Chapter 8: Carter

“Where do you think you’re going?” I hear a rather womanly voice scream out near the left side entrance of the music room. Grabbing my sheet music that was on top of the brown piano that was on its right side (the piano is closer to the right side entrance with my desk mirroring it), I walked towards my desk that was upright on the white brick wall, past the whiteboard, and near the left entrance I grabbed my black bag that was sitting on my black leather chair, putting the sheet music away, before looking around to notice the guitars on the wall with a blue carpet leading to the back - which had two entrances to a small gym on either side. All of a sudden, Shawn came rushing through the left side entrance and hid behind my dark jeans for legs as Grace entered in behind him, facing the two of us, featuring her light blue wavy shirt tucked into her tight mossy green skirt, with her long dirty blonde hair pulled back and black leather purse dangling over her right shoulder. “What’s going on here?” I ask Grace, rather worried yet dumbfounded at the same time. I thought I asked Shawn to wait for me outside the theatre as I went to get Tyler. “Shawn, why didn’t you tell me that Carter was your father?” I hear Grace ask Shawn as she crosses her arms, directing herself towards him with those piercing brown eyes of hers. Grace and I have a secret that no one knows of, and she’s been making sure that no one knows, especially Shawn and Tyler, because they can easily catch word if someone ever hears Grace and I talking. “Shawn, wait for me at the front entrance. Don’t go anywhere else,” I tell Shawn as I look at those young innocent eyes of his, before he walks out of the room behind Grace, who seems to not have a care about the problems of the world. “That was a close one,” Grace mutters out towards me once Shawn was no longer in hearing distance. “Okay Grace - I’ve kept this secret for too long, I’m afraid I’m going to say something to someone about Genny,” I tell her. 

I know Daniel once asked me if I had any intentions towards his daughter, and I hate to admit it, but I’ve had a small crush on Genny for the past few months. “You mean Guinevere?” She asks me, reminding me that is her actual name. However, if she wants to be called Genny, that’s what I’ll call her. “Yes - Grace I can’t keep this secret anymore,” I admit out loud as I silently run my hands through my thick yet short dark brown hair, thinking about Genny and how that morning she came rushing towards me because of Anthony and Maverick. “First off, who calls her that name, and second of all, why can’t you just tell her how you feel?” Grace asks me, rather agitating me like she wanted to poke the bear with an unwanted stick. “First off, I call her that because I respect her, and secondly, I can’t say anything without risking Levi finding out how I feel, because it’ll make it seem like I had a motive,” I tell her, remembering the dreaded day that Levi saw my penis the night I got heavily drunk that I thought I wouldn’t remember, but only to ask Grace on the Monday after if she could swear not to tell anyone, especially Genny. If I do tell Genny anything, it’s what happened that night - and it needs to come from me before she hears it from Levi, who has a completely different perspective on that. He may think that I raped her because my pants were at my ankle and my underwear were at the knee, but I was a drunk man - what kind of man forgets to pull up their pants after using the bathroom and walks out of the bathroom, forgetting that their pants are down, and proceeds to give someone a good night’s kiss on the forehead with their pants down? I’ll admit it, it was a low moment for me and I’m not proud of it. But the fact that Anthony now knows shows that Levi could tell Genny at any moment now, and there’s nothing I can do to stop that. “Right…” I hear Grace let out in a low sigh. “Have you tried talking to Levi - make him see your perspective?” Grace asks me as she slowly starts walking towards me, making her voice go quieter, so that not even a passing teacher in the library across from us could hear. 

I never really thought about talking to Levi to make him see my perspective. Even if I did, it would make him mad, because I remember that I lied to him the morning after when he helped me recover from puking my guts out in his closet. So the only person that I can talk to about that is Grace - who’s sworn to never tell anyone. “It wouldn’t work,” I mutter out to her as I grab my black bag and swing it over my right shoulder. “Grace you need to leave,” I tell her before walking out of the left side entrance, waiting for her to leave, only to see her walk off back to the high school side with her arms crossed after scoffing in my face, before I turn off the classroom light and lock the door with one of the many keys on my silver keychain that I kept in hand. Across from the music room is the elementary library, and down the hall on my right is the office. However, the main office is in the middle of the school, and this office holds extra rooms for teachers and secretaries. There is a small wooden bench in front of it where normally grade 6 students would volunteer to sit at recess so if someone came at the front door, they could let them in. Past the office, I turn my right, eventually coming across the front entrance on my left, where there are three sets of glass doors back to back from left to right, and in front of me, there is one black leather sofa that needs to be upholstered badly, where Shawn and Tyler were sitting and waiting for me. There is a small red carpet that runs from the sofa towards the doors, yet it is covered in mud and snow from people’s shoes when they walk in. Exiting the front door, and past the rail on the left side, I walk down the concrete sidewalk and towards the shared parking lot that is in front of the path that leads to the high school side and towards my black sedan car, heading home to Erica with Shawn and Tyler in the back seat. 

If I’m going to be honest, I’ve thought about telling Genny how I feel for her, but one part of me doesn’t want to risk the friendship we have. Even that morning, I still remember when she came towards me. “Carter?” I remember her asking me when I had just entered the classroom that early morning and placed my bag on the desk, with her behind me. “Is everything all right Genny?” I remember asking her when I turned around to notice her, wearing an elegant short sleeve emerald dress that flowed down her body and her coral scarf that wrapped around her shoulders that were underneath her short aquamarine hair - lining with it perfectly. “Something isn’t right. Well, I think something isn’t right,” I remember Genny muttering out loud. “Well what is it?” I remember asking as she stepped closer towards me, letting me get lost in those dark blue ocean eyes of hers. “You need to come with me,” she told me before walking towards the high school side, with me following. “What’s going on?” I remember asking, reaching for those pale hands of hers as she walked onto the path towards the high school side. “I don’t know how to explain it,” I remember her telling me as I held her hand, feeling those soft and gentle fingers of hers, featuring her sparkly white fingernails that she got not that long ago. “But something doesn’t feel right,” I remember her finishing her sentence before walking off, me following her. 

Past the theatre entrance, she turned her right, past a set of blue lockers on both sides, with classrooms on the left, and turned her left towards the cafeteria from the side entrance that was across from the dance studio, only to find Anthony straddling Maverick on the ground and punching his face. 

…

“Dad?” I hear Tyler call from behind me as I pull up in the garage that is adjacent to the left side of the house. “Yes Tyler?” I ask him, clearly not paying attention to the fact that we were already home. “We’re home,” he tells me before I stop the car and the three of us step out, only to watch the two of them run around the cobblestone wall on our right and towards the picket fence. However, I didn’t catch up with them in time, because my brain wouldn’t stop thinking about Genny and how she could tell that something wrong was going on this morning. How does she do that? 

…

Past the cobblestone wall and the picket fence, there is a white pearl stone fountain on the right side when entering, where there are blue hyacinths behind and across that were underneath the right side window. On the other side that mirrors the fountain is where there are rows upon rows of roses, only to have peonies on the back row. On the other side of the fountain is where there is a small cobblestone wall that leads to the rest of the garden. Erica loves to have a big garden, and it’s one of the things I love about her. She always goes to the extravagant level when it comes to expressing her love. Walking into the extra garden from the cobblestone entrance, there is a small lot of sunflowers that is in front of me, followed by poppies in the next lot behind it. On the right side, the cobblestone wall continues to wrap around to the hedge that leads to our back door, but on the left side of the lot of flowers is our swimming pool. Erica is the one that swims the most, but when we had Tyler, we learnt about his love of swimming over the many years of us being together. 

“Carter?” I hear Erica ask from inside the laundry room that overlooks the pool, opening the window. “I’ll be right in,” I tell her before walking back towards the entrance that has the brown french door, leading to the house. Inside of the marble stone house, there are two rooms, one off to my left and one to my right, with a marble staircase not that far from the entrance that leads to the second level. Because of the fence that’s on the second level, you can see the entrance to Tyler’s room on the second level on the right, with Shawn’s room behind Tyler’s in the right hand corner, and Erica and I’s bedroom mirroring Tyler’s room. On the main level, the “music room” is on the left side, where we keep our grand piano, where the black leather bench mirrors the window that looks out, with beige ikea storage drawers against the wall, holding onto the many music books and manuscript papers that I like to keep. The right side has a small living area where Tyler and Shawn like to play in - that living area looks out to the garden, where the blue hyacinths lie under. Past the music room is where the office is - burgundy walls that have a red carpet that runs under the black marble table to the edge of the brown door. Just across the office is the stairs to the basement. Past the stairs and office, I find Erica in the kitchen, warming up dinner on the stove, beside the granite countertop that was on the other side of the storage room. The laundry room was tucked in on the right side of the storage room, but behind the long quartz countertop on my right that ran underneath the dark green drawers that had long silver handles.  “How was work?” Erica asks, turning around from the other side of the granite countertop for an island to face me, revealing that light pale face of hers, but showing those light red lips that I’ve grasped before, brown eyes that I knew I would get lost in, her mid-cut long wavy brown hair wrapped around her ears, revealing sparkly dark blue diamond stud earrings, and wearing a black and blue dress with black lace at the top, but had a dark blue bottom that had black flowers reaching to the bottom of the dress, that stopped at the knee. “It went well,” I tell her as Tyler and Shawn run around the cream-colored sectional in the living room that is just off to the left. “Careful!” I hear Erica gently let out towards Tyler and Shawn before they accidentally run into the glass table that was on top of the light blue carpet that led from the sectional to the edge of the marble-stone electric fireplace. In front of me is the dining table, where I sit at the throne of the table. “How about you?” I ask Erica after stepping in between Tyler and Shawn, stopping them from hitting the table and getting a bruise, or even tripping on the carpet. “It went okay. However, the meetings weren’t that great,” Erica tells me as she grabs her pot roast from the stove and places it on the middle of the table. “That smells divine,” I tell her, embracing the smell of tenderly cooked roast, blending in with the curried carrots and creamy potatoes, before sitting down at the head of the table and digging into dinner. 

…

“I just tucked Tyler into bed,” Erica tells me later that night, stepping into the master bedroom. We have a small sitting area that is separated from the bed with a wall that has two white circular chairs on the other side, facing the TV on the opposite wall. Erica enters in from the door that was on the left side of the TV, and near the bed, there are two rooms that are off to the left (I sleep on the right side of the bed, but that is when it seems that the right side is when you’re lying down), where the furthest room is the bathroom, and the nearer one is the walk-in closet where Erica walks towards and enters. Beside me is the porch that overlooks the front garden, but there is a glass wall and white french doors that separate me from the rain pouring down, silently watching the thunder roll over. “Everything all right?” Erica asks me, stepping out of the closet, wearing her purple with pink lace pyjamas, sitting down beside me on my left. “Yeah I’m just thinking…” I tell her, trying to stop myself from saying something about Genny towards Erica. If Erica ever caught word about my feelings for Genny, I’ve never thought about what she might do to her, and I don’t want to think about what she would do. “About what?” Erica asks rather curiously, even though I know that tone of voice. That’s the tone where she tries to get me to think about her instead of something else. In this case, it’s Genny.  “About Tyler,” I tell her, reminding myself that his birthday was coming up on the 23rd. Genny’s birthday is next month on the 10th. “Thinking about what to get him?” Erica asks me, aside from reminding me that it’s coming up, but of what Erica got for me earlier that month for my birthday when the fifth came around: grey Calvin Klein underwear. I remember hoping that she was joking around, but then again, I had serious holes in the one before, so I guess I kind of needed it. What I really truly wanted was a fedora and whip, so I could pretend to be Indiana Jones for a day - cause isn’t that what every 39 year old male wants for his birthday?

“Yeah - I don’t know what to get,” I tell her before she tucks herself into the purple comforter and falls asleep. 

One part of me knows that if I was with Genny, I would’ve gotten the gift I truly wanted. She knows me well enough, and I know her well enough to know that she gives her gifts with love. Two months ago, a few days before Christmas, she dropped off a Christmas present that she had made for me, and I absolutely loved it: a novel that she had written the summer before and had never shared it with anyone, called Written In The Stars. Not even Charlotte and Daniel knew about it, and Erica was out the night I received it, so not even she knows about it. Hearing Erica silently snoring away, I quietly opened my bedside table, keeping the lamp on, where I kept the novel from Erica, only to grab it and stare at the cover image. Written In The Stars has the cover image being an ocean wave that has the sun shining through it from the other side, where Genny has the use of irony, because the story is a dark romantic story about two people: Dahlia and Caleb. Dahlia is a powerful sorceress, where Caleb is an innocent bystander to Dahlia cursing everyone that crosses her lands, yet instead of killing Caleb she falls in love with him. The weirdest part though is at the end, where they have two kids named Nikolaus and Maria, and since the two kids have a kid named Ayla, Dahlia curses Maria and Ayla, taking herself down with them, creating the doppelganger curse. 

It’s a great story, but I personally find the ending a bit weird, because it’s the last paragraph where you learn the truth of why it’s called Written In The Stars: Dahlia and Caleb create a curse that all of their doppelgangers will end up together no matter what life they live, writing their fate in the stars. 

But when I put the book back, I’m not thinking about the plotline of the story that she wrote, I’m thinking about Genny herself. I may not have told her how I felt, but I started to realize that I could’ve been showing that I’m into her. She has all this talent in her that I absolutely love, but the fact that she’s starting to share personal things with me that no one knows of - like her story - and the fact that I’m actually letting her, makes me come to realize that I may be showing more to her than I’m letting on, and she might actually know more about it than myself. 

She may be young (turning 18 next month), but she’s wise beyond her years. 

She’s not your average young woman that you find on the street. 

She’s more than that…

Genny will always be more than you expect…

One part of me wants to know what makes her so intriguing. She comes across as this mysterious bright young woman who can lead you into the best kind of life that you never thought you’d have. Maybe that’s one of the reasons why I’m into her - because her life is like a rollercoaster, taking you on the ups and downs of life with her. 

But the main thing that kept burning inside my mind was the one question I couldn’t seem to stop asking myself yet couldn’t figure out the answer to: How did Genny know that something was wrong this morning, and knew that I was the one that she needed to bring to the scene?