The Tourist Trap

Chapter 16

Eventually I dried my eyes, changed into a tank top and cotton short, and crawled into bed. Suddenly, I was exhausted, but I knew I wasn't going to be able to sleep. 

I propped my pillows up against the headboard and sat with my sheets covering my knees. I could hear my parents talking in low hushed voices, but intense ones, in the kitchen. 

From what I imagined I could hear, my father was seriously angry and my mother was defending me.

Finally, I heard the floor boards squeak and their bedroom door closed. For a moment I thought they had both gone to bed, but then I heard my mothers footsteps coming down the hall. She knocked lightly and opened up the door.

"Mind if I come in?" she asked, peeking her head inside.

"Sure," I said. I reached over and turned on my bedside lamp. My heart felt sick and my insides were all twisted up. I just hoped my mother was here with good news, not something that would make it all feel worse. 

She sat down at the end of my mattress and rubbed my foot through the sheets. 

"Cassie, about what your father said earlier," she began. "He just doesn't want to see you get hurt. We know you're getting older, but it's kind of hard for us to stop wanting to protect you."

"I don't get it mom. What is the big deal with the Kents? So Jared's mom fell in love and left tow. Big deal! That shouldn't make them public enemy number one."

My mother took a deep breath. "The story's not that simple."

I tipped my head back in frustration. I was sick of cryptic answers. Of gossipy stories and muddled facts. "So tell me the story! Come on, Mom. If you guys want to get me to understand, then just tell me. I'm a big girl. I can handle it. 

My mom looked at me in the semidarkness, then turned and lifted her legs up onto the bed. She sat there Indian style in her night gown, and folded the end of my quilt over her knees.

"Okay, Cassie. I don't like to talk about this because I don't like dredging up bad memories, but now that the Kents have come back into our lives, I suppose you should know."

I leaned back, still holding my knees, and settled in. Half of the kids in my high school would have killed to be there in that moment, getting the real Kent saga from a woman who had been there. But all I cared about was how it might affect me and Jared.

"Robert Kent was this gorgeous teenage hotshot who came up here every summer with his parents and his two older brothers," my mother began. "The brothers were totally sauve and obnoxious, but mostly kept to themselves like the other summer locals, so they were no big deal. Robert, however was another story. He would get up here before Lake Logan High was even out for the year and he'd hang out in the parking lot with his corvette, talking to local girls and taking them out for rides. Every girl who met him completely fell in love with him. Except me of course, I was already taken."

I smiled at this, recalling the picture of my parents in their senior yearbook: "Class Couple." So cheesy, but so ridiculously cute.

"Anyway, as you know, Susan Morris, was my best friend, but as adventurous as she was around here, she was totally shy when it came to boys. Plus she wasn't the fashion-plate-type. She was pretty, but not into clothes and makeup and all of that. Robert tried to talk to her once and she basically turned red and ran away," my mother continued.

"After that, he didn't bother her, but for two years, Robert was all she could talk about. She daydreamed about him. Wrote his name in all over her books. And even though he came up here every summer and broke some girls hearts, she never stopped thinking that if she could just get up the guts to talk to him, they would fall madly in love."