Soria Girl

If you’re bored, there’s nothing quite as awesome as knowing that you’re not being bored alone. So the Saturday after my epic adventure to Mike’s dad’s house, I got a phone call from Mike and he told me he was bored as shit too.

“You wanna go somewhere?” he’d said.

“Depends. Where?” I replied.

“I dunno.” Somebody was talking in the background and he paused. “My parents are gone and Isaac’s staying with us for a week. He said he’ll take us somewhere.”

Well, what did I have to lose?

I asked Dad if I could hang with Michael for the day and he said something to the effect of, “Sure. Whatever. Just don’t let him rape you. Pee your pants and scream ‘fire’ if you have to.”

I don’t think he actually heard me, but I didn’t really care.

At around noon, there was a pickup truck parked outside my house and I ran down the driveway to meet Isaac and Michael. The car was splattered in mud and looked to be at least twenty years old. The interior didn’t look any better, either. The seats had holes in them where the foam was showing, and Michael must’ve noticed me grimacing, trying to sit down comfortably, since he looked back from the front seat and laughed.

“She doesn’t bite. She stinks, but she don’t bite,” he told me.

Isaac rolled his eyes. “Mike, this car is the biggest girl repellant you’re ever gonna come across. Why couldn’t we just take Dad’s car?”

“’Cause you suck at drivin’ Dad’s car, and I don’t want you to kill us,” Mike replied, elbowing his brother behind the wheel.

The stench of burning rubber and manure seeped through my nostrils and penetrated my clothes. I certainly didn’t want to be rude and say to Michael that this truck smelled like horse shit and farts, but it wasn’t real easy being quiet about it.

“Oh yeah, we’re going to Palisades Park,” Isaac informed me. “Might be a while.”

“Can I crack a window?” I finally spoke up.

“She lasted five minutes! You owe me twenty bucks, Mike,” Isaac cheered, shoving Mike in the shoulder and completely ignoring my question.

Michael sneered and looked back at me, snickering a bit. “Alright, alright…see, I thought she’d go a little longer without pointing out the smell. That’s proof that you gotta clean this thing out, man…”

“I’ve had this truck since I could drive. I’m not cleaning out all of the memories.”

The McEwins fell silent, and so did I. I turned my attention to the window where California sped past me in a blur. In a half hour or so, we’d be at our destination, and all I had to do until then to occupy the time was listening to the scratchy radio Isaac had tuned to a country station. I could’ve pulled out my phone and played games or something, but that would’ve seemed rude.

I mean, at least Mike could’ve said something to me. It was sort of odd to not having him chatting it up with me or at least his brother. Awkward, to say the least.

Seemingly suddenly, Mike snapped his fingers and pointed at his brother, shooting off in their own little conversation and ignoring the girl in the backseat.

“Hey, when is that volunteer thing supposed to start?” he asked.

“The soldier’s not gettin’ here until sometime after Christmas. We’re not even gonna know who it is until late November,” Isaac answered.

Mike leaned back and folded his hands on top of his head, sighing deeply. “Dang. I’m lookin’ forward to that.”

“What’re you guys doing?” I piped in, curiosity peaking. “What about soldiers?”

“Our dad’s getting to be an old fart and can’t work on the farm as much as he used to,” Mike’s brother told me. “There’s this program going on with the military in San Diego where we can let ‘im or her stay in our house and we’ll pay them if he helps out with the farm.”

“That’s awesome. Total respect,” I smiled, nodding. I didn’t even know things like that existed, but it struck me as cool how they’d do something along those lines.

Mike turned around and adjusted himself on his seat so that he was in quite possibly the most unsafe sitting position in existence, but he faced me. “Back in Mississippi, we tried doin’ something like that, but it wasn’t with the army.”

“Oh God. You mean that time Dad hired all those hobos to help raise the cattle? I remember that,” Isaac snorted, covering his mouth. “That was awful.”

“Yeah. What he did, Sor, is he picked up all of the hobos he could find along the interstates and said he’d pay ‘em all if they helped him out. But half of them were crazy and the other half were lazy as sin, so halfway through the first day, they weren’t doin’ nothing right. Dad fired ‘em. He was so pissed,” Mike laughed, turning red in the face. “I wasn’t even in school yet and I remember it.”

I cocked my head. “You lived in Mississippi?”

“Yes ma’am,” Mike answered. He took off his hat and ran his hand through the neat orange curls on his head. “Until I was seven. Then we moved.”

“And I had to start all over at school and convince everybody that I wasn’t the anxious sadsack they thought I was!” Isaac happily proclaimed. “It was fantastic!” Then he grumbled more nothings under his breath while Mike looked on in confusion.

“You’re such a drama queen, man,” Mike teased.

“Kiss my ass.”

I tried not to smile, but I did anyway. Isaac never struck me as this kind of person. I guess that’s what you get when you’re stuck in a smelly truck with them for a while, even though it’d only been around fifteen minutes.

After he uttered those famously infamous words, the conversation died again. Mike went back to sitting safely and I noticed the musty stench of the vehicle again, turning my attention outside. Palisades isn’t really that far from the house, but it’s not a real short drive either.

Used to be, back in Claymore, Saturdays were reserved for band practice with Plaster Caster. I’d look forward to the weekend solely for that reason. I wasn’t used to having boring Saturdays yet, but at least Mike prevented me from having one that weekend.

I wondered what the guys were doing back in Florida. I knew they weren’t having band practice, but were they even hanging out anymore? I hated to think about them possibly drifting apart. I couldn’t even picture it happening. And no matter how hard I tried not to think about it, no matter how hard I focused on the trees rushing past the truck, the thoughts kept coming back to me like a lethal boomerang.

Thank God for Isaac, though, since his deep voice cut through the cloud in my head and brought me back from the pathetic whining I did in there.

“Jesus Christ, this is sad. I’m a twenty-three year old grown-ass man, and I’m driving two teenagers to the park ‘cause I ain’t got nothing else to do with my time.”

Mike snickered at his brother’s misfortune and slapped his shoulder with the back of his hand. “This is why you need a boyfriend. You need’a get outta the house sometime.”

Isaac laughed right back. As we rolled into a stoplight, he hung his head on the steering wheel.

But I just tried to make sense of what Mike just said. Either Mike had a slip-up of the words, or he just brought something up that totally flew over my head.

This was yet another uncomfortable moment starring me, Soria Atkinson, the girl who was insanely curious about this farm family but didn’t want to act like a nosy little dickwad.

I tried to hide my perplexed expression.

Isaac caught me in the rearview mirror and pointed. “Oh, shoot. That’s right, you don’t know. Well, anyways, I’m gay as hell. Just sayin’.”

Question answered. Good. I didn’t have to open my mouth and sound like a moron to find out, either.

But it really didn’t add up…he wasn’t the kinda guy who you could just look at and think, “Oh yeah, he totally likes boys.” Then again, his perfectly-conditioned scarlet hair that came to halfway down his back didn’t exactly scream “straight,” though…

Whatever. I shrugged it off; I had no right to talk about it.

“Oh man, Sor. You should see this kid when we’re at home. Like I said before, he’s the biggest drama queen,” Mike poked fun at his brother.

Isaac smiled smugly and kept on driving quietly.

“All of our relatives think he’s this real quiet guy who’s all nice, but he ain’t that. When it’s just us and our parents, he’s such a smartass,” Michael continued, pointing his thumb at him every so often.

“I get it from Mom,” Isaac explained, shrugging. “You’re just jealous ‘cause I’m the prettier brother…”

“I could be pretty, too, if I grew my hair down to my ass and took steroids.”

“I could be a manwhore, too, if I flirted with an innocent teenage girl and invited her to my house.”

Mike shot his brother a dirty look, but Isaac returned the favor. I just sat there in the backseat, blushing.

“I don’t flirt, Isaac. That’s just my natural charm,” Michael joked, throwing a grin back to me. “You’d have some too if you got outta the house once in a blue moon.”

“Well, what if I don’t wanna flirt? What if I just wanna skip straight to the dirty stuff? Maybe I’m good at that and you just don’t see it,” Isaac backfired, taking both of us off-guard.

Mike’s mouth dropped and so did mine. We just sat there staring in shock at his remark. Now, why? I’m not so sure.

Isaac won this sibling battle and he knew it, gripping the steering wheel with confidence.

But then he sighed real hard and leaned forward. “Damn it all, I want an army man in my bed right now. I hope the soldier we get is hot.”

Michael burst into laughter, turning bright red from snorting so hard.

“Seriously!” Isaac insisted, punching Mike’s arm. “There ain’t nothing I wouldn’t give to lose my virginity to a man in uniform. Dang.”

“My neighbor’s in the army and he’s pretty hunky. You could end up with him,” I kidded.

He looked at me over his shoulder and beamed. “Aw, it’s just a fantasy of mine. I ain’t getting my hopes high over it. But it’d be nice…”

“Hey, you’re gonna be alone most of the time. Dad’s gonna be staying with us during the week and it’ll just be you and the soldier,” Mike fueled the fire.

“Guys, shut up. You’re makin’ me get my hopes up!” Isaac yelled.

“I just like bugging you,” Mike grinned, poking his brother. “You overreact to everything.”

“Well, he’s right. Army guys can be totally hot,” I agreed with Isaac.

And we carried on like that for a little while, just going back and forth about how awesome it would be to end up living with a sexy soldier for half a year. It was nice to talk to them. Not just Michael, but with Isaac, too. I didn’t really get to hear much of him when I stayed at the McEwins’ house for that one weekend, but I did then. I guess first impressions aren’t everything.

- - -

Palisades Park was pretty breathtaking to me. I loved Santa Monica already (the beach and the actual environment), but I’d only been to Palisades once or twice in my life, and they were both when I was really young. I hadn’t really seen it. And I’d never been there with two new friends that appeared in my life because of a chance meeting.

My mind kept shooting back to when I went to the beach with Plaster Caster in the beginning of the summer, how Ren told me how he’d react if I said I was moving. He’d said he would’ve told me how much I meant to him if I told him straight-up about it. That used to baffle me, how he went back on that promise and it took an overnight change for us to be okay again. I never did tell them immediately about it. I regret that every day, even to this day. And it took a while to grow up and understand why he reacted like that.

It sucked, not being able to look at a coastline without thinking of St. Augustine and how I’d only been there once when I had to move back here. It hurt. It especially stung being self-aware and knowing that being hung up wasn’t helping anything. Even now when I look back on it, it’s painfully embarrassing.

I suppose I wasn’t all grown up yet in eighth grade. Even though I sure as hell knew what I was doing with a guitar in my hands, I didn’t know much of anything else. Not with Mike, not with Dad, not with anyone.