Watermelon Fight

Chapter 3

Lauren chats with me for a little and we sit and watch the rain but she's clearly more interested in her younger cousin, who is doing flips off of an odd platform. She might notice that she leaves me out sometimes, because I sure do. But it's hard telling when she is so lost in her own world.

I gaze back at the rain outside and something red catches my eye- a big, juicy watermelon, sitting in a huge tin-foil pan like those ones sometimes used for baking turkeys. There is actually two full watermelons, already carefully cut, while a third that is half-eaten sits off to the side. While we got our four-wheeler turn, it's evident that the younger children were eating their watermelon. "Watermelon, guys!" I gather the confidence to say and suddenly struggling sounds fill the air as the two boys with us shove and poke at each other to tear into one. Rolling my eyes but walking away so they couldn't see me doing it caught the eye of Lauren's mom, and she winked at me. Obviously I hadn't meant, guys exclusively. They manage to knock a chair over, and Shannon seems a bit taken aback by how they act compared to him. There's no direct comment about it from him, but I know that's just how we all are. Humans, trying to appear so direct on the outside, to others- but also hiding so, so much from other humans, an indirect way of expressing ourselves when we don't want to hear, or fear the reaction of others.

I find myself staring at the guys with all the girls by my side. After they've ripped it apart, us women and Shannon go to cut our pieces a lot more calmly. They have savaged apart one of the watermelons. Lauren's mom comes with us, but takes her piece back to her seat. It's evident that she's now drunk, but Lauren has no problem with it and neither do I. After all, her father will be driving us home, not the intoxicated lady I see in front of me. Lauren's mom looks like a shadow of herself constantly. For unknown reasons to me, she put her eye liner on so thick that her eyes looked like a coon's. She wore thin, with clothing that made her look taller and skinnier, when already she was tall, skinny, and didn't have to flaunt anything to appear beutiful. She owned dozens, if not hundreds of shoes, and was very possessive over her purse. When she talked to anyone besides a child or teen, it seemed like she was flirting. Just that voice she used, so nasally and desperate to be recognized, it made me wonder what made her this way. Being so young, back then, I couldn't imagine. My own mother had her faults, and would go into fits of rage that were random as snow in July. The reason was bipolar disorder, and I could imagine Lauren's mom had something serious going on with her along those lines. Still, I couldn't point it out. Anxiety? Depression? There had to be so many more things that I didn't know about yet. Lauren's mom seemed like neither of those, but also a little bit of those too.

Nobody notices me staring at Lauren's mom. As we eat the watermelon, it starts pouring outside and something wet trickles down the back of my neck. Of course, being a human being, I jump up and look around for the source but didn't need to. Figured, this barn has worn wood so it must be leaky.

But Lauren is standing behind me, chunk of crushed watermelon in hand and her eyes even bigger through the glasses than usual. She stares, and then starts laughing so I take one more bite from my own piece and hurl it at her chest, where it hits her shoulder and leaves a bright pink stain. Lauren is very competitive, so if you can't handle her random games you can't handle being her friend. I know this and never get offended from her random offenses. She might be my friend, simply because she is the only applicant available for the position. She might be my friend because she genuinely likes me as one. She might just be my friend so she doesn't feel like a loner when she's alone.

I'll never know, because I won't ask.

"Jokes on you! I can just go outside in the rain," Lauren cries out but isn't intimidated at all.

"Please do if you're going to be throwing watermelon all over the place," her mom complains while holding her glass of wine. It's tipped a little, and she goes back to talking-too-fast to the other guy. I'm sure he's desperate to stop talking to this woman, but none of us is about to help him. He shouldn't have been the last person out here. Maybe it's harsh, but if you look hard enough you can usually see right beneath the surface, down to what people are really like when you get to their stage of excitement. And her's is reaching just by an invitation to chatter, and get worked up over how bad her ex's treated her. My mom is very similar in this way, but also different in other ways.