Story #9

Veronica woke up the next morning with a stiff neck. She yawned, and looked at the mechanical alarm clock on her night stand. It was seven, which meant she’d gotten approximately six and a half hours of sleep. Despite the exhaustion of the night before, she hadn’t slept for half an hour after she’d gone to bed. She stood up from her creaking bed, and curled her toes painfully on the cold wood floor. She looked down, and sure enough, one foot was swollen. It didn’t look too bad, but it was bruised and purple. She stretched, and rubbed her face with both hands. She sat down in front of her table. It served double purpose as vanity and desk, but during summer when school was out, it was just a vanity. She looked in the mirror, eyes still half closed. Sunlight streamed in the window over her bed and illuminated her wild red hair. Stretching again, she pushed the unruly locks away from her face and leaned on the table, staring herself in the eye. She knew that Grandfather would be stirring soon, and she needed to get downstairs and get breakfast ready, there were chores to be done. But she couldn’t seem to make herself move, she was wondering how the boy was doing. All night she’d had nightmares about the green eyes, and her door rattling in the night. At last she took out her brush and brushed her hair out, and braided it over her shoulder. She pulled off the dingy shorts and tank top she slept in, and put on her jeans and a fresh shirt. This was Tuesday, which meant that laundry day wasn’t for two days. Her room was nice and neat. It had a sloping ceiling, since it was technically in the attic, a low bed, a dresser on one side of the room with a laundry hamper, a vanity and a nightstand, and that was it. The only light after dark was the lamp on the nightstand, but it felt homey and clean. The yellow wallpaper always made it feel light, and she liked it. The rest of the house was shared, but this was the place she could always count on being alone. She took one last look around, and went for the door. It rattled, and she remembered she’d locked it the night before. She unlocked it, stepped into the hall, and closed the door as silently as she could behind her. The other room upstairs was empty like the one the strange boy was staying in, and the door was always kept closed. She didn’t know what happened to her parents, or why she’d been sent to the farm, but her earliest memory was of the first night she’d spent there, when her Grandfather had told her gently which room was hers, and that the other room had belonged to her mother. Oh how scared she’d been that first night, walking by herself with her armload of blankets and sleeping in the strange bed in the strange house, with strange noises. She walked down the now familiar hall, silently in her bare feet, and crept down the creaking wooden steps. These days she’d been trying to pull more of the load for her Grandfather, and not to wake him up in the morning. Still, it seemed like he never slept past seven thirty. It was her job to make breakfast, milk the cow, gather the eggs and feed the horses, unless Grandfather got up first, then he’d feed the horses.

Veronica hauled the milk pail in one hand, and the basket of eggs in the other, and shifted the weight carefully as she opened the front door. She was still as quiet as she could, but ever since the storm last winter when the screen door hadn’t been fastened properly, it made an unnecessary amount of noise when you opened and closed it. The house was still silent, except for the ticking of the clock in the living room. She set the pail and the basket on the smooth rectangular table and started on breakfast. She took down a cast iron pan from the wall, and turned on the stove. The propane caught with a puff, and blue flames licked the black bottom of the pan. She took a spoon of bacon grease from the bean can next to the stove and plopped it into the pan, watching it melt into a snapping, spitting puddle. She took the eggs from the table and cracked six of them into the pan, tossing the brown shells into the bowl on the counter to go to the chickens later. She broke the eggs with a spatula and scrambled them. While they were cooking she put on a pot of coffee and took care of the milk. They did have a small refrigerator, but it was only for the things that were inconvenient to always be fetching from the cellar. Milk, eggs, and some vegetables always stayed in the house, but anything else you had to get from the cellar outside. It served both to keep the food from the garden, the cheese and canned goods fresh, and as a storm shelter during tornado season. She opened the door to the small pantry and looked inside. After scanning the shelves, she pulled out a jar of pickled herrings, and set it on the table. They seldom ate things like that, since they couldn’t be grown and if you wanted more you had to go to town and buy it, but since they had a guest, she decided it was alright to be a little extravagant. She set the eggs on a hot pad on the table, along with the coffee and herring, and sat down to wait. She took an old newspaper out of the burn-bin in the living room and sipped her coffee. The house was silent and peaceful, the sunlight streamed in through the east window, and with the yellow curtains at the windows and the shutters thrown open, it was warm and welcoming. Veronica set down her paper, and leaned forward onto the table, chin on fist, staring out the window. She closed her eyes and loved the feeling of the sun on her face and hair. She heard a door open in the hall, and her head turned.

…..

Song