7 Clues to Winning You

by Kristin Walker

  Mom shook her head. “Five boys? This place would be destroyed in a week. I won’t hand over my home to people who aren’t even responsible enough to use birth control.”

  “Anne!” Dad chastised. “You don’t know that. Stop fabricating things.”

  “I bet they were trying for a girl,” I offered.

  “I don’t care why they had five children,” Mom said, not looking at anyone. “I can’t let them ruin …” She pressed her lips together. Squeezed her eyes shut. Couldn’t stop the tears from running down her cheeks.

  Dad crossed the room and wrapped his arms around her. He stroked the back of her head and said, “Whoever buys this house will be buying it because they love it. They’ll take care of it. You don’t need to worry. And you’ll have the new house to make your own. We’ll build new memories. We’ll still have the old ones too.”

  I watched Mom’s rib cage heave in and out with silent, jagged sobs. Then it stilled. Mom straightened up and wiped her eyes. Sniffled once and walked out of the room. This argument wasn’t over.

  I found it odd that Mom would dig her feet in about this decision, yet when Dad asked to move to Meriton, she rolled right over. Why hadn’t she stood up then? Why hadn’t she burst into tears then? Why hadn’t she disagreed with him when it really mattered?

  Maybe she had. Maybe she’d done all those things. And maybe when she walked out of the kitchen just now, she was saying, I’ve given you enough.

  “Take the damn money!” Zach hollered.

  “Don’t swear,” Dad said meekly. It was nothing more than an automatic response. His gaze had focused in the air somewhere between the tile floor and the table leg. Yet, he looked like Dad again. Not Principal McKenna. Only for a moment, though. Then he snapped to attention and asked, “What’s on your schedule for today, honey?”

  I took a big slurp of coffee to buy a second and steady myself. I swallowed and said, “Just running some errands. Nothing big.”

  “Good.” He nodded and slipped away into his thoughts again.

  “I’ll be back late this afternoon,” I said.

  “Okay.”

  “Don’t make any decisions without me.”

  “Nope.”

  I could’ve told him I was running off to marry a gay kangaroo and I would’ve gotten the same robotic response. I counted myself lucky that he didn’t pry. And even luckier that Mom was still in her room when I left the house just before one o’clock.

  I drove over to Shady Acres and parked in the back again. The visitor lot was packed anyway. Ms. Franny was right about this being prime visiting time.

  Apparently, Shady Acres was a whole different place on Sundays. I knew that Sunday was the day that most guilty family members showed up to spend a few strained minutes with their ailing relative and then go home feeling better about themselves. I just didn’t realize there were so many. And that they all seemed to come at one o’clock. I guess it made sense. The visiting family wouldn’t feel obliged to take their relative to lunch. Plus, they could still get home in time to watch the football game or wash the car or do whatever else they’d rather do than sit here pretending that their relative wasn’t withering in front of them. Or saying they’ll see their relative next week, when they know he might not be here then. Or even hoping he might not be here.

  Their visits were a joke.

  I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be so cynical and judgmental. But the sight of all those people who could visit anytime—but didn’t—made me angry.

  I shoved my anger deep inside and concentrated on the task at hand. I stopped by Ms. Franny and Ms. Eulalie’s room, but it was empty. I found the ladies in the common room in their wheelchairs. They’d cornered one of the few male residents, Coleman Watson, who had outlived his wife by almost forty years. Let me tell you, the women in this place were like horny piranhas around the widowers. There was flirting, touching, possessiveness, giggling, lying, eyelash-batting, jealousy, and backstabbing. Just like high school.

  Ms. Eulalie saw me first. She patted Ms. Franny’s shoulder and pointed to me. “Here she is, look. She’s here right now.”

  Ms. Franny turned and gave me a conspiratorial wink. “Well, Coleman,” she said loudly (he was pretty deaf), “Eulalie and I have some business to attend to. I hope we can continue this conversation later.” I swear to God, she stroked her braid and smiled at him like a schoolgirl. Then she stuck out what little boobs she had left and shimmied her shoulders. Gross!

  “Let’s go, Franny pack,” Ms. Eulalie muttered, “’fore you shake your womb out onto the floor.”

  Ms. Eulalie could wheel herself, but Ms. Franny wasn’t strong enough, so I pushed her. She and I led the way so we could clear a path through the crowded hallway for Ms. Eulalie behind us. We rolled into the dining hall and closed the double doors. We weren’t alone, though. A few families still sat at the tables where they’d finished lunch. Servers cleared the other tables, clinking glasses together, piling plates and silverware, and swooping tablecloths into a big canvas laundry bag on wheels. It smelled like French onion soup.

  They had stopped serving lunch at twelve thirty, so when I peeked in to check the kitchen, it was fairly empty. A couple of the kitchen staff stood at the giant dishwasher against the left wall, hosing off pots and plates. They were listening to their MP3 players, though. Between those and the noisy rush of the dishwasher, the workers probably wouldn’t even notice me unless they turned around.

  The real problem was the servers bringing in the dirty dishes. I needed to keep them out of the kitchen for a few minutes. We had it all planned, though. Ms. Eulalie would distract them while Ms. Franny and I sneaked through to the trash repository room. She’d keep a lookout at the door while I went inside and stuffed eighty-seven cans into the black garbage bag I had tucked in my coat pocket. At first, I had wanted to go out to the Dumpster and toss the bag over the fence into the parking lot. But yesterday when I told the ladies my plan, they insisted that I stack the cans in their room so they could see it. I wasn’t sure why. I guess when you live inside four little walls, anything unusual becomes a treat.

  I glanced around the dining room again. The last few diners got up from their table. Once they were gone, it was just the servers and us. “Okay, ladies,” I whispered. “It’s showtime.”

  Ms. Eulalie wheeled over to the far corner of the room, turned around, and set the brake on her wheelchair. Then she clutched her left shoulder and started to wail. “OOOOH, LAAAWD! PRECIOUS, PRECIOUS LAWD!” Every eye in the room turned to her. “I THINK I’M HAVING ME A HEART ATTACK! LAWD JESUS SAVE ME! SOMEBODY HELP!” A few servers jogged over to her. “HELP ME, PLEASE!” She stuck out her left leg and slid halfway down her seat. “LAWD A-MERCY! I’M FADING, JESUS!” The rest of the servers rushed to help her.

  This was our chance.

  I grabbed the handles of Ms. Franny’s wheelchair and pushed her through the swinging door to the kitchen. We raced across the floor so fast that my hair blew back and Ms. Franny’s nightgown flapped around her shins. She waved her hands in the air, squealing, “WHEEEE!” None of the dishwashing staff seemed to hear a thing, just as I’d predicted. We careened into the alcove and I wrenched open the heavy door. I backed Ms. Franny just far enough into the doorway that her wheelchair propped it open. That way, I could hear her warn me if anyone was coming. I grabbed the trash bag from my pocket and ran over to the giant recycling bins that sat ready to be emptied into the blue Dumpster outside.

  As quickly as I could, I counted by twos and tossed the cans into the bag. I had twenty. Then forty. Then sixty. “Everything okay?” I whispered to Ms. Franny.

  “Fine and dandy,” she whispered back.

  Seventy cans. Now eighty. Then a few extra to make ninety in case I counted wrong. I knotted the bag and dragged it over to the door.

  Oh, crap. I hadn’t thought about how to carry it back to the room. Originally, I was going to throw it over the fence. How was I going to haul this bag and push Ms. Franny at the same time?
The bag wasn’t heavy; it was just huge and bulky. “I can’t carry the bag and push!” I hissed to Ms. Franny. Time was ticking. My heart pounded.

  “Give it here!” she said. “I’ll hold it on my lap. People will think I’m just a crazy old bag lady who likes to carry her garbage around.”

  There was no time to argue. I hoisted the bag onto her lap and she hugged it with her bony arms. I gripped her wheelchair handles and we zoomed through the kitchen again. I think one of the guys with the hose saw us, but we were through the door to the dining room before he could say a word.

  Ms. Eulalie was still wailing and grabbing her chest while the people around her stood or squatted or held her hand. A nurse was stooped over her, listening to her heart with a stethoscope.

  When Ms. Eulalie caught sight of us zipping past, she sat straight up and said, “Oh, you know what? I feel much better all of a sudden. Yes, I do. I do believe I feel just fine now. Thank you for your kindness anyway. I think I’ll be leaving. Bye, now.” She released the brake, grabbed her wheels, and gave them a firm shove. The nurse followed along for a few steps, still trying to check Ms. Eulalie’s heartbeat. Her wheelchair finally broke free and she sped toward us.

  I held the door open for her with my foot, and we all rolled out.

  It was clockwork!

  As we wheeled down the hall, several visitors looked at Ms. Franny funny because of the garbage bag. She just kept yelling things like, “I got body parts in here” or “Hands off my pocketbook!” or “Who wants my big bag of poop?”

  Once we were safely back in their room, the ladies and I whooped and clapped and gave each other high fives. I held up the black garbage bag like it was a pirate’s booty and shook it to rattle the cans. When we finally got ahold of ourselves and settled down, I said, “You guys were so great!”

  “I gotta hand it to you, Ukulele, you should get an Oscar for that performance,” said Ms. Franny.

  Ms. Eulalie still panted a bit from the ride back to the room. “Mark down the date!” she said between shallow breaths. “Frances Calhoun gave somebody a compliment.”

  “Enjoy it while you can, because there won’t be any more. Not in your lifetime, anyway. A compliment from me is like Halley’s Comet.”

  “You got that right,” said Ms. Eulalie. “It flies by fast and then you forget all about it for the next seventy-five years.”

  I helped the women back into their beds and folded up the wheelchairs so there’d be more floor space to stack the cans. I kept getting almost to the top and then accidentally knocking them over because the ladies kept asking me questions about Luke, and I couldn’t concentrate. Talking about him made me nervous.

  They wanted to know every detail about him, so I went over what he looked like, what he wanted to study in college, conversations I’d had with him. When I told them about his e-mail apology, Ms. Eulalie said, “An E-MAIL?” like it was the rudest thing ever. So I explained that he’d needed to look up the Shakespeare quote first. Then they started teasing me about liking him and demanded that I read the e-mail to them. Of course when I did, they really let loose with the ooh-ing and aha-ing and mmm-hmm-ing.

  By the fourth time I tried to stack the cans, my hands were shaking like crazy. I was just about to put on the final few cans when Ms. Franny shrieked, “WATCH OUT, BLYTHE!” and I jumped and knocked the whole thing over again.

  “MS. FRANNY!” I yelled as I spun around to her. She was cracking up and clapping for herself. When I saw her wrinkled face so open and happy and drawn back into such a fulfilled smile, I couldn’t help giggling too.

  “Oh, you an evil, evil woman, Franny pack,” Ms. Eulalie said. Yet, her belly bounced up and down as she chuckled silently.

  Finally, I successfully stacked the cans and snapped a picture with my phone. I gave each of the ladies a few balls of Ms. Franny’s yarn and they threw them at the stack like a carnival game. Between the cans falling and the ladies cheering, the noise was pretty loud. The Sunday floor nurse stuck her head in the door to see what was going on, but Ms. Franny threw a yellow yarn ball and hit the nurse right in the forehead. “Bull’s-eye!” Ms. Franny cried. “I told you I had good aim!” The scowling woman vanished.

  I stuffed the soda cans back into the black trash bag and thanked Ms. Eulalie and Ms. Franny again. As soon as I was through the door and out of their line of sight, I heard Ms. Eulalie say to Ms. Franny, “You know she could’a just asked for those cans. They’d’a given them to her.”

  “Sure,” Ms. Franny answered, “but where’s the fun in that?”

  Then they laughed some more.

  I hadn’t even thought about asking for the cans! My brain had gone directly to thievery. When did I start thinking like a bad girl? Had I stopped being a good girl? I couldn’t tell. The only thing I was sure of was that being bad was fun. A lot of fun. I finally understood the appeal for people like Cy and Jenna.

  The question was: Did bad girls get into Bryn Mawr?

  I started to see my happily-ever-after plans in a new light. A light that showed how dull they were. How riskless. How tame.

  I didn’t want to be tame. Or tamed. Domesticated, like a dog or a horse or a sheep. I didn’t want to unlearn whatever instinct it was that made me “take” instead of “ask for.” I didn’t want someone else telling me what I could and couldn’t have. Or should have. Or should want.

  Had I read so many happy endings that I thought I should want one? That every girl wanted one? That good girls wanted one?

  Did I really want that happy ending I’d envisioned? Or had someone told me to want it?

  What did I really want?

  Why didn’t I know?

  The bag on my back felt heavier. I hitched it higher on my shoulder and trudged through the front door of Shady Acres. I rounded the corner and headed to the back parking lot. The wind blew so hard against me that I had to lean into it. The weather was just one more unpredictable thing about that March.

  After I ran the cans out to the recycling plant, I went home. I had a slight gnawing in my stomach that Mom or Dad would ask me where I’d been. I decided to tell them that I’d left my phone at Shady Acres yesterday so I ran over to get it and stopped to visit with the ladies. That had enough truth to it that I could talk about it convincingly.

  I walked into the kitchen. Mom was slicing carrots and putting them in a slow cooker. When she saw me, she said, “Good, you’re back. Stew for dinner.” That was it. No questions about where I’d gone or how things went. She looked right through me. I’m not saying I was disappointed that I didn’t need to lie to her, but it bummed me out that she didn’t even care where I’d been.

  I snagged a piece of carrot and went up to my room. Two seconds after I logged on to the Revolting Phoenix, an IM window popped up from Luke. A jolt of excitement shot through my abdomen. He hadn’t even hesitated to IM me. It must have been his shift to mind the website for item verifications.

  profmarvel: having fun?

  kate4eva: sure—pouring rain, digging through garbage, petty theft, lying to my parents … good times

  profmarvel: just wait until the next clue

  kate4eva: why?

  profmarvel: you’ll see once you solve clue 2

  kate4eva: done. was about to upload it

  profmarvel: go do it. i’ll verify.

  I clicked over to the main window of the site and uploaded my picture of the cans. I waited for Luke to verify it, and then the next clue came up.

  Congratulations! You have successfully uploaded a valid picture of item #2.

  Here is your clue to item #3:

  Playboy, Penthouse, Hustler are all types of this. But wait …

  You have to get a certain kind, and not the type that’s straight.

  Proof of purchase necessary! In your picture, show

  the item and its paid receipt, and onward you will go.

  I clicked on the IM window again.

  kate4eva: OMG A GAY PORN MAG?????

  profmarvel: hav
e to upload pic to see if you’re right

  kate4eva: you guys are so EVIL!!!!

  profmarvel: mwahahahaha

  kate4eva: i hope you’re enjoying this

  profmarvel: i am

  kate4eva: the receipt was a nice touch …

  kate4eva: so we have to buy it, which is illegal < age 18

  profmarvel: my idea

  kate4eva: I’m not surprised. you’re despicable

  profmarvel: think so?

  kate4eva: know so

  profmarvel: that’s a shame—i was just beginning to like you

  I inhaled sharply. Was he teasing? Was he being ironic? Did he actually like me? As in like me? My fingers hovered, trembling, above the keyboard. I couldn’t hesitate too long or he’d know something was up. I had to type something. Now.

  kate4eva: that’s a conflict of interest anyway …

  kate4eva: aren’t journalists supposed to be impartial?

  profmarvel: depends

  kate4eva: on?

  profmarvel: how strongly they feel

  Both my lungs shrank to the size of walnuts. Not a molecule of air went in or out. What did Luke mean by that? Was he being cryptic and flirting with me? Or was he genuinely talking about journalism? I reread the message. He had to be talking about journalism. Right?

  Kate4eva: have you ever lost impartiality?

  There was a pause. Definitely a significant pause. Maybe he was trying to puzzle out his feelings. Maybe those feelings were about me. Or maybe he just had to scratch his foot or take a bite of his sandwich or finish the game of solitaire he was probably playing on the side because talking to me was so boring. Then his answer popped up.