Lost in Seattle (The Miss Apple Pants series, #2)

by Charlotte Roth

  I had chosen the most beautiful deep purple, velvet fabric for my dress.

  “Purple makes your beautiful green eyes pop,” Grandma had told me, and I promised her I would wear it on prom night (even if it did clash a bit with the red hair).

  Right before leaving for the party, Dad had taken a picture of the five of us, standing side by side in our colorful dresses on the front porch.

  “Fruit of the Loom,” he had cried from the top of his lungs just before he snapped the shot. We all laughed so hard. It became one of my all-time favorite photos.

  Even though they had all technically been Maddie’s friends, I guess they eventually became mine too—my first real friends ever. And I knew I had Mom and the sewing machine to thank for it. Mom knew how much Maddie wanted one, and she knew how I—her shy, red-haired daughter—had always wanted some friends, besides her parents. And with the sewing machine came a handful of “custom-made” friends too.

  I LOOKED AT MOM IN the dark and pulled her hair away from her face. I whispered, “Thanks for trying, Mom,” knowing it was going to take a lot more than an impressive twenty-first century sewing machine to make new friends this time.

  The Post-it notes

  The following morning, I woke up next to the Bible in a quiet motel room.

  “Mom? Dad?” I sat up and scanned the room. No glass-half-full parents anywhere! Mom’s Bible sat on her pillow with a piece of paper sticking out. I grabbed the Bible and turned the page. “Good morning, Little Big Ugly Foot.” It was Dad’s handwriting. I guess he had decided to stick to the whole weird totem pole theme. “The Big Mamma and Snoring-on-Panties-Bed Dad have gone for an early morning walk. Meet us downstairs when you wake up. There’s coffee, eggs, and bacon. Hurry. Love, Dad.” The word bacon was crossed out by Mom, I figured, who instead had made a drawing of a little matchstick man with a big fat belly. It made me smile.

  I took a quick shower and found my extra pair of underwear (not purple), a pair of jeans, and a t-shirt in the bottom of my bag, before heading downstairs to the matchstick man and his wife.

  Mom was already on at least her third coffee, evident by her wide-eyed expression, but Dad was yawning his head off. In a voice that was a bit too loud he said, “Morning, sunshine.” People around us turned their heads to look at me. A voice from behind me said, “Coffee?” I turned around and looked up. A true copy of Keri Russell in Waitress was standing right behind me, with a pot of coffee in one hand and a cup in the other.

  “Yes, thank you.” I moved slightly to the left and nodded.

  “Room for milk?” Keri Russell said, showing all her perfect teeth.

  “Sure,” I said, trying not to stare at her.

  “Me too,” the woman with the busy, caffeinated eyes said from across the table.

  The superstar look-alike took my order and left me staring.

  I whispered across the table, “Keri Russell or what?”

  “Keri who?” Dad said, staring at Mom’s leftover bacon.

  Mom was just as puzzled and echoed Dad’s question. “Keri who?” Her voice went up an octave when she thought she’d figured it out. “Keri Underwood?”

  I sipped my coffee with a wide grin. I growled a whisper. “Keri Russell, Mom and... Oh no, I forgot; she’s an actress from this century.” I sat down my cup and smiled.

  Mom and Dad haven’t been to the movies since a mutual friend dragged them along to see The Matrix in ninety-nine. I was, like, five back then and had stayed home with Grandma. “Thank God,” Mom said afterwards, still shocked by “all the hate and evilness.” Dad didn’t seem too impressed either. “It was all about showing off some special effects,” was all he had to say about one of the most classic movies all of times.

  Since the awful The Matrix experience, movie watching has been limited to the comfort of the living room, watching classics like Kramer versus Kramer, Sophie’s Choice, Forrest Gump, Saving Private Ryan (and occasionally a Tarantino movie when Mom’s out). If it hadn’t been for Maddie and HBO, I would probably never have known that there’s actually a movie out there not starring Tom Hanks or Meryl Streep.

  Sarcasm dripped from Dad’s voice when he leaned over and grabbed a piece of bacon from Mom’s plate, saying, “Ha ha ha.”

  “We’re not that old,” Mom said, rolling her eyes as the bacon made its way to Dad’s mouth.

  “I know you’re not, but your movies sure are.” I teased as Keri Russell returned with my French toast. “Thanks, -” I said, looking for her name tag.

  She offered her name in a strange accent I couldn’t quite place. “It’s Betty.”

  “Thanks, Betty,” I said as she quietly left again.

  Mom put down her cup, cleared her throat, and looked at me. Her words were spoken in a soft voice. “Feeling a little better this morning?”

  I nodded and grabbed another piece of bacon from Mom’s plate.

  Dad’s eyebrows contorted. “Better?” His voice grew louder. “Better?” he repeated and turned toward me. He moved his chair a little closer, his belly almost touching the edge of the table. His voiced gained another octave. “Better?” he said for the third time.

  “Yeah, you know, she just felt a little homesick,” Mom said, kicking him underneath the table.

  “Oh, yeah, that,” he said, making wide eyes at Mom.

  One thing my parents are not: subtle. I guess they had been talking about me on their little walk this morning.

  “I’m so happy you’re feeling better, sweetheart.” She took a sip of her coffee, and then leaned back and smiled. “I know... we know,” she corrected herself and looked at Dad, “We know it’s been tough on you, moving and everything, saying goodbye to Maddie and the girls on such short notice. And we just want to say that we are really proud of you.”

  “Thanks, I guess,” I said, not knowing what else to say.

  “Well, this morning, we went to that little shop just across the street.” Mom pointed toward the top of my head. “And I got you a little something to help you get started in Seattle.” She picked something up from the floor and placed it in her lap.

  “An umbrella?” I suggested and smiled at Dad.

  Mom tightened her lips in a playful manner. “No.”

  “A new sewing machine?” I offered again.

  “No,” she said, a little hesitant, “not a sewing machine this time.” She looked at Dad from the corner of her eye and placed a small white carton next to my French toast. “Open it!” she demanded.

  I looked at the box. It had a big sticker on it saying, “Welcome to the land of Lincoln.” I grabbed it and shook it.

  With a mouthful of food, Dad said, “Hey, that’s cheating.”

  “No, that’s cheating,” Mom said, pointing at Dad’s stuffed mouth.

  He looked at me and smiled. “This almost counts as a holiday,” I think he said.

  I removed the Lincoln sticker and looked inside the box. “The little something” was a stack of Post-it notes in four different colors: bright blue, pink, green, and light yellow. I couldn’t help smiling. “You went to the store and got me some Post-its?” Mom nodded and glanced at Dad.

  “Post-its,” he said, nodding too. “Your mom always did have a knack for buying the perfect gift, huh?”

  I nodded. She did. See, I’ve always had this thing with Post-it notes. I mean, can you imagine a better way to express your message to the world, than by tiny bright and colorful squares of paper with tape on one side and freedom of speech on the other?

  In my old room, I had dedicated one entire wall with hundreds and hundreds of appreciation notes, among others: “Thank you for inventing Mac and Cheese.”

  “Thanks for women’s right to vote.”

  “Thank God for knockoff designer jeans, Abercrombie & Fitch, The Gilmore Girls, Grande lattes with extra foam, skinny jeans, and the iPhone.” You name it, and I had a Post-it for it. I had never really had any kind of system; the wall was just one big yellow Post-it note but judging by the colors—going fro
m a strong yellow, to a nicotine yellow, to an almost faded white—I could roughly tell the really old ones from the new ones.

  Right before we moved, I had spent an entire day going through all of the notes. It was a fun but somewhat of an emotional day—reliving some of the best years of my life. I remembered one in particular. It said: “Thanks for falling asleep at the dance and not...” The last part had been erased with a bad eraser, leaving a greasy gray smear on the note. But I remembered exactly what the last part once said... “not having sex on prom night.”

  A lot of seniors, including Maddie, had lost their virginity that particular night for no other reason than it being prom night. And while girls in prom dresses and Regis hair were having unprotected sex with some pimply-faced guy, I—exhausted from trying to finish my purple dress the night before—had fallen asleep on the staircase leading up to the girls’ restroom, waiting my turn.

  Miss Hawthorne, our P.E. teacher, had found me there sleeping in my purple dress, and assuming a great deal of alcohol was involved (how was she to know it was instead due to a great deal of sewing?), had called Mom and Dad. I woke up with Mom standing over me, smelling my breath.

  “This girl has not been drinking a single drop. She’s just tired. Don’t you ever just get tir...” Mom’s voice trailed off as she looked up at Miss Hawthorne. Maybe this was not the most appropriate question to ask the teacher also known as Miss Saddlebag; Miss Hawthorne chronically looks deprived of sleep.

  Without another word (about alcohol), Miss Hawthorne had just looked at Mom and nodded her head and left. The last thing I remember from my prom night—lying in the back of Dad’s old car—was Dad saying to Mom: “My daughter drunk? I don’t think so. Maybe she—Miss-what’s-her-name—was the one who was drunk. I swear, I could see a bottle of Jim Beam sticking out of one of those humongous bags,” he said. Mom giggled like a sixteen-year-old drunk girl herself. “Oh, stop it, Frank. We’re going to wake her.”

  “Nah, she’ll be sleeping till Monday.” He was right; I almost did.

  Sometimes I still wonder; what if I had ended up in a position where it would have been hard to say no? I knew that, for the most part, that was the number one reason for doing it in the first place, and I also knew that most girls regretted it immediately after—including Maddie. Since prom night, Maddie had had a long year of regrets. She had also fallen asleep that night, but in the back of Tyler’s truck, drunk and naked—her dress carelessly tossed in the back, stained by a can of beer on the floor. She hadn’t worn red or seen Tyler since that night.

  Right next to the smeared note, there had been three related Post-it notes from the very same night. One of them said, “Thanks for my first kiss.” It didn’t have a name on it, but his name was Larry and he was one of Annie’s belching brothers. (Annie, like her three older brothers, had a bad habit of constantly burping. She claimed it was a family weakness.) I often imagined what a dinner with the burping family would be like. Annie claimed her oldest brother, John, could burp the entire “Star Spangled Banner,” but I never got the chance to hear it myself. I never got invited for dinner, and I certainly never invited myself. He was nice to me, complimenting my green eyes, and had not burped one single time. The note next to it said: “Thanks Maddie, Annie, Taylor and Tamra for making my prom dress so special.” And the last one said: “Thank you, color purple (and Grandma), for making my green eyes pop.”

  I TAPPED MY FINGERS on top of the little white box and smiled. “Thanks, Mom. I guess you can never have too many Post-its,” I said, thinking of the stacks of new Post-its I had already packed a few days earlier.

  “You’re welcome. You said you might start a new Post-it wall in Seattle, so I figured...” She pointed at the box of empty statements. “You needed some new ones. A clean slate.” She smiled.

  “Uh-huh,” I said, thinking how detached and sad all of my old and discolored Post-it notes had looked—lying on top of each other in an old Converse shoebox.

  “Well, we still have a somewhat-large country to cross.” Dad stood and grabbed his cap, hanging from the chair next to him. In his loud conductor voice he announced, “All aboard,” making everyone, including Kerri Russell, turn their heads. Again.

  A few peanut butter sandwiches short

  I was awakened by Dad jumping around in his seat with excitement. “I see the sign. I see the sign. Next exit!” He adjusted his cap and looked at me and nodded.

  I rubbed my eyes and peered out the window. It was almost light outside, though it felt like it was still in the middle of the night. I glanced at the clock on the dashboard: four freaking thirty-five in the morning. Mom was still asleep, her head resting on the dashboard.

  Dad shifted into the right lane and I saw a sign that read: Kirkland next right.

  “I thought we were going to a place called Sammamish?”

  “Excellent memory!” He looked at me with pride. “And good pronunciation too. This is where we get off; it’s just a few miles east of here.”

  We traveled a bit further and made a turn onto a street not quite alive yet, when Dad pointed out the front window and smiled. “Look, this is going to make your mom happy.”

  “Pine trees?”

  “No. That!” He pointed straight ahead.

  I gazed out the window again, and right there—in between a thousand and one pine trees—was a friendly and familiar face. “Ah, Starbucks.” I turned toward Dad and nodded my approval.

  Mom sat up straight with her eyes wide open. “Did someone say my name?” She looked at us with a pair of puffy eyes and smiled.

  “Morning, precious. You sure look ... awake.” We both snickered at the sight of the huge red dashboard mark on her forehead.

  Mom leaned over and adjusted the rearview mirror and squinted her eyes. In a voice that sounded more demanding than requesting she said, “Drive through?”

  “I have to go.” I squeezed my thighs together and smiled.

  “Me too,” Dad said and moved his hands to his crotch.

  “I could use a potty break too, I suppose,” Mom said, taking one last look in the mirror—estimating the damages.

  They are so weird sometimes.

  “MAYBE THE DOORS ARE different in Seattle.” Dad was leaning up against the door, trying to open it for the third time—this time pushing and pulling at the same time.

  “Maybe we should just read what it says on the door,” I suggested.

  We all looked at the door.

  “Open five a.m. to eleven p.m.” I grabbed my phone. Four fifty-two in the morning. “Maybe, it’s just because it’s f... really early in the morning?”

  “Christ.” Mom rubbed her face and leaned against the wall. “Well, at least it’s not raining.”

  “I told you so.” Dad looked up into the summer morning air. “It’s just perfect. Not too hot.”

  “Dad, it’s five in the morning,” I reminded him.

  “Even better,” he said, not making any sense at all.

  Suddenly the door opened from the behind and Dad, slightly leaning up against the door, almost made a spectacular entrance.

  “Morning, early birds,” the Starbucks woman said with a smile too wide for five a.m.

  “Morning,” we all said at the same time, following in the Starbucks woman’s footsteps.

  “What brings you up this early?” she asked from behind the counter.

  “Moving,” Dad said politely.

  “Peeing,” I said a little too loud.

  “Coffee,” Mom said even louder.

  “Gotcha!” the guy said and took our orders.

  A few minutes later, we had all peed and had our first sip of Starbucks coffee, in Seattle, which Dad thought was a very big deal (of course he insisted on taking a picture of me and Mom—at five in the morning—bad hair, forehead mark, and everything).

  A couple of guys in heavy work shoes entered the door and sat down at a table right next to us.

  “Morning,” the tall one said and took off his cap.
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br />   “Morning,” Mom said, automatically reaching for her dashboard tattoo.

  “Up early, huh?” It was the tall one again.

  Dad sighed. “Moving.”

  “Uh-huh,” the short guy said, sizing up Dad.

  “We have been on the road since Saturday morning.” Dad tapped his fingers on top of his cup. “We’ve had a lot of these guys.” He sipped his coffee and added, “Connecticut,” nodding his head.

  “Wow, you drove all the way here?” The tall one pointed out of the window.

  “Yep.” Dad looked at Mom and smiled. “But I’ve had the best co-pilot ever.”

  “What?” Mom looked up from behind her huge venti.

  “Not much room in there, huh? We just picked it up last night.” The tall one pointed out the window again.

  “The two of you moving?” Mom sat her cup down and smiled, revealing an extra-foam-venti smile.

  “The two of us?” The short guy pointed at the tall one and himself. “No, no, no, no,” he said with a bashful smile. “We’re just moving a load for some old couple.”

  “They cleared their entire house a few days ago, and all we had to do was load the truck, and then unload it at the storage unit. We’re on our way there now. It’ll take two hours tops,” the tall one explained.

  “Easiest five hundred bucks, if you ask me,” the short guy added.

  “I didn’t,” the tall one said.

  “Well...” Dad stood up and grabbed his cup, “have a nice day, gentleman. We better...” He looked at Mom, still working on her supersized coffee. “We have a house to meet,” he said.

  The tall one nodded and tapped on the table. Mom and I both got up at the same time.

  “Bye, guys.” Mom grabbed her barrel of coffee and smiled.

  “Have a coffee-licious day,” one of them hollered from behind us as we left.