The Blanket — 2
#3 of The Blanket
The room was stained playfully with banners and red solo cups filled with innocent liquids like koolaid and sprite. Familiar, joyful faces wheeled about, friends of friends and people Ed knew and had known for years. One was missing, Eds father -- he hadn't been in attendance for about a year and a half now. Not that it mattered to Ed, he and his mom were doing fine without him, Mom had a job now and Ed didn't see her as much. And homecooked meals were growing more and more in sparsity, and she was usually too exhausted for Ed to try to teach her how to play video games or go outside and go to the park, but as long as she was happy.
This was Eds thirteenth birthday party, he had wanted for a more muted and mature of a celebration but his mom wasn't having any of it, she loved her son to death and she wanted to make sure she could show it.
Ed could see her from across the room talking to Koda's dad, cracking jokes and telling stories over a red solo cup and she was smiling. That smile filled him with joy, and every time he saw it he was reminded that she had gotten better.
The days and weeks and even months following the breakup were not easy. Both parties involved were now healing wounds of debt that the legal case had wrought over them and for a week during the battle it looked like Ed was going to stay with Chris. Annie wouldn't have that, and she fought tooth and nail against the mere mention of it. It was long settled however and Ed was happily with his mother. After Chris had left however, Annie was emotionally distraught, she'd go days without speaking unless provoked and the bags under her eyes garnered a sort of traction on her sad face.
But she'd gotten better, the bags nearly disappearing and the only eye decoration she wore were the little creases underneath and next to her eyes that she'd earned with her thirty something years on this earth. Those pretty eyes caught Eds, and she winked at him, smiling from across the room with motherly affection, and returned to her conversation. Ed filled his drink with a mix of koolaid and Sprite, his pubescent hunger lending him to experiment with strange little expansions on his pallete. A sip told him it was okay, and he'd rate the mix a six out of ten. He took another sip, scanning the party.
It was a small affair. At this age, he was pulling away from these childish events and enthusements, but he allowed himself to be caught up in it. He got a few presents from friends. Koda was a pretty girl who was fourteen, some canine species with a long face and huge eyes behind small glasses. She was as skinny as a rail with a soft voice that was capable of catching attention in an unusual way and she read a lot. Her present to him was a gargantuan graphic novel, composed of an entire series. An absolute unit of a book, topping seven hundred full color pages and it must have cost her. He saw her approach him with a smile on her face, and her golden blond hair streamed around her head in lazy, flowing curls that didn't really seem to ever complete a loop and she was taller than him, with budding breasts and lanky legs.
Her voice was louder here, splashed with Sprite and promised with cake that hadn't been cut yet and dipped in a vat of childish socialization. She said "Hey there, birthday boy! How's it going? Do you like my present?" She wasn't the only friend of his, he could see Jesse, a little deer boy with big eyes. Chester, the blind mole rat who was as round as he was tall and he wasn't very tall -- he sniffed and listened his way around the party, and played a lot of instruments at home in his free time. Antony, the bluejay boy who did sports and always had broken bones. There were a handful others from school, and their parents.
"Yeah! I can't wait to crack it open, Koda." He said to her, looking around the party. A banner read Happy Birthday!. There was a pause, they started saying something at the same time, and Koda let him speak first. "Am I the only one who thinks this is a little..."
"Elementary?" Koda usually had the right word for the situation.
"Yeah. That. This is more for my mom that it is for me, I think. I honestly don't really care about my birthday." He saw his mom, looking happy and calm as she talked to Koda's dad still. He was tall and skinny, with a regal pale-gold fur, and Koda had inherited a lot of facial features from him.
"You don't seem to care about a lot of things, Ed." He didn't really.
"I think I should put it in different words, it more like it... like it's not important to me. Graduating years used to be exciting when I was little but now that I'm a seventh grader I feel like it's just another year."
"I started feeling that way around fifth grade." Koda said. "But hey! It's an opportunity to get presents from everybody without having to ask!" Antony had given him a video game, some dystopian rpg with a multiplayer setting. Devin, the 6'1 bear sixth grader had given him a BB gun. Ed and his mom lived in a very wealthy district, even though him and his mother were just lower middle class citizens. Everyone he knew up was upper middle class or up and they could throw money at the wall when it came to presents, every kid in the middle school he went to had a phone and an allowance. Ed didn't get an allowance and his mom said he'd have to wait for a phone.
"Can't say no to presents. Thank you again, Koda."
"Anytime." A lapse of silence, lisping into their conversation. They were both looking at their parents -- Ed at Annie, Koda at her father, Franklin. "Say, they look happy together."
There was a cold feeling of water rushing through his head, inexplicabale, but he choked out the words "Yeah." Annie and Franklin were leaned against a wooden table in close proximity. "Yeah I think they do."
"Something wrong?" It must have been written on his face, whatever that emotion was. Maybe it was a possesiveness, that her dad was gone and they were together and alone. Some Fruedian thing that Eddie couldn't understand. He didn't understand what he was feeling or why.
"I'm fine, it's just gonna be weird if she starts dating again."
"Yeah... It was weird for me once my father divorced my mother and it was weirder when he started dating. He can't seem to... click with anyone." Koda said.
"Does he talk to you about his dates?" Ed asked.
"Sometimes, when he needs to vent. Most of the time he talks to his buddies over the phone about them." Koda pursed her lips.
"What kind of things does he say?"
"That's not for me to repeat." She said bluntly. "Say... wanna go outside?"
They did so. They played on the swingset in the backyard for a longtime, underneath a warm grey sky to embrace the August weather and they let their fingers get warm and stiff against the chains of the swings and they talked.. More and more kids came out, Riley, the golden retriever came out. He asked the same question that Koda had, about the whole thing being elementary and Ed answered the same way, that he thought it was more for his mom than for anyone else.
Riley tossed him a fresh football, unused. "Here, it's yours bro. Now throw it." They never had enough room in their backyard to play catch like they wanted to, to throw itas long and as hard as they wanted to. Ed only yelled 'go long!' in his dreams. Riley was one of those kids that only wore t shirts and basketball shorts, no matter what time of year it was. As Riley caught it, he tossed it to Koda. And Koda tossed it to Ed.
This proceeded for a while, and the feeling that this was an elementary celebration crept more and more through him. Koda was pretty and he wanted to seem more independent to her, to be able to prove himself as not just a boy but as a budding man. He was interested in those pretty long legs and that soft voice and those book hungry eyes and he wanted her to be interested in his boyish legs and his hard to discern eyes.
He ran over in his head some conversation he wanted to spring on his mother after everyone had gone home. He couldn't find the right words for it, no matter how many iterations he spelled out for himself.