2010
$11.95
| Issue Three - Amber Sparks |
When I was five, I found a penny covered in blood. At least, I think it was blood. It was just lying there on the blacktop at the playground, all shiny and new except for the crusty red on the edges, so I picked it up and wiped it off on my pants and put it in my jacket pocket. I didn’t tell anybody, but I thought it was certain to be the luckiest penny of all time.
Two days later, the driver of a semi truck fell asleep and plowed right over my mum’s car at about ninety miles an hour. So you can see I’m one of those people who’s always dead wrong about everything—even their own luck.
I am a Gifted and Talented Student at Risk. At least that’s what my counselor, Mrs. Lundeen, wrote in a little typed piece of paper that they stapled to my report card last semester. I hate her because her breath always smells like coffee and tuna.
The ‘Gifted and Talented’ part, I guess, is because I get good grades and I love to read. The ‘At Risk’ part is probably because I frequently skip school and accidentally swear in the classroom and occasionally smoke pot in the parking lot with my friends. And I’ve run away from home a million times, though the last time was years ago. You’d think none of those things would matter as long as I had good grades, but I guess nobody likes to pass judgment more than high school counselors.
I wasn’t even really running away when I ran away—I was just hiding. The first time was when I was very young, maybe just six, after Mum died and I came to live with Larceny. I was probably hiding from Gary, who used to come after me with his shoe, and I didn’t call it running away. I was convinced that I could make myself invisible, and nobody could see me hiding on the top of the slide in the park playground.
I told Larceny about being invisible one time when she asked where I’d been all bloody day, and she said I was nutters and that unless I wanted to get taken away from her, I’d better not talk any more nonsense like that. Larceny’s from England, which is why she uses words like “nutters” and “bloody.” She and Mum were best friends in Liverpool, and they both moved to America shortly after I was born. Without my father, obviously. Nobody knows who he is, except my dead mum. She and Larceny meant to end up in L.A., working in the movies. But somehow they ended up here Meadow Park, after hitchhiking halfway across the country and running out of money. Then Larceny met Gary, and that was that.
I understand giving up your life for love. I mean, I’d do it. Not for that fucking asshole Gary. But for John, I would.
John is the janitor at my school, and I am in love with him. Yeah, that’s right, go ahead and make fun of me—Lindsay already laughed her ass off when I made the mistake of telling her, which is not surprising since she is a gigantic snob and even owns her own horse.
But I’m in love with him just the same. He’s young and has short, soft blue-black hair and stubble, and he listens to jazz in the little office downstairs they give the janitor when he’s not pouring sawdust on puke or sweeping up pubes in the locker room. And he talks to me and no one else. (Well, except maybe Vice-Principal Jennings, but she’s about fifty and for real a lesbian so she’s not exactly competition or anything.)
I’m the only one at school that knows, for instance, that he is in several TV commercials that are currently airing on local cable channels. Including a used car commercial where he buys a used car at a lot from some shiny-faced jerk in a cowboy hat. Because really, John’s not a janitor, but a struggling actor. Not that I think for three seconds that he’s in love with me—I mean, he’s like, twenty-five or maybe even older, and I’m fifteen, and that’s illegal and probably gross—but still. Still.
We saw the car commercial on TV one afternoon. When I told Larceny I knew John she accused me of lying. Then she asked me if he was a real car customer or fake. “Sometimes they have cameras ready at those places, to tape real people buying real cars.” I told her that was the goddamn stupidest thing I’ve ever heard, and she got all huffy and demanded another pillow and a ginger ale, which I had to go all the way down to the 7-Eleven and buy with my own allowance. And P.S., who drinks ginger ale? She even texted me when I was walking there to tell me to get Canada Dry, not Schweppes. Swear to god.
Anyway, when I got back she was drinking a Coors Lite instead and told me to take Christmas outside and play with her. “She keeps trying to climb on me,” she said. About her own flesh and blood, mind you.
I was going to use some of what Aunt Mina calls “That Language!” when I saw that Larceny’s eyes were squeezed shut, and that line was coming down the middle of her forehead between her eyes. I realized today was a bad pain day for Larceny. So I decided to be nice and go distract Christmas, which is about the easiest thing in the world as she is only two and interested in officially everything. She calls me Ottie, which I think means Auntie, and she puts her little fat pink arms around my neck sometimes and gives me wet baby kisses on my cheek. Besides John, she’s the only person I love.
On the way into school on Friday, I slip on the ice and fall down—on the sidewalk right there in front of everybody. And to my total horror, I start crying like a baby. I'm all wailing and embarrassed, and my hands are all scraped and painful, and my head hurts where I hit it and my butt is getting soaked through from sitting on the wet ground.
And then John is there, John the Janitor, my savior, and he is helping me to my feet and brushing snow off my crap-colored brown jacket that Larceny bought at Savers for $13.50. He smiles at me. “There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow,” he says, quietly, just for me to hear. Then he winks, and I almost fall right back over. He turns around and starts shoveling snow again, but I think I stand there for about a minute and a half, the snow practically melting around my boots as I become a love-drunk statuette.
Then Lindsay is yelling for me, freaking out because the bell has rung and we’re late, and so I become unstuck but not unstupid as I drift into the building, thinking of all sorts of places John and I could maybe live. Places where there isn’t any snow, ever. Places where lots of people make their living acting, so they don't have to wipe off dry-erase boards for money.
Lindsay is a horse girl. Even when we were really little, she used to hang around outside the stables in Eastbrook and just watch the riders train or whatever they do. Her parents bought her horse for her when she turned seven, which explains why it’s named Fluffy Marshmallow, or Fluffers for short. She should have asked for a naming do-over when she was old enough to realize how retarded it sounded.
I’ve ridden a few horses before, and it’s a totally smelly, painful experience in my opinion. I mean, I love most animals, especially cats, but horses . . . I don’t know. I have no idea what Lindsay sees in them. But she really loves horses—like, obsesses over them. She feeds Fluffers sugar cubes and strokes her mane and draws pictures of her during class when we’re supposed to be doing geometry proofs.
But it’s not as if you choose your friends, really, any more than you choose your family. With friends, it’s all coincidence and timing and who lives nearby. Convenience that turns into permanent friendships, especially if you can’t drive yet and you live way out in the boondocks like we do. Thus, my best friend is Lindsay McMahon, who has lived within biking distance of my home-sweet-mobile-home in scenic Meadow Park since we were in Mrs. Cooper’s kindergarten class together. Her family’s not what you’d call trailer park trash, like Larceny and Christmas and me; they live in one of those gigantic houses near Lakeville. It’s a ten minute bike ride if you go around the north side of the park.
I wish you could choose your family. I certainly wouldn’t have chosen this one. Christmas, maybe, but definitely not Larceny. And I’m pretty damn sure she wouldn’t have chosen me, either. Which is not to say that we don’t tolerate each other. Larceny’s okay, but she and Aunt Mina (who is actually Gary’s mother, but everybody, including Larceny, calls her ‘Aunt’) are not the world’s brainiest. Larceny never finished high school, even, before she and my mum came to the States. She married stupid Uncle Gary right away, and they started a motorcycle repair business which mostly consisted of Gary fixing his friends’ bikes for free. He left a couple of years ago, thank god. All he ever did was get drunk and yell and hit things, mostly Larceny but sometimes me. He sucked so much that even now, thinking about him makes my eyes water and shut like I’m going to get punched in the face any second.
Larceny used to try to protect me, and sometimes I’d lie to Gary for her and say she was out when she was really hiding out back of the trailer and he came home all drunk. And after he left, we threw a big party and got beer and chips and salsa and watched movies. We even got some fireworks and the Johnson kids came over to help set them off. We sat there until like four in the morning, watching the black snakes burn and flake off and fly away over the blacktop.
And we’ve done okay ever since. Larceny gives me a small allowance to do chores and buy groceries, and take care of Christmas sometimes when she’s asleep or at the casino. I guess people can get to depend on each other, even if they don’t really belong to each other.
Lindsay has just texted me to say that she’s over at the stables again, where she does nothing but ride her stupid horse around and stick its nose in a feedbag. So I decided to head to the library and check out a big ratty old-book-smelling copy of Shakespeare’s Plays. I know this book well—I think I’m the only person that ever checks it out. I love the old-book smell, even though it makes me sneeze. Larceny says it probably gives me allergies, but what the hell does she know? Like she’s ever even opened a book in her life.
This time when I get it home and open the big heavy thing (carefully because the pages are cracking and falling out of their binding) I turn to the tragedies. More specifically to Hamlet. I want to find the line that John quoted at me, which is Hamlet talking to Horatio, but I also want to eat up all the lines, all the words, since Hamlet really is the most amazing thing ever written by anyone. I feel the same way every single time I read it—like somebody gave me a very tiny, sustained electric shock and I just can’t stop my brain from quivering.
Anyway, suddenly I feel like a joint, but I don’t want Larceny to know.
She’ll think I’m stealing from her. So I go over to the corner of me and Christmas’s bedroom, dig around under the bed until I find my own stash, and I roll a little fat joint. I can’t find my lighter, so I run to the kitchen, light it on the stove, and then run back to my room. Not like I have to worry; Christmas is napping with Larceny, and Larceny is all conked out on painkillers. I take a drag and breathe out slowly, coughing just the tiniest bit, and then I start with one of Ophelia’s monologues, the one about the flowers and herbs after she’s gone crazy. I like reading about Ophelia when I’m high—it’s easy to imagine myself floating in a river, skirts spread and hair coiling around reeds and floating debris.
The next day, Lindsay calls. She’s broken again, and she wants me to fix her.
This happens more and more often now, though she’s been weird and semi-broken since we were little. Once I caught our mailman standing in her kitchen with his hand up her shirt. I never said anything, because his name was Jimmie even though he was easily middle-aged, and because he seemed a little slow to me. I suppose I probably should have told someone. He quit about three years ago—hopefully not to become a full-time sexual predator.
Anyway, Lindsay’s had a lot of problems all her life, you know? So I’m used to it. I sigh and don’t tell Lindsay that I’m tired of fixing things. That’s all I do anymore, fix stuff—whether it’s Mrs. Morris’s busted lip from her meth-addicted, piece-of-shit son, or Larceny’s backaches, for which she requires me to get her copious amounts of weed—luckily, my friend Mike Ready is a drug-dealer, in a very small-time way.
But I don’t tell Lindsay any of that stuff. I just sit in her living room listening to her bitch, and then finally I tell her we’re going sledding.
“Sledding?” She’s lying on the couch sort of feet up, and she flips her feet off and body around to look at me. “But there’s pretty much no snow. And I don’t have any sleds or anything.”
I put on my crap coat, and grab her pretty quilted pink one from the peg on the door and throw it at her. It lands on her head and I can’t hear what she says until she gets it off. And by then I have already said, “I don’t care. We’ll use garbage bags. I heard that works. And there might be snow out by the mall.”
We make her brother Adam drive us there in his new truck, which we have to pay him ten bucks to do because he’s a total asshole-face. He always turns up his shitty metal really loud so we have to practically yell to hear ourselves. We don’t talk about the way Lindsay’s brain is failing her. We are very careful to only talk about little things like school and homework and movies we like. We laugh like we always do when pass by the Meadow Park Casino, with the big neon sign in front that flashes, “Everyone’s a Winner at Meadow Park!!!!” Four exclamation marks, no kidding. And what a lie—if everyone was a winner, would the parking lot be full of the same Winnebagos, day after day, their owners inside dropping their Social Security money into the slots one quarter at a time? Nobody’s a winner in Meadow Park. But everybody keeps trying just the same.
Lindsay has a name for her brain failure. She has been diagnosed with severe depression. She has a little pill case, like old people have where the pill slots are labeled with the days of the week. Hers is pink and the contents keep changing, because the doctors can’t quite get it right, the dosage or the pills. Sometimes the medicine starts working, pushing and prodding her until she starts to come out of herself a little. She does other things those days beside smoke and eat chocolate and wear this old pink Power Rangers bathrobe she got when she was little (I had a matching one), and draw pictures of horses. She’ll come over and watch movies with me, and draw these amazing, crazy comics about a group of weird misfit superhero chicks. She’ll comb her hair and put on makeup and act like things matter, ask me questions and listen to the answers, and do super well in school without even having to study. She’s always been the smartest person I know.
But then the medicine will stop. Lindsay doesn’t know why. The doctors don’t really know why. Lately it seems like she’s always halfway waiting for the days when the medicine stops working. Then her hair goes unwashed, and her parents can’t get her to go to school. Then she starts to sleep all day and stay up all night long, lots of times with these strange guys, older guys she meets god knows where. And she draws the damn horse pictures, soft penciled strokes tracing the same lines over the same musculature, again and again and again.
Sometimes I hate not having a history. I mean, I know a little about the English side of my family, but nothing about my dad’s side. Larceny thinks he might have been an American, but she’s not sure. My mum never told her. It makes me feel off-balance sometimes, the not-knowing.
We had to do reports in American History last year on our ancestors. It was supposed to show that we’re a nation of immigrants, because everybody comes from somewhere else. Well, except Native Americans, of course. There are a ton of Mexican and Guatemalan kids in my school that like, literally just came to the States so their parents and older brothers and sisters could work at the meatpacking plant outside of town.
When it was my turn to give my report, I said that my ancestors were Swedish farmers who bought their land cheap from the railroads when they came to America. I talked about how their farms failed during the thirties, how the crops just sat there unsold and rotting. Ms. Nivens got all teary when I got to the part about how my great-grandfather Sven finally gave up on the farm, sent his sons off to work in the stockyards, and hung himself in his own grain elevator.
Of course, I made the whole thing up based on a book I read about the Great Depression. It was easier than admitting I didn’t know who my dad was. It was a better story.
It seems like nobody writes really grand stories the way they used to. I mean, I’ve always loved all the stories and novels and poems and plays where it seems like the author just took everything that’s ever been true about life and people, and stuffed it into the pages and let it grow out like some strange, bloody, chaotic and wonderful plant. I’ve always loved older stories best because of that—I mean, obviously, Shakespeare’s tragedies and histories, but also stuff like the King Arthur legends and Tale of Two Cities and the big epic poems, too, like The Iliad and the Odyssey, and Beowulf.
I don’t think that the things that happen to people nowadays are any less grand and spectacular than they used to be—it’s just that nobody writes about the grand stuff anymore. The stories have gotten so small. It’s like, hey, that’s great that this chick is growing up spending summers with her wealthy family at their seaside resort or whatever, but are you going anywhere with this? Because, meanwhile, sorry, I can’t concentrate because this kid that used to live in our park, Dan, just a few years older than me, just got blown the fuck up in Iraq. (Totally true, by the way. And totally rotten—he was a super nice guy, so nice that even though he had crazy bad acne, he always had a lot of girlfriends.) And last year some kids just disappeared from my school and we found out it was because they got deported after the government raided the packing plant where their parents worked. And people are getting killed in genocides and terrorist attacks all over the world, and dying of starvation and rioting about food. I mean, it’s not like we’re lacking for subjects to write about here.
For me, I just like to see all of the people and places and emotions and conflicts and struggles all exploding out of the pages of one single amazing book or play or poem. Because that’s how life really is, right? You don’t ever get to sit there and concentrate on one tiny little thing. For most people, I think life just comes at you from everywhere and you have to deal with it all at once. Like in Slaughterhouse Five, you know, where Billy becomes unstuck in time? That’s how I think we all sort of live. And that’s why I love Vonnegut best of all the modern authors I’ve read, because he recognizes that about people in the same way that Shakespeare did. Human life is a huge, messy, complicated, unbelievable thing. No wonder some people still don’t get that we used to be apes just flinging our shit at each other.
When I come home, Aunt Mina is in the kitchen, drinking a Diet Coke and gossiping with Larceny. I slide past her to get to the fridge and grab a Coke for myself, and when I crack it open, I notice she’s just staring at me. In this really intent, focused, batshit kind of way.
I have to admit, Aunt Mina terrifies me. She’s the craziest old lady I know. I try to run past, but she grabs my arm and holds me there, smoking with her free hand and looking not exactly at me but sort of past me, her eyes a little bit unfocused. She blows smoke out of her nostrils, which makes me cough, and she slowly shakes her head in this way that reminds me of one of the sea turtles at the zoo.
Aunt Mina has had a tragic life. She smokes long, thin cigarettes, and wears tons of jewelry, so much that she sort of clanks and jangles when she moves. She owns her own business, out of her home. It’s a small room with green curtains and a super old computer and printer and a whole bunch of ashtrays. If you blow, dust comes up all around you, like a filthy snow globe.
She used to be in love, a long time ago, before I was born. Not with her husband, which is part of the tragedy. She had an affair, and they had a baby, but the baby died, I guess. Apparently everybody knew, even her husband, but he must not have cared or something because he stayed married to her for another fifteen years until he died of cancer. And then Gary abandoned her too, so she kind of adopted me and Christmas and Larceny. Anyway, she’s a very strange old lady—really old, with skin so thin you can see all the purple veins bulging out underneath. And now she just stares at me with those big watery eyes that old people always have, until I kind of shake myself free and slither around her to the bedroom.
Today Mike Ready tried to kiss me. We were sitting on a picnic table in the Randall Park shelter, and he just kind of leaned over and mooshed his face into mine, like something would happen if he kept it there. I actually thought for like three seconds that he must have lost his balance and fallen into me, before I realized what he was trying to do. I pushed him off the table and he hit his head on the bench and landed in the dirt. It was kind of funny, but I didn’t laugh because I didn’t know who else I’d get Larceny’s weed from if Mike wouldn’t sell it to me.
“What the fuck did you push me for, bitch?” Mike stood up, all pissed, brushing the dirt off his butt.
I shrugged. “I dunno. I like somebody else, okay? I just didn’t want you to kiss me or anything, because I like somebody else.”
“Who?”
“Nobody you know. A senior.” I thought this was smart of me. Mike would never want to get in a fight with a senior, so he probably wouldn’t ask any more questions.
“Huh,” Mike kind of grunted at me. “Well, don’t think I’m gonna sell you any discounted stuff anymore. You can pay the same price as everybody else from now on.”
I sighed in relief. “So you’ll still sell to me?”
He shrugged, still pissed. “Business is business. And anyway, you’re not that hot.” Mike’s dad owns two Cameros, one yellow, one red. He parks them in his driveway in the summer and washes them by hand every weekend, wearing teeny shorts and no shirt. It explains a lot about Mike.
John has asked me to come downstairs to his office today after P.E. I was super crazy nervous, but I ran to the bathroom and fixed my hair up, wiped the sweat off my face and slapped on some lip gloss, and sauntered down the rickety old wooden stairs to the janitor’s office.
Before John was our janitor, you couldn’t have paid me to come down here. The janitor’s office is next to the boiler room, so it’s hot and creepy and dark and there are plenty of places a person could hide if they wanted to axe-murder you or something. When Mr. Sweeney was the janitor, it was even creepier, because he kind of looked like John Wayne Gacy and nobody was sure that he wasn’t maybe one of the very people who’d want to axe-murder you. Even the senior guys kept out of Mr. Sweeney’s way.
Even with John down here, it’s still really scary, and I get all sweaty again between my nervousness about John and my nervousness about the hiding axe-murderers. I run-walk the rest of the way downstairs and practically bang on John’s door.
“Hello,” I mean to say, but instead I think I say “help.” Christ, I sound like an asshole.
Luckily, John is busy opening the door so I don’t think he hears me anyway. He looks really good today. He’s got a black button-down shirt on, very sharp-looking, with the sleeves rolled up in a very hot casual sort of way. He’s got nice arm hair, medium brown and just a little wiry, but not too thick or pelty or anything. He’s wearing a silver watch on his left wrist, and the hairs catch in between the links in this super hot way.
He smiles at me and asks me to sit. Then he reaches into his desk drawer and pulls out a book. “I thought you might like to read this,” he says, handing it to me. “You being a fan of the Bard and all.” It’s a copy of the Sonnets. I feel sort of bad, because I’ve read all of the Sonnets already and they just don’t do it for me like the plays. I’m not a poetry kind of person. And I have to admit, John sounds super lame when he says “the Bard.” But it’s a thoughtful gesture, so I smile and take the book.
“Thanks,” I say, and get up to go. John reaches over the desk and grabs the strap of my bag, sort of playfully yanking me back with it.
“Now bring that back in one piece,” he says, and when I put my hand on his desk to steady myself, he puts his hand over it and smiles again, a big white wide smile straight from a toothpaste commercial. I am really nervous now. And not in a good way. I mean, I really wanted him to like me like that, but now I feel a little bit creeped out. I pull my hand back and tell myself that he’s a totally hot guy who obviously has a girlfriend already, probably an actress, and that he’s just being friendly. But I’m not an idiot, and the way he smiles at me is definitely a little more than just friendly.
“Uh, thanks for the, uh—thanks for the book, and I’ll bring it back—thanks—I have to go to class,” I say, and sort of back out of the office. I run all the way up the rickety old steps, suddenly scared shitless. It’s not like John is an axe-murderer or anything—but I can for some reason picture him hiding in that basement just the same.
You must be out of your fucking mind, I tell myself. I mean, maybe it’s slightly creepy that he’s hitting on a way younger girl, but hey—you’re different than other people your age, right? More mature, smarter, you read Shakespeare! Maybe he never knew anybody else who liked Shakespeare.
Maybe, maybe, maybe…I’m too riled up to go to class, so instead I walk home and sit at the picnic table in the park. Someone has carved a big crude heart into the top of the wooden table. I run my finger over it again, and again, until I get a splinter and I have to go inside and dig Larceny’s tweezers out of her top dresser drawer. Luckily, she’s all passed out in front of the TV so she doesn’t even notice.
It makes me sad when I think of Larceny, and how she probably should have married somebody like Ted Tyler. Ted Tyler owns Tyler Tires, which recently expanded into a regional chain, and he makes a shitload of money. He always whistles when Larceny walks by with Christmas in her stroller. And believe me, Larceny is no prize.
Larceny used to be kind of pretty. I’ve seen her old photos, from way back when her hair was like forty feet high. But I think she just wore herself out or something. Before she hurt her back, she worked the overnight shift at Cub Foods, stocking shelves. She’d come home, sleep for a few hours, and go to her other job cashiering at Walgreens. She had to work two jobs, because Gary could never even hold down one. He would work construction sometimes, or fix cars for his friends, but he usually got fired for stealing or fighting or drinking on the job. The worst was when he got hired to park cars at a used car lot, and was so drunk that he ended up driving a beat-up little Chevy Nova all the way home and parking it in our lot instead. Larceny managed to convince them that it was all a misunderstanding, so the car lot agreed not to press charges, but Gary still got charged with drunk-driving. And fired, of course.
Anyway, right before Gary left and after Christmas was born, Larceny fell asleep and fell right off the ladder at the grocery store while she was stocking. She can’t work anymore, so she gets disability, but it’s not very much money for three people. And she has this chronic back pain that makes her cry sometimes. It really sucks. Nothing helps except smoking weed, which is why she’s going to kill me when she hears the price is going up.
Sometimes I wish Ted Tyler wasn’t married, so he could come and take Larceny (and Christmas) away with him. He would treat her pretty well, I think. You can tell by the way he looks at her. But I don’t know what I would do then—maybe go live with Aunt Mina? Clean the ashtrays and listen to awful old people stories? Anyway, Ted Tyler is married. His wife and Lindsay’s mom are friends, and they always throw these stupid jewelry things where you think you’re going to a party but really you’re just there to buy stuff. In fact, they’re throwing one tonight, which is why Lindsay is sleeping over at my place.
I hate when Lindsay sleeps over. She thinks it’s fun to come sleep over in the mobile home park with all the poor people. For me it’s totally humiliating. I have to sleep in the same bed as Christmas, and somebody usually comes home drunk and starts yelling at about three in the morning and waking up the whole park. Tonight the Andrews’ dog Snotty, a big huge white dog that’s actually part wolf, gets loose and starts running around the park howling like mad. The two stupid Andrews kids, Tina and Angie, start running around after him, shouting brilliant things like, “Here, Snotty! Snotty boy, come back!”
Over in my bed, Lindsay starts giggling. She’s trying to hide it, burying her face in the pillow, but her whole body is shaking and I can tell.
“Shh!” I tell her. “You’ll wake up Christmas.” That just makes her laugh even harder.
I sigh loudly and turn over in bed. Lindsay always does this. And tomorrow morning, she’ll tell her mom and dad all about the crazy trailer park antics. It’s not that I want her life. Horses and wall-to-wall carpeting and depression and a perma-tanned mother? No, thank you. It’s just that I don’t want my life to be an amusing anecdote. I hate the thought of my life being small and funny and disposable.
That starts me thinking about John. And the more I think about it, the more I’m sure that it was just my immaturity that got in the way. My small-mindedness. I mean, I am in love with John, correct? And he is good-looking and wonderful and fairly obviously attracted to me, also correct? I am clearly immature in that my first reaction was fear, and not excitement, when he hit on me. So, I decide to have sex with John. After all, this is what you do when you’re in love with someone (ignoring, of course, those “True Love Waits” posters that the Christian kids put up all over school), and besides, most of my friends have already done it with somebody. I’m practically the only virgin.
The next morning, Larceny is feeling much better, so she takes me and Lindsay and Christmas out to Denny’s for breakfast. It’s a total disaster, as it usually is when Christmas goes anywhere. She spills her Coke all over the table and screams because she has to sit in a booster seat. I don’t blame her—it’s one of those hard brown plastic ones, and it’s got some kind of sticky goo all down one side of it. I order a Grand Slam and eat every single bite, dipping my sausage links in the syrup over and over again until they’re nice and saturated. Lindsay glares at me because she’s watching her weight and I don’t have to. I’m skinny and shaped like a pencil. I wish I had a figure like Lindsay, though maybe not quite so much of a figure. I wouldn’t want all the attention she gets from the senior guys just because her boobs are huge.
Aunt Mina is in her office, chain-smoking as usual, D.I.V.O.R.C.E. playing very softly in the background while she sits there typing. She loves old country music, Aunt Mina. She can’t get enough Tammy Wynette and Crystal Gayle. Nobody actually knows what Aunt Mina’s business is, or whether she makes any money at it. But it certainly keeps her very busy.
I have been told to march myself “right over to Auntie Mina’s and keep her company.” I am totally horrified by this direct order from Larceny, and only the slightest bit of pity makes me ride my bike past Lindsay’s and on to Aunt Mina’s. Especially since Lindsay has just texted me to see if I want to go ice skating, which I totally do. Damn. Entertaining crazy old lady. I text back. Sorry.
Mina stops typing for a second, and spins her chair around. She jams a cigarette between her lips and waves her hands at me. “Here, what are you doing? Stop playing with your phone and get me my lighter,” she says, and I dig it out of her crusty old purse. There are like fifty gazillion balled-up Kleenex in there. “So you know,” she starts, “I have lung cancer.”
I just kind of stare at her, not sure if she’s kidding. I mean, she must go through three or four packs a day, so I guess I wouldn’t be surprised. Maybe it’s mean, but I have to ask, “For real?” She squints her eyes at me through the smoke around her face, as if I might have turned into someone else there for a second.
“Yes, for real. I found out a few weeks ago.” She takes a deep drag off the
cigarette and blows smoke out of her nostrils in this totally dramatic and also kind of gross way. She reminds me of a character in a Chekhov play. You know, the ones that always seem to be living about forty years in the past? But she’s not Russian. She’s from Nebraska, and her family came over from Iceland, if you can believe that. I mean, who moves here from Iceland?
“Jesus, so why don’t you quit smoking, then?” I don’t mean to say it, but it’s out of my mouth before I realize.
She does that squint thing again. She’s got some crazy wrinkles, Aunt Mina. When she squints they come out in big dents all over her yellowy face. “Oh, right, I’m going to quit now,” she says, and laughs. “It’s already killed me—what else could it do to me?” Then she gets this really serious look on her face and turns so she’s facing me. She smells like old people: that stuffy, decaying, B.O. smell. I don’t want to look at her, so I pick up a little ballerina statue she has sitting on the coffee table. It’s one of those stupid statues where the figures are doing adult things, like dancing and getting married and holding babies, but they have little kid faces with great big eyes. Mina has a whole lot of those.
“Put that down,” she snaps. “That’s valuable.” I put it down and sigh loudly.
“Have you told Larceny yet?” I ask.
“No,” she says, “I don’t know that I will.”
That makes me mad. I mean, Larceny’s no angel, but she’s had a fairly shitty life and this is just going to be another shitty blow in it. And I think she deserves to know that her own ex-mother-in-law is dying. So, naturally, I tell Aunt Mina that.
She stubs out her cigarette and puts both her old spotty hands on her knees like she’s steadying herself for something. I never knew anybody could get so many rings all on one set of hands. She does the serious look at me again, and again I have to look away and quick pick up the stupid big-eyed kid statue again, like it was the most interesting thing ever on the planet. Oh, wow. Look at the way somebody painted the tiny eyelashes on by hand. What a total fucking waste of time.
“Oh, honey,” she says. She has not ever for real ever called me honey before. “I’m leaving everything to you. The house, my money—all of it. You’re the only one who’ll ever amount to anything—maybe you can use it to go to college, huh?”
You know how people in movies are always dropping things when they get surprised? And you’re like, yeah, right, who does that? Well, shit. I dropped that big-eyed ballerina kid statue so quick the thing shattered into forty million pieces. And then I actually felt bad about it, now that I sort of owned it and it was worth real money. Some gratitude, huh?
I am not supposed to tell anybody. Aunt Mina said so. Not yet, anyway. I try to be good. I don’t even tell Lindsay.
But I really, really want to tell John. I want to tell him that with my money, he won’t have to worry anymore about being a janitor. That I will support him as he looks for more acting work—maybe I could go to school in L.A. or New York or someplace, because let’s face it, you’re not getting a whole hell of a lot of acting work here. We could maybe even buy a house, not a big one but maybe a fixer-upper or something. He’d have to wait for a couple of years, of course, until I graduated, but I’m sure he’d be okay with that. I mean, I know he doesn’t love me or anything, I’m not that stupid. But I figure he’ll stick with me for the money and the conversation and mutual attraction, and that in time he’ll learn to love me.
Yeah, I know, right? I sound like a jerk. Trust me, it all plays out much better in my head.
Reversal of fortune—fortune’s wheel gets cranked around, and the good find ill and the ill find good. We studied all of that in my drama class this year—Shakespeare uses it all the time in his tragedies. Like Shylock, who’s had this loving daughter and all this wealth and power, and then he loses it all in the end because he’s been kind of an asshole. (And also, let’s be real, because he was a Jew and Shakespeare was a product of his time, right?)
I don’t think I’m such an asshole. But man, does that wheel get spun quickly sometimes just the same. Because once I get downstairs to John’s office the next morning, I forget to knock because I’m too excited and anyway there’s never anyone there but John, except that when I push open the door I see that there is someone there, a girl, and she’s totally naked, and John is holding both her boobs up like they were water balloons or something, and oh, by the way, it’s Lindsay.
John sees me right away because he’s facing the door, and he kind of croaks and tries to push Lindsay behind his desk, but it’s way too late for that. Thank god he’s still got his clothes on, because this would be even more awkward if he didn’t.
Not like it’s not the single most horrible and awkward moment of my life just the same.
“Oh, shit,” he says, and just kind of stands there. And Lindsay has kind of ducked down, trying to hide behind the desk, probably because she doesn’t want me to see her naked.
This is not the kind of surprise where you drop things, or scream, or jump up and down, or even let your jaw fall like characters in books. This is the kind of surprise where you just sort of stand there, even while your insides are quietly eating each other and your brain is going dark and red and sad.
“Hey, you’re not going to tell anybody, are you?” John finally asks, after what seems like about five minutes. I don’t say anything.
“Don’t tell my mom,” says Lindsay, still behind the desk. “Please don’t say anything to my mom, okay?”
But I still don’t say anything. I just sort of stand there. What kind of tragedy is this? It’s not grand and operatic at all; it’s a small hurt, just like all the other small hurts that happen to people like me in towns like mine. In places like Meadow Park, where people can always find the money for Old Crow and cigarettes and lottery tickets and slot machines and jewelry parties and a new paint job for their pickup, but never for books or newspapers or a better life for their fucking kids. Invisible kids, invisible neighborhoods, invisible suburbs that no one ever thinks about, including the people who live here.
I don’t pray or anything, but I hope a lot, you know? Even with my shitty luck I still hope. As I walk up the stairs and out the front door and light a cigarette on the steps of the building, cupping my hands around the flame to ward off the wind, I find myself hoping Aunt Mina really has enough money to send me to college so I can get the hell out of Meadow Park. I hope no one will catch me out here and write me up. I hope I don’t throw up right now. I hope my story gets bigger than this.