Storms 01 - Family Storms

my miniskirt. I didn’t know what to do, but when he lifted it a little to touch my thigh, I jumped, and Kiera turned.
    “What’s going on?”
    “Nothing much,” Ricky said. “That’s the problem.”
    “The problem is, you don’t have any patience,” she told him.
    “That’s Ricky,” Boyd said. He was on Kiera’s other side and leaned over her to talk to me. “PE Man,” he said, jerking his thumb toward Ricky.
    “Shut your mouth,” Ricky told him.
    Boyd laughed and sat back.
    Ricky didn’t bother me for the remainder of the movie, which had some very funny scenes but was basically pretty stupid, I thought. I didn’t say so, because the others, including Kiera, seemed to think it was great. Later, after we parted to go home, I asked Kiera what Boyd meant when he called Ricky PE Man.
    “He was just teasing him,” she said.
    “I know, but I don’t know what that means.”
    “It means premature ejaculation. You know what that is?”
    “I think so,” I said. I wasn’t really sure.
    “It’s when a boy, a man, gets excited too fast and the girl gets nothing out of it.”
    “Oh.”
    “Anyway, I can tell you for a fact that it isn’t true, so don’t worry about it.”
    I looked at her. She knew for a fact?
    She smiled. “Hey,” she said. “Don’t look so shocked. Relax. This is your first day of real class in the real school. Here, I’m the best teacher. And,” she added as we reached her car, “it’s tuition-free.”
    She laughed, but something told me it wasn’t tuition-free.
    Something told me there was a price to pay.

22
The Price
    M rs. Duval will be happy,” Kiera said as we drove through the opened gate just before eleven-fifteen.
    “How will she know what time we arrived?” I asked.
    “You’ll see.”
    Sure enough, when we parked and went into the house, Mrs. Duval was there to greet us. Kiera glanced at me and smiled.
    “As you can see, Mrs. Duval, you didn’t have to worry. Both of us are still in one piece,” Kiera said.
    Mrs. Duval said nothing. She watched us go up the stairs, Kiera giggling.
    “Did you have a good time today?” she asked when we reached her suite.
    “Yes, thank you.”
    “No, thank
you,
Sasha,” she said, and then she surprised me even more by hugging me. “Sweet dreams,” she said, and went into her bedroom.
    I hurried to mine. It was still difficult to think of it asmine. There was so much of Alena in it, not haunting it as much as continuing to possess it. I slept in what had been her bed with her choice of headboard. Most of the clothes I wore every day had been her clothes. Her pictures were still on the dressers, tables, and walls. I wished it was different, wished that her things were gone and it was really my bedroom suite, but I felt guilty wishing that. I now knew as well as anyone that those you loved died gradually after their funerals. The blood of their immortality consists of the memories you have of them. As they are gradually forgotten or thought of less and less, they drift farther away, closing the lid on that darkness. Mrs. March, as would any mother, refused to close the lid.
    Perhaps by embracing me, if that was really what she was doing, Kiera was avoiding the pain of losing her sister. Would I be doing the same thing in relation to Mama if I accepted Mrs. March even as a surrogate mother? Could you really slip people in and out of your family the way you slipped your feet in and out of different shoes? It seemed so mean and horrible to me right now, but I knew that people did it all the time. Husbands and wives remarried and slipped new spouses into the spaces beside them on their beds, into the chairs across from them at their dinner tables, and into their arms when they danced.
    Maybe loneliness was worse than grief after all. The guilty feeling that followed and grew as you began to accept someone else and bury your loved one deeper could be overcome. In the beginning, you did that by using anger. How dare the one you loved so much die? How dare he or she not fight off death, defy fate or destiny, or drive away somemysterious plan God supposedly had? There should have been some greater resistance so as not to leave you alone.
    After that, you thought, if the person you loved was just as loving of you, he or she wouldn’t want you to be lonely. When you found someone else, it was almost as if you were building a new relationship for your loved one who had passed away as much as for yourself. Why add grief to