Between Seasons by Aida Brassington Page A

house in bright colors because it took a part of his parents away from him, he found himself a little irritated when the woman wrinkled her nose at the painting behind Sara’s red couch.
    It was a Georgia O’Keefe reproduction – he only knew that because Sara had told him. Well, not him , really. She’d been talking to herself or her imaginary person again.
    He really didn’t know who Georgia O’Keefe was, but he figured she was an artist. Sara had a large, hardcover book with the woman’s name on it in a box, and while she’d unpacked and fit her books onto shelves, he’d stood behind her and hungrily took in the titles. The cover for the Georgia O’Keefe book looked unsettlingly like a woman’s… well, parts he’d only seen a few times but liked a lot. The painting over Sara’s couch was a red flower, althou gh it didn’t look anything like… that , he had noticed with some relief.
    Over the last two weeks Sara had filled the house with furniture. The house was a completely different place, which freaked him out –it was hard to say goodbye to his mom’s gold floral wallpaper in the kitchen. And yet at the same time he loved walking into his parents’ room and feeling like he’d finally gone someplace new. He sat in the living room for hours while Sara chattered and pretended he wasn’t trapped.
    Sara had moved into the master bedroom and painted it green… sort of a weird color between peas and the grass in the front yard. Her bed was even bigger than his parents’ had been, and the headboard was plain, just a black cloth rectangle above which she’d hung a dozen framed pictures in all different sizes. He’d studied them, trying to figure out more about his new roommate, but he couldn’t make any sense of them. The photographs weren’t of anyone or anything that he could see. Rather, they just looked like shapes to him.
    “Oh, thanks, Jules,” Sara said, watching her guest move around the room and inspect her stuff. “I know it’s not your style and all…”
    Jules. Oh, this must be her sister. She’d mentioned a few days ago her sister was coming to stay for a few days. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen her - Sara had lots of picture frames scattered around the house, and unlike the photos above her bed, these had people and places in them. Patrick memorized each one. His favorite was of Sara with the people he assumed were her parents and her sister. Sara looked healthy and tan in the photo, arms around a tall man with a brown and gray beard, a full head of dark hair , and a wide smile, and a woman slightly shorter than Sara, hair short like his mom’s had been but blonder. The woman’s smile and nose looked just like Jules’, who stood on the other side of her father in the picture, arm linked through his, while Sara favored her father around the eyes and nose. Patrick liked that everyone looked so happy . I t was good to see Sara without the wounded look in her eyes she seemed to carry most of the time.
    Even though he still wasn’t entirely convinced of Sara’s sanity, he did like that she constantly talked out loud in the house. He loved that she’d made his bedroom into her office. She’d spent most of her time in the last few weeks cleaning and arranging furniture and unpacking, but after she painted his room light blue and moved a big, dark wood desk into it, she’d spend a few hours in there every day writing. Sometimes she’d sit at the desk chair, and sometimes she’d sink into a huge , brown leather armchair.
    The writing was the weird thing - he’d expected a typewriter. The letters were laid out the same, for the most part, as on the big Corona he used to own, but the thing she typed on looked more like an oversized plastic book. He’d never seen anything like it: she typed , and words appeared on a white screen. It was kind of cool to be able to look over her shoulder and read what she was writing, even if it was mostly stuff he had no interest in. She