Completely (Un)expected

Day one in Jersey actually wasn’t that bad. All that really happened was that I arrived at my aunt's house, got settled into my new room, which was going to take a little getting used to, and had dinner before going back upstairs and promptly conking out from all of the hustle and bustle of the day.

I awoke the next morning at an oddly early hour. The room was still dim, but I could see the first rays of sunlight fighting their way inside through the semi-lace curtains. Accepting defeat and the notion that I was probably not going to get back to sleep, I kicked off the striped bed comforter and padded my way over to the little bay window and sat myself down on the cushioned sill.

Letting out a soft yawn, I pulled back on the curtain closest to me and shielded my eyes as a flood of light came pouring into the already brightly colored room. My eyes adjusted soon enough and I let my gaze fall out onto the side yard where the green grass was being illuminated by the rising, Jersey sun.

Out in the distance, behind the trees and past the other houses, the sky was coming off its previous purple hue and fading into the dazzling mid-August blue that only summer could pull off. Clouds floated effortlessly and weightlessly as they passed overhead, drawing my gaze now upward to follow their paths, and distracting me just enough to make me flinch when a sudden knock was heard at the door.

I shot up off of the bay window seat and crossed my arms over my chest, realizing that I was wearing only a tank top and shorts. When a moment passed with no further sign of anyone, I spoke up. "Uhm, you can . . . come in."

The door slowly creaked open as I shifted on my feet uncomfortably. I saw Mikey's messy head of bed hair cautiously peer in and his eyes found mine as he let a smile play across his timid expression. "Morning," he said notably more comfortably than when I'd first been reunited with him and the family the previous day. "Up early?"

"Uh, yeah. Sun comes up a lot earlier here I guess."

"Than where?" Mikey asked as he slowly began the process of opening the door, gauging whether or not to step inside.

"Pennsylvania. I know the time zones are the same and everything it's just that I never slept in a room that faced the west I guess." Mikey nodded his head in agreement and out of not knowing what else to say as he held onto the door, still only about halfway inside the room.

"Probably," he added, confirming the inference as to why I was awake before eight o'clock during the summer.

The subject hadn't been expected to last long, but I was still a little surprised when it was abruptly changed by Mikey saying: "Get dressed, we're going out."

"Out?" I questioned, though that definitely wasn’t my only one. "Where?"

"I'm going to show you around Jersey. You sort of don't have a say in this, but I promise I'll try not to make your first tour around Belleville suck too much." This earned Mikey a chuckle out of me, and perhaps some relief of his own as he saw that I wasn't a total killjoy.

I thought about his plan for a moment. I mean, how bad could it be? Mikey was nice and I'd have to get the awkwardness of actually getting to know him out of the way eventually, and I did need to know my way around here if I was going to be staying for a while anyway.

I shrugged my shoulders, still keeping a conscious effort to keep my arms over my chest since Mikey was still around. "Okay, sounds good," I replied, watching as Mikey's smile continued to widen. "Give me ten minutes?"

"Ten minutes, sure," he said sarcastically before adding. "You're a girl so ten minutes in girl math is like, what? Half an hour in real time."

I laughed at Mikey's joke and was tempted to throw a pillow at him if it weren't for my current configuration meant to keep myself from flashing Mikey. "Whatever," I replied equally as sarcastically. "I'll be ready."

"Okay," Mikey sang out as he turned on his heel and shut the door behind him.

I got dressed as quickly as I could, admittedly taking longer than ten minutes, but I felt as though I was entitled considering not all of my clothes had been unpacked yet and the white, high-waisted shorts I wanted to wear were at the bottom of one of my suitcases. I slipped on a navy blue tank top, tucking the shirt into my shorts and slid my arms into a black cardigan. I wasn’t sure how warm it got in Jersey, but it was light and I was already exposing my legs.

I slipped on my black converse and went downstairs to meet Mikey, ignoring his comment about how I'd taken thirteen minutes to get dressed, granting me no reprieve.

"Yeah, but I brushed my teeth, so that’s an automatic two minutes, and these shorts were buried underneath-"

"Excuses, excuses," he remarked, shaking his head jokingly. I took this as my opportunity to smack him with the closest thing that I could find which looked to be a magazine that was on the counter.

"Hey, careful with that!" Mikey exclaimed, taking the booklet from me. "You blind?"

"Well, the last time I checked-"

"This is a special printed, limited edition, collectors' copy of the first volume of Doom Patrol," he said sounding like an obsessive nerd clinging to a, oh…

"What? Your precious little comic book," I teased as Mikey hugged it protectively against him.

"Yes actually, and it's very important to me." Mikey actually sounded adorable in the way he innocently protected those few, flimsy sheets of paper 'bound' together with a couple of crappy staples. I had nothing against comics, in fact, they'd helped me pass countless hours of down time waiting up for my dad while he was off at a show I couldn’t get into. I'd read them in the car on the way to shows that were really far away and I'd skim through a story or two as preparations for the start of a show were being conducted that I couldn’t help with.

"Okay, I'm sorry," I said, probably sounding less genuine than I was. Mikey narrowed his eyes at me as if analyzing whether or not to trust me.

"Forgiven," he said, keeping up his fake, 'intimidating' façade. I smiled and he lightened up before placing the comic back down, closer to him this time.

We made eggs and toast for breakfast, which really meant I made eggs and Mikey put bread in the toaster. I'd only really known him for the day, but that was enough time to know that he had no idea what he was doing in the kitchen.

Breakfast finished and with dishes put away, Mikey and I embarked on our tour of Belleville.
It was a relatively small town with a few shops and businesses clustered in a municipal town square, but other than that, it was relatively plain and a little more than boring. It was the kind of town where a summer romance between two young, naïve teenagers would be the cutest thing in the world; the two of them making their own fun in a drab and slow paced town, but it was also the kind of town where that sort of thing just didn’t happen.

Everyone was friendly, but it seemed more out of courtesy than genuine interest in the feelings of another. This wasn’t a town where teens snuck around and got into love fueled mischief, or where school boys made extra change walking their neighbors dogs. It was just there; nothing bad, but nothing seemingly worthwhile.

It was only noon and Mikey had already taken me around to just about every place in Belleville. He showed me the old library from the eighteen hundreds, the tiny art museum that actually had some good stuff, the diner where he and his friends sometimes hung out in late at night, and we'd passed the high school I was to be attending in September which was only a few blocks away from the local pool.

We'd worn ourselves out and after a quick lunch at the diner, which Mikey insisted he pay for, we made one more stop that Mikey said was not option and completely necessary.
The storefront was so small I would have missed it entirely without Mikey there to know exactly where it was.

"Hey guys, what are you doing here?" I heard Gerard's voice call across the front of the low-down, little comic shop we'd meandered into. I looked up to see him coming toward us, a box full of magazines in his arms, which he set down on the counter beside the register.

"Oh, not much," Mikey shrugged and looked to me. "Just showing Henri around a little."

"Cool," Gerard replied.

"So, do you work here or -?" I asked Gerard, seeing as he'd come out carrying the box.
"Yeah," he said, taking a look around the, admittedly, impressive interior of the shop. There was a fairly decent selection of comics and a nicely displayed shelf of figurines and miscellaneous memorabilia. "It's a pretty sweet gig, I guess."

"In case you couldn’t figure it out before, we like comics. A lot," Mikey added, over emphasizing the drama in his tone at the last part.

Gerard then asked, "You into them too, Henri?"

"Yeah, I mean," I started. "I'm not nearly as into them as you too, but I do like me some comics."

"Who likes comics?" A short, older man said as he unexpectedly and undetectably came out from an invisible door somewhere in the back of the store.

"Mr. Ricket, this is my cousin, Henrietta. She's going to be staying with us to finish out her senior year here in Jersey."

I shook the man's hand when he held his out to me. I smiled to him and, just as I was about to greet him myself, he interjected, "You're a 'Way' too?"

"An 'Owens' actually," I began to explain, adamant on not going into too much detail. "My mom was a 'Way' so her last name changed."

He nodded his head and I realized that it was only at this point that he finally let go of my hand. I slipped it into my pocket awkwardly, an uncomfortable and inexplicable clamminess forming on my skin, though it may have been because his hand was a little sweaty.

"Well, hey," he said in a very cut-to-the-chase manor. "You seem like a good kid. I'm looking for some more help if you're ever interested in an after-school job."

"What would I do?" I asked. Although a job did sound like something nice to pass the time and keep me busy, I wasn’t going to take it if I was going to hate it.

"Well, mainly the money stuff: counting the cash in the drawer at night and making sure all the numbers add up every week. I'll pay you good, and you can be left to your work alone, no one will bother you."

He really did seem like he needed someone bad. It didn’t even sound like that bad of a job; being left alone to finish on my own terms, only coming in once a week and still getting paid.
"Do it, Henri," Mikey piped up. "I'd take the job, but I have the math skills of a fourth grader." I chuckled at this and took in a breath before replying to everyone collectively at this point.

"Okay," I said. "I'll do it."

Mr. Ricket smiled and patted my shoulder. "How's about tomorrow you come in and I'll get you familiar with the programs and money system?"

I'll admit, it all moved a little quickly. The man barely knew me and he was willing to trust me with the funds of his store just because I was a 'Way' (sort of.) Part of me wondered why someone would entrust such a major part of their business in the hands of a sixteen year old girl, but the rest of me was just excited to have something to do and to be earning some extra cash.

"Sounds good to me," I said, solidify the fact that I had a job now. We made the plan to meet at the comic shop at eleven the next morning. I just hoped that I'd remember how to get there without Mikey's guidance. Any worries or concerns aside, I was actually pretty happy with the day's rather unexpected outcome.

Mikey and I soon left the comic shop after he purchased a few new booklets, not without first trying to bribe Gerard into letting him have them for free, which of course he refused. Once Mikey officially paid for the books, we told Gerard we'd see him at home and left.

It felt a little weird to say that. Say that I'd be seeing Gerard at home, because it wasn’t my home, but I was living there. I still wasn’t quite sure where I was fitting into this whole situation, but thus far, I'd say things were going pretty good.

Notes

The use of the word 'killjoy' in this chapter was totally not on purpose; I just didn’t want to use the word 'buzzkill' and, come on, this is an MCR fan-fiction after all :)
Read, enjoy, comment, message me if you want, and I'll see you next week!! ^.^