Her Autumn Song, Tremy Woods [books to read this summer .txt] 📗

A M A B E L L E

I am a young teenager, so pardon me if I am filled with angst, I thought to myself. A sad kind of song was playing, a girl moaning about how her love was gone. I looked outside the window in a morose kind of way, the way people in movies do when there is a sad kind of song playing. A weird kind of haze made my eyes grow heavy, and I leaned my head against the window. It was peaceful, the song was lulling, and I felt as if nothing could stop me. I began drifting off.

And the window kept. on. banging. itself. against. my. head. I groaned, and stopped repeating the same mistake I always did when I was sleepy and in a car. I sat up, looking at my big sister reading a book. Damn, I thought, I should have thought of that. I was bored, and my dad had switched to a talk show with a man blabbering about his paycheck, so that was that. What else could I do other than bug my sister? I leaned over her shoulder, reading the book she carried around so many times.

“That guy sounds hot,” I told her. Dreidel looked at me, glaring. Yes, her name was Dreidel. My mother was the decision-maker (aka tyrant) of the family, and being new to the foreign language (according to her, fifteen years in the United States doesn’t do you much good) of English, she had picked a word that had showed up on the Christmas reruns that talked about other ways people celebrated December 25th.

“He is fit,” Dreidel defended, “Not hot.” Her glasses looked ready to fall off her nose, and I felt tempted to laugh. Dreidel hated to wear glasses, and in that moment, my boredom and sad sense of humour spurred me to being annoying to my family.

“You guys aren’t allowed to know any hot guys,” My mom yelled to us from her seat. Dreidel started pouting, something she had mastered from having two years more experience from me.

“The guy I’m reading about is fit, Mom,” The elder one stated, “Our little palindrome here just likes to embellish.” While my mom was asking my dad about what embellish was, I was busy being annoyed at the notion that I was our family’s palindrome. It wasn’t fair that my dad had nicknamed me Ama, and that my sister had been having a particularly stupid moment of clarity on the specifics of what my nickname was. I quite liked my real name: Amabelle. It was better than being named after a spinning top.

Today was the day where for three months, I would be older than my sister. My dad felt that it was also a day to be lazy and not cook dinner, so we were driving for three hours to the nearest old-fashioned diner, to a town close to the suburbs where we lived: Emery Creeks. It was where we headed every year because my parents found it funny that my mom’s water broke in that diner.

You try eating a nice apple pie whenever your parents start talking to the waitress (that we know quite well, might I add) about how your mom gave birth to you. Today was a day of history, my dad would like to proclaim, a day where we thought about the origins of our family.

Funny how he doesn’t do that on Dreidel’s birthday. “You guys, we are here like a good chug of beer!” My dad exclaimed, and my mom responded to this by slapping my dad on the back of his head. Thank god he had already parked our car.

Can you tell that my mom is a little bit on the violent side? No? She is. “Harold Mercedes!” She said in that weird voice moms make when they are severely disappointed in their husbands. My dad began laughing.

“What? Don’t teenagers like to be drunk? Our friends used to smoke pot,” He said. My mom shook her head. Me and Dreidel were snickering. We’re very mature teenagers.

“No! Not our daughters! They don’t talk to anyone like that! And btr, it was your friends who did those things!” My mother started ranting. My dad stared at her, his hands still on the wheel.

“Btr?” He asked her.

“By the road,” She said, “Marge taught me how to text.” My dad gave her another blank stare.

“It’s by the way.” He said, and we all got out of the car, fearing that this would be another long argument consisting of my mom and her misleaded beliefs. He was busy trying to convince my mom that Marge made a typo when she wrote that and that my mom assumed incorrectly, and that it was actually by the way when we all sat down to our usual table where Bethany Anne would serve us.

I found Bethany Anne quite a cute name for a rather uncute lady. No offense to her, but Bethany Anne was a rather nice elderly woman until the day me and Dreidel were found eating the pies and having wrecked the stuff in there looking for them. It was the first and last day she babysitted us, and that was about ten years ago. Now she had this condescending smile toward us.

I’m kind of scared of her, to be honest, and I’ve watched the Michael Meyers movies over fifteen times. You can blame that on my other babysitter who had had no other way of dealing with me back when all I did was stare into someone’s eyes/soul/being/whatever other “big” word she called it.

But back to the matter of the moment, in which Bethany Anne is asking for our order. “The usual please,” My father asked her, and she snorted.

“I’m sorry if people call this bad service, but Howard, I see you once a year and I’m growing old. I don’t know what your dang usual is.” She told us frankly. My dad chuckled, and he ordered for all of us. I sat down, spinning my spoon around and around. And around in the coffee mug that had been ordered about ten minutes ago. I was 17 in a world where everyone in my sophomore year except for the ones who were born really late in the previous year was 16, glad to finally be able to drive.

Doesn’t it suck to be born on the New Year’s? I was the kind of person who obsessed about when others were born, and it took some getting used to, but people got used to it. Somehow. “I can’t believe that every year this restaurant is still open even on holidays,” I muttered. It started when my mom and dad came here because their car had conked out in front of the diner. The diner was closing early because of the holidays, and Bethany Anne had invited them in.

And that was the day I was born. My mom now has a new appreciation for Bethany Anne’s car ever since that day, and every time we leave that diner, we are all supposed to say goodbye to it. Dreidel sticks out her tongue because she now has a little sister. I just groan.

We were just about the only people in the diner, except for a few lonely souls speckled here and there. I stared at each and every one of them, wondering about their birthdays and their dark days. I was still in the habit of staring after all those years of Michael Meyers. I found that a little sad, really.

It was just as we were about to eat that the bell to the door rang, signaling that someone was coming in. I turned my head to mentally stalk them. To my surprise, it was a family just like ours.

Well, not just like ours. They had more people. I scanned each and every one of them, but my stalking was over when Dreidel slapped me on the shoulder. She had taken off her glasses, so now her eyes were less magnified but just as big. Why? Because she looked kind of surprised.

“That’s Easton Turner!” Dreidel whispered to me. I looked over. And as soon as I did, I realized that indeed, it was Ethan Turner. It was that one boy in my Pre-Calculus class that my sister had with me who my sister just adored. He played guitar and piano, she oozed. He was cute, she told me.

He looked like a stoner, I thought to myself. Okay, that was a very mean thought, but I was protective of my big sister. She liked to go through stages in her life, places where she would completely fawn over something so badly that it hurt, and then the next day, she would bawl and completely forget about it. In this case, Easton Turner had been something she obsessed about ever since he got abs, which was three years ago, when I was still in middle school and she was a freshman.

I was hoping the phase would just end already, but apparently Easton Turner started swimming. And running. And studying.

So he got hotter. Fitter. Whatever. His hair was in that messy annoyingly in his eyes kind of style as he sat down, and my sister was practically drooling. She should thank her blessings that there was a delicious pie in front of her. I took a piece from it, just for the fun of taking advantage of someone.

While I was chewing, I went back to mentally stalking. They were sitting in the booth across from us, with their big coats and hats. I looked down at my T-shirt and shorts. I looked back at their attire. Back and forth I went until my sister slapped me again, and I started giving my mom the stink eye for teaching her the light slap. I did not tolerate violence.

I slapped my sister on the knee, harder than she had. I told you I didn’t tolerate violence. She didn’t even care, she was too busy worshipping Ethan Turner and building yet another shrine for him. This was the way to a guy’s heart, I am sure.

I took greater notice in the fact that the guy had such a big family, though. There were these two twins who looked 8 playing around, and a two girls around the same age talking to each other. Then there was Ethan and another guy who looked about our age, Ethan looking bored and said other guy writing furiously in a journal of some kind. The mom and dad were trying to calm down the twins as one of the girls looked up and started shaking the boy writing to pay attention as Bethany Anne came over.

I was instantly reminded of Dreidel. Dreidel continued to stare along with me, and at some point, they noticed us. Since they were only about a yard away from us, one of them began talking. “Sorry,” The girl who had been shaking her brother (I think that was her brother) said. “We must be creeping you out.” Mom and Dad were busy ignoring them accidentally-but-actually-purposely.

“Not at all,” Dreidel assured them. “I mean, we’re the ones staring.” I didn’t say anything, I just nodded, continuing to spin the spoon in my cup over and over again.

“Hey, you’re in my math class, right?” Easton asked. Dreidel began replying enthusiastically, going in a rant. After she was done, he blinked.

“Oh, you too? I was talking to her,” He pointed at me. I blinked, and smiled.

“Yeah, I am. Um, you’re Easton, right?” It was an answer I already knew, but surprisingly, he shook his head.

“No, that’s actually my little brother here. I’m Enzo.” I stopped spinning my spoon around to glance over at Dreidel. She was blushing. Enzo was looking at the boy who had been writing, who right