[Author’s Note: This chapter is part of an ongoing saga of a young woman uncovering the mystery of her family’s past. This chapter contains major spoilers for those who have not read earlier chapters. If continuity is important to you, it’s highly recommended that you read the earlier chapters before this one. Otherwise, please enjoy.]

Chapter 11 – A Turbulence of Fortunes

I must have fallen asleep. I didn’t intend to do it, but I found myself awaken to clicks and whirrs coming from the VCR. Disoriented at first, I grabbed my glasses and looked over at the machine for better detail.

The tape had stopped and then suddenly started counting backwards. Slowly it dawned on me that the tape had come to it’s natural end and had started rewinding on its own. I took a deep breath and sighed a breath of relief – my mother hadn’t snooped at all. The VCR simply had reached the end of the tape and rewound.

The tape… the tape… something about the tape…

I heard my mother moving about in the other room, and I felt a surge of adrenaline bring me to full alertness. I scrambled for the remote and hit the stop button, the whirring and clicking finally coming to a rest. I turned off the TV, and pulled off the covers.

Damn. Still naked.

“Shanny?” she called. “I’m back!”

“Be right there, mom!” I answered.

A few moments later, I stood in the kitchen with my hair quickly pulled back into a pony tail, dressed in a t-shirt and sweats. Underneath, I had pulled on one of my unflattering bras and a pair of my faerie-covered underpants. Hey, comfort over style, right?

“Help me with these, will you?” she asked, sorting out groceries from their bags.

I didn’t want to move too much – not just because I was too sore to do so, but my mother would certainly recognize that I was walking funny. Instead, I stood at the counter and started unbagging the groceries and put them on the counter. I really didn’t want her asking too many questions, so I decided the best defense was an offense.

“Mom, what were you and Dad talking about?” I asked.

“Oh, he was telling me that he was going to be late with the support payments,” she said. She said it nonchalantly, without any hesitation. But she wouldn’t look at me.

“But I’m eighteen now,” I said. “I thought he didn’t have to do that any more.”

“We had an agreement that he would do it until you left for college,” she said, brushing past me to put cans in the pantry.

My mother was a terrible liar. They may very well have had such an agreement, but there was no way that’s what they had been talking about. Whenever she lied, she could never look you straight in the eye. As it was, she hadn’t looked at me directly since I came into the kitchen. At the moment, she was stacking the cans with her back to me. It was an awkward angle to do the task, so I knew she was doing everything in her power not to look me in the face.

“Did you finish your homework for tomorrow?” she asked, changing the subject.

Crap. No, I hadn’t. But this gave me an opportunity to make a somewhat graceful exit. Graceful for me, anyway.

“Not yet,” I said, playing it off as no big deal.

Her response was as predictable as I had hoped. “Well, you should probably take care of that,” she said, reaching to a top shelf. Now I knew she was avoiding me – because there was nothing on the top shelf that needed to be reached. We were both too short to use anything up there on a regular basis.

“Okay,” I said, and I went back to my room.

Even though I didn’t really want to be talking with my mother, I didn’t really want to be in my room, either. As I walked in, I felt like I was starting a jail sentence, which was a radical departure from the sanctuary it had been. All week long I couldn’t wait to get in there, watch the video, masturbate, spend “me-time.” Now, though, it forced me to be alone with my thoughts.

I wasn’t really sure where to turn, who to trust. No one would give me a straight answer, it seemed. My mother obviously didn’t want to be near me. Did I do something wrong? Well, aside from the obvious, but she didn’t know about that. Or did she?

Paranoia started creeping in. As bad as the situation with my mother was, the conversation with Tracy was far, far more disturbing. What the fuck did she mean when she said “the rest of us”? Why was she angry at me? I couldn’t figure out what I’d done wrong.

I didn’t understand what she had been getting at. Did she want me to come out and say that I was envious? Did she want me to say that I wanted to fuck my own father?

Well, do you?

I replayed the conversation in my head, intermixed with watching them fuck and being fucked by Tracy herself. I remembered how she looked when she sucked his cock, how enraptured she was. Then she had told me about how she had never had anyone make her feel that way.

Maybe I did want bonus veren siteler to feel that for myself. Maybe, just maybe, she had planted a seed in my mind that there was something out there, something just beyond reach, that my father had. Maybe I did feel like I was so close to getting it, right next to me, so close, just like in the car…

Stop it! Team Morality thundered in my head. Just, stop it you freak!

I did feel like a freak. A pervert. An abomination. There were likely even more accurate words for what I was, but for those I’d have to crack open a thesaurus.

Begrudgingly, my mother had been right about one thing. I hadn’t done any homework that was due tomorrow. In a mindless trance, I fished out my laptop and propped it up on my desk when my phone buzzed. I fished it out of my pocket and stared at the message, confused.

Where are you? It was from Andrew, a boy from school.

Where am I? I’m right here. I began texting him back, a little confused as to why he’d be sending me messages out of the blue.

Home, about to do my homework. You?

Another text popped up as I hit ‘send.’ We are supposed to be working on our team report, remember?

Despite everything going on, my heart leapt into my throat. I looked at the time. Crap! I was a half hour late for a meet up with him. I had totally forgot about him, the project, and – well, about anything else that wasn’t my own problems for the past week or so.

Thinking quickly, I texted back. Family emergency today. Sorry I didn’t text you. On my way.

I scrambled to put my laptop back in my bag, and gather my things so that I could get the hell out of the house as fast as possible. My mood was completely soured. I had no desire – what-so-ever – to go do a team project in the best of times, let alone right now. I had my own personal drama that I needed to attend to, after all.

“Where are you going?” my mother challenged as I came out with my backpack and keys.

“I forgot I have a team project due tomorrow,” I said, realizing that every word sounded like a lie. “I was supposed to be over at Andrew’s house more than half an hour ago.”

My mother’s eyes narrowed, and I could see she didn’t believe me. I felt anger rising about that – I had never lied to my mother. Well, not about schoolwork, anyway. Besides, who the hell was she to give me a hard time? She had just lied to me about the support payments. Hell, she must have been lying to me about my father for years, after all.

“When will you be back?” she asked.

I lost my patience with her. “Like I said, it’s due tomorrow. I’ll be back when I’m back” I spat.

My mother blinked and recoiled as if I had slapped her. There was a part of me that regretted my sudden attitude, but the greater part of me was more annoyed and irritated than anything else.

I could understand her reaction, as I stood there almost daring her to respond in kind. We weren’t friends, exactly, but there had always been a mutual respect between us. It had always been an “us against the world” kind of thing, and we just didn’t seem to ever be at odds with each other.

Then again, I wasn’t the one who started this. She did.

I don’t think that I had ever copped an attitude with her in my entire life. She was my mother, and I was all she had. I hadn’t screamed at her, hadn’t swore, hadn’t called her any names. Nevertheless, In the back of my head I felt as if I had just done something irreparable in the heat of the moment.

We often hear about “bonds of trust” in our lives, but I had always thought they were metaphorical, not physical. But in that moment, it felt like one of those bonds had snapped. It was a small feeling, but it felt like the remaining ones were far weaker as a result.

Yet as I saw her response, something in me changed, pushed me even further. I felt like a lioness who had just weakened prey with a small wound. It was a surge of power, once I realized she wasn’t going to retaliate but instead retreat.

She could have said something to the effect of, “Just watch your tone, young lady,” or “What did you say to me?” or even slapped me across the face for my insolence, and there would be no more lioness, no more bravado, no more attitude.

Instead, though, her flinch seemed to make me even angrier, even more predatory. I wanted to pounce, seize and press the advantage.

“Just… augh!” I said in exasperation, and looked down at my phone.

Ok, another text read. I rolled my eyes as if that, too, annoyed me, when in reality it was just for show.

“Okay,” she said, tentatively. “Just text me if you’re -“

“Yeah, whatever,” I said, waving my hand dismissively, and walked past her.

“- going to be late,” she finished quietly.

As I turned to open the front door, I heard her call after me. “Love you!”

I turned around, fiercely. “I said, ‘whatever’.” My tone bedava bahis was irritated and yet bored at the same time. I made a point to roll my eyes as I turned and walked out the door.

That’ll teach her.

On the drive, I thought about the new-found aggression inside of me. I tried to process where all of this had come from. This was some straight, “Punk Girl”-like attitude right there.

And it worked!

I felt a measure of pride in my new-found confidence. I had stood up to her, pushed back and taken some assertive action. That’d teach her. That’d teach Tracy.

Mom! I meant Mom!

I shook my head, trying to get it back on track. Realizing that I had probably projected my anger for Tracy onto my mother flooded me with a dose of heavy-duty guilt and shame. Maybe I went overboard.

Other girls had screaming matches with their mothers, swore at them, did petty, malicious passive-aggressive attacks and never thought twice about that. By way of comparison, this was nothing. Also by way of comparison, with the way that my mother and I usually got along, it had been everything.

Doubt crept in. “What have I done?” I asked aloud.

The sound of my own voice disturbed me even more, so I quickly turned on the music on the car radio. I selected some satellite station with the most riotous, thrash metal I could find. It seemed the only way to drown out the guilt that was threatening to drown me.

The music helped, surprisingly. It felt like the kind of music that a girl-with-attitude would listen to. Inside, two parts of me were at war – the part that was the good girl who was ashamed at lashing out at my mother for my anger at Tracy, and the part that really, really did not want to care.

I found the entire battle completely exhausting, and a third voice started to arise amid the cacophony. This voice was far more practical, more logical. For my entire life, this was the voice that had always reigned supreme over the more emotional side, and I found comfort in its strength.

This voice started to remind me that I had a job to do, had a project to work on. I had a due date to complete, and a partner to do it with. It also reminded me that I had done absolutely nothing on the project in the two weeks that it had been assigned. I hadn’t even spoken to Andrew about it.

Hell, I hadn’t even thought about Andrew since this whole thing began. Once again I was reminded just how self-absorbed I’d been in the past week. I had completely forgotten about him, about the project, about school – everything. I vaguely remember him talking about getting together to work on the report on the day Simone had “gifted” me the video, and had agreed to meet up while being totally focused on whether or not to watch it.

It was no wonder that I had forgotten to meet him.

He had every right to be pissed at me, and the “old me” would likely have shirked at a rebuke that he was probably going to give me. The “new me,” though, wasn’t in the mood. If he tried, I’d give him a telling off.

I didn’t know much about Andrew. Nobody did. He was a late transfer into my class, a military brat whose father had been restationed at the worst possible time of the school year. I think, in fact, he had only been at the school for about a month. Probably not even that long. It was very, very easy to ignore and forget about him.

Yeah, you have no idea what that’s like, do you? Team Morality sniped at me.

Whatever.

I pulled into the driveway of his house, and gathered my things. I don’t know what I expected, perhaps some orgy of evidence that his parents were military fanatics; flags everywhere, insignias, hell maybe even a tank in his front yard. I had no idea.

The house, though, was about as normal as could be. There was another car in the driveway, nondescript and definitely a family car. I had no idea what kind it was, but it definitely didn’t scream “badass military urban assault vehicle.”

I knocked on the door, and a handsome man with a close-cropped haircut opened it. “Can I help you?” he asked, puzzled.

“Oh, um, hi,” I said. “I’m Shannon. Is Andrew here?”

“Yes,” he said. He didn’t look like he was going to offer any additional input.

“Um, I’m supposed to work on a school project with him,” I said, trying to fill the vacuum.

A cloud crossed his features, and I could see that he was not pleased. I don’t know what it was, but there was something about this man that was too intense for comfort.

He turned and shouted up the stairs. “Andrew!” he commanded.

“Coming!” Within moments, Andrew came down the stairs in a hurry.

Andrew was attractive in a way that I would call cute. He wasn’t handsome, and he certainly wasn’t ugly. But he had a freshness to his look that seemed to fall somewhere in-between. He was dressed in a t-shirt and basketball shorts that came down to his knees, but he was deneme bonus far too short to play basketball. I doubted he even came close to six feet tall, even though he was certainly taller than me.

“This young lady says that you are supposed to work on a school project,” he said, more of a statement than a question. Even so, it demanded a response.

“Yes, sir,” Andrew said. His body language told me that there was something between the two of them, and it wasn’t anywhere near the kind of relationship I had with my mom.

Had? Or “had had” with my mom? Once again Team Morality started tapping me on the shoulder with guilt about what I had done when I left the house.

“On a Sunday?” his father demanded.

“Yes, sir. It’s due tomorrow, and- ” Andrew got cut off.

“Tomorrow?” his father’s voice brandished a sudden edge that I had never heard before in my entire life. It was as alien as anything in Area 51. My own father had never taken that tone with me, and it scared me. I suddenly wanted to leave and never come back.

Andrew glanced at me, but then flicked his eyes back to his father. “Yes, sir,” he said.

“What have we talked about with respect to finishing your schoolwork before the last minute?”

Andrew swallowed, and said, “There were circumstances beyond my control, and-“

I saw his father’s neck start to turn red. Apparently whatever it was that Andrew said was the wrong thing. The very wrong thing.

“Enough,” his father growled. He didn’t yell, but instead his voice was incredibly low. Almost a whisper. It was so low you had to strain to hear it.

“It’s my fault,” I blurted out, catching all of us by surprise. “Andrew had wanted to complete the project last week, but I had a personal, family emergency. He was a total gentleman and did not force me to try and work while I took care of it.”

I have no idea what caused me to use the words I did, but it felt like the right thing to do at the time. I added emphasis on the word “family,” just in case it prevented any additional digging. Plus, it was true.

Andrew’s father looked at me, and slowly nodded. “That’s good to hear,” he said, calmness returning to his voice. A note of pride seemed to be creeping in as well. “A gentleman always respects a lady’s trials and tribulations and helps however he can.”

It was stilted, formal language, and sounded like it came straight out of a Z-Grade movie with bad acting.

“Yes, sir,” Andrew said, offering no emotion.

“Still, it would have been nice had you informed me of this,” Andrew’s father continued. “You know there is a rule about having guests when we’re out.”

“Yes, sir, but that could not be helped,” Andrew intoned, casting a “knowing” glance my way. I got the feeling that this was all for show, but I couldn’t tell if it was for my benefit or his father’s.

At that moment, a plump woman with an ostentatious display of jewelry stormed into the room. “What’s going on in here?” She stopped abruptly when she saw me. “Who is this?” she demanded.

At that point, both Andrew and his father stiffened. I guessed that even a military man could meet his match. “Well?” she challenged. “Who is this slut?”

I was shocked. I couldn’t believe my ears. I had no idea who this woman was, and she had no idea who I was. My inner Punk Girl was about to bring out the claws, and I fought to remain calm.

“Mother!” Andrew gasped.

“Cassandra!” his father scolded.

“Who are you?” she ignored both of them, and directed her vitriol at me. I still had no idea what was going on, and this sudden hostility put me completely off guard.

Somehow – and I have no clue how I managed to do it – my voice was steady and calm. Just a week ago I would have been a puddle of tears, but there was no way I was going to let her stand there and talk to me that way.

“I’m Shannon,” I said, cooly.

“It’s all right, Cassandra,” Andrew’s father tried to placate her. “They need to work on a school project.”

“Oh no they don’t,” Cassandra dug in her heels. “There’s no way I’m going to allow some hussy to spend the night with Andrew while we’re out.”

Andrew’s demeanor tightened up again. He was embarrassed, and I couldn’t blame him. My nascent rebel wanted to lash out, but I knew that it wouldn’t have done any good – especially for Andrew.

Jesus, I thought. If this was going to be his parents’ reaction, why the fuck did he invite me here?

“Cassandra,” his father’s voice was a warning. “That’s enough. You are being rude.”

The word seemed to have a special meaning, and his mother suddenly blinked. She shook her head as if shaking cobwebs from her brain, and amazingly, a smile broadened across her face.

“Hi, I’m Andrew’s mother,” she said warmly, extending her hand for a handshake.

What the actual fuck!?

“Um, hi,” I said, taken aback. “I’m Shannon.” I looked at Andrew for some recognition that this was just not normal. Instead, all I got from him was an unreadable, placid expression.

“Oh, Shannon, it’s so nice to meet you,” Cassandra said, sweetly. “I’m terribly sorry, but I’m afraid you caught us at rushed moment. Frank and I are late.”