Starting Position

Chapter 11

Cambrie called me the following morning. Her voice was crisp and clean, as though she had gone to bed at a decent hour, gotten a full night's sleep, and awoke to the sound of birds chirping peacefully outside. Not as though she had been at a party until the wee hours of the morning.

She first asked why I left, to which I lent a vague interpretation of the truth, as my opinion of Tyson was not entirely foreign to her. She then wanted to know how I got home, which was where my story struggled.

"You walked home? Ell, are you crazy? You could have been killed!" she exclaimed.

If I was being honest, I considered lying to her; it would have been easier. After a few moments of contemplative silence with an expectant Cambrie hanging on the other line, I decided to tell her the truth. Very quickly.

"You – hang on – you what now?"

"Got a ride home with Ben Harrison." The words sounded strange coming aloud. In fact, when I woke up, I had thought the entire evening was some weird, foggy dream. But as the seconds passed, the clearer the memory became.

"How?" Cambrie asked perplexed. "Was he there – at Dillon's, I mean?"

I was then forced into telling her the long story, stopping every once in a while to repeat or further explain certain details based on Cambrie's gasping questions. Most notably, "Tyson did what?" – "You got an extra-large bag of Sour Patch Kids? Really?" – "Ben is kind of cute, you know."

We wrapped up our conversation about a half an hour later, Cambrie letting me know she would swing by later that afternoon and swearing she would kill Tyson. Before we hung up, I asked her what happened between her and the mystery man at the party. She stammered and giggled, and I didn't come away with much, but she promised to provide the whole story in person.

I was now curled up on the plush couch downstairs with an open book in my lap. My father was fiddling with our defective dishwasher in the kitchen, the interlaying sounds of pounding and cursing echoing from beyond the cased opening.

A loud slamming inside the kitchen made my head snap upwards, and, few seconds later, my father entered the living room, his face red and hands dirty.

"Fix it?" I asked, as my father traipsed across the hardwood floors and plopped down on the couch beside me. He smelled like sweat.

"We'll be hand washing our dishes for the unforeseeable future." My father leaned his head on the backrest and let out a defeated sigh.

"What does that make it now – Dish washer, twelve, Dad, zero?"

My father exhaled a slow, sarcastic laugh before propping his head back upright. "What are you up to today?" he asked.

"Nothing much. Cambrie's coming over later," I answered, gaze returning to my book-covered lap.

My father stiffened next to me, and I wondered how many seconds I had to prepare for whatever uncomfortable speech was about to commence.

"So, listen..."

Not long apparently.

"I wanted to ask you a question." My attention was locked on the book. "Sarah and I, well, we've been talking and, um, what do you think – how does dinner sound this week? How about Wednesday? She invited us to her place. She's a very good cook."

"I can't," I said immediately. "I have a choir concert." Even though it sounded like a lie, it wasn't. My choir group was putting on the winter event at a senior center that evening.

My father recovered quickly. "Oh, right. Right – yeah, I think you mentioned that..." I hadn't. "Maybe the next week then? I'll, um, ask Sarah."