Give Into Me

The door to the apartment was locked and nobody came to the door when Kaelin knocked. Ella couldn't be asleep already. It was only eight thirty. And most Occidental students were out partying, starting break off with a bang. In fact, just upstairs, Kaelin could here the pounding bass of a popular song and the stomping of feet. How the hell could Ella be sleeping with that over her head?

She kicked the door with her toe, her hands too full of grocery bags to knock with her fist. Still, no answer. If there wasn't an elderly couple on their floor, Kaelin would have yelled for Ella to get up and open the door. But when she had done that in the past, Mr. and Mrs. Laufer had filed a complaint about her to their landlord. So, instead, she continued to tap the door with her foot, listening for any movement from the other side of the door.

Finally, tired of waiting for Ella to wake up and let her inside, Kaelin set the bags of groceries on the floor, nearly dropping them in the process, before fishing around inside her purse for the keys.

"I really need to go through this thing," she muttered to herself as she dug through the contents, pawing aside wrappers for granola bars, dozens of different lip balms, loose dollar bills, and more. This oversized purse was like a black hole; she could never find anything in it. And no matter how many times she said she would go through it, that never happened. Of course, tonight, she would have to.

The keys were at the bottom of the purse although she had just thrown them on top of the clutter within it. As she pulled them out, about five different things came out with them. Kaelin gave an exasperated sigh as she stuffed it all back inside.

Once the door was unlocked, she propped it open with a stool from the counter, hung her purse and keys on a hook by the door, and brought the grocery bags into her apartment. The door opened into the kitchen, so luckily she didn't have to haul them very far. Placing them by the sink and closing the door, Kaelin looked over the counter into the living room where Ella was passed out on the couch, sitting upright, a textbook open in her arms. The television was off, so it was likely that she had been sleeping for a while. That girl never fell asleep in the middle of a game. It was a good thing that Kaelin had set it to record before she had left.

Not wanting to miss anything, Kaelin quickly put the groceries away, changed out of her jeans into a pair of sweatpants and fuzzy socks, then walked back out into the living room.

Ella had her legs propped up on the couch beside her, and, unable to resist, Kaelin snatched the remote off the coffee table and plopped down right on top of her roommates feet.

Being the light sleeper that she was, Ella yelped at the sudden weight on her feet, pulling them out from under Kaelin moments later. The latter cackled at her friend's reaction, clicking the power button as she got settled on the couch. Ella narrowed her eyes.

"God! Do you have to wake me like that?" snapped Ella, hugging her knees to her chest. "That's not nice!"

"Oh, well, I'm so sorry, your highness, that you get to just doze on the couch while I lugged all our food up three flights of stairs," Kaelin retorted, still chuckling at Ella's furrowed brows. "The elevator's out again."

Her expression softening, Ella turned toward the TV as Kaelin turned on the Kings' game against the Wild at Staples Center. As it was recorded, they rewinded to the start, when all the players skated onto the ice. Ella smiled as Anze Kopitar appeared, Kaelin doing the same as she caught sight of Drew Doughty. Excited for the game to start, Kaelin and Ella curled up on the couch, not saying a word to each other except when the Kings scored or someone did something stupid.

The game ended in overtime with Bret Burns scoring a goal for Minnesota, making a loss two to three.

"Well, that sucks," Ella said as they turned off the TV, a little downtrodden that LA had lost.

"Yeah," agreed Kaelin blankly, distracted by the amount of packing she still had left.

"And I can't believe your boy got two penalties."

"Mm-hmm."

"So how much more do you have to pack?" asked Ella, as if she had read Kaelin's mind.

The latter shrugged as if it were no big deal, like she had done most of what she needed to do earlier that week, when, on the contrary, all she had done was pack some toiletries the night before.

"Oh, come on, Kae," said Ella, shaking her head, "you really haven't pack anything?"

"Hey, you know me. I should have been voted Worst Procrastinator in high school."

"If you were bad then, you're worse now. Kae, you're going to be up half the night packing. What time is your flight in the morning?"

"Six thirty. And I know what your going to say. I should have started earlier. But you are no better than I am."

Ella smiled, crossing her arms.

"True. But the difference is, I was voted Worst Procrastinator in high school."

Kaelin burst into laughter. Her roommate seemed very proud of that title and always had, using it as her excuse when she was up until four in the morning studying for an exam. But Kaelin was just as bad, always reading books at the last minute, doing essays the night before, and not worrying about exams until there's only a day left.

"Well, my friend, you had better get that packing done so you can actually sleep before driving to LAX tomorrow."

"Yeah . . . maybe watching the game tonight wasn't the best idea," Kaelin said with a straight face, but she couldn't hold it for very long before the two of them were doubled over on the couch, clutching their sides.

"Missing the game," wheezed Ella. "Oh, my God, that's ridiculous. . . ."

Still giggling, Kaelin got to her feet, retrieved her purse from the kitchen, and headed off down the hall to her room, the door of which was closed. She opened the door, slid inside, and closed it quickly, as her cat, Poe, made a dash for the rest of the apartment.

Kaelin leaned against the door, looking down at her little dark grey kitty, who was glaring up at her from where he sat at her feet. His brown eyes were narrowed, his pupils slits, as he stared unblinkingly into his owner's eyes, trying to compel her to open the door and let him out. But Kaelin simply shook her head, stooped, and gathered the muscular, twelve-pound cat into her arms, rubbing between his ears as she did so. Almost as soon as she picked him up, the cat started purring softly, the anger on his face fading quickly as he closed his eyes.

The poor cat, named after Kaelin's favorite author and poet, Edgar Allen Poe, was constantly locked inside her bedroom, as Ella was highly allergic to cats. Whenever the door opened, he tried to escape his prison, despite all the comforts Kaelin had provided for him: a scratching post, toys, and even a little kitty bed — although Poe prefered to sleep on her feet. He only ever left the room when Kaelin was taking a trip back to her hometown, like now. The next morning she would stuff him inside his cat carrier, give him a sedative to keep him calm on the trip, and the two would head out for LAX.

Once, when Kaelin had first adopted her cat, before Ella had known that she was allergic to cats, she had offered to watch Poe while Kaelin traveled home for Thanksgiving. On returning to Los Angeles, Kaelin found her roommate throwing up in the bathroom, eyes puffy and nose streaming. Since then, Poe had been confined to Kaelin's room and gone on every trip she took that was longer than a couple days.

She set him down on the windowsill, where he sat looked down at the dark street from the three-story view, wrapping his fluffy tail elegantly around his paws. Kaelin, ignoring the empty suitcase lying beside her bed, dumped all her purses contents out on her quilt. Before she could stop him, Poe had leapt from the windowsill to the bed, playing eagerly with the trash that had fluttered out of the bag. She couldn't help chuckling at his playfulness.

However, the cat bolted beneath the bed as something buzzed beneath the heap on the bed. Quickly digging through the pile, Kaelin picked up her phone and looked at the Caller ID. It said "Mom".

She pressed the green button on the screen of her iPhone 4 and held it up to her ear, speaking before her mother could say a word.

"Mom, it is past one in the morning there, what on Earth are you doing awake?" Kaelin smiled. As her mother always did, she stayed up to check on her daughter the night before a trip, making sure that she didn't procrastinate in packing any longer.

"Kaelin, it is past ten at night there, have you finished packing yet?" came her mother's voice through the phone. Kaelin could see her mother now, standing by the landline, all alone in her house, talking on the phone with the only child she had left.

"Well . . ."

"Kaelin Marie Bremner, you are the worst procrastinator I have ever met. Have you done anything?"

"I'm going through my purse."

"Well, that's a start. What time is your flight again?"

"I told you when you called earlier!"

"I am an old woman. This memory of mine is going."

"You're only sixty-years-young!"

Her mother chuckled.

"That 'years-young' thing is getting more ridiculous every time you say it," her mother replied, but her tone was no longer light-hearted. Kaelin knew that her mother was getting older, she could hear it in her voice, but she just didn't want to accept it.

At twenty-two, Kaelin had the most elderly mother out of her immediate group of friends. She had been born when her mother was thirty-eight, with two other children, a boy, eleven, and another girl, seven.

The "years-young" thing had started when Kaelin was eight. It was a reminder to her mother and herself that getting older isn't something to be ashamed of, that life could be taken away from them any day of their lives. And it had all started after the accident.

Her family was on their way home from picking up her brother from college for Christmas when their pick-up truck was broadsided by a speeding suburban as they crossed an intersection. The truck was propelled down the street by the velocity of the impact, the suburban pushing it along all the way. The other driver and his passengers walked away from the accident with minor injuries, but Kaelin's family wasn't nearly as lucky.

Her father and sister were killed on impact, and her brother's collarbone was broken. Her mother had a couple broken ribs and a long gash along the side of her face. Kaelin herself had a broken wrist and a purple bruise on her forehead from where her head had hit the window. Having blacked out soon after that, she woke up in the hospital a week later, being told that her father and sister had died in the accident, her brother having passed away as a result of the injuries he attained in the wreck.

"Your mother has been upset the last few days," the doctor had said. "She will be very happy to see you awake. She thought she was going to lose you, too."

At that moment, her mother hobbled into the room, stitches up and down her face from the gash and clutching her ribs, but smiling and crying at the same time. Kaelin was crying, too, before she knew it and enveloped in her mother's embrace. Her mother was all she had left.

"The plane takes off at six thirty," Kaelin answered after a moment's silence. "Go to sleep, mom. I'll call you on the way to the airport in the morning. You can keep me awake."

"All right, Kae," was her mother's response. "Good night, dear. I'll see you tomorrow. I love you."

"I love you, too."

Kaelin hung up the phone and collapsed on her bed, trying not to think of the past and look to what was ahead: a late night of packing, a six hour flight the following morning, and nearly three whole weeks spent with her mother. While the first two things were undesirable, the upcoming vacation was something she always looked forward to, despite the bickering and debates that were inevitable whenever her extended family came for a visit.

At least she had somewhere to go for Christmas and New Year's. Ella spent every break here in their apartment, sometimes reading or talking to Kaelin over the phone, but mostly doing nothing. When your own parents disown you, there's not much to look forward to when the holidays roll around.

As she started to sort through all the crap that had been in her purse, Kaelin put her plane ticket to the side and was getting somewhere until she was distracted by the pamphlet the travel agency had given her when she had booked her flight.

Taking a seat on the floor beside her bed, Kaelin looked through the little three-fold, stopping when she got to the section titled, THINGS TO DO AND PLACES TO SEE.

As a Pittsburgh native, she had done most of these things before the age of five, along with the small things that everyone always seemed to overlook, but it was always interesting to see what the travel agencies thought were worth doing. Near the top of the list was "Catch a Penguins' hockey game at the Consol Energy Center." And right beside that they had added a photograph of the Pittsburgh Penguins' captain, Sidney Crosby.

Although she had been a Kings' fan since she had started going to Occidental a little less than four years prior, Kaelin always rooted for her hometown, paying attention to the team news and never missing a game. Maybe she'd try to go see one while she was home, like the pamphlet suggested.

For a moment, Kaelin gazed at the picture of Crosby. It wasn't a very good one — he was just staring blankly at the reader, his face emotionless.

My God, he's attractive, Kaelin thought. Even when he's not smiling.

Closing the pamphlet promptly and standing up, Kaelin pulled her auburn red hair into a loose bun and went back to organizing her purse before she could be sidetracked any further by the handsome hockey player.