~*~

Home. I turned the key as silently as possible, but that lock seemed bent on letting the whole neighborhood know that I was back. I turned the knob and peered inside to see living room lamps lit and mom sitting in her easy chair with a book and a cup of coffee. Seeing that she was awake anyway, there wasn’t really any need to stay quiet.

 “Hey,” I said, stepping in. She glanced up in surprise.

 “Well, that didn’t take long. I thought you’d be out for another hour at least.” She marked her place with a pink ribbon and took off her square-frames, smiling. “How was it?”

  “Eh.” I shrugged my heavy duffle off my shoulder and collapsed onto the couch.

  “‘Eh’? Wow. Slow down, son, I can hardly keep up with all this information.” Her pretty mouth twisted into a sly half-grin. “Maybe some coffee will loosen your tongue.” My mom stood up and walked to the kitchen, as I glanced at her book. Hamlet. Ugh. How could she read that stuff for fun? My mom was a major Shakespeare buff. She returned with two full cups of coffee and handed one to me. I was suspicious. Coffee at eleven o’clock? “So, what was so “eh” about this party? I thought you said it was going to be fun.” She took a sip and I tried not to laugh at the foamy mustache on her lips.

 

 Without thinking I replied, “I never said that.”

 “So it wasn’t going to be fun? Then why did you go?” Her brows rose.

 “That’s not what I meant.” But wait, wasn’t it? Sometimes my mom was too good at reading my thoughts. “It was fine, I guess is what I mean. But I have a lot of homework, like you said, so I left early. I should be starting on that.” I stood up.

 “You don’t have to start now, do you? Its late.”

 “Well now that you’ve given me coffee, I’ll be up all night.”

 “Yours is decaf.” She sighed. “Oh alright, go live your life. I know you don’t want to let your old mother in on all your secrets.” Feigning self-pity, she opened up her Hamlet and the pink ribbon fluttered to the floor. I retrieved it and gave her a kiss. Then I was up the stairs before Shakespeare could say, “Who’s there?”

~*~

“I want you to do this assignment. Really do it. I think you’ll enjoy it if you let yourself.”

What did he mean by that? Mr. Thorpe was often vague to the point of obscurity. I sat at my desk rereading my scribbled notes from that morning---could it really only be less than 24 hours ago?

There it was: Find a blog that interests you and write a short summary of what you find. Due monday.

That was all. It was one of the smallest assignments he’d given us this whole year.

 

That’s it? I thought. What’s so important about that?

 

I flipped open my laptop, and punched in my password. Blogger. I began searching. Most of them looked boring, boring, boring. I glanced back down at the words in my notebook.

. . .that interests you . . .

What was I interested in? Baseball? Sure. What else? Right now I was mostly interested in buying a car, but I doubted there’d be too many blogs about that. I was in the middle of reading Bob Chamsky’s blog, “Cars, Trucks and Automobiles” and thinking about what a dumb name that was, since cars and trucks are automobiles, when a soft sudden sound from downstairs caught my ear. I crept to the door and peeked out through the dim light.  

Her Hamlet lying forgotten on the floor, my mom was standing at the window.

She was crying.