Déjà vu

The Chat frais was our favorite place to go after school, or on weekends. Whenever we could really. It was a dainty little café nestled not too far from town. Desiree May, the clumsy 43 year old waitress who we all adored, informed us that the café was owned by a French man, and Chat frais (pronounced Cat – fray), was French for cool cat. The only thing that this clarified was why there was a picture of a cat with sunglasses on the window. Thanks Desiree May.

“Where are our hippies?” Harper asked between slurps of her jumbo cookies and cream milkshake.

“They could be anywhere,” I replied lazily, stirring my hazelnut mocha with a spoon. This was the first time I’d had one, and I didn’t like it, despite the excess chocolate topping.

“Well, I ain’t waitin all day.”

It was only Harper and I at the café. Sunny’s grandparents were over from England for the week and she had to help around the house, but we were expecting two wonderfully entertaining guests. Rachel was a tall, tanned, beach haired girl who wore beautiful bright dresses and always looked like a flower princess. Her counterpart, Tom, was a sweet boyish musician, who had this great indie style and a quirky attitude. Together, they were our hippies….for some reason. They had been an item since God knows when.

As if on cue, just as I thought Harper was going to get up and go, the bell above the front door tingled. We both perked up.

Tom looked charming as ever with his messy hair poking out from under a grey newsboy hat. As always though, he was upstaged by his beautiful girlfriend. Rachel drifted though the door in a deep blue and white dress, looking like a fairy floating after him.

“Ah, my other women,” Tom took off his hat and bowed like an idiot, “How are you lady’s this afternoon?”

Harper giggled and I responded with the usual, “not bad Thomas.”

Rachel ignored him and quickly took her place at the table beside us. She sounded out of breath, “Sorry we’re so late. My dress got stuck in Tom’s bike chain again.”

Not always on time, but we loved them.

“Desiree!” Tom hollered, taking his seat at the table, “two of your best Dalmore 62 Single Highland Malt Scotch’s please my dear. On the rocks.” He winked.

Desiree rolled her eyes and walked behind the counter, “Oh jeeps Thomas, there are so many things wrong with that. I’m just gunna get ya’ll some tea.”

He shrugged, seemingly content.

“So honeys,” Rachel cooed, propping her elbows up on the table, “how was your Sunday? Recover alright?”

“I wasn’t well,” Harper acknowledged, holding up a guilty hand, “but swell Annabelle slept like a baby, I’m sure.”

She said the part about me bitterly.

I shook my head. Harper turned 18 on Saturday, oh what an event that was. There was a cake fight, several cat fights and so many people at her house that I got claustrophobic and left early. Too early for Harper's liking anyway, which was still one in the morning. It was embarrassing, but I never liked to be surrounded by people, especially ones that I didn’t know, unlike Harper.

“You know I don’t do crowds,” I murmured.

“I will let this one pass. As long as I can still plan your 18th, I’m a happy chappy.”

The thought of it made me ill; I’d regret that deal in a couple of months.

“Anyway,” Rachel chirped, grinning madly, “did anything ever happen with that football guy Harper? What was his name? Edger? Or…Ed—”

“No.”

Rachel tilted her head at Harper's childish response, confused, then turned to me. Things didn’t go so well for Harper, so I gave her the ‘look’. Rachel remained bewildered for a moment, then clicked and made an O shape with her mouth, opting to drop the subject.

Sometimes I forgot that Rachel was a year younger than all of us, the only reminder being that she was never in any of my classes at school. She’d always complain that she was the last to know everything.

Desiree May placed two white teas on the table for the hippies. They nodded in thanks.

Harper jumped, suddenly remembering, “hey, something weird happened today!”

“Oh yeah?” Tom chewed on a biscuit loudly, not showing much interest.

“Yep. George Holley came back to school—”

“He does go to school Harper, no matter how much of a mysterious rogue he appears to be. He even got an A in his physics paper last month,” Tom recalled, still appearing uninterested.

I narrowed my eyes, “You don’t take physics Tom.” He was in my music class during that period.

“Well, no…. but I do love to stalk George Holley! Eeeee dream boat!!”

Rachel rolled her eyes and picked up her drink. “He is a good student, though,” she sipped her tea in a dainty way, then smiled sweetly, “My Mom knows his Dad from—”

“Hey lemme finish!” Harper interrupted.

“Right. Sorry,” Tom apologized, but his smile made it insincere, “Please, go on.”

“Yeah, well, we were walking to go to class and he was just staring at us. It was so bizarre. People were talking to him, but he was just….I don’t know, watching us walk? It was for, like, five whole non-stop minutes too.” Harper looked to me for confirmation, nodding her head eagerly.

I shrugged, “I didn’t really pay much attention.”

“Hmm. Maybe he’s got his eye on one of you girls,” Tom said suggestively, winking at Harper.

I curled my lip up in disgust and Harper smiled slyly as she contemplated the possibility. I shook my head at her betrayal and took a sip of my mocha. Gross.

We all left the café in high spirits. All our houses were conveniently along the same route, which meant we all walked each other home more often than was necessary. Usually Sunny’s house was last on the list, but today it was mine.

Tom and Rachel were long gone. They had a tendency to disappear off into their own little world, which we were all used to. Harper and I walked together along the winding, tree lined street walk that we were so used to. She was being abnormally quite, which meant she was pondering something.

She stared ahead seriously, “So, I’ve been thinking about the whole George thing—”

“Oh really?” I muttered sarcastically. She didn’t hear me.

“—and I think that if he really wants to ask one of us out, whoever it is should say no.”

My head perked up and I straightened to look at her. She kicked a small stone across the sidewalk without noticing, then looked back at me, grinning.

“It wouldn’t be fair, you know? There might be fights and stuff…”

Of course she wasn’t about to say something rational, what was I thinking?

Harper had some serious experience when it came to guys. She was eye-catching, and she had, ya know, spunk. They had all been interested in her at one point or another, and being Harper, she’d always give them a chance. Even he who shall not be named showed a spark of curiosity, though nothing ever came of it, to Harper's dismay.

Blinded by his attractiveness, she obviously couldn’t remember why I felt how I felt about him. I scoffed and yanked my bag over my shoulder, speeding up my walk.

“What?!” Harper scrambled after me, “Okay you can have him!”

I breathed and attempted to slow my pace. I was already tired of how angry the thought of him made me. “Harper, for Christ’s sake, would you stop talking about George Holley?!”

She walked quietly for a minute, pondering, “…do you two have some kind of history that I don’t know about?”

“No Harper, no no no.”

“Then why the hostility?”

I turned to Harper and gave her a serious look, “do you remember when we were 13 and we were on a school camp at that teapot ranch, or something like that?”

“Teapot Valley ranch. Yip.”

“Do you remember that huge crush I had on him then?”

She wiggled her eyebrows, “You betcha!”

“Do you remember when I went up and asked him if he wanted to sit with me for lunch?”

“Ahhh…”

“Let me refresh your memory,” I said icily, “he didn’t say anything, he spilt milk down the front of my shirt and he walked in the opposite direction.”

She winced as she recalled the incident. I was so upset that day that I cried and sat in the playground tunnel for the rest of the afternoon, missing all the fun activities. Harper, Sunny and Tom took turns bringing me pretzels from the kitchen and sat with me in shifts.

“Well….yeah,” she acknowledged, sounding uncertain, “But that was just one time…?”

“There’s also every other time I’ve tried to talk to him? All those times I tried to be nice to him? Remember those?”

She tried to think. I watched her expression turn from blank, to confused, then to understanding.

“Ugh,” she scoffed and screwed up her face comically, “he really is a jerk isn’t he? Sorry, I must have been blinded by his attractiveness.”

My words exactly; I nodded and smiled at her. I wasn’t over exaggerating my immense dislike for George Holley. He was just....Grrr, he would talk to everyone except me! He was friends with everyone except me! But this was back in the day when I'd just started to notice boys. Or, as the rest of the female population acknowledged, just started to notice George Holley.

I was about 15 when I stopped trying completely, and I haven't spoken a word to him since.

--------------

Home is where the heart is. But my home had many hearts running around, beating, pumping blood and what not. Too many hearts.

My Dad was the first to greet me when I walk in the door, starving, and hoping to be conveniently in time for dinner.

Dad was lanky, had a beetles haircut and a walrus mustache. Enough said.

“Anna!” he bellowed, briefly closing his newspaper to engage me in conversation, “Where were you? The twins were worried.”

“No they weren’t. But for your information, I was with my friends,” I stated, chucking my bag on a sofa. I didn’t really feel like conversing with him.

“Oh yes yes of course. Was Thomas there? How is he doing?”

Dad loved Tom. He thought Thomas Moretti was the bee’s knees. Don’t ask me why because, after 15 years or something, I still couldn’t figure it out.

“He’s still a prat Dad.”

This was always my answer. I did it just to rile him up – he secretly loved it.

I made a runner down the hall way towards my bedroom, hearing Dad grumble something under his breath as I left.

So far, there were no signs of my psycho little sister or my annoying twin brothers. Thank goodness. I’d since grown past those crap stages of adolescence, but the three of them were always reminding me what it was like. My ferocious, constantly PMSing baby sis had just turned sweet 15, and the twins, both little rat-bag boys, were 14. The parents decided to call it quits after two popped out at the same time. I’m grateful, but I still wish I was an only child.

I almost yelped with excitement when I was a mere two meters from the safety of my bedroom door, no siblings in sight – then a loud voice stopped me in my tracks.

“Anna! Potatoes!”

I groaned loudly, Monday already? I’d forgotten it was my turn to cook. I slumped my shoulders, sulking back to the kitchen where my Mom was tossing a salad vigorously. She smiled, “just do the potatoes today, I’ll let you off the hook.”

“Yeah,” I muttered, pleased, but still not happy to be peeling stupid potatoes.

I yanked the bowl full of them she’d already pre-prepared and began the grueling task with no more complaints. If anything, my parents made sure we never neglected our responsibilities. Sometimes I hated it, but other times, when I was looking at the bigger picture, I appreciated it.

“How was school?” Mom asked, coating the salad in a light sheen of dressing.

“Normal,” I deadpanned.

“Nothing happened at all?”

“Nope.”

“…What did you do in photography?”

“Didn’t have it today.”

“Oh.” She sounded sad. Mom loved my photography…. or just photography in general. She was very sentimental; she simply adored pictures of her family, even awful ones of my little sister screaming at the mailman. That was last mother’s day. She was absolutely thrilled.

Mom scurried over to the table and placed a neat blue bowl of garden salad right in the center. She set the table at lightning speed while I started peeling my second potato.

I sighed, feeling guilty about killing the conversation, but made no effort to revive it.

Dinner was the same horror movie it was every night.

Well, actually, the twins showed potential. They could be cool. They were identical, and they wore the same outfit to school 3 times a week, just for giggles. They had a good sense of humor and they would always let me use them to play tricks on people.

But apart from that, they were little runts.

I tried my best to ignore it when a pea would bounce across the table and land on my plate, on my lap, or in my drink. Their snickering made it so obvious who did it. Still, I looked around the table once or twice, even going as far as accusing Dad, just to appease them. I was a good sister, but they still had a lot to learn.

Yes, we appeared to be a happy little family to the naked eye, but we were still missing one...

Hazel, the younger female child, barged though the door half way through dinner. Everyone froze. This was awkward.

She looked like a hooker. She was wearing a red denim mini skirt straight from the 90’s, color coordinated with red strappy sandals and some bright red lipstick that you could probably scrape off her lips.

Mom winkled her nose subtly in disgust, but I could see she wasn’t going to voice her opinion. ‘It’s just a faze,’ she would say later on. Thank God I never went through it. Not only was I appalled that someone with the same blood in her veins as me would walk around looking like that, but I was positive that lipstick belonged to me. She had it sitting in her jangling imitation louis vuitton, I could smell it. She’d been smearing it on all day, every five minutes.

That little brat, stealing my stuff. As soon as I’d finished my food I was gunna rip her a—

“Your lips are bleeding?” Dad interrupted my thoughts as Hazel passed the dining room table, strutting towards her room. I held back a laugh; Good ol’ reliable Dad.

Hazel stopped dead in her tracks and turned around slowly, her teeth bared in fury. “Excuse me?!” she growled through them.

Dad’s eyes widened, as did everyone else at the tables, excluding my own. What was her problem? Did Justin Bieber break up with her at school or something? I wasn’t afraid of the explosion, solely because I was a teenage girl myself. An older and wiser version.

I decided to save the moment, “you look like a tramp. Put that lipstick back where you found it.”

Ha ha ha, did I say save the moment?

She made the most dramatic, ‘I hate my life’, moan I’d ever heard and threw her bag on the floor with a thud.

“What’s up your butt?” One of the twins said. Pierre I think. Nick, the other one, flung a pea at her, but missed.

“I hate my family! You just don’t understand!” Hazel screamed, spinning on her heels and storming away down the hall way. “And it’s not yours!” she added from her room.

I shrugged and returned to my food; she could keep it. It was an awful color anyway.

“Annabelle honey,” Mom spoke quietly, still eyeing the bag on the floor, “could you go and talk to her? Apologize please.”

I sighed. Just a normal day in paradise.