August 25, 2013

Cam, Lyle, and Ashley continued to sit around the table in the cafeteria, talking about a freshman English professor who both Lyle and Ashley thought was a jerk when Cam heard a voice: “Hey, Cam. How are you this morning?”

“Not too bad,” he looked up to see Robin holding a tray full of breakfast, and it seemed like a good opportunity to extend a friendship with her. “Ashley, Lyle, would you mind if Robin joins us? I just met her last night, but she seems pretty cool.”

“Sure,” Lyle shrugged. “We don’t have anything better to do today.”

“Well, it’s good to see a friendly face,” she said as she set her tray down on the table. “Are you just having a cup of coffee, or have you already eaten?”

“We’ve eaten,” Cam told her. “Ashley and Lyle are a couple of my roommate’s friends, and they invited me to have breakfast with them. They’re upperclassmen, so they’ve told me quite a bit about this place. So how are you today?”

“Grumpy,” she snorted. “Just about the time I got to bed my roomie came in and started yapping on her cell phone to everyone she ever heard of and their idiot sisters. I fell asleep in there somewhere, and at least she’d shut up by the time I woke up. That shit is going to be hard to live with.”

“Hey, I don’t know what to tell you about that. Hopefully it’ll settle down when classes get under way.”

“I can hope, but I’m not holding my breath. The girl seems like an absolute airhead, and her only purpose in going to college is to snag some guy. I sure pity him if that happens.”

“There are people like that, I guess.”

Ashley smiled. “My first year here, before Lyle and I worked out the deal we have, I had a roomie who was a pain in the ass like that. I finally had to tell her to knock off her shit and quit bugging me or I’d give her a flying lesson.”

“Out the dorm room window?” Considering Ashley’s size, she was capable of doing just that.

“Something like that,” she laughed. “There are times that being as big as I am ain’t no fun, but there are times it works for me, too.”

“I know how big works,” Cam smiled. “I’m not the runt of the litter in my family, not yet anyway. But it won’t be long.”

“Huh?” Robin said. “Granted, you aren’t as big as these two, but you’re not exactly my size, either. You’re saying you’re the small one?”

“Yep,” Cam replied, “or I will be soon.” Most people who knew him also knew the rest of his family, so it would be fun to drop it on someone new. “My brother is a couple inches taller than me. My dad is a couple inches taller yet. Lauren, the older of my two younger half-sisters, has about half an inch on me, and she’s only twelve years old. I’ve got four inches on Janelle, but she’s only ten, and her next growth spurt will probably put her past me, too.”

“That’s different,” Robin shook her head. “I mean, it has to make you feel about as small as I feel sometimes.”

“I haven’t even gotten to the good part yet,” Cam went on. “My stepmother, who my brother and I call Aunt Shae, is six foot eight. To make it worse, she almost always wears high heels.”

“Now you’re making me feel small,” Lyle laughed. “That big, and high heels?”

“Not little ones, either. She has huge feet, like size fifteen, so she can wear tall high heels. I mean five, sometimes six inches, maybe even more. Most people look up to Aunt Shae, and for good reason.”

“Jeez,” Ashley said. “No wonder your half-sisters are so tall. I gotta ask, do they play basketball?”

“Oh, yeah. Just kids’ league stuff so far, but Lauren will be in seventh grade this year, so it gets a little more serious. A lot of people around Bradford are looking forward to when they get to high school. Aunt Shae was on the team that won two state championships back in the ’80s sometime, so people are already talking a repeat.”

“Who knows?” the big girl replied. “I didn’t play basketball, but the Spearfish Lake girls’ basketball team has taken home a few state trophies over the years. Maybe our girls will be able to get a little revenge for what happened at the Joe last year.”

“All right, you’ve lost me,” Robin piped up. “What’s this?”

“Ashley and Lyle are from Spearfish Lake,” Cam explained. “We played them for the state football championship last winter. We won.”

“What Cam didn’t tell you is that he was the Bradford quarterback,” Lyle added. “His roommate was the Spearfish Lake quarterback.”

“Oh, wow. That’s got to be interesting. I mean, like me and my roomie interesting.”

“Howie is actually a pretty nice guy,” Cam explained. “I expect we’ll be hanging out together quite a bit. He’s off with his girlfriend today, though.”

“Oh, yeah, you said your roomie was off with his girlfriend somewhere,” she replied. “I guess if I had a boyfriend I’d want to be with him when I could, too. I suppose I should have asked before, but do you have a girlfriend, Cam?”

“I have a very close friend who happens to be a girl, but we don’t consider ourselves to boyfriend and girlfriend. It’s a long story, but what it comes down to is that we’ve pushed the relationship just about as far as it will ever go. That may be good, and it may not be. She went to a different college, and it’s one of those questions that our being apart may answer.”

“Or it may not,” she grinned. “I hear that happens with high school romances sometimes.”

“Well, I wish it had, but it didn’t, and that’s that. Howie and Autumn are pretty tight, and he tells me it was that way well back in high school.”

“They were,” Lyle said. “They started getting serious about each other the last year Ashley and I were there.”

“So, good for them,” Cam went on, “but I guess I’m going to have to look elsewhere.” He didn’t think he was actually offering anything to Robin by making that statement, although even as he made it he reflected that she might be a pretty good place to start. But it might be a good idea to change the subject, too. “So, anyway,” he went on, “Back when Dad and Aunt Shae got married, he built a house for her that’s her size. I mean, ten-foot high ceilings, eight-foot high doors, counter tops and tables six inches or a foot higher than you’d find in most places. Even the doorknobs are higher than any others I’ve seen. I always feel something like a midget when I’m at home, or like a giant when I’m anywhere else.”

“That’s got to be strange,” Robin said. “But I guess it’s like Shaella Sunrise says, “It’s all right to be different.”

“Oh, wow,” Ashley grinned. “You watched that when you were a kid too, huh? I always wondered how they could have Shaella be so big and the adults so small. I guess it’s a blue-screen effect, or something.”

“No,” Cam replied. “The only time they blue-screen something is when you see one of Shaella’s parents, and then you only see them from about the thighs down. It’s a pain to set up, which is why they don’t do it very often.”

“You seem to know something about it,” Robin smirked. “Did they have some special behind-the-scenes show sometime? If they did, I missed it.”

“No, but I do have an insider’s view.”

“Come on,” Robin laughed. “This I’ve got to hear.”

“It’s pretty simple,” Cam went on. “My Aunt Shae is the woman who plays Shaella Sunrise in that show.”

“You’re kidding!”

“No, I’m not,” Cam told her and the rest of them. “I’ve been on the set when they’re shooting it, several times. Yeah, Aunt Shae is six-eight, and those big, clunky shoes Shaella Sunrise wears add about another four inches. Every other adult on the set is very short, about your size, Robin.”

Cam glanced around the table. Lyle and Ashley had surprised looks on their faces, while Robin looked thoughtful. This was something Cam knew would come out sooner or later, and he figured he’d better not make a huge deal out of it. It was a fact of life to him, and had been for over ten years.

“Yeah, thinking back, that would make sense,” Robin said finally. “I thought you said you lived in Bradford. They shoot that show in New York, don’t they?”

“They do. Aunt Shae has to go there once or twice a year, for two or three weeks. She doesn’t have to be there for all the shooting, just the parts that concern Shaella Sunrise. In the old days, back when I first knew her, they shot something like ninety episodes a year, and they were shooting almost year around because they were still building the show. Now, they only shoot fifteen or twenty a year, just to freshen things up since they do re-runs of a lot of the older segments. The rest of the time she writes sports for the local paper and does some basketball coaching, but she is mostly a housewife and a mother.”

“That’s different, all right,” Lyle nodded. “Does it seem a little strange to you?”

“Not really. It’s just the normal thing around a household that I guess is actually quite abnormal. I grew up with it.”

“Is she actually your aunt?” Robin asked.

“No, my stepmother,” Cam explained. “Although she’s been as good a mother as anyone could ask for. See, back when we were little we all decided that since Ty and I didn’t have any real aunts or uncles, we’d call her our Aunt Shae. She and Dad decided early on that they didn’t want Ty and I to confuse Aunt Shae with our real mother, so we’ve just always called her that. Lauren and Janelle call her ‘Mom,’ though.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t ask,” Ashley said, “But what happened to your real mother?”

“She died, Ashley, and I’ve long since had to come to accept it. She rode one of the World Trade Center towers down.”

September 11, 2001

The kindergarten at the expensive private school Cam and Ty went to was close to both their apartment in the Battery Park complex and their father’s job, so he walked them to school each day.

The two of them had been attending kindergarten for only a couple of weeks, so just some of the new had worn off. It was still a big deal to be able to go to school, and most of the kids in his class were older than Cam was.

Cam had just gotten to the point where he recognized each day as being pretty much like the others. There was something new every day, something to learn. He was already a pretty good reader for his age, better than some of the other kids in his class, but not so much better that he really stood out.

They started off the day by singing a song, like they always did, and the teacher had some activities for them. They were coloring some posters when there was a distant “bang,” but no one thought anything of it – there were often strange noises that didn’t matter to anyone. Some time after that Cam noticed that there was some shouting in the halls, and there were teachers and other adults running around – that was something that hadn’t happened before, but he was new at this school stuff, so again maybe it wasn’t anything to worry about either.

Then a man came into the classroom and had a word with their teacher. She let out a gasp, and then said, “Children, we have to leave here. Line up like we do when we go outside and take each other’s hands. Leave everything here, but we may have to go a long way and be gone for a long time.”

This was totally unexpected, but Cam did like he was told. He had Ty by one hand, and a nice girl by the name of Heather by the other. The teacher led them out of the room, along with another adult who came and helped in the class sometimes as they went outside, following along behind other students being led out of the school.

Once they were outside, Cam noticed that there were a lot of sirens wailing from police cars and fire trucks. Some people were running, and others were standing around watching. The teachers were hurrying them along, so he didn’t get a good look, but in the distance he could see one of the tall buildings that overshadowed the area had smoke coming out of it, so that must mean it had to be on fire. He knew Mommy worked in one of those buildings but wasn’t sure which one.

They hurried on up the street, and the building was lost to view. They couldn’t always hurry, since there were people standing around and sometimes it got crowded, but he held onto Ty and Heather’s hands even when they were standing around waiting to get through.

They were crossing a street that had a good view of the buildings, and Cam noticed they were both on fire now. He wondered if Mommy was all right. He hoped she was – he knew that her building had fire escapes and things like that. All of a sudden, people started shouting things like “My God!” and “Look at that!” Cam turned to look, even though the teacher was trying to hurry them on, and he saw that one of the buildings had started to collapse from the top downward. In only seconds it fell from the sky, making a huge cloud of smoke and dust.

“Come on kids, damn it, hurry!” they heard their teacher yell. They’d just made it across the street, when she had all the kids get down on the ground and cover their heads. Cam more felt than saw a cloud of dirt and dust blow over him; in seconds he was covered by it. He was scared now; so was Ty, and Heather was crying loudly. Cam held onto her tightly, and he felt like crying himself even though that was something boys weren’t supposed to do.

“Come on, kids, we’ve got to get out of here!” the teacher yelled. “The farther away we are, the better off we’ll be.” Slowly the kids picked themselves up, dusted off a little, and joined hands again, almost running in a line on up the street.

They went on like that for a long time. Cam had no idea of how far they went, except that it was a long way, and he thought they’d never stop. Sometimes they had to stop when the teacher or some other adult tried to figure out where to go next. Eventually they came to a building he recognized as a church. There was another building alongside it, a sort of boxy-looking thing, and the teacher led them as they followed the rest of the students from the school inside. It turned out to be a gym, like they had at their school, but bigger. There were a few chairs set up inside, and more were being set up.

The teacher gathered the dirty and dusty kids around her, just sitting on the floor. She was crying herself now, but was trying to get the kids to sing a song: “The itsy-bitsy spider went up the waterspout. Down came the rain and washed the spider out …”

After a while Ty piped up and asked, “How long are we going to be here?”

“I don’t know, Tyler,” the teacher replied. “I just don’t know. It may be a long time.”

As time passed the room began to fill up, and soon there were more people there than there were chairs. Everybody seemed sad, people were crying and sobbing; some sat in a daze. Cam heard people talking that both of the buildings had gone down, and even something about them being hit by airplanes, but it didn’t make any sense to him.

It was late in the day before his father showed up. “There you are,” he said with tears in his eyes. “I’m glad you’re all right. I’ve been looking all over for you.”

“Daddy, is Mommy all right?” Cam asked.

“I … I don’t know how to tell you this,” his father replied, the tears rolling down his cheeks. “Your mother … your mother is missing. She was in one of the towers when it burned and fell down. I hope I’m wrong, but we may never see her again.”

Then all three of them were on the floor crying, holding onto each other. Things seemed very lonely, very sad, even with their father there.

Nothing much happened for a while, as they just sat there, trying to pull themselves together. They weren’t the only sad and crying people in the room, but after a while it settled down some, mostly because everyone had no tears left to cry. Cam and Ty’s father said he didn’t have any idea of what to do, but that they couldn’t go back to their apartment right now.

Their father had talked on his cell phone three or four times while they were waiting. He tried to call a few people, but didn’t have much luck, other than talking to his mother, who was far away in her hometown, which Cam remembered visiting a couple of times. All of a sudden, the cell phone rang again, and after a short talk his father got up to look for someone. In a moment, a very tall woman and a much shorter one came out of the crowd, and for the first time in hours Cam felt a bit of relief. He remembered seeing the tall woman on TV, and she always seemed to make things better. Their father and the two women talked for a couple minutes, but Cam wasn’t paying attention to what was said. Could this really be?

He looked at Tyler, who had a huge look of amazement on his face. After a moment, Tyler stood up and tugged on the tall woman’s pants. “Ma’am? Ma’am?” he said. “Are you Shaella Sunrise?”

The big woman turned her attention away from their father and bent down to the boys, who stood side by side. “Yes, kids,” she smiled, “I am.”

“Shaella?” Tyler said, a tear in his eye. “Can you use your magic to bring Mommy back?”

“Oh, kids,” Shaella said, gathering them both in her arms. “I wish I could, but no giantess has that much magic, not even me. I’d bring her back if I could, but I can’t. But kids, she still loves you, and she’s still watching over you, and she’ll want you to always remember that.”

August 25, 2013

“It turned out that someone in Bradford had called Aunt Shae and her friend Eve to come find us,” Cam related after briefly relating his story. “They were friends in high school, and even though Dad and Aunt Shae hadn’t seen each other for thirteen years, they were still friends. They wound up taking us to Aunt Shae’s apartment on Staten Island. We had to walk off Manhattan Island in the darkness, across the Brooklyn Bridge. It was a long walk for as little and as tired as we were, and Aunt Shae carried both Ty and me most of the way. It wasn’t until the next day that she explained to us that Shaella Sunrise was only make-believe, and that her real name was Shae Kirkendahl. That was when she asked us to call her Aunt Shae, and we’ve called her that ever since. She and Dad got married a few months later, and we all moved to Bradford.”

“Couldn’t hack New York after that, huh?” Robin said.

“Dad couldn’t,” Cam shrugged. “He has to go back there occasionally, but he always breathes easier when he leaves the place. I don’t blame him, either. It didn’t bother me at the time, but since then I’ve developed a real phobia about tall buildings. Second floors, maybe third floors I can handle. Fourth floors are iffy. Above that, well, it’s not pretty. I figure that sentences me to being a small-town guy the rest of my life.”

“Did they ever find anything of your mother?”

“Not a thing,” Cam shook his head. “I understand that there were some people in the other tower who made it out from above the fire, but not there, and no one survived riding the buildings down from that high up. The whole pile of rubble was a smoldering fire for months, so it’s not surprising. I’m sorry to say I don’t have many clear memories of my mother, but I do cherish the ones I have. I think Dad and Aunt Shae made the right move in trying to help Ty and me keep her memory separate from Aunt Shae.”

Cam didn’t want to say it, but he knew that sometimes when his father went to New York – and not every time – he would go by the site of the World Trade Center and report to her spirit on Ty and him. He once said he didn’t think her spirit could actually hear him, but if it could she needed to be kept informed. Cam had never done it but had on occasion wondered if he should.

Cam’s unhappy story had cast something of a pall on the table. “I’ve never met anyone who was there at the time,” Ashley said. “I guess it seems, well, sort of unreal. But at least it’s behind you, and you seem to have come out of it pretty well.”

“Pretty well, considering,” he shrugged. “To tell the truth, it’s all pretty hazy to me. I was just barely five at the time, so I don’t remember it very well, and maybe I’m just as glad. Anyway, we moved out of New York to Bradford not long after that. Since then, I’ve pretty much become a small-town kid. I can say things would have been a lot different for me if we’d stayed in New York, but we didn’t and that’s that. It’s not altogether bad.”

“I’m a small-town kid myself,” Lyle said, seeking to lighten the atmosphere a little. “I know kids like us are supposed to want to head to big cities, but I don’t think I’d like to live in one. At least wood processing plants and associated research labs aren’t going to be in New York or anyplace like that, so I think there’s little danger that I’ll wind up in one. Now, I wouldn’t mind a little bigger place than Spearfish Lake, but preferably not a whole hell of a lot bigger.”

“Oh, there are kids who want to go to a big city,” Cam smiled. “The girl I went out with a lot in high school is one of them, and I think she’s crazy as hell. I mean, she’s at the University of Toledo, and I’m even somewhat surprised that she’s not in a school in Chicago or New York or someplace like that.”

“So you decided to not go with her?” Robin asked.

“There were other reasons besides too many tall buildings around,” Cam told her. “At one time I’d hoped she would come to her senses, but it hasn’t happened yet. It’s water under the bridge now.”

They sat and talked for a while longer, and on more casual things. Lyle and Ashley together told a long and sometimes funny story of how they’d both managed to wind up playing football, something neither of them had contemplated until it dropped into their laps and changed their lives in the process. Eventually the two of them decided they needed to go over to the weight room for a workout, and there was a good chance it might not be busy. Cam thanked them for inviting him to breakfast, and for the good discussion they’d had.

That left him sitting there with Robin, which was not a bad thing in his mind. She was good-natured and often funny, and cute, if on the chubby side. Granted, she wasn’t Latasha, but maybe that was a good thing, too.

“I’m glad you invited me to join you,” she said as Lyle and Ashley left. “They’re really a couple of pretty good kids, aren’t they?”

“I don’t know them any better than you do, but they’re solid gold proof that there’s more to some people than what you see on the surface.”

“So, do you have anything you want to do today?”

“Not really,” Cam shrugged. “I suppose I could unpack a few things in the room, but I’ve already done most of what I need to, and I might not get to the rest for the whole semester. About all I can say is that I really shouldn’t sit around here sipping coffee all day, or my butt is going to get sore.”

“Me too,” she said. “They’re supposed to have a pretty nice trail along the river in this town. What would you say we stroll over and check it out?”

“I’d say it sounds pretty good to me.”

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