Ha. It only gets worse! I was having trouble coming up with my words tonight. Tomorrow I’m going to do some plotting before I sit down so I can get excited about it.
Chapter Two
A Month or so later, it seemed like Lauren and I were becoming friends. Granted, I’d never been to her house, or even got a ride home from school with her and her older sister, even though they lived just a few blocks down. She did, however, let me sit with her and her friends at lunch, and she said nothing more about my free or reduced embarrassment. She explained that everyone had been calling Doug Dougie since middle school, primarily because it seemed to annoy him. She said he’d freaked out one year, during gym class. He’d started screaming that it wasn’t his name, until he finally ran off only to be caught crying in the locker room a few minutes later. Naturally, she told me, it only made things worse. I tried to express as little interest in the subject as I could, and eventually Lauren let it drop. Sometimes I’d catch him following me down the hall, but as soon as he realized that I knew he was there, he’d change direction and scurry off the other way. I kind of felt sorry for him, he didn’t seem to have any friends at all, not even the other nerdy kids hung out with him. But, I couldn’t sacrifice myself to pity, not when I was making progress.
About the time the leaves started to change, Lauren began bugging me about the homecoming dance, whether I was going, who I would go with. I insisted that I wasn’t going, therefore I wasn’t going with anybody. She asked me if it was because I was too poor to get a dress, and I nearly walked away before she called me back.
“That’s not what I meant,” she whispered. “I mean that you could maybe fit into one of my sister’s from last year or the year before. Or maybe we could go shopping right before the dance and find something on clearance. Let’s face it, Megan, if you’re going to fit in at this school, then you’re going to have to go to the dance. You do want to fit in, don’t you?” The corners of her mouth turned up in the slightest grin. She had perfect teeth and a disarming smile. And she knew it.
“Nobody’s asked me,” I said, pricking at the corners of my cold pizza with a plastic fork.
“We’ll work on finding you a dress together,” she said, kind of batting her eyelashes as part of her argument. “Then I’ll find you a date myself.”
“Really?”
“Promise. I know several guys who’d love to go to the dance with you. It’ll be a great time, and you’d really regret missing out.”
“Really?”
“Of course really.” She slurped down the last of her vitamin water then stood to dump off her tray. I followed her.
“Oh my God,” she said. “I’ve just had the best idea!”
“What?”
“Blind date! Please let me do it, I’m a great matchmaker, and then it’ll be a total surprise.”
“I don’t know,” I said, but then she made that sad puppy face at me. That shit isn’t supposed to work on other girls, but I gave in almost at once. The truth was that I kind of did want to go, but I couldn’t bring myself to ask mom for the money for a dress. It was bad enough that she already made us keep the heat down to 62 degrees no matter how cold it felt in the house, to keep the electric bill down.
“Why don’t you come over after school and we’ll see if my sister has anything that would work. You know where I live, right? Over in the Oaks?”
The Oaks was this gated community not far from where my family lived. It had steel bars out front and a doorman to keep the people out who didn’t belong. I’d seen him there on my bike, in his too dressy uniform, a suit and a tie just to sit in a cubicle reading magazines all day.
“Right, what number?” I asked, not wanting to let her know that I’d never been in there before.
“Number?” She seemed confused for a second, then it came to her. “No, we don’t have numbers like some trashy apartment complex. I live in the one called The Shenandoah. It’s stupid, but what do you expect? My dad was the one to name the place. There’s a plaque out front, but the doorman should be able to tell you right where it is. Give me about an hour after class to sort through things.” She didn’t wait for an answer. Lauren was sort of impatient like that. I didn’t see her again until I got to her house.
When the doorman buzzed me in, Lauren took forever to answer. My stomach dropped and I felt certain that she’d only been playing some mean trick on me. She was infamous for that sort of thing, even among her friends, but especially among her enemies. But her voice came bubbling through the loudspeaker for Pierre (I wondered if that was his real name) to send me in. She was waiting for me just outside the door when I finally found her sprawling building with the gold-etched plaque out front.
“Well, are you coming in? I’ve found this dress that will look perfect on you. I bet it will even fit right. You’re about the same size my sister was last year.
Now I’m sick of writing this chapter.
Chapter Three
“Mom? Do you have any idea what time it is?” She’d forgotten to turn the ringer off on her cell phone again, and it woke her up. She recognized the number at once, even half a sleep. She’d been having a dream about a long time ago.
“Megan, thank God I got you. I tried your sister, but she didn’t pick up.” She sounded frantic and a bit slurred. Megan sat up and rubbed the sleep sand out of the corners of her eyes.
“What’s going on, mom? Have you been drinking?”
“At a time like this, that’s hardly relevant.”
“A time like what?”
“There’s been a fire.”
“Oh my God, are you all right?”
Her mom took a deep breath, but it wasn’t enough to calm her. She started sobbing into the phone, loud, obnoxious sobs. Megan held the receiver out from her ear, waited until her mom’s crying subsided a bit. “Are you okay, mom? Are you hurt?”
“No…I’m all right. It’s just…it’s just.”
“You got the Beave out in time, didn’t you?” The Beave was her mom’s dog, a half-witted Chihuahua with ugly bug-eyes and a terrible fear of anything much bigger than an insect, including table scraps.
“Yes, Beverly is fine. A little scared, but fine. But,” and she dissolved into sobbing again. Megan looked at the clock, it was just a little after three. She’d have to be up again in about three hours if she wanted to make it to work on time. She had to open the restaurant every Thursday, even though she hated working the breakfast shift. The money was absolute shit.
“What is it?” Megan pulled the covers over her arm, it was an icebox in the condo, just like being home again.
“The kitchen is ruined! All your grandmother’s cookbooks are burned up!” Her mom’s pitch rose, as though it were the worst news ever.
“That’s okay, mom. You must have memorized most of the recipes you use by now. If not, we can always find them online.”
“That’s not all,” her mom’s voice dropped low, perilously close to breaking.
“Take a deep breath, and then tell me. More than one if you need to. Just take your time.” Megan waited while her mom gulped air.
“Th-th-the f-fireman…” she broke off in an attempt to catch her breath and master her quivering voice. Megan waited, stifling a yawn into her pillow. “He said…h-he said that I have to get rid of everything,” she drew the last word out to accentuate it.
“What do you mean?” But Megan had a pretty good idea of what he meant even before she finished asking the question. Her mom was a horder. She lived in a little trailer now, and the thing was packed to the brink. Her entryway was stacked with old shoe boxes, those that weren’t filled with old shoes were filled with something else, newspaper clippings, voided checks, coupons from twenty years ago, earrings that no longer had a match, garage sale knickknacks, anything small enough to fit in a shoebox. She had almost all the clothes she’d ever worn folded in piles in her closet that reached to the ceiling and to the closet door. Her recipe books took up all but a tiny area of her counter where she prepared her meals, which were usually microwave dinners. Her bathroom was cluttered with dozens of bottles half full of shampoo, some of it was so congealed in the cap that you had to take the lid off to get any out. Her bathroom cabinets were full of expired prescriptions, some of them, no doubt, were Megan’s, like from the time she had mono in high school, or those couple times she had strep, or even just an upper respiratory infection. The drawers of her vanity were full of crusty make-up, eyeshadow that probably came from the seventies, mascara that was hardened to useless. Disposable razors she couldn’t bear to throw out. Her bookshelves were full of every pamphlet she’d picked up since her children were small, yellowing with age and barely visible behind the rows of tiny figurines that she kept precariously close to the shelves’ edges. She had a closet full of throw rugs and pillows, another that was old toys. The back bedroom was a cluster-fuck of every artifact from her childrens’ childhoods, clothes, games, pictures, school books.
“He said it was a fire hazard,” her mom said when she finally calmed down enough to speak.
“No arguing with that, is there?”
“But it’s my life. It’s all my life. I can’t get rid of it.”
“Is the fire out now?”
“Yes.”
“Mom, I’ve got to work tomorrow morning. Let’s talk about this tomorrow afternoon. How bad is the trailer? Smoke damage? Do you need to sleep here tonight?”
“It woke Beverly up before it spread too far. I wanted to try to put it out with baking soda, but I couldn’t find it. I know I have some around here, somewhere.”
“And not a fire-extinguisher?”
“No, I think there’s one of those somewhere, too. Maybe in the closet. Or behind the couch.” If it was in either of those places, her mom would have never found it in time to put the fire out. Thank God she’d had the presence of mind to call the fire department before the whole tinder-box went up.
“We’ll help you get stuff cleaned up, mom, later this week. We’ll throw out all the unimportant stuff, and if you can make a sound argument as to why it matters, you can keep it. Amy’ll help us decide what can stay and what has to go. But we’ll worry about that later. Right now I need to get back to sleep if I’m going to before I have to clock in. Do you want to come over? I can put a blanket and pillow out and leave a key under the mat.”
“I don’t know. I don’t want to throw out my things, Megan. They mean so much to me.”
“I know, mom. But let’s discuss it at a more reasonable hour, okay? Tell me how bad off the trailer is and whether or not you need to come over tonight.”
“I lost all my cookbooks,” her mom said. Her voice sounded small and pathetic. The Beave barked in the background. “Quiet, Beverly, hush, hush, hush.”
“How bad is the kitchen? Is there much smoke damage?”
“It’s cold in here. I’ve had the windows open all night, and I think I’ll leave the one in the kitchen open. The counters are blackened and I think they’ll need refinished. The cupboards were just catching when the firemen came, so I think mostly they’re all right, although a couple will probably need replaced. The wallpaper on that side of the kitchen is a total loss, the curtains too, but I’ve got more of those. Although I hate to lose them. They belonged to your grandmother too, you know.”
Megan sighed. “Do you want to sleep here tonight? I’ve got eggs in the fridge, I think some sausage links, you can cook yourself a nice breakfast, if you want to.”
“They’re going to come back in a month, you know. To see that I’ve gotten the place all cleaned out. If not, they’re going to report me. I can’t remember who they’ll report me to.” Megan watched the minutes tick by while her mom droned on about all the things she would lose, stopping every now and again to sob. Megan listened until she fell asleep. When she woke up, her alarm was going off and her cell phone was on the floor. She turned the alarm off and picked the phone up. Her mom was still talking, listing things that she definitely didn’t want to get rid of.
“Mom, I’m going to leave the key under the mat. You can come over if you want to get some sleep, but right now I’ve got to start getting ready for work.”
“Okay, dear. Thank you for listening.” There was no irony in her voice and it made Megan feel guilty.
“Why don’t you come on over and we’ll talk when I get home.”
“That’s okay, sweetheart. I’m sure your sister is probably up by now. I’m going to give her a call.”
“Okay mom, I’ll talk to you later.”
“I love you, dear.”
“I love you, too,” Megan said, and felt guiltier still for not meaning, at least not the way she should. The love she felt for her mother was that obligatory sort of thing, because she had no choice. She hung up the phone and got dressed for work. It was bound to be a long morning.
