The Jealousy Plot

34) An Unexpected Visitor

A few weeks later I am sitting with Luke at his dining room table. I am attempting to go over the basics of trigonometry. Key word attempting.

I can personally tell you that it is extremely hard to go through different formulas while the person you are trying to teach continuously bangs his head against the table.

"Luke you're not even listening" I say, slightly annoyed with the boy across from me. Luke lifts his head up and looks over at me with the same slight annoyance in his face as well.

"Claire, to be honest with you I stopped listening an hour ago when you were reciting the quadratic equation" he says.

I let out a sigh. "Well that's an hour of my life I just wasted then" I tell him, leaning back. Luke grins a little. "I was going to stop you but I wanted to see how long you could ramble on for".

"I wasn't rambling".

"Sure you weren't Sleeping Beauty".

"Darren!" a high pitched voice screams out from somewhere in the house. Luke gets up, looking relieved for any reason not to listen to more about Quadratics.

"Darren, you little shit!" I hear Luke call out from the kitchen. I get up and walk into the kitchen to find Darren frantically waving a towel in front of an oven that is pouring out smoke. The smoke alarm suddenly goes off and my ears start ringing from the noise.

"Luke, turn off the smoke alarm" I shout over the noise and make my way towards Darren. I take a kitchen glove off the table and put it on. Pushing past Darren, I stick my protected arm into the stove. I grip the metal plate inside and pull the smoky object out, quickly placing it on the table.

We continue fanning the plate until the smoke dissolves into the air around us. Soon after that the smoke alarm turns off as well and Luke storms back into the room.

"Darren what the hell!" He shouts as Charlotte inspects the plate of the undefinable substance.

"I'm sorry!" Darren shouts back. "I was trying to bake cookies with Lea and I guess I left them in too long".

"Wait, where is Lea?" I ask, looking around for the small blonde haired child.

Suddenly, her figure runs into the kitchen with a bucket of water. As she pulls it back to throw, Charlotte quickly snatches the bucket from her. "Easy there tiger" Charlotte states. "We got the burning cookies under control".

"Wait, where is Amanda?" I ask them, wondering why their mother hasn't made an appearance in the kitchen yet.

"Oh, she's out. She's been doing a lot of shopping lately according to her but I'm not so sure she is just shopping" Luke explains.

Darren speaks up. "So what, do you think she's a drug dealer or something?" he asks Luke. He shrugs but doesn't argue with the statement.

"She's probably dating you guys" I say and get weird looks from both Luke and Darren. Oh, so they thought their mom was more likely a drug dealer than dating someone. And I was the crazy one.

"Mom doesn't do the dating thing" Darren puts down my idea. I shrug, "Well if I was here I'd want to get some alone time myself as well" I say.

Darren scrunches his face but briskly moves on. "Whatever. Charlotte, Lea and I are going to go out for some milkshakes. This new drivers license is burning a whole in my pocket. You guys want to come? I'm driving".

"No" Luke and I say at the same time. The image of Darren behind a wheel was almost scary enough to convince me to walk from now on but I wasn't so sure I would be safe even then.