Dirty Little Secrets

by C. J. Omololu

  “I, uh, it’s broken,” I said, knowing in the pit of my stomach that it was already too late. Our hallway bathroom was covered in mildew, and the shower was filled with papers and bags of clothes, but technically it still worked. She’d have to push her way through the rest of the house to get there, though, and there was no way I was going to make this worse.

  “Broken?” Elaina asked, staring at the piles of newspapers that lined the hallway. “How does a bathroom get broken?”

  “We’re remodeling.” I tried to block her way into the house, but just then Mom came around the corner and stopped in her tracks at the sight of Elaina on the wrong side of the door.

  Her hands flew to her hair, as if having a few hairs out of place was the worst thing we had going. “Oh, hello, dear,” she said. Her voice was shaking and her eyes were darting around the room. “Are you girls going out?”

  “I was just telling Elaina that she can’t use the bathroom. Because of the remodel.” I sent Mom messages with my eyes to please, please go along with me. She hated lying, but she hated having people in the house even more.

  Mom couldn’t keep her hands still, and they flew around her body like they were possessed. She reached out to touch some of the newspapers and to smooth the cover of a National Geographic that had gotten bent, but until she opened her mouth, I wasn’t sure what she would do. “Right. The remodel.” I was afraid Elaina would see my relief. For once, Mom was on my side. She looked directly at Elaina for the first time. “Perhaps we can go next door and ask Mrs. Raj if you can use hers?”

  Elaina took one last look around, memorizing the piles of junk that reached almost to the ceiling. “That’s okay,” she said. “I guess I can wait.”

  I grabbed my bag, and all three of us slipped out of the house. I didn’t dare look at Elaina, but Mom cut her eyes at me like she’d never been so angry in her life. I knew she’d blame me for letting Elaina in on purpose, even though I spent all my time trying to keep people away. I was glad I was going out, because then maybe she’d cool off by the time I got home.

  Mom followed us down the driveway and plastered on a normal-looking smile as she waved to Elaina’s mom in the driver’s seat. “Hi, Victoria,” she said as she reached the van. “Thanks so much for taking Lucy with you.”

  “Oh, it’s no trouble at all,” Elaina’s mom said.

  I pulled the back door open and strapped myself into the van. I tried to stare straight ahead and listen to their conversation, but I couldn’t stop thinking about what Elaina had seen. I started to breathe faster and had to will myself to calm down. Maybe it wouldn’t be as bad as I thought. Maybe Elaina would just think the place was a little messy, is all.

  After what seemed like an hour and a half, Mom stepped back from the van with a wave. “All set?” Elaina’s mom asked.

  “Yup,” Elaina said as the van pulled away from the curb. She watched out the front window as her mother drove, but kept sneaking glances back at me as she talked. I swear I saw her nose wrinkle just a little. That whole afternoon, Elaina seemed normal but distant. There was no way I was going to bring it up, so we just acted like nothing had happened, and I’d hoped that was the end of it. I found out at school on Monday that it was nowhere near the end of it.

  The balled-up piece of notebook paper hit me in the back of the head to the sound of giggling from the back of the room. It landed near my right foot, so I bent down to pick it up. As quietly as I could, I straightened it out in my lap so that I could see the cartoon of what was probably supposed to be me, with boogers dripping down my face and flies buzzing around me. I was sitting on top of a mountain of junk and underneath the whole thing were the words “Garbage Girl” written in big black marker.

  I looked toward the back of the room, but everyone was staring at their desks, pretending to write in their journals. It could have been anyone, really—aside from Elaina, I didn’t have any real friends. Maybe now I didn’t have any friends at all.

  “Lucy, do you have something to share?” The voice from the front of the room echoed in the stillness.

  “No, Sister,” I said, and tucked the disgusting drawing away in my notebook.

  To my left, Curtis Swanson coughed loudly, but I swear I heard the words “Garbage Girl” come out of his mouth. Over the next couple of weeks, I was going to hear it a lot. Elaina avoided me like I stunk, and I got notes and drawings stuffed in my locker almost every day. I finally told Phil about it after I’d said I had a stomachache and stayed home from school for three straight days. For once he wasn’t a jerk—he was the sympathetic brother I’d always wanted sticking up for me. Now that he was older, Mom treated him more like another adult. Maybe she knew he was on his way out.

  I don’t know how he did it, but Phil got Mom to let me go to public school right after that. She said it was because Catholic school was too expensive, but communication wasn’t a strong point in our family. I was just glad the whole “Garbage Girl” episode hadn’t followed me this far. Yet.

  I glanced back at the front counter where Josh was helping some more customers. He wasn’t even looking in my direction. I’d missed my chance and he’d already moved on. Probably relieved that I’d changed my mind.

  Kaylie picked up her coffee and walked back to the table, squinting at the display on her phone, trying to read a text. “So it looks like I’m meeting Vanessa at nine—are you sure you can’t come?”

  I nodded quickly and took another sip of coffee.

  “I’m sorry I got all mad at you on the phone. Is it your mom’s head again?” she asked. She looked sympathetic, but that was probably because she had Vanessa as backup. Maybe Kaylie was moving on too.

  “Yeah,” I managed, grateful that she’d remembered my lie. Over the past couple of years, I’d told people that Mom had a brain tumor, multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, Alzheimer’s, kidney failure, and irritable bowel syndrome as reasons for why I couldn’t do something or have them over. I always felt a little guilty saying it, like I was jinxing Mom somehow. Maybe I was.

  “I thought the brain surgery was supposed to cure the seizures,” she said.

  “It will,” I said. “But the doctors said it might take up to a year. She’s . . . she’s not doing so good right now.”

  “That sucks,” she said. She glanced up at the counter where I didn’t dare look again. “I just think Josh would be so good for you, you know? You need to have a little more fun in your life. You’re always so serious.”

  I couldn’t answer her. I just looked down and studied my fingernails.

  “I mean, I know you don’t let guys rule your life and everything,” she said. “And you don’t care what people think about you. But still.”

  All I could do was look at her and nod at this totally distorted image of me that she seemed to have. I’d love to let guys rule my life, if my life was normal. The fact that she thought my hiding from the world was some display of maturity was actually a little sad.

  “Are you okay?” Kaylie asked. She leaned her face in closer to mine. “You look funny.”

  I plastered a smile on my face. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

  “Maybe later I could come and help you, so that you could get out of there,” she said. “You never let me come over to help, even though you’re all alone with her.”

  As she said that, the backs of my eyes started stinging, like I was going to start bawling. The worst part was there was nobody who could help me—nobody that I could even tell. Dad had made it clear that sending money every month was about as much involvement as he wanted with us, and all he’d do was tell me to call 911. Or worse, call them for me. He’d probably be relieved if I could persuade Phil to move back in with me afterward so that he wouldn’t have to deal with it, but I wasn’t convinced that Phil would see things my way. What if I told him what had happened and he called the police? Sara would definitely not see things my way and would have the house surrounded by flashing lights in no time. I had effectively been an orphan for the past eight hours
or so, and I had to keep the biggest secret of my life all to myself.

  “No. Thanks,” I said. I rubbed my eyes with the palms of my hands. Kaylie looked at me like she wanted me to say more. “Why . . . why do you even bother?” I finally asked.

  “Bother with what?” Kaylie looked genuinely confused.

  I was sure that my nose was bright red by now and that I looked even more pathetic than usual. Luckily, nobody around seemed to be listening. “With me,” I said quietly, wiping my nose to make sure there was nothing dripping. “You’ve got Vanessa and all of your other friends. I just wreck your plans.”

  She sat back in her chair. “Are you serious?”

  I didn’t say anything else. I knew that I sounded like a whiny pain in the neck, but it might be easier if I just got rid of everyone—all two of them—in one quick afternoon. Maybe after all this was over I could make new friends—have a boyfriend, even, but things were getting too complicated right now.

  “First of all,” Kaylie said, “you don’t wreck everything. Okay, yeah, you bail on me sometimes, but you’ve got a lot going on. Do you remember art class last year?”

  Of course I did. Kaylie sat at the next table while my partner was the annoying Miles Harris, pitcher for the baseball team and all-around idiot who threatened to ruin my favorite class. I tried to ignore him, and all the girls in the class who would always find excuses to come by our table, by drawing pictures of the house I was going to design someday. Kaylie started talking to me toward the end of the year, first asking to borrow a pen or some paper and later asking me to tag along with her when she went out on the weekends.

  “You were the only one who wasn’t dying to sit next to Miles—you even seemed irritated by him. You’d just sit there drawing these really amazing pictures, and your projects were always so much better than mine. It was like you had more important things to deal with than the hottie sitting next to you. I wanted to find out what your secret was.” She laughed.

  If Kaylie ever did find out the real secret, she wouldn’t think it was so funny. “I don’t have a secret,” I lied.

  “Yes, you do,” she said. I felt a momentary flutter of dread, but I knew she wasn’t anywhere near the truth. “Your secret is that you really don’t care about all the stuff that goes on in school. You’re somehow removed from it all.” She sat forward again. “Which is why this whole Josh thing is so awesome. I just don’t want you to walk away from him.”

  “I’m not,” I said. “It’s just that tonight . . . I can’t come tonight.” I didn’t want to tell her how much I really did care about what Josh thought and what he was doing. And who he was doing it with. Leaving yourself vulnerable was the quickest way to have anything good taken away from you. If I’d learned anything from Mom, it was that.

  “Well, I’ll totally keep an eye on him for you,” she said. “I’m not going to let him get away, in spite of you.”

  I managed a smile. “Thanks, Kay,” I said. I tossed back the last of the coffee in my cup. “I really do have to head back,” I said, and stood up.

  Kaylie sighed. “If you say so. Do you want me to walk with you?”

  “No, it’s cool. I have to stop at Safeway.”

  She leaned over the table and gave me a hug. “I’ll call you if anything good happens.”

  I nodded and picked up the second cup of coffee I’d ordered.

  “Didn’t you just have coffee?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. “This one’s for Mom. I promised her I’d bring some back with me.” The one thing I didn’t have set up in my room was a coffee maker, and I was going to need all the help I could get if I was going to keep working until late at night.

  “Don’t let my mom hear you say that,” she said. “She already thinks you’re the perfect daughter. She’s always joking that she’d like to adopt you and have you come live with us.”

  I could never tell Kaylie how perfect that would be. As much as I wanted to grow up and be on my own, I wished for someone to take care of me so I wouldn’t have to worry all the time. I thought of my mother’s sheet-covered body lying in the hallway at that very second. Every time I started to feel guilty, I had to remind myself that I was doing it for all of us. But that still didn’t change the fact that Mom was dead, and I was sitting here talking and drinking coffee. I wondered what Kaylie’s mom would think about that. “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m not so perfect.”

  Josh was busy up front, so I just walked out the door without another word. It was probably best this way. It felt like a solid lead ball was sitting in the pit of my stomach. I couldn’t stand thinking about him at the party tonight. As much as I liked to think I was special, there would be so many girls there, he wouldn’t even notice I was missing. He’d probably be going out with someone else by the time vacation was over.

  Walking home, I carried a bag from the grocery store and balanced the coffee in one hand, hoping that and some egg rolls from the deli would keep me at least until tomorrow. I’d really wanted fried rice, but as I bent down to look at it in the deli case, all I could think of was the maggot I’d brushed out of my shirt earlier. As much as it used to be my favorite food, thanks to one lone, preadolescent fly, fried rice was probably lost to me forever. I’d also loaded up on more rubber gloves and those paper face masks that supposedly protect you from chemicals and irritants. We should probably have been living in these all along.

  The walk was short, but it felt good to be out in the cold air. I zipped my jacket up to my chin so only the top of my head and my face were freezing. It was starting to get dark, and most of the houses still had their Christmas lights on outside, which made the cold darkness seem not so bad. Like it had a purpose, even.

  As I walked up our street, I looked in the windows of the houses I passed. I could see people sitting down to dinner, or the blue glow on the walls from the TV.

  The Callans a few houses down had their curtains open, and I could see the Christmas tree all lit up by the window. I was sure Mrs. Callan would be in the kitchen cooking, waiting for Mr. Callan to come home. Hanging out in their house had made me realize that not everyone had parents who loved their stuff more than they loved their kids.

  The air smelled like a campfire, and I thought about how nice it would be to sit by a warm fire on such a cold night. Maybe we could get the fireplace working again once everything was done. Phil and I would keep a big stack of wood on the porch and feed it to the fire every time it started to die. Maybe we could have regular movie nights in the winter, where we’d invite people over, make popcorn, and sit in front of the fire, watching movies with all the lights off. At this point I should have probably stopped with the “maybes” and “what-ifs,” but whenever the now got bad, thinking about the future always made me feel better.

  chapter 11

  5:30 p.m.

  “Lucy!”

  I stopped dragging the green bin across the dining room and listened. It was high and faint, but it was definitely my name. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up, and my heart beat faster.

  I pulled down my face mask. “Mom?” I whispered cautiously, and immediately felt ridiculous. I had to be hearing things. Since I’d only put on lights in the dining room, it was pitch black in the rest of the house now—and starting to get a little creepy, if I let myself think about it. I slowly tiptoed out of the dining room and down the hall, trying to calm myself. Mom was definitely dead the last time I looked. No amount of moving her stuff around and looking in forbidden boxes would turn her into an angry ghost. At least, that’s what I hoped.

  I got to the back hallway and flicked on the overhead light. The sheet was still there. I swallowed hard and tried to reason with myself. This was crazy. Whatever I was hearing, it definitely wasn’t Mom calling me. At least not from the hallway.

  I walked back to the dining room and started moving boxes again. As I was stuffing some newspapers in a garbage bag, I heard it again. A small voice calling my name.

  “Stop it!” I ye
lled out loud this time. I was starting to panic when movement at the window caught my eye. Before I could react, the curtains parted, and TJ stuck his head through them.

  “Hey!” he said. “Didn’t you hear me calling you?”

  “Man, TJ,” I said. My knees wobbled with relief, and I felt like I had to sit down. “You scared the crap out of me.”

  “Did I?” he said, not looking ashamed. “I wasn’t sneaking up on you or anything. I yelled and stuff.” He scrunched up his nose and looked around. “What stinks?”

  I ignored that last statement and crossed the room until I was standing above him at the window. “What are you doing out there?” I peeked out the window and saw him standing on the stack of plastic bags. Only TJ wouldn’t think to ask what a giant stack of plastic bags was doing along the side of the house.

  He looked around the room. “Are you moving or something? Who’s going to babysit me when Mom goes out?”

  “Knock it off,” I said. “We’re not moving. I told you, I’m just cleaning up some stuff.”

  “Cool.” TJ looked behind him. “Can I come in?”

  “No!” I answered just a little too quickly. “You can’t come in. It’s not a good idea. You said yourself it stinks in here.”

  “I didn’t mean it. Come on,” he said. “I can help. Plus, you said you’d see if you could find some of Phil’s stuff for me to go through.”

  I hesitated just long enough for him to see the crack in my resolve. TJ was one of those kids that spent his free time wandering the neighborhood waiting for someone to ask him to come over. Whatever the reason, he hated being home—a feeling I understood more than anyone else on the block. Plus, he was a pretty good kid.

  “It’s freezing out here,” he said. “Can’t I just come in for a little bit?”

  Even though I willed myself not to look back toward the hallway, I could feel my thoughts wandering in that direction. It was dark out now, and even though I could still hear the music from the kitchen, I had to admit it would be nice having another living body in the house. How much could a kid figure out, anyway?