Jem…Chapter 90

Chapter 90

 

---

Author's Note: Picture used with permission from *lavonia on deviantart.

---

 
Chapter 90
 

Previously on Jem…………

I head to my room and I pack a bag with some things and yes they’re my regular clothes and my meds too and I get my phone and I call dad.

“Hello?” I got him at the shop phone.

“Mr. Powers?”

“Angel! Hey what’s going on?”

(Sniffle.) “Rayne and I had a fight and I need some space…can i…Can I stay over tonight?” I’m saying this like this because it’s safer and since Adam pretty much owns the town cops who the hell knows if dad’s lines aren’t tapped with them looking for Jason.
But what I’m really asking is Daddy can I come home?

“Yeah okay you want me to come and get you honey?”

(Sniffle.) “Yeah…that might be the best thing right now…”

“Bad?”

“Yeah…I…I don’t want to talk about it over the phone okay…”

“Okay honey…okay…I’ll be right over.”

……………………………….

“Angel…” Rayne’s looking at me. “Look please lets just talk.”

“I can’t Rayne, I can’t okay it just hurts too much still okay and we need space.”

“I’m not breaking up with you.” She has this stubborn look on her face.

……………………………

I’m almost right back to bawling when I hear dad’s truck pull up and I get squeezed extra hard by Kim and hugged by Brooklyn and Rayne’s wiping at her eyes and there’s this minute that lasts a thousand of awkward hurting silence between us and I step out the front door backwards before I lose it completely.

I turn and I run to the truck and I get in throwing myself pretty much and I look at the house and… (Sniffle-big-sob.) “Go Dad…please can we just go…?”

He pulls us out of the yard and I don’t know why that it is but there is this part of me that’s hurt a little more that she didn’t come out after me and saying…asking me not to go.

And Continuing………………………….

You ever hurt so much that you’re almost choking on it?

There’s that ache in your throat like when you get upset and you’re trying to talk. Well this is like that only I can’t talk, all I can get out is these sickly sounds of raw hurt. I just walked away…I just left my world.

I mean its dad here and I love him but the house…the house is home, the girls are the only friends that I’ve ever really had in my life and then there’s Rayne.

I thought she was the hugest fluke.

Someone who could love me.

Me…

She was my impossible.

You get abuse into you y’know it’s exactly why bullying can kill…you can fight and fight and fight but it’s literally like toxic waste, it stays right there in you hiding away like some kind of mercury poisoning until you just can’t take any more.

I….

She hurt me…I thought we were so good and safe.

It, it just hurts to be with her right now and leaving her…leaving Angel’s home is ripping my heart out.

Why can’t I just act like this never happened?

Why can’t I fake happy?

I’ve never really done this before and it’s honestly one of those things that I’m kinda hating, I’m crying on Dad’s shoulder as he’s driving and okay I know that I’m a girl I’m supposed to be allowed to cry but you just can’t drop all of the person you were just like that.

Well actually it sort of is because doing this and crying this hard and me hanging onto his arm and my face planted into the top of his sleeve…it’s such a girl thing that it’s like these tears are burning or melting parts of the old me away.

It feels like a bad thing but given how I usually feel it’s probably not and it might even be a good thing y’know after a while and things fade…but right now it just hurts.

Dad actually doesn’t take me home we drive out to the old mill road and we stop at Bart’s Shell station. It’s old and it’s one of those old timer places and we’re stopping her and I’m wiping at my eyes trying to stop crying and I’m sniffling and feeling bad on the inside and kind of gross too.

But Bart’s does sort of make me smile at least a little.

We used to come out here every time that dad had to go fix something out here. The road isn’t actually called that it’s just the Marshal Pulp and paper mills are out here and a gravel yard and a bunch of other stuff it’s just the first mill was here and it’s just always been called that.

It’s a rural route something or other I guess officially.

But Bart’s has been here forever and it hasn’t changed even the floors are wooden boards all scuffed and worn. There homemade stuff that his relatives make and he has ice cream and all the stuff you’d find at a lot of other places and then there’s the candy.

Before I was even born he had this side room built on with nothing but candy.

Dad’s getting a paper bag for him and one for me and we start getting stuff…There’s Bottlecaps, Sweet-Tarts, Lick-em-aid, Gold rush gum, the tattoo packs with the hard baseball card gum in then and Pixie sticks and things I haven’t seen carried in town since I was like five.

I want the same things and I want different things too. I’ve never bought a candy necklace before in my life and I want them a lot actually now because they are cute…and I like cute and I look at Dad and he’s all smiles and he’s got a bag of those mini ice cream cones with the marshmallow inside and the sparkly sugar.

I love those.

He gets us a tow liter of milk and two of the homemade subs they have here and we drive the rest of the way up to Springer Falls.

It’s on a little side road and it’s a big pond or a small lake with this cool little waterfall that comes out from the far side that’s this really big rocky hill you’re definitely in Ontario thing.

It’s sort of this kind of secret place for the locals and stuff that work out here. Actually it’s a ten minute bumpy drive on a really old dirt road so pretty much these days no one comes here.

It’s been years and years for me too. Mom was with us last time.

Mom bought candy necklaces.

And Ring-pops.

It’s so quiet here and there’s just the sounds of the water as it hits the lake and the sound of the little creek that the lake sort of empties into before heading to The Lakes.

(Sniffle.) “Oh…this would be such a good place to make a video.”

Dad smiles and we go and we find a place to sit well sort of our old place to sit or everyone’s I guess and it’s just a bunch of old logs around a big old stone fire pit. “Fire?”

“Yeah…I’m a bit chilly.” (Sniffle.)

He gets the coat he has into the truck and he drapes in over my shoulders just like I’m a…

“Dad…?”

“Yes honey?”

“Did you know?’

“Know what?”

“That I’d be like this?”

“Nope, not a clue.”

“Really?”

“Yeah…I was skinny all my life.”

“Dad, you still are skinny.”

“Thanks.”

(Sniffle-smile.) ” “Short too.” Well he is. I mean my dad’s definitely a guy but he’s like five foot seven tops and he might come in at a buck fifty or sixty…but he’s one of these wiry guys. I actually take a long look at him and other than that and our eyes we don’t have a whole lot of things physically in common.

“I went to see the Doctor today.”

“I know, are you okay……” He looks worried.

“Yeah, now still sort of sore but yeah I’m okay I guess.”

“You guess?”

“He said I’m a paisey.”

“A what?”

“It’s called PAIS and I guess that I don’t process guy hormones barely.”

“So…that kind of explains things.”

“It does?’

“Yeah see before you figured out who you were honey I thought that you’d look a lot like your mom’s side of the family and you do…god you look so much like your mother. But for awhile there I thought that you’d look like her first cousin Shaun.”

“Who?”

“Your mom’s first cousin he died over in Golan heights in the armed forces Jason sort of looked like him.”

“Oh…do we have pictures?’

“There might be some in your mom’s room. But you’re okay then.”

“Yeah I’m cleared to start my pills and stuff…actually he even wrote me scripts for those and some vitamins too. I guess once I’m going on these things I might grow and not just boobs.”

He’s gathering dry sticks for firewood and I’m picking up flat stones to skip. “Makes sense, not being female you weren’t really producing enough of either and you were getting short changed.”

“You think since I likely always had this it’s why I…I…got cancer Dad?”

“No kiddo I don’t think that that’d be linked to kid’s leukemia.”

“Okay…I was just wondering…”

“Angel…?”

“Yeah…?”

I start skipping stones, I’m actually not bad at that either. The first few suck but I get used to the waves from the falls and soon I’m getting four or five splash-skips.

“Angel.” Okay y’know when your Dad just says you’re name once, well he just did that.

I sigh and throw the last two and then sit with my sub as he gets a little fire going. “I has something twisted and shoved up inside in the wrong way when I was at the doctor’s getting checked out.”

Dad visibly winces.

“He fixed it and it hurt and I was in a lot of pain and feeling sick as we were heading to Wall mart for my scripts and to buy me some period panties….uhm they’re…”

He grins at me. “Oh I know what they are honey, I even bought some for your Mom.”

“You bought her….”

“Yes.”

I’m…okay I’m not sure what to think since girls get guys to buy their tampons when their together some times and stuff but buying her panties for that just seems…and it’s my parents.

He takes a bit of his sub and gives me this raised eyebrow go on look.

“Okay…so Rayne’s thinking it’s cute to say that it’s me getting a dose of what they feel like when their on their period and I was so sick and feeling everything and I dunno…it just sort of hit me no matter how much that this hurt I wouldn’t, I couldn’t and that it hurt…it really wasn’t that funny…not to me.”

He’s chewing and nodding.

“Well I said that she couldn’t do that and that wasn’t fair for her to use or bring up her period with me. I can’t have one and I know that they suck and I know that girls hate them but they have them…their girls…and for use that’s…it’s not fair.”

“And you fought.”

(Sniffle.) “Yeah…then it got worse.”

“Worse?”

“We really got into it and heated and mad and we were yelling and she get right pissed off at me and got in my faces and she went all…”

Okay and now I’m imitating her… “Aargh…fucking guys.”

Dad’s giving me the eyebrow again while chewing a big mouthful. He swallows.

“Okay, I can see where this hurt you.”

“Thank you!”

“And it’s not right what she did.”

“Thank you!”

“But.” And he’d holding up a finger.

“But what….?”

“You ever think that she wanted to hurt you?”

“I know she did that’s why she said it!”

“But why?”

“I…because I’m not a real girl!” I’m mad again and hurt and crying some more.

“That might have been the ammo Angel but why did she go there?”

“Because I was being….” He’s shaking his head no. “It wasn’t?”

“No, it wasn’t.”

“But…but…”

“Angel this is the girl that sings to you, not to the crowd but to you in every show, this is the girl who wrote you love songs and that song about cancer. People like that don’t want to hurt the people they love unless they’re really pushed.”

“I…I didn’t think it was that bad…not until…”

“Honey, Rayne thought she was safe with you…you’ve never been mad with here before and then you just sort of exploded on her over something silly.”

“Silly…Dad it’s not…”

He does the hand thing again. “It was…I’m not saying that you’re not entitled to your feelings angel especially about stuff like that but this was a knock down drag out shouting match over periods.”

“I’ll never have one Dad.”

“I know but y’know what neither will a whole lot of other girls like you and all those other natural born girls that can’t either and I can well imagine that there’s a lot of them in a lesbian relationship with girls that can.”

“Okay…okay yeah…but she said…”

“She was being an asshole honey we are assholes to the people we love sometimes.”

“But…Dad…”

“Rayne took stuff she said right before and she’s sort of said her homelife wasn’t cake either so what if she said that because she was safe?”

“Because she was safe?”

“Summer hit you right? At Lucky’s?”

“Yeah…”

“So what if Rayne had done that to her in their relationship, said something just as bad.”

“I dunno…it wouldn’t be good.”

“Yeah it likely wouldn’t have been. Look kiddo the point is that Rayne felt safe enough in your girl’s relationship to unload on you…to actually fight with you. Okay what she said sucked but she’s going to learn her lesson on things you just never say and what’s funny and what’s not with you as an S.O. and you will too.”

Okay…that…wow…I can get screwing up; I can get being that mad you do something stupid. I mean I broke Adam’s nose and I knew I was outnumbered…hell everytime we had…well he had an issue I didn’t do the smart thing usually.

With a relationship.

I’m nodding to myself and eating my sub and watching the fire and I’m sort of seeing it. The way that Rayne was when we first met and how she’s changed and how much she really has since we’ve been together.

And if I really look at it despite how much that it hurts…we are flying blind here. I have no idea of a whole lot of stuff in her life yet and she’s the same…I’ve told them stuff sure but we all hold stuff back, we’re all scared of things…of each other even as close as we’ve gotten there’s.

It’s like passing each other on tightropes and stopping to kiss.

I wash it down with some milk and I’m digging into my candy some as dad gets some stones to and I grab some chewing on a candy necklace that’s around my neck and we just spend a few minutes doing that.

Dad can skip them all the way across until they clack on the rocks on the other side. I look at him and I can’t help but to smile. This, this was better than going home and curling up and just bawling and trying to shut the world up.

“So I’m not wrong to be hurt?”

“Nope.”

“And it’s a good thing that I forgive her?...that I said that I forgave her?”

“You did huh? Yeah that’s a good thing.”

“And now what?”

“Now you stay overnight home and get your head to have a talk with your heart and pick things back up.”

“And think that things are fine?”

“Nope, you let her have the chance to make it up to you and then you make good with her about her right to her lady stuff.”

I snort. “Dad…really lady stuff?”

“I’m trying to be polite. Look you both did The Stupid. Her stupid was just a lot bigger than yours this time.”

“This time?” I’m looking at him and he’s laughing.

“Oh honey you both are going to screw up and hurt and piss each other off and you know what?”

“We are…Dad…okay what?”

“You have each other to hurt and to make angry and screw up with…each other Angel. It’s actually an amazing and a wonderful thing.”

“Fighting, screwing up and hurting each other is a good thing?”

“Yeah….it sounds so twisted but yeah kiddo, I would give so much just to even have one more passionate…stupid fight with your Mom.”

I’m crying…I’m not crying for me but for him and there is just this sort of wistful hurt that’s going on in there behind his eyes and in his voice and it hurts me to see him like this and I close my eyes and I hug myself and…

And I want her arms around me…even after all of this…hell like he said maybe even because of all of this?

(Sniffle-sob.) “Daddy…can we go? I…I want to go home okay?”

I hug him and I can feel both of our ragged shivering almost crying breaths and he nods. “I think that’s a good idea.”

We put the fire out really well, it’s just sort of habit and we get in the truck and we head home.

“Dad, can we stop into the store again?’

“Sure, what do you need?”

“Some more candy necklaces and some Ring-pops.”

“Your mom loved those she thought they were cute.”

“I know, I sort of remembered her wearing them the last time that we came up here.”

“She liked camping she liked getting away and just being.”

“Yeah her on the porch.”

“Yeah when the weather was good she was out there every morning.”

“I do that.”

“Good, she’d like that you’re taking the time.”

We stop and I get the boxes of both and Dad pays for them. I want to have some on hand and some for the girls but both of them would be cool to hand out as things for an all girl band and besides their just fun.

I’m feeling a lot better about stuff a lot enough that I’m licking and putting some of my tattoo stickers on and chewing the way stale gum and accessorizing myself with some of the candy necklaces around my neck and some twisted over like bangles and I’m wearing my watermelon flavored ring pop.

It’s pink, I like pink.

We head home going through the long way on the old mill road just because it’s some father daughter time and there’s some really great views of the lake here and there and we pull out of there on another connecting road that brings us out onto the highway and we head home.

Dad even cranks the stereo up with one of his CD’s and we’re singing. Y’know before all of this I’d have said that I didn’t really know where I got the music thing from but doing this with Dad tonight…him starting in on this really good plain old rock song…yeah this at least I got from him I think.

He’s good too if anything he’s kinda got this Mark Knoffler sound.

*Here I go again.* By Whitesnake is what we’re jamming to with him leading and us doing this father daughter duet and we’re driving down the highway.

No, I don't know where I'm going …. (Dad)
But, I sure know where I've been ……… (Me)
Hanging on the promises
In songs of yesterday ………………..(Dad)
An' I've made up my mind,
I ain't wasting no more time …………(Me)
Here I go again
Here I go again …………..(Us)

Tho' I keep searching for an answer,
I never seem to find what I'm looking for
Oh Lord, I pray
You give me strength to carry on,
'Cos I know what it means
To walk along the lonely street of dreams………(All me)

An' here I go again on my own
Goin' down the only road I've ever known,
Like a drifter I was born to walk alone
An' I've made up my mind
I ain't wasting no more time ……………(All Us)

I'm just another heart in need of rescue,
Waiting on love's sweet charity
An' I'm gonna hold on
For the rest of my days,
'Cos I know what it means
To walk along the lonely street of dreams ……….(All Dad)

An' here I go again on my own
Goin' down the only road I've ever known,
Like a drifter I was born to walk alone
An' I've made up my mind
I ain't wasting no more time ..............(All Us)

But, here I go again,
Here I go again,
Here I go again,
Here I go ……………………(All Us)

'Cos I know what it means
To walk along the lonely street of dreams ………(All Me…really belting it out!)

An' here I go again on my own
Goin' down the only road I've ever known,
Like a drifter I was born to walk alone
An' I've made up my mind,
I ain't wasting no more time …………(All Us)

An' here I go again on my own
Goin' down the only road I've ever known,
Like a drifter I was born to walk alone
'Cos I know what it means
To walk along the lonely street of dreams …………….(All Us)

An' here I go again on my own
Goin' down the only road I've ever known,
Like a drifter I was born to walk alone
Goin' down the only road I've ever known,………….(All Us)

Music is such a release I was down today in the lowest place I have even been I think and then all of this…the drive, the getting away from everything with dad and figuring things out, like really figuring things out in this father daughter way that was just as deep and just as important to me as any father son talk that I’d have had.

And it might be the sugar too a little; but doing this with him and singing just some old tune that just sort of at the same time kinda fits both of us…

It doesn’t hurt for my heart to keep beating.

I can breathe again.

It’s late like close to midnight by the time we pull in and I get my things and head into the house and stop at mom’s picture and look at it and hold it a minute before kissing it and setting it back up. “Thank you mom…he’s one of the good ones.”

I’m still keyed up a little but I settle into mom’s room. I mean it was her and dad’s but after she died…I do get some paper towels and stuff and I clean up the little bit of dust that’s been here single I crashed here with the girls and do their bathroom too and I use some of her things there as I take a bath.

I stay up until about twenty after one looking through her things and the photo albums and fell asleep listing to a pretty good mix tape she had in a shoe box in her make up dresser bottom drawer.

Yeah tape…like Memorex.

……………………………Morning comes a little late for me I was really beat and worn out and there’s the scents of mom’s bath stuff and her bed which is really a comfort bed and the mixed tape all dropped me off in the land of Nodd.

It’s about eight thirty and I get up and I take my hair out of the sleep elastics and I comb and brush everything out and I get my stuff. My bag with my scripts and I read the instructions and I get a glass of water and I take the pills that I’m supposed to take and taking a breath I apply the hormone patch with slightly shaking hands.

Next is my underwear and yes I’m wearing the girl boxers again. I get into my track pants and mom’s McGill university sweater and I head downstairs and the first thing I do is I wash the panties I bought and a few of my other things or rather I get them on and then I head to the kitchen and make some breakfast.

It’s kind of weird being here now with the guys all out Uncle Mitch and Dad out in the garage and Mike’s in school I think.

They have a lot of guy food in the house actually, but there’s some real food too. The snow’s not flying yet so they’ve been living on the grill. Lot’s of hamburger in the fridge and there’s lots of potatoes so I’m going with them doing burgers and baked potatoes.

It’s already going on that I’m taking some of the Italian sausage they have and blitzing it up in the food processor then adding it to a bowl with hamburger and a whole pack of crumbled burger buns and then I blitz up two onions and four cloves of garlic two sticks of celery and I add in salt and lots of pepper and some A1 Steak sauce and mix it all together and I make a whole roaster pan of meatloaf.

And since we have the cookware I make potatoes for tonight and I put together a potato scallop or make scalloped potatoes which ever you prefer that they can eat later. Mine uses though partly precooked before slicing potatoes and a bottom that is buttered…yes real butter please and I “flour” it with instant potato mix.

Then it goes in with two layers the first all the slices and chives chopped in and some thyme and salt and pepper then some béchamel sauce over all of it and then the second layer is the potatoes and actually a little chopped bacon just for flavor that I cooked off first and canned cream of mushroom soup. It dust the top with the rest of the packet of powdered potato and bread crumbs and all of them go into the ovens.

I make some bread dough and get it rising and I settle in with my first pot of coffee and it’s like nine thirty so I hang out my stuff and then grab all the guys laundry and then go get mom’s mixed tapes and I blast her music loud and I wash clothes.

I like her tastes…old rock, and even then a lot of girls….maybe hearing this stuff as a kid helped for my tastes. Blondie, Go-Go’s, Joan Jet and The Blackhearts, Heart, Luba, Roxxette, Pat Benatar, Annie Lennox, Stevie Nicks…Mama Cass…I seriously get a girl groove on rocking out to these women in her collection.

My stuff’s dry so I get it in and put the stuff that I can fit out on the clothesline mostly the bedding and I retreat for a change of clothes being a pair of panties and I slip into one of mom’s old peasant skirts…I like this one I’m wearing because it’s sort of black or grey in the background but it’s all these red and pink flowers it almost looks like what you’d see as a print from like some old european movie. I change tops too because my SLB tee-shirt really goes well with this.

I don’t eat until the first bread is out of the oven and I slice some tomato and heat it in the same pan as the bacon just to soften it and add a touch of dad’s HP sauce to it and make a hot tomato and bacon sandwich.

I’m eating it just taking those long slow savoring bites out on the little side deck with my feet up and a big coffee and enjoying the sun and it’s actually now close to lunch so it’s warm out and there clothes on the line and Fleetwood Mac playing in the house.

I feel better.

All the stuff I did, the clothes, the way I feel and the way that I smell the rightness of the weight on my chest and the way that feels.

I make some of Jenna’s cinnamon rolls with the left over bread dough just a pan while grooving to Patti Smith and I doze in the kitchen window seat for an hour or so while everything cooks off.

Two’ish…The girls will be getting home soon.

I’m thinking of calling Rayne when she’s texts me.

[Hey.]

[Hey back.]

[You need a drive?]

[Please yes.]

[Okay, come out front.]

Okay…I head out front and the van is parked in front of the walk to the front porch and Rayne’s standing in from of it and she’s wearing this old styled light tanned trenchcoat and she looks up at me and she turns and she opens the side panel of the van and she takes out one of the amps from the house that she’s used as a speaker and holds it up over her head and she’s looking at me as it’s blasting out.

*In your eyes* By Peter Gabriel in her own version of John Cusack’s character from the movie “Say Anything.”

Love I get so lost, sometimes
Days pass and this emptiness fills my heart
When I want to run away
I drive off in my car
But whichever way I go
I come back to the place you are

All my instincts, they return
And the grand facade, so soon will burn
Without a noise, without my pride
I reach out from the inside

In your eyes
The light the heat
In your eyes
I am complete
In your eyes
I see the doorway to a thousand churches
In your eyes
The resolution of all the fruitless searches
In your eyes
I see the light and the heat
In your eyes
Oh, I want to be that complete
I want to touch the light
The heat I see in your eyes

Love, I don't like to see so much pain
So much wasted and this moment keeps slipping away
I get so tired of working so hard for our survival
I look to the time with you to keep me awake and alive

And all my instincts, they return
And the grand facade, so soon will burn
Without a noise, without my pride
I reach out from the inside

In your eyes
The light the heat
In your eyes
I am complete
In your eyes
I see the doorway to a thousand churches
In your eyes
The resolution of all the fruitless searches
In your eyes
I see the light and the heat
In your eyes
Oh, I want to be that complete
I want to touch the light,
The heat I see in your eyes
In your eyes in your eyes
In your eyes in your eyes
In your eyes in your eyes

It’s so sweet, it’s so dorky and it’s right there in the middle of the street with everything going on in the middle of the day and it’s Rayne…Gothy yes, corny and showy in public and not when on stage is just.

I’m smiling and hugging myself and watching her while I lean on the porch beam.

Okay…okay yeah that’s…..

It’s good being a girl.

It’s good being her girl.