CHAPTER ONE
EXTRAORDINARY
Today was supposed to be just as ordinary as any other, but I've grown to realise that one's life is never ordinary and yet sometimes extraordinary. Jacob and I soon had to admit that our life was never to be ordinary again.
My brother and I spent the day like any other. We'd go to work at Smart Aid, try to get fired (yet fail miserably every time). Sometimes afterwards, we'd visit our grandfather, or we'd go back home and spend our endless summer with my brother's annoying friend, Ricky.
Ricky wasn't exactly my friend, but he was pretty much all Jacob had. At school, no one talked to us, and we never made an effort in making any friends either. We're what one might call 'unapproachable twins'. We were always together because we feel comfortable in the presence of each other and feel lonely or isolated without the other. Most likely due to years of our parents ignoring us and having to find our desired comfort with each other.
Though, many bullied us for it or when we were alone in a class because teachers hated putting siblings in the same class as one another and then we were forced to make conversation with others, no matter how much we hated it.
Today marked the day our lives stopped being ordinary.
Jacob and I spent the whole afternoon at Smart Aid constructing a one-box/ten-thousand-square scaled replica of the Empire State Building from boxes of 'On Sale!' adult diapers. We were pretty proud of ourselves. The base stretched to five feet, and it towered over the cosmetic aisle just behind.
I was on the ladder placing the last box on the top of our makeshift Empire State Building while the two of us laughed, the sound of squelching could be heard coming down the frozen food aisle to the left of our display, and I wavered on the ladder, Jacob was quick to catch it as I saw the red hair of Shelly popping over the edge.
"You used Neverleak," Shelly said once I had fully come off the ladder. I turned around to her and sighed as she eyes our work with a sceptical frown. "The sale's on Stay-Tite."
"I swear you said Neverleak." I groaned because she had. Shelly eyed me as I said 'swear' she was huge on manners. Shelly was also our store manager, but she never made an effort to look like she liked her job. She always wore the same sour expression as if it had become a part of her uniform.
"Stay-Tite," she insisted, shaking her head. She looked up and down regretfully at our display. There was awkward silence where Jacob and I shared eye contact; as Shelly continued shaking her head at our display, we both rolled our eyes. We stopped as we caught Shelly eyeing us, then her sight landed on the adult diapers, then she'd repeat, "Stay-Tite."
We stared blankly at her; I couldn't quite gather what she was implying until Jacob's loud but sarcastic, "Ohhhhhh," broke the silence. "You mean you want us to do it over?"
"It's just that you used Neverleak." She repeated.
"No problem." I snickered and walked over to the display. Jacob walked to the other side. "We'll get started right away." I used the toe of my black converse to nudge the small box at the bottom corner, Jacob did the same on the other side, and I smirked, satisfied, as I watched all the boxes cascade down to the ground, falling all around us.
The boxes skidded across the store, startling passing customers as they jumped over packages of adult diapers allowing few to go as far as the sliding door, which opened upon sensing the box's movement, allowing the August heat to be flushed into the store.
Shelley's face turned a vibrant shade of a ripe tomato. As always in these predicaments, she should've fired us on the spot, but we were never that lucky. We've been trying to get fired all summer, and it was next to impossible to do so. No matter how incompetent we try to be, Shelly stubbornly kept us on the payroll.
Let me clarify this: it was next to impossible for us, my brother and I, to get fired from Smart Aid. Anyone else would've been out the door on our first 'misshape'. The reason why we couldn't be fired from our job was that our Uncles owned all one-hundred-and-fifteen Smart Aids in Florida. Supposedly working at Smart Aid is a hallowed family tradition. No matter how much we stuff up, in the long run, the both of us will inherit a sizeable chunk of the company, to many employees distaste.
Shelly quickly waded through the diapers and grabbed Jacobs arm before coming to me and pointing a finger and my chest. Before she could go on a rampage and yell profanities at us, the PA system interrupted her.
"Jacob, Sophia, you have a call on line two. Jacob, Sophia, line two."
Shelly glared at the two of us, her face still the shade of a tomato. I gave her a sweet smile, and I'm sure my soft features as shinny blue eyes made me look like an angel because her scowl fell and turned into a half frown before we were dashing off with Jacob leaving her with the ruins of our tower.
We walked into the employee lounge, which was windowless and humid. The pharmacy assistant, Linda, sat at the cheap plastic fold-out table eating a crustless sandwich in the silver glow of the soda machine. She nodded to the phone screwed to the wall.
"Line two's for you. Whoever it is sounds freaked."
I rolled my eyes at her scoff towards the two 'twins with the crazy Grandpa' and picked up the dangling receiver. As soon as static started from the phone scratching along with my earring, a voice cried.
"Serduszko, is that you?"
I looked up to Jacob. My eyebrows knotted together, and he waited for me to say who was on the phone before coming over. "Hi, Grandpa Portman. Jacob is here too." I faked a smile, and Jacob came to my side. The phone sat between our ears as we pressed our sides together to hear muffled noises coming from the other end.
"Yacob, Serduszko, thank God. I need my key. Where's my key?" His voice came out hoarse, and his tone was of being upset or in distress.
"What key?" Jacob asked.
"Don't play games," he snapped. "You know what key."
"Grandpa, you've probably just misplaced it somewhere." I laughed it off.
"Your father put the two of you up to this," he said. "Just tell me, he doesn't have to know."
"Nobody put us up to anything." I groaned, trying to make him believe me. Trying to change the subject, I jumped in with, "Have you taken your pills this morning?"
"They're coming for me, understand? I don't know how they found me after all these years, but they did. What am I supposed to fight them with? The goddamned butter knife!"
This wasn't the first time we've heard Grandpa Portman talk like this. Over the years, he's been getting worse and worse. He was getting old, and frankly, he was starting to lose it. Over the summer, his dementia had taken a cruel twist, and he was no longer fit or okay. All the stories he had made up had become real to him.
Over the last few weeks, he'd been especially agitated, and our parents thought he was no longer fit and feared he was becoming a terrible danger to himself, so they locked up his guns and were seriously thinking of putting him into a home. For some reason, Jacob and I were the only ones to receive his imaginative and apocalyptic phone calls.
As usual, Jacob and I tried our best to calm him down, but today he seemed more agitated than most. "You're safe. Everything's fine. I'll bring over a video for us to watch later. How's that sound?" Jacob sighed.
"No! Stay where you are! It's not safe here!"
"Grandpa," I held my forehead in my hand as I silently groaned to myself; I hated seeing Grandpa Portman like this. "The monsters are not coming for you. You killed them all in the war, remember?"
Our faces were turned to the wall as we tried to shrink away from Linda's prying eyes as she pretended to read a fashion magazine. With our side of the conversation alone, we sounded mad.
"Not all of them," he said. "No, no, no. I killed a lot, sure, but there are always more." We could hear him banging around on the other end as he flung open drawers and slammed them shut. "You stay away, hear me? I'll be fine - cut out their tounges and stab them in the eyes. That's all you've got to do! If I could find that goddamned KEY!"
"Grandpa, I don't know where the key is!" I repeated even though I knew farewell exactly where it was. There was more swearing and banging as Grandpa Portman stomped around looking for the bloody key.
"Feh!" He finally cried. "Let your father have the key if it's so important to him. Let him have my dead body, too!"
"Grandpa, don't." I tried, but Jacob had taken the phone and hung up as quickly and kindly as he could.
Jacob began pressing hard on the buttons as that was the only way to call a number properly; otherwise, if you don't press down hard enough, the number doesn't ring up, and you have to start all over again.
"Who are you calling now?" I sighed as the phone started ringing as I heard my fathers voice on the other end.
"Grandpa's flipping out," Jacob told him.
"Has he taken his pills today?"
"He wouldn't tell us. Didn't sound like it, though."
We heard a sigh on the other end, "Make the two of you mind if you were to stop by and make sure he's okay? I can't get off work right now."
Dad volunteered part-time at the bird rescue, where he helped rescue sick and injured snowy egrets hit by cars and pelicans that had swallowed fish hooks. He was an amateur ornithologist and a real wannabe writer (with a stack of unpublished manuscripts to prove it), which are real jobs, just not for him. He also happens to be married to a woman who owns one-hundred-and-fifteen drugstores.
"Yeah, we'll go," I said, only to be able to get out of work, so we didn't have to do anything for the rest of the day.
"Thanks, Jake, Soph. I promise we'll get all this grandpa stuff sorted out soon, okay?"
All this grandpa stuff. "You mean to put him in a home." Jacob and I cursed together with a drastic sigh. "Make him someone else's problem."
"Mom and I haven't decided yet."
"Of course you have." I protested.
"Sophia..."
"We can handle him, Dad. Really."
"Maybe now you can. But he's only going to get worse."
"Whatever, who cares? I've got this." I recite what I always said then hung up the phone. I looked at Jacob and sighed as I knew the only person who could give us a lift, so I gave him a call.
"Hello, am I talking to an Angel or Special Ed?" Ricky answered as he had our work number saved as we call for lifts many times.
"It depends; Jacob's quite the sweet and innocent type, so I must be Special Ed." I disregarded his not so subtle flirting. "Look, we need a ride. Do you think you could come down?"
"Say no more, my love."
( note! )
Serduszko is the polish term of endearment, meaning heart/sweetheart given to Sophia from her grandfather. This name idea was given to me by a lovely reader of this story.