Message in a Bottle

Chapter Two
“Why aren’t you going, Morgan?” Emily moaned.
“For the millionth time, Emily, it’s not my thing. School dances are stupid and a waste of time. The only reason anybody really goes to them is to get attention,” I mumbled, walking into the lunch line.
“Morgan, you’re such a party pooper. Prom is part of your high school experience which means you have to do it! Are you going to grow up to tell your kids that you didn’t go to Prom just to look back and regret it?”
I put my finger on my chin in fake concentration. “No! I’m not.”
“You used to like this stuff, Morgan. You used always talk about going to school dances and you used to love wearing frilly girly things like dresses and you used to have long perfect blonde hair and you used to always babble on about how you’re going to find your prince someday in the castle.”
“Shut up, Emily! That was back then. I grew up.”
“You grew up to jeans, sneakers, a shirt from the thrift store, and boring hair? Ew.”
“It’s not from the thrift store,” I mumbled, looking down at my dark blue shirt. “I got it off the clearance rack.”
“And the weird thing is that you have the money to buy things at the front of the store.”
“But I choose not to.”
“And that’s what annoys me. You’re coming with me to go Prom dress shopping and you’re going to buy a Prom dress whether you like I or not.”
“I don’t even have a date even if I were to go,” I said as I took a tray.
“Go Hurricanes!” a couple cheerleaders yelled as they started twirling into the lunch room with their pompoms and short skirts.
“Ugh,” I said in disgust, rolling my eyes.
“How about Christopher Marksman? I see you always giving him the oogly-eyes,” she said in a low voice, nudging me.
“Stop it, Emily,” I said, pushing away her elbow. “And that was one time and that wasn’t the ‘oogly-eyes.’ I was starring at his butt because he had gum stuck to it.”
“So you were starring at his butt?”
“You take everything the wrong way.” I took a burger, chocolate cake, and a peach tea. I paid it and Emily and I went outside to the school courtyard to eat our lunch where we always ate.
“Sometimes I wonder if you’re even going to get married.”
“Will you stop it about my love life and me not being girly enough? Sheesh. If you want someone like that go join the cheer team.”
“I’m sorry, Morgan. I just want you to go to Prom so bad!”
“It’s in three months, Emily. There’s not even posters up yet. And if it calms your nerves, I’ll try looking around for someone to take me and if not I’ll go with you and Justin. Being the third wheel won’t be so bad.”
“He hasn’t even asked me yet,” Emily sighed, picking at her salad.
“He’s your boyfriend. He doesn’t need to ask you.”
“Yeah, but it would be romantic anyways.”
After school Emily came over to my house to work on our drama class project.
“You can do all the drawing. The best I can do is stick people,” she said, pushing the paper toward me.
“I don’t know how to draw….”
She gave me a dubious look.
“Well, I haven’t drawn in such a long time. How do you expect me to remember?”
“Do you have any artistic ability left in you, Morgan?”
“Nope,” I mumbled, leaning against my bed, bringing my knees up to my chest.
She rolled her eyes and began drawing the clothing for our two person play for class.
Benjamin was walking down the hall and stopped, walking back to the door frame. “You don’t live here,” he said.
“I know that,” Emily said, annoyed.
“Just reminding you,” he said, continuing to walk up to his room.
She roller her eyes. “He’s such a buffoon.”
“Try having to live with him for seventeen years,” I laughed.
“With how long we’ve been bestfriends, I feel like I have.” She got up and began looking around my room.
“What’re you looking for?”
“Do you have any coloring utensils?” She opened my closet door and spotted a brown box. “Ohh.” She grabbed the box with both hands to bring them down.
“No! Don’t touch those!” I cried.
“What? Whoa!”
The box was heavier than she thought and the glass inside the box began rattling because she didn’t have the strength to keep it from falling.
I lunged for the box as if fell from her hands. I caught it right in time but the box smashed my stomach.
“Oh! I’m so sorry, Morgan,” she panicked, pushing the box off of me.
“It’s fine,” I mumbled, gasping for air.
“Are you hurt?”
“Other than the air being pushed out of my body, yes.”
“What are these?” She asked, kneeling down next to the brown box.
“What do they look like, Emily?”
“A bunch of bottles. Why do you have these?”
“…just a collection,” I said, shrugging my shoulders, pushing the box to the corner of my room.
“I won’t even asked why you had a Vodka bottle in there.”
Emily and I worked on our project for a while but it wasn’t long until dinnertime that she had to go home.
“So how was everyone’s day?” my mom asked conversationally ten minutes into our dinner of lasagna and salad. Lately it seemed as if my mom was really trying to reach out to my brother and I because we haven’t had a dinner with all of us in a long time. Usually my mom was out on a date with her new boyfriend she seemed to care a lot about and constantly tried to push him on Benjamin and I. The guy’s name was Kyle and they met through eHarmony.
Ben shrugged his shoulders, putting a piece of salad into his mouth.
“Fine,” I mumbled.
“Oh, my day was great, thanks for asking,” she said.
Then we went into more awkward silence.
“Remember that you have a doctor appointment next week, Ben. We need to check if-”
“I know, I know. If I’m going to die or not,” Benjamin groaned.
“Ben!” Mom exclaimed. “Will you stop acting like that? You aren’t going to die. Cancer can be cured with the right attitude.”
Ben rolled his eyes. “It’s been years, mom. If I weren’t to die then I would have been cancer-free along time ago…. But I’m not.”
“We’ll talk about this some other time, Benjamin,” mom said between her teeth. She took a deep breath. “ On a brighter note, I was thinking… maybe tomorrow we can all go for a walk on the beach just like the old days.”
“Mom, that was something we did as a family and if you haven’t noticed… our family isn’t really complete right now,” Ben said.
Mom starred ahead at the empty chair in front of her then looked down at her plate.
I kicked Benjamin under the table.
“What?” He mouthed.
I rolled my eyes. “I’m up for a walk on the beach, mom,” I sighed reluctantly.
“No, no, it’s fine. You don’t have to if you don’t want to. I know it’s weird to do something that we used to do as a family without your father…. If you’d excuse me,” she whispered, standing up from her chair and walking to her room solemnly. We heard her footsteps and the creaking of the floorboards as she went up. Then she entered her room and closed the door gently.
Even though my mom was happily dating Kyle, she still missed my father very much. I felt like she was just using Kyle to get over my dad but it was obvious it wasn’t working because the first day her and Kyle started to actually date she put away all pictures of my dad around the house but a day later when I came home from school they were all back up.
“What’s your problem, Benjamin?” I scolded. “Do you always have to bring up dad like that around mom? How insensitive are you? It isn’t her fault that he left us.”
Ben glared at me and threw back his chair, stomping to his room.
“Ben,” I called. His door slammed shut and I sighed, putting my hands over my face and groaned.
After doing the dishes and cleaning up the kitchen I went up to my room and laid in bed. I liked sleeping beneath my skylight so I was able to see the stars from where I slept. I took the brown root beer bottle from my bedside table and toyed around with it in my hands. Even though looking at the bottle made my cry, it also brought me peace, a time back to my childhood when everything felt like pure perfection.
I never read the message inside my grandmother’s bottle. It would be invading her privacy if I did so I kept it shut with the cork stuck deep inside.
I laid the bottle against my heart and shut my eyes, falling into a deep sleep as tears rolled down the side of my face thinking about my grandmother, my broken family, and what things used to be like.