She giggles again from within the cupboard.
“Could she be hiding behind the door?” I ask to no one as I kneel in front of the cupboard. “Noo, she’s not over here. Maybe she’s in the bathtub.” I carefully grab the little doorknobs. “Or maybe she’s hiding behind Maxwell.” I look up at him and smile.
A banging sound comes from the Salmon Room, making me fall back on my butt. Maxwell jumps to his feet. I watch, nervousness seeping through me, as Maxwell hurries into the other room.
“What the hell?”
“What is it?” I turn back to the cabinet, open the drawers, done with our game, and pull Lynne out.
“Hey.” She squirms in my arms, wanting me to put her down.
To her request, I put her down on the floor and walk into the other room, where I find Maxwell holding two large blue bags by the straps. “Are those lunch bags?”
“Yeah.” He hands one over to me.
Taking it, I realize how heavy it is. “What’s in them?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t check.” He walks over to the cots and sits down.
I follow him and sit on the cot, keeping my distance. I place the lunch bag down on my lap and pull the little black zipper, opening it. Cold air radiates from inside the bag. “Maxwell, it’s food.”
Maxwell opens his up and pulls out a sandwich wrapped in plastic wrap. “Why would the they give us all this food all of a sudden?”
I don’t answer him. Instead, I look down to see what’s all in my bag: Oranges, hot dogs, cheese, yogurt, and little bottles of chocolate milk. I shuffle through everything before turning towards Maxwell. “What’s in yours?”
“Sandwiches, bananas, chips, cookies, and some granola bars,” he replies. “Yours?”
I tell him what’s in my lunch bag. “Do you think whoever gave this to us heard you before?”
“I don’t know.” He looks in the lunch bag in his lap then up at me. “Hungry?”
I don’t know what time it was, but at some point, Maxwell, Lynne, and I had gathered on the cots and started to pig out on the food that the mystery man had brought us. I was too surprised about all this that I didn’t even care when Lynne went straight for the chocolate chip cookies instead of something healthier like the oranges. I had started with one of the vanilla yogurts, using one of the plastic spoons that were provided, and used it to get every last bit. Tipping the little plastic container upwards, I lean my head back, my body tipping so much that I fall backwards onto the cot. I can hear my sister laugh at me.
“You think that’s funny, huh?” I push myself up with my arms and stare at Lynne with a big smile.
She nods and takes a big bite from her cookie.
“Well, you know what? I think this is pretty funny.” I drop my yogurt container with the spoon inside into the lunch bag and reach over, tickling her. “How do you like this, huh?”
Lynne starts laughing high and loud. She kicks her legs as if she is trying to get away. “Stop it!” she screeches between laughing and sucking in a lungful of air.
I stop, not wanting her to choke on her cookie. When I look away from her, I see Maxwell smiling at me. Instantly, the pestering butterflies start to move again, and color starts to rise in my cheeks again. Dipping my head, I reach into one of the lunch bags and grab the first thing that my fingers touch. When I pull it out, I see that it is one of the sandwiches.
“I still can’t believe we have all this food,” Maxwell says, sipping one of the chocolate milks.
“I know. It feels like a dream and if we don’t eat it all soon, it’ll disappear.” I unwrap the sandwich from the plastic wrap and take a bite. A mixture of peanut butter and grape jelly oozes from between the slices of bread and onto my taste buds. I moan, closing my eyes. It feels like forever since I’ve had something this good.
“Is it really that good?”
Opening my eyes, I see Maxwell looking at me with a half-lip smile.
“Even better.” I smile.
“Maybe I’ll have to have mine.” He closes his milk, reaches into a lunch bag, and pulls out his sandwich. I watch him as he unwraps it and brings it to his mouth for a bite. A piece of jelly plops out from between the two pieces of bread and lands on his chin that has a stubble growing on it.
“You got a little . . .” I point to the spot on my own chin.
“Yeah, I know.” He wipes the jelly off his chin with his hand and wipes his hand on his jeans.
“At least whoever brought all this knew what food to bring,” I say with a mouthful full of bread and jelly and peanut butter. I know it is impolite to talk with food in my mouth but I am too happy that we have actual food that I don’t care about the rules of society.
Technically, we’re not in society, I think, finishing the bite I have in my mouth before taking another.
“Can I have some milk?” Lynne asks, finishing her cookie.
“Here you go, Short Stuff.” Maxwell reaches into the cold lunch bag and hands a milk towards Lynne.
“Can you open it?” she asks, not taking it.
Placing his sandwich on the plastic wrap that rests against his leg, Maxwell opens the chocolate milk and hands it back over to her. “Here.”
Lynne takes it in both hands and tips it back to her lips.
I finish my sandwich in another two bites then lick the crumbs off my fingers. The taste of peanut butter is strong in my mouth, and I can’t decide whether to ruin that delicious flavor with something else or not. After a moment of not really thinking, I reach inside a bag and pull out a cold hot dog and unwrap the plastic from around it.
“You know, it’s like I’m getting full, but I can’t stop eating.” I toss the plastic back into the lunch bag.
“I know.” Maxwell finishes his sandwich and reaches for an orange. “I’m getting full, but I want to make it last for a couple days.”
“Exactly.” I bite into the cold hot dog and a rush of old childhood memories comes surfacing to the top of my mind. One in particular was when I was four, before Lynne was born. I had just come from playing in the sandbox in the backyard and was digging into the refrigerator with sandy hands. Everything that I touched had a dirty handprint on it. That included the meat drawer and the bottom of the fridge with the hot dog package. I had dragged out the hot dog package and carried it to the dining room without closing the refrigerator door, and started eating the hot dogs one right after another until my mom came into the room and caught me. Long scoldings came after that.
“Can you take this?” Lynne holds out her half-drunken milk towards me.
I pinch the hot dog between my teeth despite how it may look with it hanging out of my mouth so that I can close Lynne’s milk and put it back in the lunch bag Maxwell had got it from. I take my hot dog out of my mouth and am thankful that he doesn’t tease me about how it had looked.
“Can I have a hot dog?” Lynne asks, pointing to mine.
“Yeah.” I reach into a bag and give her a hot dog still wrapped in plastic.
She takes it and starts to unwrap it. “Is there any ketchup?”
“No. No ketchup.”
Lynne pouts but eats the hot dog anyway.
The three of us are like that, sitting on the cot together, digging into the lunch bags until the food is gone and our stomachs are full. When my share of food is gone, I lay down, my feet between Maxwell and Lynne, and stare at my reflection in the mirror above me. I’m a mess.
“That was so good,” I say, my voice thick with the pleasure.
“But why today?” Maxwell asks from the other side of the cot. “Why give all this all of a sudden?”
Great, he’s thinking again. If I knew it wouldn’t piss him off, I would groan.
“How many times are you going to ask that question?” I groan, risking it anyway.
“Well, there has to be a reason,” Maxwell says, frustration pouring into his words.
I know then to shut my mouth. We were having a good time, and I don’t want to be the one who ruins i
t.
“Sarwa, my tummy hurts,” Lynne complains, crawling over to me. She lays down right next to me so that we lay side-to-side.
“Did you eat too much?” I glance at her from the corner of my eyes.
She nods and leans on her side, facing away from me.
Turning to my side, I rub her back the way I know Mom used to when Lynne was having troubles going to sleep. I rub her back until I can hear her calm breathing, which tells me she is asleep.
As I continue to rub her back, I can feel sleep starting to get to me. My eyes droop, but I struggle to keep them open. It feels like the ultimate battle of tug-of-war; me verses gravity. Knowing I’ll be asleep in the matter of seconds if I don’t do something, I sit up and take in the mess we made on the cots. There are crumbs and plastic wrap everywhere.
“What?” Maxwell looks at me with his eyebrows furrowed.
“I’m just looking at the mess we made,” I reply tiredly. Careful not to wake up my sister, I swing my legs over and pick up the blue lunch bags to find more crumbs that had snuck underneath.
Maxwell seems to pick up on what I am doing. He picks up the plastic wrap in one hand while he brushes the crumbs on the floor with his other.
I take the plastic wraps from Maxwell’s hand and stuff them into the bags before placing them down by the door as he finishes brushing off the crumbs. When I get back to the cot, almost all the crumbs are gone.
“You know,” Maxwell says as I pick up Lynne and carry her to the head of the cots so she can rest her head on the pillows, “you two look a lot alike.”
“What?” I frown in confusion as I settle on the cot on the other side of Lynne. I look at him. He’s sitting on the other side of Lynne.
“You and Short Stuff have the same eyes.” He looks between Lynne and me.
“What? Brown?” I lay down and start rubbing Lynne’s back again. “A lot of people have brown eyes. It’s not that big of a deal.”
Maxwell shrugs and lays down on the other side of Lynne.
After a moment, I stop rubbing Lynne’s back and close my eyes, letting myself drift away.
Chapter 8
Day Seven
The smell of perfume wakes me up the next morning. It smells like lilac. It reminds me of spring, and sunlight, and fresh green grass, and bright blue skies. When my eyelids flutter open to reveal my dreary-looking reflection, a brick of disappointment settles on me so hard that the need to cry arises within me.
In a trance, I rise and find that I’m the first one awake again. Tiredness hangs heavy and thick on me like the spider webs in the corner of the room. It takes me a moment to notice the five large, white bags sitting by the door.
“Maxwell.” I reach over Lynne, grab Maxwell’s closest shoulder, and shake him until he stirs. “Maxwell, wake up.”
“What? What is it?” He shoots up and looks around. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Look.” I point to the giant bags next to the door. With every moment of being awake, new smells fill my nose. Now mingling with lilac, I can smell bleach and other fumes that smell like cleaning products.
“What the hell.” He gets up, walks over to the bags, and peers inside. “Sara, come here.”
“What’s in them?” I crawl around my sister, walk over to Maxwell, and look inside one of the bags. Big, fluffy-looking pillows bulge from within. “What is all this?” I drop to my knees and tip the bag over, spilling out its contents. Three pillows and a thick blanket comes out.
“Shampoo, conditioner, soap, towels . . .” Maxwell lists the items in the bag. When he pulls his eyes away from the bag, he looks at me and says, “First the food, now this.”
I’m confused. Grabbing the blanket, I lift it to my nose and take a sniff of the cleanness. It smells like lilac. More confusion fills me, making my head spin.
“I’m guessing this stuff is for you and Lynne,” Maxwell says, dropping a bag near me. I rise up on my knees to look inside. There are colorful pieces of clothing, a pack of diapers, makeup, razors and shaving cream, perfume, deodorant, and packets of feminine products. The scent of lilac overfills this bag.
“I don’t understand,” Maxwell mumbles, pulling out a gray long-sleeved shirt from the bag he’s looking through. His dark eyebrows crinkle together. “Why would they give us all this.”
“I don’t know.” I stand up, excitement overflowing within me. All I want to do is take a bath, but first I have to wake up Lynne. I walk over to the cots, sit down, and gently shake her awake. “Lynne, wake up. There’s presents.”
“Presents?” she says, her voice high-pitched. She squints as her eyes peek open. “For me?”
“Yeah.” I lift her up from the cot and take her to the bag that holds the items for us. “See? We can take a bath now.” A sudden click pulls my attention to the bathroom door that has just shut with Maxwell inside. Then I notice one of the white bags missing. “Or maybe when Maxwell’s done.”
“What’s this?” Lynne asks, pulling out the peach perfume.
“Perfume,” I reply.
“What?” She frowns in confusion.
“Pretty smelly stuff.”
“I want some,” she says, popping off the clear cap.
“Hold on, girlie.” I snatch the bottle from her hands before she can untwist the whole cap and make a mess. “Come here.” Grabbing her arm, I pull her over and squirt some peach spray on the back of her hand. “Now smell.”
Lynne brings her hand up to her nose and takes a long sniff. She coughs a few times before her face twists into disgust.
“Are you okay?” A chuckle escapes my throat.
She nods and wipes her hand on her oversized sunflower dress.
“Do you want to help me?” I ask, standing up.
“With what?” She comes closer to me as I reach down into a bag and pull out a pillow.
“Take this pillow,” I say, giving her the pillow, “and help me make the bed.” I walk over to the cots, Lynne trailing behind me, and pull off the old blankets and replace them with the new blanket. I crawl over the cots, smoothing out the creases before I take the pillow from Lynne and place it at the head of the cots.
“Can you grab the other ones?” I ask, throwing the two dingy pillows in the direction I threw the blankets.
“Herwe.” Lynne hands me the last two pillows that are almost the same size as her.
“Thank you.” I grab them and set them side-by-side with the other one.
Lynne nods and scrambles up on the cots.
I lay down next to her, our heads sinking into the plush, new pillows.
“What’s that smell?” my sister asks as the scent of lilac invades our noses.
“Lilac,” I reply with my eyes closed. Instantly, the image of blue skies and green grass fills my head. It’s so realistic that I swear I can feel the warm sun shining down on me. Then, a voice I haven’t heard in a while, fills my ears.
“Sara! What are you doing?”
Leigha McCallister; one of my best friends. Her peppy voice rings in my head. Then the image in the back of my head changes and I can see her wearing a yellow sundress, her chestnut-colored hair pulled up into a ponytail.
“Leigha?” I ask in my mind. “What are you doing here?”
“I was going to ask you the same thing.” She beams, showing off her pearly white teeth. “Kentin Farthum is having a party tonight and you’re stuck here.”
“Well, it’s not like I can just open the door and leave.”
“Well, you have to find a way,” Leigha says. “You have to hurry home, Sara. We all miss you. Your parents have been going crazy without you or Lynne. I think your mom went berserk at the supermarket the other day when she took a look at soft the Chip Ahoy cookies. My mom heard from Sally Newbie’s mom that she started screaming while she grabbed a bunch of cookie packets and started smashing them to the floor.”
“My mom would never do that,” I say with a laugh.
“How would you know?” A smile tugs at the corner of Leig
ha’s lips, then drops. Before I know what is going on, Leigha rushes over to me and wraps her arms around me.
“Lei?”
“We miss you, Sara,” Leigha whispers. She squeezes me tighter so I feel like I’m going to break apart into a bunch of little pieces. “You have to hurry home.”
Then the vision darkens, and I open my eyes to reveal myself in the mirror. Leigha’s voice still rings in my ears; We miss you, Sara. You have to hurry home. I can feel my chest swell with emotion, and tears spring into my eyes.
I miss you, too, Lei, I think, grabbing the extra pillow and hugging it to my chest.
“All yours.” The door to the bathroom opens and Maxwell steps out in his new clothes. His shaggy, brown waves hangs in wet clumps that drip little droplets of water. Stepping out of the bathroom, he shakes his head, flinging water.
I sit up and crawl off the cots. “Come on, Lynne.” My voice sounds choked.
“Hey, are you okay?” From across the room, Maxwell must hear the quiver in my voice. He frowns, concerned. I can feel his eyes follow me as I grab the bags with our stuff and carry Lynne to the bathroom.
“Yeah. Fine.” I plaster a smile as I hurry past him into the bathroom, shutting the door behind me.
Inside the bathroom, it is steamy and smells like ocean mist and cleaning chemicals. The little mirror above the sink is all steamed up, and it feels like there is a thin layer of water on all the surfaces of the bathroom. Placing both Lynne and the bags down, I peer into the tub and see that it is clean with no dead mouse or dirty spots. I realize then that whoever had dropped the bags off in the middle of the night had cleaned in here.
“Come on, Lynne.” I kneel on the linoleum floor beside the bathtub, turn on the faucets, and plug the drain so that the water can’t escape. When I have the water running, I turn around, grab Lynne, who is looking curiously at the water, and start to undress her.
“Is it hot?” Lynne asks, looking nervously at the water.
“No, it’s warm.” I stick my hand in the water and splash her. “See?” I stand up, lift Lynne off the floor, and place her into the tub. I sit her down on her butt so she won’t slip, then get down on my knees and squirt some blue ocean mist shampoo and conditioner into my hand. “Close your eyes.”
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