Chapter Thirty-Two
“Are you sure it’s okay to be here?” Chase asked apprehensively.
“Is the sky blue?” I retorted.
“Right now, it’s actually gray,” he said. He was right. It was raining out, so the sky wasn’t it’s normal indigo, but rather a dull, depressed, overcast shade.
“Shut up,” I said, inserting my key into the door, and turning the doorknob. The door opened, and we hurried inside the house to elude the heavy flow of water. Chase had offered to share his jacket with me, me being the senseless person I am in forgetting to check the forecast, but I declined.
I sat down on the floor before the door, placing my backpack beside me, and began to take off my soaking wet shoes. They were Converse, and I had had them for a few years. They weren’t anything special, plain black with white tips I had covered in writing. That’s one of the things I love about Converse- you can express yourself through something as simple as a shoe.
On this particular pair, I had drawn hearts bordering the sidewall of the shoe in red Sharpie, though you could hardly see them because of all the dirt they had acquired over the years. On the toe of the left foot I had written the letters “JU”, and on the right foot “LES”. Surrounding the letters were swirls and squiggles. The shoes had history, identity, and individuality. What more could you ask for?
Right now, they were sopping wet, as were my feet and unmatched socks (one was neon yellow and the other neon green). I rolled my socks off my feet, and wiggled my toes, feeling as though my feet were actually able to breathe. I looked over to Chase, who was also in the process of taking off his shoes. His shoes-
“Chase,” I started, looking down at his feet, “why are you wearing Nikes?”
“Because I like Nikes…” he said, momentarily pausing.
“But Converse are better,” I said.
“No,” he said simply, untying a shoelace. His shoes were red, black, and white. They had the signature Nike swoosh on them, and came just above his ankle. They weren’t ugly shoes, they just weren’t Converse.
“Yes,” I said, looking back to my beloved pair of black shoes.
“Look Jules, you’re wrong on this one, let’s not argue about something as stupid as shoes,” he said calmly.
“Did you just call shoes stupid?” I questioned, slightly offended by his remark.
“No! Not like that- I meant arguing! I like shoes, just not as the topic of a debate I want to have with you!” he said, recovering from his comment.
“Fine,” I said, dropping it. I grabbed my backpack, and climbed up the stairs, leaving Chase on the landing.
“Hey Jules,” he said.
“Yeah?” I called back.
“Where ya going?” he asked.
“To my room to change, I’ll be right out,” I said, ambling my way over to my room. I opened the door, and smiled at the sight that met my eyes: my perfectly messy room. Chase would probably have a heart attack if he saw this.
I stepped over a pair of crumpled up jeans and a textbook, making it safely over to my dresser, and dropping my backpack somewhere in the midst of all the chaos in the process. The top of my dresser was covered in hair accessories, guitar picks, glasses with the lenses poked out, and various forms of jewelry. I opened a drawer, and pulled out a pair of black sweats and a white T-shirt. I got changed, and departed from the room, going back to the front area where I had left Chase.
“You look cute,” he said, as his eyes skimmed over my change in appearance.
“Thanks,” I said, slightly blushing. “So, what do you want to do?”
“Whatever the hell you want to do,” he answered almost automatically.
“I don’t care, you pick,” I said.
“No, Jules, I honestly don’t care- you pick.”
“Okay, I’m picking to have you pick what we do,” I said complexly.
“We can do anything I want?” he asked, smirking.
“You know what, on second thought maybe I’ll choose,” I said, not wanting to find out what was running through his mind.
“That’s a better idea,” he said, nodding.
“Let’s watch a movie,” I suggested.
“Actually, can I… see your room first?” he requested strangely.
“Uh sure…” I said, unsure of why we were going there.
“Cool,” he said. I led him down the hall back to the tornado I had just departed, and turned the knob of the door, hesitant to enter.
“Don’t pass out,” I warned, opening up the door. We stepped in, and he didn’t utter a word. He went over to the middle of my floor and picked up a pair of crumpled up pants. Balling them up, he threw them in the direction of my closet. I watched as they traveled over the other miscellaneous objects placed messily about on the floor, and landed in my laundry basket. “What the fuck are you doing?”
“No, what the fuck are we doing is the real question,” he said, smiling, and picking up a handful of socks. He tossed them across the room to the laundry basket, and I gaped in confusion.
“Okay, what the fuck are we doing?” I asked.
“Cleaning your room,” he answered.
“Ha! No, seriously Chase.”
“I am serious, we’re cleaning your room.”
“Why would we do that?” I liked my room cluttered- it was me.
“Because I want to actually be able to hang out in here without wanting to explode of stress,” he said, placing a balled up piece of paper in my trashcan.
“But I don’t like cleaning!” I complained.
“Too bad,” he said, handing me a folder. “Put it away.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me!” I said, astonished with what I was seeing.
“Nope. I’m serious.”
“Chase!” I whined. “I don’t want to!”
“We all do stuff in life that we don’t want to do,” he said, picking up a pair of purple shoes and throwing them into my closet with the rest.
“Can we watch a movie after this?” I groaned.
“Sure. But seriously Jules, I can’t stand being in your room when it’s in this state,” he said.
“Do you have OCD or something?” I asked, giving in and placing a clean shirt on a hanger.
“Undiagnosed,” he replied.
“Huh. Why?” I questioned, walking over to my closet and putting the hanger on the rack.
“Are we playing the ‘Why Game’ now?”
“Uh… sure,” I said, slowly moving back over to the disorder in the middle of my floor.
“When I was younger, I had this stuffed animal. It was an elephant. His name was Eli. Every place I went, Eli came with me. I was attached to him,” he told, continuing to organize the contents of my floor.
“Aw! That’s so cute!” I exclaimed.
“Right. Well anyways, one day I was playing outside with my brothers and Talia. My mom had made me leave Eli inside, saying that he might get dirty if I brought him along. I hid him someplace in my room. I didn’t want anyone to take him, and I wanted to keep him safe,” he paused, as I dunked a sweatshirt over his head and into the laundry basket. “After we were done playing, I went up to my room to retrieve Eli. I couldn’t find him. I started to panic. I ran downstairs to tell my mom. She started to look for him. With each minute, I became more stressed. I began to cry.”
“Since when does Chase Ryan cry?” I laughed.
“Shut up,” he said, throwing a pair of shorts at my head.
“Hey!” I said, lobbing them right back at him.
He sighed, flinging them into the laundry basket. “Talia and my brothers helped in the search for Eli, as I became more anxious by the minute. After two hours of looking, we couldn’t find Eli. I was sad for days. My mom got me a rhino who I later named Spike as a replacement, but he wasn’t Eli,” he finished.
“And when did this all happen? Last year?” I snorted.
“When I was four,” he said, rolling his eyes.
“Uh huh. So how the hell does this touching story relate to you having OCD?” I asked, not understanding.
“The reason we couldn’t find Eli was because my room was such a mess. I lost him in a sea of toys and clutter. Since then, I’ve always been moderately neat and organized,” he said, drifting over to my desk, and sitting down in the chair. He started to arrange various objects on it in a more ordered fashion than they were.
“I still don’t get it,” I muttered.
“The reason I’m this way is because I don’t want to ever lose something I love again,” he said, letting out a breath.
“Oh,” I said quietly, comprehending the story’s relevance.
“So, since we’re playing the ‘Why Game’, I believe it’s my turn,” he said, switching subjects.
“Oh no. Do I have to answer?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Fine, what do you want to know?”
He thought for a brief moment before a light sparked in his mind, and he turned to face me. “Why do you hate drugs so much?” he inquired.
I shuddered at the question, unsure if answering truthfully was the best idea. “They’re bad for you,” I said.
“Yeah, I know that, you know that, Talia knows that, the who flipping world knows that; what’s the real reason?” I avoided his gaze, as memories clouded my thoughts. “Have you ever… tried them? Is that why?”
I shook my head. “No; I may not be the smartest person academic wise, but I’m not stupid enough to try smoking,” I said seriously.
“Jules, if you can’t tell me it’s fine,” he said, recognizing my discomfort with the topic.
“No, I’m fine,” I said, opening a drawer on my dresser and putting a pair of leggings away. “You told me something, so now it’s my turn.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah,” I said, trying to sound confident. “I was in 7th grade; only twelve at the time. Emily and Taylor had just left my house. My mom said that she was going to run a few errands. I heard a knock on the door. Being the paranoid twelve year old that I was, I crouched behind a couch, and peered through a window to see who it was. It was Adam,” I choked.
“He was a freshman?” Chase asked.
“Yeah,” I confirmed.
“What happened?” he asked.
“I opened the door, and he came in. There was something different about him. I didn’t know what it was. He was acting differently, his eyes were bloodshot, and he just wasn’t the same person. I asked him what happened. He didn’t answer me, but calmly went into his room, closing the door behind him. I was scared.”
“He was high,” Chase commented.
I nodded. “The next morning he came into my room. He apologized for the way he acted, and told me it would never happen again. He asked me to not tell our parents. I asked if he was smoking pot. He said his friends were trying it, so he too went along with it. He promised to never to it again.”
“Did he?” Chase asked.
“Two weeks later, I was home alone again, watching TV, when Adam came over to me. He was high again. I took out my phone, took a picture of him, and ran away, locking myself in my room. I didn’t know at the time entirely what being high meant, but I didn’t want to. The next day, I printed out the picture, and gave it to him. He saw it, and was horrified. I made him promise to never smoke again. He’s kept his promise,” I said, smiling a bit at my brother’s dedication.
“That’s why?” Chase said.
“Well, that’s half the reason,” I said, not wanting to go into the other part.
“What’s the other half?” he asked.
“Josh was a stoner until we got together. He stopped…” I bit down on my lip, not wanting to cry or become emotional in any way, “because of me.”
“How’s that movie sounding about now?” he suggested, standing up and walking towards me.
“Perfectly perfect,” I said, heading over to the door. We exited the room, and strolled down the hallway and past the kitchen to the living room. I went up to the table the TV was mounted on and picked up the remote, tossing it to Chase. He caught it, and held it in his hand, waiting for further instruction. “You choose something to watch; I’ll go make popcorn.”
“Okay,” he said, going to the couch. I went into the kitchen and stared at the vast array of cabinets. Which one… I’m not really what they call “culinary inclined”; aka- I can’t cook. The kitchen isn’t an overly familiar place to me. I went over to the far side, and opened the cupboard next to the fridge. SCORE! I saw a red box of popcorn, and took it. After reading the package, I placed the box inside the microwave.
Ah the microwave! The two of us have quite a history. When I was eight, I wanted to make pizza. I put it in the microwave, and was then told that it needed the oven to bake “correctly”. When I was ten, I tried to make a baked potato. I put a potato covered in tin foil into the microwave. I saw sparks fly, and not in the Taylor Swift way. Our smoke detector began to beep, leading me to the conclusion that my actions may not have been the brightest. The firemen told me that tin foil and the microwave don’t exactly mix. Yeah, the two of us have had our issues over the years…
“Jules!” Chase called from the other room.
“What?” I yelled back.
“Why do I smell smoke?” he questioned, coming into the kitchen.
“I’m making popcorn,” I explained. He went over to the microwave and pulled the door open to expose a steaming box. His eyes glanced around the counter until he saw an oven mitt and put it on his hand. Carefully, he lifted the smoking box out of the appliance, and dunked it into the sink.
“What the fuck were you doing?” he asked, taking off the oven mitt.
“Making popcorn,” I repeated.
“Just a word of advice- next time, take the packet of popcorn out of the box before putting it into the microwave…” he said, shaking his head.
“Should I try again?” I offered.
“No! Let’s watch a movie; forget about popcorn right now!”
“Okay,” I said, as we roamed back into the living room. On the screen was the movie he had chosen: Mean Girls.“You do not seriously want to watch this, do you?”
“Do you want to watch this?”
“No,” I said.
“Good. Let’s watch The Hangover,” he said more characteristically. We sat down next to each other, our backs against the couch, facing the TV. He pressed a few buttons and Mean Girls disappeared, replaced with the lovely comedy I could watch on replay everyday, The Hangover. The first few seconds played, and then a serene wedding scene filled the screen. I leaned my head on his shoulder, and he tentatively wrapped his arm around me. I didn’t move, or object.
The opening credits began to play, and then, out of nowhere, a flash of light came through the window, followed by a loud booming, and an even scarier sound, “JULIA EDEN TYLERS!”