I felt guilty for wanting to hurt her. Sometimes, I wished she was annoying like Abbey’s mom. Then, I wouldn’t care if she worked all the time and was never home. I wouldn’t want her to be. But she wasn’t like Abbey’s mom.
Maybe, even with her home, Abbey and I still would be able to jump on the couch and sing to music videos blasting on the TV. I was sure she wouldn’t be as strict as Abbey’s mom because she wasn’t that kind of a mother.
Being home alone most of the time meant I didn’t have many rules, but I was aware of my limits because I was sure the old lady next door wasn’t the only neighbor keeping an eye on me. Somebody had snitched to my mom about my climbing the fire escapes, and I was certain it wasn’t Mrs. Chapetta.
“Do you think I need to worry about you falling down and cracking your head open while I’m at work? If I hear about you climbing anything more than trees, I’m sending you to summer camp. Understand?” my mom had said to me one night.
She threatened summer camp a lot. I was mostly sure she was bluffing because I knew she’d miss me too much. I didn’t stop climbing fire escapes, I was just more careful about making sure no one was watching.
I couldn’t fall asleep. I quietly got out of bed and opened my bedroom door slowly so it wouldn’t squeak. I tiptoed into the living room and found my mom asleep on her favorite chair, just as I’d suspected her to be. I remembered, as a little girl, all the nights I’d climb into her lap and sleep with her until she woke up and then she’d carry me to bed.
I leaned down and kissed her softly on the cheek. She stirred slightly, but her steady breath remained even. I watched her carefully, making sure I hadn’t woken her up.
I often kissed my mom good night.
And I wasn’t sure why I didn’t want her to know that.
Chapter Four
ABBEY AND I played Bon Jovi in my garage again the next day. By then we had memorized every single word to every single song on the cassette. I strummed the old racket so hard I broke a string.
The last song of the tape ended, and the garage was suddenly quiet.
“You wanna do it again?” I asked.
Abbey put a hand against her stomach. “I’m kinda hungry. You got anything to eat?”
“Besides a bologna sandwich?”
“I know they’re my favorite, but I’m kinda sick of those,” Abbey said.
“Me too.” I thought for a second. “I know. Let’s get burgers.”
“I’m so hungry I can eat two. Wait. Do we have money for cheese? I don’t want any unless we have enough money for cheese.”
I counted the change in my pocket. “Is it ten or twelve cents more for cheese?”
“Ten, I think. But if we don’t have enough for cheese, then forget it. I don’t want any,” she said again.
Abbey still hadn’t gotten over the time we didn’t have enough money to add cheese to our burgers. We had been craving cheeseburgers one day, so we rode our bikes to the nearest McDonalds. I was counting our money as we stood in line and realized we didn’t have enough to cover the extra cost for cheese. Abbey had had a hard time accepting the notion of no cheese on a burger, and I was sure she was going to cry.
I suspected the people standing in line with us were aware of our dilemma. Abbey hadn’t done a good job of hiding her displeasure of eating plain hamburgers, and yet, no one had offered to help pay the difference.
At that moment, I swore that when I became an adult, and I saw kids who couldn’t afford cheese on their burgers, I’d not only pay for the extra cost for the cheese, but I’d cover the entire burger. It was McDonalds for crying out loud.
Right then, I knew most adults were assholes.
As we stood in the garage, I assured Abbey we had enough money for cheese.
“If you want two burgers, you can get ’em both with cheese, but then you won’t be able to buy fries and we’d have to share a small drink.”
“Hmmm. Let me think about it,” she said.
My knee was still too sore to ride a bike, so we walked to McDonalds. I knew Abby was considering our order dilemma the entire way because she was mostly quiet.
As soon as we walked through the door of our favorite fast-food place, she said, “I’ve made my decision. I’m gonna get just one burger with cheese so then I can have fries. Will we still need to share a drink?”
I pulled the money from my pocket.
Once a week, my mom left me money on the counter before she left for work, usually with a note attached instructing me not to spend it all on junk. She gave me what money she could, and even though it wasn’t much, I knew it was all she could afford, and sometimes more.
When she gave me extra, I knew it was because of the guilt she carried for being a mother who didn’t see her child as much as she wanted to. That morning, she had probably kissed me goodbye while I slept, and if she’d have to work late again tonight, she’d most likely come into my room and kiss me again.
I didn’t know what Abbey’s dad did for a living, but I knew he wore a suit to work, and Abbey told me he missed dinner most nights because he had a lot of meetings. I was sure Abbey’s dad made a lot more money than my mom did, but still, that didn’t leave Abbey with any more coins in her pocket than mine. Her parents didn’t leave money for her on the counter. Abbey didn’t have that kind of freedom.
Standing in line to order our food, I asked Abbey what size fry she wanted.
“Um . . . medium?” she asked in a way that sounded like she expected to be shot down.
I recounted the money in my hand and looked at the prices on the menu board. I quickly did the math in my head—figuring for tax. When we first started going to places on our own, I didn’t know about tax, but now I did, and taxes sucked. The extra cost made it hard to know exactly what the total would be and sometimes I was way off. I wanted the price to be the amount stated, and when I shared this with my mother, she shrugged, and casually said, “Taxes will never go away, and you can’t always get what you want.”
After adding up the costs, I figured I would order two burgers with cheese and no fries for me and one burger with cheese and a medium fry for Abbey. Then we’d have just enough left over to split a small drink.
I told Abbey the order plan and she seemed satisfied.
I SWALLOWED MY last bite of food and crinkled the cheeseburger wrappers into a tight ball. I leaned against the back of the booth we were sitting in and took a deep breath. I had eaten my burgers way too fast.
“That was good,” Abbey said, popping the last of her fries into her mouth.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out a stink bomb. I held it high enough so Abbey could see it, but low enough so that nobody else could.
“What’s that?” Abbey asked.
I rolled my eyes. “You know what it is.”
Her eyes widened. “Is that a stink bomb?”
“Shhh . . . don’t yell it.”
“I didn’t know you had any left.”
“I didn’t know either. I found it underneath my bed last week, was waiting for the right time. I think this is it.”
“You wanna drop it here?”
“Of course.”
She reached out her hand. “Can I see it?”
I hesitated, remembering the last time I let Abbey hold a stink bomb. Our school play had just ended and Abbey had begged me to let her smash the bomb against the floor.
“You have to throw it hard enough on the ground so that it breaks, but without showing that you’re throwing something,” I had instructed her.
She was behind me as we exited our aisle and I’d turned sideways enough to catch the quick movement of her arm.
“Did you do it?” I whispered.
“I think so,” she whispered back.
“You think so?”
I followed the rest of my classmates to the exit door, but hadn’t smelled anything foul. I glanced behind me and saw Mrs. Shuster, the school librarian, holding up the tiny hour-glass-shaped bottle in her hands. She was i
nspecting it as though she were trying hard to decipher what it was. The old woman then dropped the object into her purse.
“What do you think she did with it?” Abbey had asked me.
I shrugged. “Maybe she thought it was one of those perfume samples they pass out at stores.”
“Lyssa! What if she breaks it in her house?”
“Then that would be the funniest shit we’ll never get to see,” I’d responded.
Abbey was waiting for me to hand over the stink bomb.
“Fine. But be careful you don’t break it on yourself. You’ll smell like rotten ass for days. Your mother’ll make you sleep on the porch.”
“I know.” She held the tiny bomb gently in her hands.
“I’m gonna drop it on our way out,” I said.
“These people are gonna throw up while eating their Big Macs, you know,” she said.
“So? We’ll be long gone by then.”
I collected our trays of empty wrappers and tossed it into the garbage. I took the stink bomb from Abbey and tucked it inside my hand. “Come on, let’s go.”
She followed me as we walked past the other patrons, seemingly enjoying their cheap meal. Right before we got to the door, I opened my hand and in one swift movement, I slammed the glass bottle against the floor while trying to mask any sound I might make with a fake sneeze.
Instantly, the hard rancid scent stung the insides of my nose. Abbey rushed out of the restaurant, but I held her arm back, slowing her. “Don’t hurry too much. You’ll make us look suspicious.”
“Okay.” Abbey slowed until her pace equaled mine, a quick, steady walk.
“Hey, kids!” I heard a voice yell from a distance behind us. I turned around to see a chubby man in a McDonald’s uniform holding the door open. “Did you two drop a stink bomb in here?”
Abbey didn’t wait for me to tell her to run, she took off immediately. I sprinted beside her. Adrenaline pumped so hard through my body I no longer felt the scathing pain in my knee.
We cut through a couple yards and hopped a few fences. We ducked inside the stoop of an apartment building we knew. If anyone saw us, I’d just tell them we were playing hide and seek.
Abbey and I were both deeply out of breath. My sides hurt, and my knee was throbbing.
“You think we made it hard for anyone to follow us?” Abbey asked.
“I think we’re in the clear, but let’s just chill for a bit. If they did call the cops and told them two girls took off running after dropping a stink bomb, I don’t want to be out of breath if a cop sees us.”
“You think they called the cops?” Abbey asked, and I could tell she was getting nervous.
“I don’t know. It’s a stupid stink bomb. But just in case they did, we’ll wait here.”
We sat quietly as our breathing slowed to normal. I leaned my head against the concrete wall behind me and relaxed a bit.
“We probably can’t go back there ever again now.” Abbey kicked the side of the wall with the tip of her sneaker and folded her arms across her chest. “No more cheeseburgers for us.”
I shrugged. “We’ll start eating hotdogs.”
DEREK WAS LYING on his back, across the gravel, with his jean jacket bunched up under his head. He sat up when he saw us coming.
“Hey, Derek,” Abbey said.
“Hey, Ab.” He climbed to his feet and brushed dirt and dust from the gravel off his jeans.
“Why don’t you lay in the grass instead of the gravel? That’s what me and Lyssa do.”
He offered a small smile. “I like to get dirty.” He turned his gaze toward me and then down to my knee. “How’s the knee?”
“It’s all right.” I shrugged.
“She still can’t ride her bike,” Abbey threw in from behind me.
He took a step closer to me, and with the most sincere expression I’ve ever seen cross his face, he said, “I’m really am sorry about that. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“We were all goofin’ around. It was an accident. It’s cool.” I playfully punched him in his shoulder to show that all was good, and he winced.
I was about to ask him what was wrong but Abbey blurted, “We got chased out of McDonald’s today. We’ll never be able to go back there ever again.”
Derek sat on his rock and pulled a cigarette from his pack in his jacket pocket.
Abbey plunked down next to him. “We had to hide at some apartment for like an hour to make sure the coast was clear before we could go back in the street.”
He let out a short laugh as he lit up his cig. “Really? What’d you guys do?”
Abbey shrugged as if to say it wasn’t her fault, which meant it was mine. “You know how things go. Hey.” She leaned closer to him. “What happened to your eye? You get into another fight?”
Derek turned his head away from Abbey’s scrutiny, but not before I was able to get a peek of a small black-n-blue mark underneath his left eye that I hadn’t noticed before.
“It’s nothin’,” he said.
“Well, what happened? Another fight?” she asked.
“Kinda.”
“How do you kinda get into a fight?” Abbey furrowed her brow.
“It means,” I stepped next to Abbey, “the other guy was barely able to get in a punch before Derek took him down.” I motioned my head toward Derek. “You gotta be the toughest guy in your school.”
Derek coolly folded his hands behind his head and crossed one of his ankles over a bent knee. “Another sorry soul found that out yesterday.”
I laughed. “That’s awesome.” I squatted down to him and noticed a bruise on his shoulder, near the spot I had lightly hit him. “Tell us about the fight. How’d it start?”
“You guys don’t want to hear another story about my fights.”
“Yes we do,” I answered quickly.
“Well . . . it happened like all the rest . . . someone started messing with me and I finished it.”
“He gave you a shiner. What’d you give him?”
“I gave him . . . I gave him . . .” Derek slowly pushed himself off the rock. “I don’t know. It happened so fast, but there was a lot of blood. I gotta get goin’ guys. I’ll tell you about it another time.”
“Okay,” I said, disappointed.
“Bye, Derek,” Abbey said.
“Do you think Derek’s a bully?” Abbey asked on our way home.
“Nah. He just likes to make trouble.”
“He gets into a lot of fights.”
“So what? He’s nice to us,” I said.
“I know, but do you think he’s like Jason?”
“Jason Shmutts? That guy’s a dick.”
“He poured honey in my hair last year,” Abbey said.
“I know. I kicked him in the nuts for that.”
Abbey smiled. “Oh, yeah. Thanks.”
“Sure. And I don’t think Derek would do something like that to a girl. He fights guys—guys who are asking for it.”
“I really hope he’s not a bully cuz I like him.”
“Just because he gets into trouble doesn’t mean he’s a bully. Maybe he gets into fights sticking up for the kids getting bullied,” I countered.
“Then maybe he should stop cuz it doesn’t look like he’s winning.”
I took in Abbey’s words with an egregious look.
“What? What’d I say?” she asked.
“What do you mean what? You don’t even know what the other guys look like at the end of the fight. Maybe Derek lets them have it real good and they got a broken leg or arm, or their face is all batted in.”
“I just don’t like that he fights all the time. I don’t see the point of fighting. Nobody ever really wins.”
“Shit, Abbey, you sound like an after-school special. Guys get into fights. That’s what they do.”
I WAS ASLEEP in my bed when the sound of muffled laughter stirred me. I opened my eyes and was trapped in a flash of confusion where I wasn’t sure if I was still dreaming, or if the moment was
real as quiet chatter along with soft giggles reverberated into my room. I sat up straight and rubbed my eyes. I was fully awake, not dreaming, and the quiet laughter was real.
I pushed the covers off me and tiptoed across the thin-carpeted floor. I pressed my ear against the door and absorbed the hushed noises coming from my mother’s bedroom, directly across the hall.
I didn’t hear a voice other than hers so I knew she was either on the phone or was talking in her sleep. I’d never known my mother to talk in her sleep before, but I didn’t know who she could be talking to so late at night.
There were breaks between her chatter, usually followed by a session of low silly giggles or a deep, muffled response. I couldn’t make out the words, no matter how tightly I pressed my ear against the door. I knew I’d hear better if I listened against my mother’s bedroom door, instead of my own, but I was sure the usual squeak my door made every time it opened would alert her that I was up, and I didn’t want to give myself away.
I stood still, listening, but when the minutes ticked by and silence filled the house once again, I knew my mother had said goodbye to whomever she’d been talking to.
Chapter Five
I FOLLOWED ABBEY toward her house. We’d been riding our bikes around town and needed a drink and just happened to be closer to her house than to mine.
Usually, I avoided going to Abbey’s home for even the briefest of reasons if her mother was home. But when Abbey said her mom was gone, not only was I relieved I wouldn’t have to endure her nonsense rambling about what boys like, but, I thought, maybe this would be the day we’d finally find her secret stash I was sure was hidden somewhere in that house.
I stepped through the doorway and all of my eager expectations were halted in a thwarting instant. The aroma of something cooking in the oven and the sound of the TV blaring from the family room indicated we were not alone.
“You said your mom wasn’t home,” I muttered.
“She wasn’t when I left. I figured she went on one of her all-day shopping sprees.”
Mrs. Hulling was clearly home. The kitchen counter was covered in scattered remnants of cut-up vegetables and empty jars of tomato sauce.
A Penny on the Tracks Page 5