Falling For Amelia Manning - 5 A Day in the Life of James VanWrigh

Pink, green, and dark blue sticky notes fell into clean lines around the vanity mirror James found herself sitting at too early in the morning for any normal person to function. Slowly, as if her fingers worked by themselves, she picked up each pallet of eye shadow and tried to pick one out that would match her uniform she was still hiding from Phoebe. Luckily, the varsity team only competes and doesn’t do games or rallies at school. That was the main reason she tried out for them.

Not seeing the right shade for their school colors, she rubs a small brush into the blue and a lighter shade of red trying to make a royal purple shade she could use. As she stoked the brush over each lid until it looked as she imagined, her eyes drifted off to a few of the notes on the mirror. Ones telling her to take specific pills before leaving for the morning, others telling her she was a strong woman – one that didn’t need validation to live her life – and others were ones that Phoebe wrote her when they had sleepovers.

She had to keep them because they brought a brightness to the others that told her to take her estrogen pills or not to forget the homework from the day before. Instead of them being all about remembering things like pills and work she wanted to forget about, they gave her a break between each of the mundane annoyances she had to deal with every day. They were little jokes from her best friend that would make her smile as she took each day’s pills.

“James, sweetie, are you up already?” Her father’s voice came from the small crack in her door’s opening. Throwing her makeup brushes down, the sound of little bottles of random creams and moisturizers falling over alerted her dad to push the door open.

“You are up, a little early to get a jump on the day. You don’t have to be at Phoebe’s until seven, right?” He asked with a glance down at his digital watch.

“Yeah, but I have a few things to get done before I go. I left a couple of questions on the homework blank.” She turned her back to her dad for a second while she rooted around for her school bag. While she was much more organized than Phoebe, since school started, she hasn’t had the time to clean her room properly.

“Picking up a few of the clothes may help you focus, don’t you think?” Taking a glance around the room she saw what he was talking about, sighing, she looked at the clock on her wall and decided that she wouldn’t wear a full face of makeup so that the clothes would get picked up. Before her dad left the room, he cleared his throat making her look back up at him in the doorway.

“What time do you get back today?” He asked her while she threw pieces of clothes into the basket in the corner of her room. “Probably sooner than usual, I don’t have practice, which, by the way, we are still keeping on the down-low. Remember?” She looked pointedly at her dad who just nodded along as if he wasn’t paying attention. “When you get home, I need to talk to you about something. But I wanted to make sure I saw you before you left for the day.”

Throwing the last piece of clothing into the basket, she turned back to the door only to see it empty. It wasn’t like her father to drop in then leave with not much to say. Looking at the clock a second time this morning, she saw that there wasn’t much time to think about what was going on with her dad. Instead, she pulled on something new out of the closet from their horrible mall shopping trip and threw a few last things into the backpack on the floor before heading out.

The sputtering of her car, Steven, could be heard down the street so she wasn’t surprised that Phoebe was waiting by her curb with a couple of bagels in her hand, something that was a sort of tradition for them.

“Mom made jam last night, so, I give you jam-filled bagels. Don’t get it on your shirt.” Phoebe hands her the messy bagel wrapped in a napkin that was already half covered in the jam she talked about. Taking a big bite before pulling away from the curb, she felt the sticky raspberry jam fill her mouth. She wasn’t worried that the jam would leave sticky spots all over the steering wheel or that Phoebe may or may not have gotten a spot on the passenger side seat, she was too worried about finding a spot to park in the lot behind the high school.

Bagels eaten, hands washed, and books put away in their lockers, they made their daily deal to meet back at the metal lockers before lunch started. James’ first class was on the other side of the school while Phoebe’s was only a few halls to the left of their lockers. Slamming her locker shut, she headed off to her world history class.

People running behind on their schedules dashed by her making a breeze go through her hair. When she stopped to fix her flying locks she noticed a guy standing in the middle of the courtyard just to her right. Through the closed double doors that led to the outside world, she saw the picture of perfection through the grimy glass. It was just a glance, as fleeting as it was, but when she walked away, nearly late for the first period, she couldn’t help but wonder who the guy in the jean jacket was.

Sliding into the plastic seat attached to the desk, James just made it before the bell sounded off above them. Busying herself with the few questions she left blank on the homework she told her father about this morning; she almost missed her favorite part of the class – roll call – or rather the incorrect call of her name from a teacher that did it on purpose.

“Jackie Lewis?”

“Here,” James listened while she stares at the homework so intently that she didn’t notice the boy from the courtyard wander into the room while the teacher called out each name down the list, when it got to the end, she held her breath.

“Ethan VanWright?”

No one answered, there were a few pairs of eyes she could feel on her but she didn’t look up from the paper on her desk. She scribbled in a few words but didn’t pay attention to what she was writing.

“Ethan VanWright, if you do not speak up, you will be written out of the class today and marked as an unexcused absence.” The gruff, snide, voice of her middle-aged teacher was the only thing she could hear. She didn’t want to respond, it wasn’t her name, no one else had to be called by something that wasn’t theirs. She held her pencil so tightly that if it was any tighter it would snap in between her fingers.

Without lifting her head, she finally spoke up.

“That’s not the correct name, if you’d say my given name, I would sound off like everyone else in the class.” The only reason her hand wasn’t shaking was because of the grip on the pencil and with one more wave of sheer terror about being called out in front of the whole class, the pencil snapped between her grip making even more people turn to look at her.

“I have your name listed as Ethan, not James as you’ve told your other teachers. I use government names, not nicknames, that’s how this works. I will call your name again, you will answer, and if you can’t get that right then you can go sit in the office. How about that?”

She didn’t look up, her vision was fixed on the two pieces of the pencil sitting on the paper. She didn’t want to make waves just get her education and then get the hell out of this town and never look back. But it was people like this man that made things so much harder. She didn’t want to think about what Phoebe would do if she had this class with her. It would be more than the broken pencil she’d have to be concerned about.

“Eth-”

“I’ll just save you the hassle of saying my real name, and walk myself to the office.” She didn’t let him finish the incorrect saying of her name, instead, she picked her books and binders up and stormed out of the room without looking at a single person in the process. The teacher more was more annoyed that James wouldn’t just say she was present than her storming out of the classroom. To him, it was just a name, to James it was something she killed off a long time ago.

With the hallways deserted, she took a moment to hit her locker one more time before heading to the office. Throwing her books in there she mentally prepared herself for the office assistant to make a call to her father. She didn’t want him coming down to the school again, messing up his work schedule, and making a scene. Maybe if she begged them not to call him this time they wouldn’t, she thought.

Slamming the door closed, she pressed her forehead against the cold blue metal, before composing herself long enough to get to the office. She didn’t want to cry, not in front of the office assistant or the principle, if it came to that. She told herself it was because she didn’t want to ruin her makeup, but she knew it was because there were already so many tears wasted to days like this.

It wasn’t until the very last bell that James saw Phoebe again. After the berating questions, she was able to come up with a good enough excuse that she would believe. If she knew what happened James wouldn’t hear the end of it and she would have to child lock her into the car to prevent her from finding the teacher and yelling at him. Which would get her written up and then Mrs. Edan would be called, and it would get back to her father who would also come down to the school and join in the yelling. It was a vicious cycle she wanted to squash with a single white lie.

James knew she was lucky to have people in her life that would sucker punch someone for calling her anything but her name. But she didn’t have the energy to deal with it right now and knowing her father would be home when she pulled in didn’t help things. She wanted to crawl into bed and fall asleep with a face filled with makeup and the clothes she was currently wearing and not care. She wanted to leave her homework on the floor of her room and ignore it for another day, but she knew it would only be an hour or so before she’d be able to do that, and that’s what pushed her to get home quickly after dropping Phoebe off.

Hauling her bag and the weight of the day into the house, she noticed the smell of fried potatoes and burgers cooking wafting through the air as she walked into the living room. It was her favorite meal which made her stomach turn because of what her dad said this morning; that they needed to talk about something. Bad news usually meant something good first.

Maneuvering around the coffee table, she found her way into the kitchen to see her father standing at the stove seemingly talking to himself. But when she came around the corner to where the kitchen table sat, she froze in her tracks.

“James, you’re home,” she barely heard when her father acknowledged her, she was too busy staring at the woman sitting at the kitchen table, as if nothing had changed.

“What the hell are you doing here?” James finally pushed the words out of her mouth and soon the paralyzing fear was replaced by boiling anger.

“Is that any way to speak to your mother?” The woman sitting at the table spoke to her as if she didn’t leave them when James was twelve. Forgetting herself, James turned from the kitchen and stormed into the living room. Grabbing her bag, she ignored her father shouting after her. The jingle of her keys was the only thing she heard when she ran to the car and jumped into it before anyone could catch up.

Starting the car, she pulled out of the driveway as her father ran out to the front yard with her mother on his heels. She didn’t stop until Steven’s tires met the curb in front of Phoebe’s house.

Thunder rolled overhead as she stormed up to the front door. Knocking frantically, the door swung open to reveal Phoebe with a mouth full of something but a laughing smile on her face. As soon as Phoebe’s eyes met James’, her smile fell.

“Can I stay here tonight?” She asked Phoebe. It didn’t take a yes or no response for her to know she was welcome. Instead of words, Phoebe pulled her into a tight hug as James cried on her shoulder while the storm above them rolled further over their town.