work. This could work.
"Hi." He said again, a little more confident.
Nameless Girl didn't even flinch, but Isaiah noticed that she tightened the grip on her coffee cup a little tighter. She had heard him.
"Hi."
This time, a girl with heavily shadowed and heavily black rimmed eyes glared at him a few tables away. He sent her a quick smile and she rolled her eyes, succumbing to the Isaiah Matthews charm.
Nameless Girl didn't respond. The feeling in Isaiah's stomach multiplied. He nodded to himself, getting ready to turn on his heel and do some damn calculus, but then he remembered the way Karim had laughed at him yesterday. The way he had guffawed and 'fawed until he clutched his stomach and wiped crocodile tears away from his eyes.
There was no way Karim wouldn't laugh at him. He would even tell Shiro and River, and then it would become a whole big thing.
River would want to meet her to ask her about her views on intersectional feminism, and Yoshiro would want to draw her and paint her and sketch her and oil her the minute Isaiah described her (because that was how beautiful Nameless Girl was), and Karim would laugh even louder and guffaw and 'faw and 'faw until the dish and the spoon returned from their elopement.
And so, in an effort to avoid that mess, Isaiah did something...strange. Isaiah Matthews nodded to himself in a psych-up, before he planted himself right opposite the beautiful Nameless Girl. And then, he smiled.
He smiled wide, showcasing his perfect teeth that had been prepared by one and a half years of braces when he was twelve. He smiled the smile that has ensured and resulted in a steady stream of female admirers, texts, and party invitations. However, all of that was moot to Her. Nameless Girl looked at him, her beautiful eyes conveying indifference. It was if she didn't care whether he sat next to her, whether he fell into a vat of oatmeal, or whether he robbed the place. Isaiah had a feeling she didn't care about anything.
Internally, Isaiah tugged on his hair and groaned in frustrated annoyance. She didn't care that he sat with her? So he could've sat with her everyday for the past three days and she wouldn't have minded? Those were three days worth of missed opportunities...
But externally, Isaiah was a few things. Relieved; he had expected her to use those wonderful eyes to glare at him for his rude, presumptuous action of sitting opposite her without her invitation. He was conflicted; was it possible to be feeling both soothed and completely on anxious? Both relaxed and tensed? To feel sure, unsure and...awkward? This wasn't him. At all.
"So...hi." He said again, a shy, nervous laugh bubbling out of his throat. He cringed as soon as the words (and the laugh) left his throat. Seriously, who was he?
The Nameless Girl blinked at him, face set in neutrality. After a second of observing him, her coveted gaze slid back to the map-thing she was reading and occasionally marking with a pencil. He tried not to feel so cut up about the fact that she hadn't smiled back at him. She was letting him sit with her, that had to count for something.
Isaiah put his focus onto elevating his calculus grade. He was positive that he was going to get a B on the test on Monday, and indirectly thanked Nameless Girl for that. If she hadn't been so beautiful and interesting, he wouldn't be spending his Thursday afternoon doing calc, but rather doing what he always did on Thursdays.
Holed up in football captain's basement, bonding with his teammates with beer, girls and video games. It was only a matter of time before Miguel asked him where he was.
And when Isaiah was knee and elbow deep into his third question, he thought that was exactly who it was calling him. But, the frowning face of his little brother and his name flashing in white font was a lot different that what his football captain looked like.
He sent a quick glance to Nameless Girl, only to find she was looking at him. She looked bored. Or annoyed. Isaiah wasn't sure until he swore she rolled her eyes at his vibrating phone that was causing the table to do the same. Isaiah almost blushed. Oops.
"Hello? Micah?" Was his greeting.
"Isaiah, where are you?"
"Uh..." He frowned, totally confused about the urgency in Micah's normally bored, blank voice. "Why?"
"Because the entire football team is in the media room waiting for you? Because Amèlie is sitting on Miguel's lap and showing him pictures of Poopsie and Lala after their dye jobs? Because Hope is braiding the hair of football players?!"
Isaiah tried to muffle his laugh, but Micah managed to hear it. In the background, he heard the sound of Hélène telling Rosario and Charles to serve his teammates whatever they wanted, and of Amèlie's light French accent trying to explain the difference between the two poodles in broken five year old English.
Isaiah couldn't help but smile at the image of his little sisters entertaining the ten football players. He had to admit, that did sound very adorable. Micah had to learn to have a sense of humour.
"Are you with a girl?"
Isaiah blinked. He pursed his lips for a second, wondering whether to admit it or not. He was with a girl, just not in the way Micah was familiar with.
"You are with a girl!"
Micah's assumption must've been as loud as Isaiah thought, because he could hear the whoops and whistles from his teammates. He groaned (externally unfortunately), and Nameless Girl's lovely eyes flicked up from her second coffee and focused on him.
"Not really."
"How dumb do you think I am?" Micah scoffed.
"He's with a girl? Way to go, goalie!"
"I'm not–"
Isaiah cursed under his breath, running a hand through his hair and fumbling for the right words that would convey the truth, but keep her existence his secret.
"I am...but...it's not the way you think–"
"Just leave her and come home. You've never had problems with that before?"
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
He hadn't meant for his voice to come out as loud, sharp and as shocked as it had, but it had and She blinked, seemingly caught by surprise at both his bark and that bite.
"Whatever."
"Look," Isaiah started, lowering his voice tremendously and staring very hard at the glazed doughnut he had ordered. "I'm telling you that it's not what you think."
"Isaiah?"
"Yeah?"
"You seem to have forgotten that I don't care."
And then the line was dead. Isaiah stared at his phone for many, many seconds. He was really trying hard to steady his breathing and to loosen his grip on the rectangular electronic device.
"Shit." He hissed out, slapping the table with his palm. The frown on his face was deep and so unlike him, and of course, only someone like Micah could bring it out.
The sound of the cutlery on the table that jumped a millimetre, tinkling as it crashed back down to the table, was enough to shake him out of his irritated haze. Instantly, his gaze flicked up from the table and to Her.
She was looking at him, impassive eyes blinking once. Her eyes went to her coffee, which had spilt it's creamy brown on the table mat. She looked at him again, eyebrow raised as if she saying, Care to explain?
Isaiah followed her gaze and immediately cringed. Although, he had to admit that his heart beat a little faster at that little action she just performed. That's all he'd gotten since he'd sat down. He'd say it was progress. Microscopic, minuscule progress. But progress.
He could feel eyes on him. Eyes that weren't Her eyes. Curious, gossip-hungry eyes that would rip Her to shreds in an effort to save or preserve his dignity. That would rip her to shreds and paint him in a positive light. He never really paid attention to how people did that, or that it even happened, but thanks to River, he saw that that was how it went with girls in general. Women.
That was how it went with girls he got involved with. That's how it went with Alice. That's how it went with Madison and the cheating rumour that surrounded him or her during two-thirds of their relationship, and that's probably how it was going to go to with Her.
And that wasn't progress. That was regress.
What also wasn't progress, however was the way he blurted out the reason he had spilt her coffee. No, that wasn't progress at all. That was just embarrassing.
"I'm sorry. It's just...that was my brother. He was saying my teammates were at our house and my little sisters were braiding their hair. I'm on the, uh, football team. Goalkeeper." He said, shaking his head. "Sorry about the..." He gestured at the mess.
"He's not really my biggest fan. He hasn't been for about three years now, but who's counting, right?" Isaiah attempted, laughing awkwardly and running his hand through his hair.
"We used to be close. And then one day it just...changed. And I don't get why, but he never makes me forget, you know? And I guess that's kind of my fault. It's always kind of my fault..."
He froze immediate those words left his mouth. He had to remember who exactly he was talking to. This was Nameless Girl, and he didn't even know her. She didn't know him! It was completely inappropriate to tell her things like that.
...but, he had to admit that for some reason he couldn't exactly decipher, there was something about her that made him want to say something. To say more, and then more, and then one more again. There was something about her that made him want to reveal his deepest, darkest thoughts, and then after that, tell her what he really thought about life and the universe.
He wanted to hold her. He wanted to know what it was like to see and hear her laugh (he thought she'd be a giggler, or a snorter when she really found it funny). He wanted to see her smile, a grin or a toothy smile that lit up those beautiful eyes. He wanted to see her look at him with something other than indifference. He wanted to hear her voice, her thoughts, what she thought about the stars, what she thought about what was going on in the world. He wanted to see how she would look like after he kissed her.
Would those beautiful, plump lips swell up? Would those beautiful, dull eyes be brighter? And against his better judgement, he wanted to know what she looked like out of breath. And he didn't want to stop there.
It was scary. It was weird. It was fucking unusual. But it was there. And it spooked him so much, that he did the same thing he did the first time he sat across her. He gathered his things frantically and rushed out a goodbye.
He could almost hear Karim's guffaw. And 'faw. And 'faw.
+++
When he drove through the gates of his gated community and got to the whitewashed, three storey mansion that was much like the other whitewashed, three storey mansions of his neighbours, he wasn't surprised to see Miguel's Jeep, Logan's Hummer, and Kwame's Prado parked in his driveway. For a bunch of big, bad footballers, they were pretty environmentally conscious.
When he walked through the front door and deposited his keys in the bowl, Poopsie and Lala, the colour-dyed French poodles, were at his feet, yipping, yapping and pawing at him affectionately.
He absentmindedly ruffled the lime green of Poopsie's fur and made his way to the media room. His sneakers skidded across the floor, and that was exactly what drew the attention of the twelve people in his media room. Some of them were seated, watching a music video featuring a rapper, a masked entourage and burning cars, and some of them were playing foosball.
Suddenly, he was mauled (lovingly, of course) by his little sisters. They were a mass of little limbs, excited shrieks and tickled giggles as they ran around him and wrapped their little arms around his legs.
"Isaiah!" Amèlie announced, her accent causing his name to come out a little more differently. She spread her arms out wide, and an even wider, toothy grin displaying her recently released tooth lit up her face.
He couldn't fight the smile that worked its way. The smile that always arose because of Amèlie and Hope. He also couldn't discard the special, soft voice he used to talk to them and only them.
"Octonauts," He greeted the girls. "What mission did we go on today?"
He gathered Amèlie into his arms and placed her little five year old self on his hip, securing her with his arm and using his free hand to envelope that of Hope.
Hope and Amèlie looked scarily alike to the point where it was indisputable that they were actually sisters due to the colouring of Amèlie's hair, and the blue eyes they had both gotten from their mothers. But they weren't fully sisters.
The fact that Amèlie looked like Hope, who looked like his mother too much, was probably the reason why he readily accepted her into his life. He was a real sucker for them, and they'd soon realise just how much.
"Well, well, well," his captain, Miguel started. His thick, dark hair was held back in a light blue bobble that he had a feeling had been Hope's doing. He still managed to make it work. "Our goalie is back, gentlemen."
"And it looks like he was studying." Kwame commented, eyes locked on the calculus textbooks Hope was picking up from the floor. He smirked slyly at Isaiah, rubbing the heel of his palm against his beard.
"He was." Isaiah assured, his words coming out a little muffled and slurred. Amèlie was smushing and contorting his face, squashing his cheeks between her palms.
"So you weren't with a girl?" A defender, Logan, asked. He sent him a sly smirk, wiggling his eyebrows suggestively.
Isaiah cleared his throat and stuck his nose into the air, trying to downplay Logan's suggestion by using humour. "These are the only girls in my life." He managed to get out with the presence of Amèlie's fingers pulling the sides of his mouth.
"I'll keep that in mind." Logan said thoughtfully. The look on his face told Isaiah that they would talk about it in private.
"Now that Isaiah's love life is out of the way..." Miguel began, "...lets play some fucking FIFA!"
Hope gasped loudly and stomped towards him. She stopped in front of him and crossed her arms over her chest, rose her nose into the air and pointed a finger at him.
"That's a bad word!" She accused, narrowing her eyes at him.
Miguel's eyebrow raised up, amusement dancing in his dark brown eyes. He crouched. "Yeah? And how do you know that?"
"Daddy gets very upset when Mike and Isaiah says that word. And Mummy used to hate it. Mummy Hélène hates it too."
Miguel blinked. The tension in the room, previously non-existent, piqued. As well as the awkwardness. Everyone except Logan noticeably shifted in their seats.
Isaiah's mother (a vision with long blonde hair that her daughter inherited, and strange pale blue eyes that the three of her children inherited) along with his new step-mother, were topics nobody really liked to talk about. This was simply because it turned calm, levelheaded Isaiah into someone completely opposite.
Miguel glanced at Isaiah and then forced an apologetic smile to the nine-year old who was staring at him accusingly.
"I'm sorry." He said to her, a lot more softly than the usual, brash, loud way their captain was fond of speaking like.
And Isaiah wasn't sure what he was saying sorry for.
+++
"You are not going anywhere, Isaiah Nicholas Evander Matthews The Third!"
Isaiah Nicholas Evander Matthews (The Third) blinked his shock. He wondered how on earth River was standing behind his door on this fine Monday afternoon, waiting for the moment; this moment where he would open his door, just so she could yell that in his face. He hoped she hadn't been waiting for long.
He cast a wary look River's way, not liking three things. (1) the fact that she remembered his middle name, and (2) the fact that he was being kept from seeing Nameless Girl, and (3) the fact that she was interrupting the tiny schedule he'd planned out in his head.
"River," he started calmly, trying not to barrel past her. "I've gotta go somewhere."
"Where?"
"Um. Nowhere."
"But you just said you gotta go somewhere."
"Yeah, but..."
"Where are you going?"
"River, what are you even doing in my house?" He asked instead, as if it was weird for the French girl to be in his house. River, Karim and Shiro had spent so much time, so many days at the house that they knew where they kept the dog food and the poop scoop.
"I just wanted to drop by. I haven't been seeing you outside of school that much."
He was sure that she said that just so it could inject some guilt into him. And it worked, damn her.
"...You've been really studious lately. Always running off to go to the library to do your work. Almost everyday after school. We never really see you since you're at the library." River said casually, strolling around his room.
He frowned at her nonchalance. It seemed...forced. And her tone became sharper whenever she said the word library. Isaiah felt his defences rise and his posture straighten. His eyes darted left and right after they had narrowed. He was prepared for whatever River had up her ripped sleeve.
"How's the work been Isaiah? You been catching up?" River asked, brown eyes wide and innocent, almost curious if you didn't look hard enough. "You been doing good? Working all those questions?"
"Yeah, I've been doing okay." Was his reply. Easy, casual, conversant.
"Good, good. 'Cause you know, physics isn't easy. You have to really sit down and study it. That's what you've been doing in the library, isn't it?"
"Yeah. Hopefully–"
"Aha! You liar!" She shouted victoriously, whirling around suddenly. Her index finger was pointed at him accusingly.
"Uh....wha–"
"Shiro! Karim! Come out, he's lying and I've caught him red-handed!"
"I think the only person red-handed now is me." Shiro confessed, picking at the red paint stuck to his fingers as he strolled through the door.
"What the hell are you guys doing here? Who let you in?"
"Your Dad. I thought you said he was out of town?" Karim plopped down onto his bed, putting Isaiah's Brazilian flag designed football under his arm.
"He came back this morning." Isaiah muttered.
"Did he, Isaiah? Did he?" River stressed, disbelief lacing her tone.
Isaiah glanced between the three of them confusedly. "Uh, yeah? He did? Like, literally three hours ago–"
"Yeah? Or is it another lie?!"
Isaiah glanced at Shiro and Karim, slightly panicked and honestly a little confused.
"Uh, River–"
"Is it like how you've been doing your work at the library?!"
"Why the hell are you saying it like that?"
"Because, Isaiah." River started, looking damn-well pleased with herself. She took her time to explain what that because was.
"I went to the library yesterday." River mentioned casually, as if she was talking about how there wasn't much sun these days.
Isaiah blinked. "Yeah?"
"Yeah. Around four, like after I finished walking Asterix. And the funniest thing..." she let out a light laugh as if it really tickled her. "You weren't there."
Isaiah blinked again, clearing his throat. He tried to eliminate his nervous tics (i.e. biting the inside of his cheeks, excessive blinking, etc), but failed. And he knew River could see it, damn her once more.
"I thought you'd already left to get some lunch or something. Or maybe that you went home. So, I asked Ms Schwitz." River practically spat the older woman's name out, and collectively a shudder ran through the quartet.
"Oh?" Isaiah's pitch had increased of its own accord, and he almost strangled himself.
"Mm. I spoke to her, that bitch. And you know what she said?" River asked, raising her pitch like she was sharing something juicy between her friends. "She was confused."
Isaiah found his voice, and it wasn't the squeaky, stammering mess he expected it to be. "Well, Schwitz is a little old, Riv. You know that."
River nodded easily, contemplating his words. "Yeah. I thought so too. But then, I said you were someone who started coming a lot the past two weeks especially. I described you verbally...and, nothing. No recognition at all."
"Maybe–"
"Until, I showed her a picture of you."
Isaiah blinked repeatedly. He cleared his throat, about to formulate a useless reason. River beat him to it.
"She said she hadn't seen you in the library since the Kama Sutra thing! Two months ago!"
The silence that followed the shocking revelation wasn't as tense as it was awkward. It would've been funny too, because of the story behind the Kama Sutra thing, but it wasn't. No.
Isaiah Nicholas Evander Matthews (The Third) lost count of how many times his mouth opened and closed with his insistence to formulate a response to what River said. Lost count of the number of times he blinked. Lost count of the number of times he contemplated running out of the house.
In the end, her settled for something he hadn't been doing lately. Telling the truth.
And it began with;
"So, there's this girl..." He trailed off a little after that, unsure whether to reveal to them that he, Isaiah Matthews, had been unable to get jack-squattity-squat out of this girl. Not even a damn name.
But before he could think further, River held up a hand in front of his face, effectively silencing his thoughts. She and Karim turned to face Shiro expectantly, palms exposed and drawn out in the universal 'Give Me!' way. With a roll of his eyes, Shiro dug into his jeans pockets and drew out two crisp bills of money and slapped them onto the eager, expectant palms, not bothering to hide his grumblings.
What on earth...
"You bet on me?" Isaiah's incredulous voice rang out once the seventeen year old had put two and two together.
"You lied to us." River scoffed, waving a hand at him. "Besides, we knew it was either a girl, or you got a new hobby. I went with the former."
"So did I. Best ten pounds I ever got." Karim grinned, sending a smirk Shiro's way. The Japanese boy said nothing, only rolled his eyes again.
"Thank you, Yoshiro, for actually having faith in me doing something not girl-related." Isaiah drawled. Shiro sent him a thumbs up.
Isaiah's eyes narrowed at Karim, darting between Sudanese boy and the Japanese boy. "You know he had an unfair advantage, right?"
"What d'you mean?" Shiro asked.
Karim's smile faltered. "Isaiah..." He warned, taking a step closer to the boy. "Shut up, or else."
"He knew. He knew about the girl."
"You son of a..."
The colourful description Shiro was about to bless Karim with was drowned out by the sound of pattering feet and a sigh.
"Hope," River sang her name, causing the nine year old the smile a little. It was unlike the usual wide grin that overtook her when River said her name like that, but Isaiah didn't think anything of it.
"Hello." The little girl greeted, a look of seriousness on her face. She went to stand beside (behind, really) Karim regarding them all with reproachful eyes.
That itself was strange. Isaiah almost always had to urge Hope to leave he and his friends alone whenever they came over, but today it seemed she wasn't ready for that. He frowned in her direction, especially when she whispered something in Karim's ear. The taller boy nodded seriously, before sputtering a lame excuse about wanting to see what movies Isaiah had rented in Box Office, and taking the other two with him. Isaiah was even more confused when the door clicked shut behind River, the last to leave.
Hope Naomi Matthews stood in Isaiah's bedroom, hands wrung out in front of her but otherwise seemingly alright. She was wearing a blue, floral print dress and someone, probably Rosa, had plaited her hair into two blonde pigtails.
Isaiah was just about to ask her if she wanted something from him, when he noticed it. The way her bottom lip began to quiver. The way her breath started coming in shorter, and shorter. The way she began to blink repeatedly. The way her eyes became watery. And then, the floodgates opened with her letting out a choked sob.
"Hey, hey, hey," he tried to soothe, grabbing her little hand in his much bigger one. He dragged her to the bed and sat her down, using an old shirt of his that had been lying around to wipe away at her tears.
She scooted close to him, taking uneven breaths and beginning to full-on bawl. Isaiah's eyebrows furrowed and the deepest wave of confusion crashed into him. He picked Hope's little body up and planted her onto his lap, rubbing a soothing hand against her back to calm her down. The tears rolled down her cheek in little streams and rivers, dampening the front of his shirt and some part of his neck.
"Hope," he started gently, once he had gotten her to calm down. The little girl looked up at him, pale blue eyes red and brimming with yet-to-be-shed tears. "What's the matter?"
"Mummy," she sniffed. Isaiah felt his entire body freeze and tense and wind up in that uncomfortable way bodies tended to do when one heard an unwelcome surprise.
"What about her?" He asked, his voice softer than before.
"I miss her," she whispered, equally as soft. She said it like it was a bad thing, like she would be punished if someone else heard her say it. And the funny thing was, it wasn't that far off. "I miss her a lot."
It had been decided by the adults in the lives of the Matthews children that Hope was far too small and little to understand fully what had happened to their mother. And so before Micah's teen angst tripled in the recent years, in the good old days when trips to Swallowton were made with Isaiah driving and the two boys actually getting along, Hope was always informed that they were going to play football. How wrong that was.
"I know," Isaiah found himself whispering. "I miss her, too. I miss her a lot."
"Will she ever come back? Will she ever come back from where she is?" She asked, a little shred of her namesake injected into her voice.
Hope Matthews believed a half truth that her father had fed her. Their mother was gone, and it was a place better than where they were, Isaiah supposed. But it was still not the truth.
Isaiah hated himself for what he was about to do. The little shred of hope that Hope seemed to be clinging to could only amount to nothing but disappointment, major disappointment. And so, like a weed, he had to pull it out before it just ended up ruining the garden. He hated himself, that the only thing the little girl found hope in could never come to pass. It was impossible. Their mother could never come back.
"Hope," he started, his voice strained, heavy with guilt that he had no reason to feel. "Mum can never come back."
The little girl nodded her head slowly, softly. It was worse than Isaiah thought – she already knew, but had to ask. That hope was still in Hope. But it was gone now. Forcibly pulled out like a weed.
"I saw the picture of her and me. When I was just a baby," she told him, like she wasn't a baby still. "She was smiling. And me too." Hope said, sniffing through her story. "I wanted to ask Daddy about Mummy, but...he got really upset the last time."
She frowned, looking up at Isaiah as if he held all the answers in his newly seventeen year old brain. And it was like how younger siblings believed that the older ones knew everything about life, from why butterflies were called butterflies, to why the sky was blue.
"Why doesn't Daddy like talking about Mummy? Real Mummy, not Mummy Hélène." She clarified, like Isaiah even thought of that woman as his mother.
What could Isaiah say to her? He wasn't sure why their father discouraged Hope from asking about her mother, but he was sure it had something to do with the fact that Hope looked just like her. Same eyes, same shade of blonde hair, same wide smile. Isaiah knew enough about guilt to know that seeing it in the face everyday, in the form of the pale blue eyes of his mother that they all had, and seeing it in the nine year old form of Hope, it must've driven him crazy.
Isaiah was glad. He hope it drove him crazy until he couldn't pretend anymore.
Instead, he said: "Mummy's always gonna be your mummy. She's not here," Isaiah explained, gesturing around the room. Hope's wide, blue eyes followed him.
"But...she's here. In you, in me, in Micah. She's in here, and she always will be." He folded her little fingers to a ball, placing them against her chest and to her heart.
Hope's little arms flew around him, squeezing him into an embrace that was eight-year old talk for, thank you.
Isaiah didn't know why and how an eight year old could believe him, when he didn't even believe himself.