A person with whom one has a bond of mutual affection
Chapter 2 - Hope’s story
“Hope… Hope, what are you looking at?”
“What?”
“I said, what you are looking at?”
I looked around me, coming back to reality. I was standing in the middle of the hall, slowing down the flow of traffic, and starring out one of the skylights.
“I’m sorry, I wasn’t paying attention.”
And I definitely wasn’t. Was the sky always this blue? The clouds looked like spun white cotton candy. Anna looked at me with that puzzled look that I’d seen so many times before. Anna and I had known each other since we were in the third grade. Anna was tall, standing next to me, all five-foot-nine. She was a blue-eyed blond. We teased her about her blondness a lot, even though Anna was one of the smartest girls I knew. I was delighted she was one of my best friends.
My other dear friend was Toby: Tobias Winters named after his grandfather. He had threatened me when I was five, that if I ever called him Tobias he would make me eat a worm. And I still believed he would. I had known Toby all my life. He lived next door to us with his two sisters. It was Toby and I who had wanted to see the world in our hot air balloon. Okay… it was really just my tree house. We spent hours dreaming of places we would go and the marvels we would see looking down from the sky above.
We were the three musketeers, Toby, Anna, and I, until last summer. That’s when Kayla moved into the neighborhood and we became the four musketeers. It always seemed natural that the four of us had more in common than just our friendship. We all wanted to see the world together. To see the places people sent post cards from. And I wanted to see the great wonders of the world; at least what was left of them. All the places my dad told me stories about. To make those travels come true we all agreed you need a good job… a very good job, that pays good money. You needed a college degree, from a good school. And you needed good grades to get that. So we all enrolled in a program at high school called Stepping-up. We spend a half-day at the high school and evening classes at the college across the river. With our plan, we would graduate in June with a high school diploma in hand and one year of college finished as well. Plan [A] was coming together. All the hard work was paying off.
“Hope, after class we were going to stop at the mall, want to go?” Anna had that puppy dog look, the one I usually gave my dad.
“Sounds like fun, you driving?”
“Don’t I always?” she said with a smirk.
Anna had an old car that was her grandmother’s. It was a big white four-door sedan we called the ‘Boat’. Don’t get me wrong; we loved it. It fit all of our junk and the four of us with ease. To top it off it had a very large trunk for our shopping trips. What more did you want in a car? And like Anna always said, ‘It was free’.
You could tell what the plan of action was when we got to the mall. We stood by the car all facing in different directions.
Anna had a date with the dress shop. Kayla yearned to get to the bookstore. Toby sought out the technology. Yes, Toby was a techno geek. I was always on the hunt for some new music. We all stared at each other, with the, “okay, you win” look. Like always we would go as a group. I always felt sorry for Toby with girl stuff, but he didn’t seem to care. I guess with two sisters he got used to it.
The first store was “Bargain Books” for Kayla. She knew what she was looking for, even had a list. Her room at home had so many books it resembled a small bookstore. Books were stacked on shelves and some in piles in the corners like little towers.
We wandered between the aisles of books together. Observing the sign above his head, Toby giggled when he remarked, “Young Romance”?
Kayla gave him that ‘think about it’ gaze. “I spend most of my free time studying, or hanging out with you, I don’t date, and this” shaking a book in his face, “is as close to a boyfriend as I’m going to get.”
I gave Toby that ‘you started it’ look, putting my hand over my mouth and I started giggling.
The next stop was Toby’s hi-tech electronics store where he was in geek heaven. Okay I liked the store too. I liked the iPods and anything else I could listen to my music on.
The music shop was next. This was my domain. We all went to our neutral corners. Our taste in music was as different as the four of us. We even looked like we belonged in each place. Kayla, in her long skirts, wild colored tops, with her perfect cornrows. She blended into the Reggae corner with ease. Her music always seemed upbeat like her. Anna was country all the way. Even down to her pointed toe boots and snug jeans, though she ditched the cowboy hat in the eighth grade. Toby was all rock: concert tees was his statement. I didn’t have to look at him to know that. I could always hear the heavy metal beat from his bedroom since only eight feet distance and one six-foot fence, separated our bedroom windows. You heard everything. For me, I guess, I was new age. I liked all kinds of music. The music just had to make you feel something, happy, sadness, love, anything but a headache. If I wanted that I would just open my bedroom window more often.
Our last stop was a dress shop. Anna needed a fancy dress for a dinner dance she planned to go to with her parents. It wasn’t often we got to play dress-up since we spent most of our time in classes of some kind. Anna was searching for the perfect dress. She wanted to feel beautiful, to look like a Hollywood starlet. Taking the three of us with her was a big mistake, with a capital B. What was she thinking? We followed her in like we were her entourage.
“I like the blue one.”
“Do you like red?”
“Black goes with everything.”
“Straps or strapless?”
“The ‘girls’ would look great in this one.”
“What girls?”
And in unison, “Never mind Toby.”
We were like an army. They didn’t know what hit them, in and out with a dress in thirty minutes.
Carrying our bags to the car Toby had to ask, “Will some one please tell me what all that ‘girls’ stuff meant back there?”
It was Kayla who whispered in his ear making Toby turn bright red. She gestured and held her chest, “the girls” and smiled.
Toby just shook his head, “I give up”. On the drive home, every now and then, one of us would look at Toby and smile. He would turn red again, so the game was on.
As we pulled up to my house Anna said, “Hope, there won’t be any morning classes, so when do you want me to pick you up?”
“I’m having some Dad time tomorrow… How about, after dinner, say five? We’ll still have plenty of time.”
“That sounds like a plan to me.”
“Thanks Anna.” Anna was always on good terms with my dad, so it wouldn’t bother her hanging around the house with us.
As I walked up to the front door, the house seemed covered over in shadows. Dad was teaching an evening class tonight but as always he left the front porch light on for me. I turned on the lights and the music as I headed into the kitchen to find something for dinner.
After having something to eat and doing my homework, I decided to watch TV until Dad came home. In the background I could hear the rhythmic pounding of drums, over and over. I muted the TV only to discover the noise was coming from my purse. I pulled out my phone and recognized Toby’s face looking back at me. I pushed the ‘Accept’ without another thought.
“Well, it’s about time you answered.”
“Toby, what did you do to my phone?”
“Hope…