“It’s not that long,” he said. “And besides, I’ll probably go someplace close by so I can come and visit all the time. And you can come and stay with me sometimes.” He bumped me with his hip. It was probably the closest thing to a hug I’d ever gotten from him. “It’s going to be fine. You’ll see.”
Just then the phone rang, and he ran to get it. I could tell it was a girl by the way his voice got softer and he stretched the cord as far into the dining room as it would go.
I picked the last dish up out of the sink. It was the pink “World’s Greatest Mom” mug that she always used for her morning coffee. I stabbed at it with the sponge and tossed it into the drainer without even rinsing it. Maybe I’d get lucky and she’d be right about the germs.
Now, so many years later, I stared at the pink mug in my hand like it was an artifact from a previous civilization. As I threw the mug into the garbage bag with as much force as I could, it was satisfying to hear it break into little pieces.
chapter 9
4:00 p.m.
The smell in the kitchen was giving me a headache, so I decided to take a break from the worst of the mess and go back to the living room. I’d been digging for a while when the shovel hit something at the bottom of one pile that felt solid, not like the papers and clothes that were everywhere else. I leaned against the handle of the shovel and tried to figure out why I couldn’t pick up whatever was on the bottom of this pile. It just looked like newspapers and maybe a couple of bags of something else. A McDonald’s bag was lying near it, and when I picked it up, the top half tore off of the soggy bottom. The bag must have had food in it when it was set down here however long ago, because whatever it was had liquefied and seeped into the layers of newspaper down below, providing a home and nourishment to a colony of rice-sized maggots. I scrunched up my nose and tossed the remains of the bag into the big green can.
With the shovel, I felt around the edges of the soggy, maggot-infested papers. I put the blade on the very bottom of the pile and tried to lift it, but the pile had been in this spot for so long that the papers were stuck to the carpet. I tried again about halfway up the pile and, with a ripping sound, managed to separate part of it off from the bottom. As it ripped away from the base, the pile of papers flipped into the air, and several of the maggots were flung off the papers and into my face like a larval rain shower.
Raking my fingers through my hair to make sure none landed on me, I felt something cold and wet inside my shirt. I quickly shook it out and watched as one lone maggot landed on the ground, still moving. I ground the disgusting thing into the remains of the carpet with my shoe until it was just a pasty, wet smear.
Spitting and gagging, I ran into my bathroom and went straight to the sink. After splashing cold water over my face and peering intently into the mirror, I was sure with the reasonable part of my brain that there weren’t any more maggots on me, but the unreasonable part felt like they were crawling through my scalp and down my neck.
I had come into this part of the job completely unprepared. Tearing off my shirt, I dug around in my drawer for an old turtleneck. There was a bandanna in my sock drawer from when we had Wild West Days at school, so I took it out and tied it around my head to protect my hair from whatever else I was going to find as I cleaned.
Armed with the neck of the shirt pulled up over my mouth, I walked back to the living room. Taking a deep breath, I grabbed the shovel again and tried to pry the stack of newspapers off the carpet. The tip of the shovel dug into the brown fibers as I jammed my foot on the blade to try and work the papers free. Finally, with a wet tearing sound, the small stack broke free of the floor, and I was able to heave it into the trash can. A big patch of the carpet had come up with the papers, and I could see the hardwood floors underneath. I poked at the floor with the metal shovel. Instead of being solid, the wood felt spongy and soft. We definitely couldn’t keep the carpet the way it was once the place was cleaned. I wondered how much it would cost to replace an entire floor.
Dark clouds were rolling in as I dragged the bag toward the window, making it seem like dusk even though it was only four o’clock. As I balanced the bag on the sill, I could see the last rays of watery sunshine glowing behind the clouds in the distance as the sun began its roll toward the ocean. The weather didn’t usually make much difference to me, because we always kept the curtains closed in the front of the house. I shoved the bag out the window and heard it join the others with a soft sigh.
“Hello?” The voice came from outside. I sucked in my breath and froze. It came again. “Hello?”
Pulling the turtleneck off my face, I stuck my head out the window and tried to manage a normal-looking smile. Mrs. Raj. Even though her house was a pretty good distance from ours, she seemed to think that living next door was an excuse to constantly monitor what we were doing.
“Oh, hello, Mrs. Raj.” I sounded remarkably normal, even though I was a little out of breath.
“Doing a bit of early spring cleaning, I see.” She stood at the corner of our house where the walkway ended. Her eyes darted to the growing pile of garbage bags, and then back to me.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. I forced a little laugh. “I didn’t have anything else to do on vacation, so I thought I’d help Mom out. Just getting rid of a few things.”
She pursed her lips and looked at me. “I’ve heard teenage girls can be rather untidy,” she said. “It’s nice to see you making a go of it.”
Her dog, Tinto, strained at the end of his leash, trying to sniff some of the bags. I hoped she had enough sense to pull him away before he chewed a hole in one.
I’d always begged Mom for a dog, but with her breathing problems, we could never get one. Not that I’d want a dog like Tinto—even calling him a dog was generous. He looked more like a long-haired white rat on a leash and was always barking in that high-pitched yap that could be heard all over the neighborhood.
“Tinto, no!” Mrs. Raj called, pulling him back toward the street. He lifted one flea-bitten leg and peed on the bags as a parting gesture. “Come away from there. I don’t want to have to give you another bath today.” Mrs. Raj bent down and picked him up, nuzzling him on the nose. “My precious baby.”
“Well,” I said, giving her a little wave, “have a nice walk. You should probably hurry; it looks like it might rain.”
“Yes, we will,” she said. She tried to peek around the curtains at my back, so I reached down and held them closed with one hand. “I notice your mother’s car hasn’t moved from the driveway all day. Is she out of town?”
I kept the smile plastered on my face as my insides were screaming for her to mind her own business. “No. She’s home. She’s just not feeling well, so she didn’t go to work today.”
“Oh, I see,” she said. She raised her eyebrows. “Is there anything I can do?”
“No, thank you,” I said. “We’re fine.”
“All right, then,” she said, and turned like she was going to walk away.
I exhaled, unaware that I had been holding my breath. I started to pull my head back inside the window when she spoke again.
“Oh, Lucy, dear,” she called from the sidewalk.
I bumped my head on the bottom of the window as I stuck it outside again. “Yes?” I said brightly through the pain.
Mrs. Raj indicated the growing pile of black trash bags with her hand. “You’re not going to leave those bags there, now, are you? You know the town council has rules about compounding garbage that is visible from the street. It would reflect badly on all of us to start a garbage dump on the side of the house.”
The whole place is one giant compounded pile of garbage, I wanted to scream. But instead, I smiled sweetly and said, “Only until trash pick up day. I’m going to get tags for extra garbage.”
Mrs. Raj sniffed from the sidewalk. “Well, that’s very good, dear,” she said. “As long as it’s gone on trash day. We can’t have garbage piling up around our neighborhood, now can we? What would people say?”
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“No, we certainly can’t,” I said. “Have a nice walk, Mrs. Raj. I have to get back to work.” I pulled my head in the window and pulled the curtains closed before she had a chance to reply.
“We can’t have garbage piling up around our neighborhood,” I mimicked as I worked my way back to the living room. No, we certainly could not. Instead, we’d keep it here behind closed doors and live with it every second of our freaking lives.
Mrs. Raj and all those people who were just like her were the reason that I had to get rid of all this crap before anybody could see. Snooty, too-good-for-you busybodies with nothing better to do than to stick their nose in our business. I’ll bet Mrs. Raj had been killing herself trying to get in here for years. She was just the type to get invited over to the neighbor’s so she could feel that she was so much better than them. Than us. I couldn’t let her have the satisfaction.
My phone rang once, so I pulled it out of my front pocket and flipped it open. It was a text from Kaylie asking when I was coming over. I couldn’t believe it had gotten so late already. I texted her back that I still had a lot of work to do, trying to stall for time. Anytime I thought about Josh and the look on his face when he asked me to come to the party, I could feel a zing of energy course through my whole body. It would be totally amazing to stand in the crowd watching him play, knowing that he had asked me to come. But it was crazy to leave here, wasn’t it? There was no way I could hang out at a party with things the way they were. What if someone came by? And all of that time wasted—it wasn’t like I had so much to start with. I would have to come up with something so that Kaylie wouldn’t hate me and Josh wouldn’t think I was a total loser for not showing up. A few seconds later, the phone rang for real.
“Hey,” Kaylie said. “What could you possibly be doing that takes all day?”
“Just some stuff around the house,” I answered. “Did you go shopping?”
“Yeah, I got an awesome new bag. What time are you coming over?”
It felt like last night with Josh was a part of another lifetime. I looked around the room and felt the crushing weight of the stuff wash over me. All of a sudden I felt exhausted, like the only thing I wanted was to curl up in bed and sleep for weeks.
“About that,” I said. “I don’t think I can make it tonight. Something came up.” I winced as I said it, knowing she wouldn’t let this one go easily. You’d think that all my lying over the years would have made me better at it. You’d think.
There was silence on her end for a long moment. “Something came up? Are you seriously trying to tell me something came up that’s more important than seeing Josh play? At a party that he asked you to go to?”
“It’s just—”
“No. Way.” I could picture Kaylie holding her hand up to the phone. “I don’t want to hear any of your excuses.” Her voice was getting louder. “I’ve been planning all day for tonight. You can’t let me down like this—you can’t let you down like this. Josh is totally dying to see you tonight, and you’re saying something else came up?” She was really on a roll, so I just waited until it wound down, trying to come up with a good reason why I couldn’t go have the best night of my life.
“I can’t—”
“At least meet me at Sienna. In twenty. Then you can explain all this to my face.”
I knew that if I didn’t go to the café she would try to come over here. “Okay—” But the phone went dead.
I wiped my forehead with the back of my arm. I could use a break, and some coffee was definitely in order if I was going to keep at this for much longer. It was almost five o’clock, and I would have to work late into the night—probably all night—to keep making any progress. I had just enough time to change out of my maggot-deflection gear and get over there before she got suspicious.
chapter 10
4:45 p.m.
I ordered my drinks and headed to the bathroom at the back of the café—I’d managed to beat Kaylie here. I knew Josh’s work schedule by heart, and luckily he was off on Tuesdays so I didn’t have to see face-to-face what I was giving up. I had a feeling that if I looked into those brown eyes, I’d be able to rationalize just about anything.
The bathroom was empty, so I turned on the hot water full blast in the sink and poked at the stream with my finger until it got warm. Once I had the temperature adjusted so that it was just this side of too hot, I ran it over my hands and lower arms, feeling a shiver raise the hairs on the back of my neck as the warmth reached through my skin and into my blood. I stood staring into the running water, enjoying the sensation of hot water cleaning away the maggots and the dirt and the thoughts of everything that had gone on today.
Out of everything else, I missed hot water the most. I had a bathtub in my bathroom, and a couple of times in the last few years I’d warmed up enough hot water in the microwave to take a teeny tiny bath, but it took so long to get bowls of water hot enough that, in the end, it really wasn’t worth the effort for five inches of lukewarm water. Showers at the gym were nice, and they never cared that I often stayed in there so long that clouds of steam rolled off my red skin by the time I got out. Maybe we could get a hot tub for the backyard when everything was cleaned out. I’d always wanted a hot tub.
A lady with a bad orange dye job opened the bathroom door and went into a stall, so I just soaped up my hands, rinsed one last time in hot water heaven, and turned off the tap. My hands were red but warm all the way through as I patted them dry with a paper towel and went back out into the busy café.
The frothing sound of the milk steamer was soothing, and it calmed the flutters of panic that kept rising in my throat and threatened to reject the blueberry scone I was picking at. My stomach was starving, but my head wasn’t interested. I chewed another piece of scone and looked around. It was somewhere between lunch and dinnertime, and there were a surprising number of people sitting down for their afternoon jolt. Nobody paid attention to me—I just blended in with the rest of the people in the café staring into space and waiting for their drinks. It was amazing that a person could have such a big secret and it didn’t show at all.
“Two large vanilla lattes,” the girl called, setting my cups on the counter.
Just as I reached for them, Josh walked out from the back room, tying a black apron around his waist. “I’m back if you want to go on break,” he said to the cashier. I was frozen between trying to pick up the steaming coffee without being noticed and running away. Damn Kaylie. She must have known he’d be working today, which is why she wanted to meet here.
I grabbed the coffee and tried to turn around quickly, but it didn’t work. “Lucy,” he said, sounding surprised and (I hoped) happy to see me. “Fueling up before the party tonight? I was on a break, or I’d have gotten you something special.” Josh grinned, showing off every one of his perfect white teeth with the small but adorable gap in the middle. He wasn’t making this easy, standing there looking like something out of a magazine.
“It’s okay. Thanks, though,” I said. I pretended to be absorbed in slurping up the little plume of foam that had appeared through the tiny hole in the lid. “Yeah. I’m, uh, meeting Kaylie.”
“Here she comes.” He nodded toward the front doors.
Kaylie walked in with the phone to her ear, talking loudly to someone, but she snapped it shut as soon as she saw us. “Good,” she said. “You’re here. I guess you’ve told him already?”
Josh tilted his head and looked at me. “Told me what?”
I willed more people to show up and desperately need caffeine, but it looked like everyone in town was taken care of for the moment. I took a sip of the hot latte. “Mmm. Maybe later. You’re busy.” I made a move toward an empty table, but Kaylie grabbed my arm and held me there.
“Lucy has decided that she can’t come tonight, after all,” Kaylie said to Josh. “Something has ‘come up.’ ” She made little quotation marks in the air with her fingers.
It was hard to read Josh’s reaction. Even though I knew th
at there was no way I could show up at the party, I wanted him to look at least a little disappointed.
“You sure? We’ve been working on this new song, and I really wanted you to hear it.” I had to admit, he looked pretty sincere.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m sorry, I really can’t.” Looking into his eyes was like looking directly at the sun—do it too long and you could go blind. I stared down at the scuffs on my Converse. “Next time, maybe?”
“Sure,” he said. He reached across the counter, but just then the bells on the front door rang and three women walked in. Josh looked like he wanted to say something else, but instead he turned to the customers. “Good afternoon. What can I get for you?” As he ignored me and became all businesslike, I started to realize what had just happened. Josh had asked me out once, and chances were, he wasn’t going to do it again.
Kaylie ordered a coffee and headed for an open table. “Come. Sit.”
“I really do have to—”
Kaylie kicked the chair under the table so it scooted in my direction. “Sit. You at least owe me that for bailing.”
So I sat. Kaylie had been my best friend since the start of school this year—longer than I’d ever been best friends with anyone before. She didn’t ask a lot of questions and always believed my answers, which to me were important qualities for a best friend. I couldn’t afford to blow it, especially now. After what happened to my last “best friend,” I swore I’d never let it happen again.
I’d always been careful before. Whenever I got picked up at the house, I made sure to meet people out front or on the curb. I spent a lot of time waiting outside, but it was worth not having to explain why they couldn’t come in. I should have been waiting at the end of the driveway for Elaina and her mom to pick me up that day. Even though I’d never been able to pull off the slumber party, she and a couple of girls in my class still seemed interested in hanging out with me. I’d fooled myself into thinking they liked me. Instead of waiting at the curb that day, I was in the bathroom trying to get one side of my hair to lie flat like it was supposed to. Once I noticed what time it was, it was too late. Elaina was knocking on the front door before I could even get down the hall. I stood on the other side of the door with my heart racing, trying to figure out what I was going to do.
Dirty Little Secrets Page 9