by Nora Olsen
Ms. Guerrero stood up and shook hands with my dad. “Mr. Kirchendorfer, let me give you my card and a folder explaining all the services I offer. You go away, think it over, and let me know if you’d like to engage me as your lawyer. This initial consultation was at no charge.”
Then Ms. Guerrero gave me a bone-crunching handshake.
“If you’re looking for a job, send me your résumé,” she said. “I could use someone like you working in my office.”
“Oh, I have a job mucking out stables,” I said.
She laughed, her earrings clanking. “It’s the same job, Clarissa, the same job. There are some mortgage foreclosures that need to be mucked out.”
“I like being around horses,” I said. “But maybe I can have two jobs.”
“Mr. Kirchendorfer, with a go-getter like your daughter in the family, I think you guys will be just fine,” Ms. Guerrero said, with false cheer. I was sure she could see we were totally doomed.
In the car, I stared at my father. “I think you should hire her and go to court,” I said. “The bank shouldn’t get away with this. You could get the house for free, like that guy in Massachusetts did.”
“I’m not going to hire her,” my dad said. “Listening to what she had to say was very illuminating. There’s no way we can keep this house. I give up.”
All I really heard him say was, “I give up.”
“I want to make a fresh start. We’re going to move out, and I’m going to mail the keys to the bank,” Dad said.
I pictured a fat envelope stuffed with jingly keys. I wanted to ask him how we could make a fresh start when we had no money and no place to live and his credit was destroyed. I wanted to beg him to hire Ms. Guerrero, who seemed canny and capable, or to do a short sale with one of the ten million real estate agents who had approached us. But I didn’t want to reproach him, or underscore what a mess we were in.
“I don’t want to be one of those people who lives rent free in a house that’s in foreclosure while other people are making their payments like they’re supposed to,” Dad said. “Barnaby, one of my clients, was talking about people who do that. Of course he had no idea about my situation.”
“Dad! I know all about Barnaby. That man owns a 1962 Ferrari. He has no idea. Don’t listen to what he has to say. You think he has any idea what it’s like to be punked by the bank and strapped for cash?”
“My clients are the ones who are putting food on the table,” Dad said. “Don’t disrespect them.”
Frustration welled up inside me. My dad made no sense.
“Someone else who can actually pay can move into our house,” Dad said. “Why should we be keeping it off the market?”
I closed my eyes and turned my head to bury my face in the car headrest. I had gone through my life in a bubble, not realizing money could ever be a problem, until just a few weeks ago. I was beginning to suspect that my parents just were not that good with money. They were exactly the sort of people who were taken advantage of. I had been flattered my dad brought me to this meeting with the lawyer instead of my mom because I understood mortgages better than she did. But really, Mom should have been there. If I could learn about mortgages, Mom could too. And Mom should stop Dad from doing dumb things instead of going along with all his decisions.
My house, which I had lived in since I was eleven, was going to be history. I took a deep breath and tried to think about what was really important. What my parents did with the foreclosure was not up to me. And the kind of people they were was probably not going to change. I had helped as much as I could. I could be pissed and allow the foreclosure to drive a wedge between me and my parents. Or I could accept them and love them for what was good about them. Their kindness, their integrity. In just a few years I would be in college, God willing, and then I would be in charge of my own destiny. For now, I should stand by my parents while we all had to weather this stormy crisis.
“I love you, Dad,” I said. “I don’t always agree with you, but I love you.”
“Thanks, pum’kin,” he said, chuckling. It kind of pissed me off that he didn’t understand what it cost me to say that to him, but having parents was all about being pissed off at them.
We passed the Red Line Diner, and I remembered what Lexie had said about it.
“Dad, why’s it called Red Line?” I asked.
“It’s a driving term,” Dad explained. “On your car you have a speedometer saying how fast you go, and there’s another little dial called the tachometer.” He pointed.
“That’s the RPM thing,” I said. “That says how fast the engine is turning.” You can’t listen to your dad talk about cars nonstop for your entire life and pick up nothing.
“Yup. There’s a red line on it, which means if you go faster than that for any period of time, your engine could blow up.” He made a little exploding noise. “It’s the upper limit of RPMs that you can accelerate. So if you’re driving your car at the red line, you’re badass.”
I knew Lexie was totally wrong. That crazy girl. I had a twisted sense of satisfaction.
“What are you smiling about?” Dad asked.
“Nothing.” I stopped smiling. There was really no reason to smile, not even love. My family was so screwed.
“I just don’t want to end up homeless or on Uncle Hal’s ostrich farm,” I said.
“Don’t worry, we won’t be homeless,” he reassured me.
But that only made me worry more.
Chapter Twenty-six
Lexie
On a Saturday morning, Clarissa called me in tears. As a matter of fact, she woke me up. I’m not an early bird.
“I left the ring in the house!” she wailed.
“What’s that?”
“I left the ring you gave me! The first time we kissed, the I’ve-been-with-you-for-half-an-hour ring? I left it in a drawer of my desk, and I left my desk behind. When I was mad at you. And my dad brought all our keys to the bank after we moved out last weekend.”
“You didn’t keep any keys?” I asked.
“No. Well, our neighbor Mrs. Martinez must still have a key. She used to water our plants when we were on vacation. Will you help me break in and get my ring back?”
“Sure,” I said. I had lots of rings; I could give Clarissa a different ring. We had been going out for eleven days now since I had sung under her window, so she was due for a new one. But her request was epic. Breaking and entering to get my girlfriend’s ring back? This was what I was born to do. I hoped it wouldn’t just be as simple as getting the key from the neighbor.
Plus, I thought maybe Clarissa just needed to say good-bye to her house one more time. I had helped the Kirchendorfers move out the weekend before and bring most of their stuff to a storage unit. It had been so hectic, Clarissa barely got a chance to look around, let alone burn sage and cry, or whatever you’re supposed to do when you lose your home.
I picked Clarissa up at the Extended Stay America, and we drove to Bluebird of Happiness Court.
“Wow, someone else has a foreclosure sign,” Clarissa marveled, pointing to another house on the cul-de-sac.
When we pulled up in front of Clarissa’s old house, we were confounded. There was a new sign about an auction date, but the thing that really hit you in the eye was a huge Dumpster. Beside the Dumpster was a big white pickup truck with a trailer attached, backed right up to the house. The side of the trailer read Cristoforo Colombo Trash Out Company. Every door to the house was open. And burly men were walking in and out with trash bags. I saw a giant egg lying on the ground, and then a man stepped on it and crushed it.
“Oh my God, what is this?” asked Clarissa.
My heart ached for Clarissa, but I was also thinking it was a Dumpster diver’s dream. So much stuff. Every item the Kirchendorfers had left behind.
A muscled, tattooed man was carrying a reclining chair out the front door as if it weighed no more than a matchstick. Bam! It went into the Dumpster.
“That was my dad’s easy chai
r,” Clarissa said. “My mom said he couldn’t bring it because it’s so ugly.”
I got out of the car, and Clarissa followed.
“Help you girls?” the tattooed man asked. “They don’t live here anymore.”
“I know,” Clarissa said. “It was me, I lived here. And I forgot something.”
“Well,” he said, stroking his stubble. “I don’t know. It’s not your house anymore. I don’t want to let you in, in case you chain yourself to the wall or something. Why didn’t you just bring it with you in the first place?”
“Because it was so small,” Clarissa said. “I didn’t realize. It’s a ring. Lots of sentimental value. I left it in my desk drawer. My parents said we didn’t have room to bring all the furniture.”
The man brightened. “Was it the desk with lots of little drawers, upstairs? The pinky-white one?”
“Lilac, yes,” she said. “Sort of shabby chic with a curved front?”
“I put that in the trailer for my brother’s girl,” he said. “Nice desk. Let’s take a look.”
He led us into the trailer. “So weird,” Clarissa said. Here were all kinds of furniture, stacked neatly. The man heaved things out of the way like they weighed nothing and exposed a desk. “Take a look,” he said.
Clarissa opened the drawer and scrabbled through some papers. “It’s here,” she said and held up the evil-eye ring, the stone in the center of the eye looking yellow and bright.
“Good for you,” the man said. “Betcha your boyfriend would be mad if you lost that.”
Clarissa winked at me.
“Thanks a lot,” Clarissa said.
“Don’t mention it. Good luck.”
Clarissa sped back to the car, giving me the impression she didn’t like seeing her house disemboweled like that.
“Shall we bounce?” I asked.
“Yes, oh please, yes,” Clarissa said. She admired her ring and didn’t look out the window until we had left Bluebird of Happiness Court.
“Desi says she’s going to buy the house back someday,” Clarissa said. “But that’s just a stupid fantasy. Can we take Desi out for pizza with us? She’s been kind of down in the dumps.”
“Girls who are down in the dumps deserve everything,” I said, touching Clarissa’s leg. That was so her, to be upset herself but to worry about her sister.
“Dad has been hanging around the hotel room, fuming because he had to sell the Daimler, and that’s not helping,” Clarissa said. “Plus Skippy keeps barking, and apparently Extended Stay America has some kind of rule about how many barks your dog is allowed to do. I think we’re all going bananas. I’m so glad Desi got nominated for homecoming queen the day after we moved out. That was a really good moment.”
“Yeah,” I said. They’d announced the top nominees who were in the running at a spirit rally before a football game. I’d gone with Clarissa and Desi, making it the first time I’d attended either a spirit rally or a football game. I’d managed not to vomit, and it was really nice to see Desi so excited about being a top nominee. Slobberin’ Robert, in absentia, had also been voted a top nominee, which I thought was a sick joke. All last week Clarissa, Desi, and I had been feverishly baking vegan cupcakes for Desi to hand out at school, and creating a Facebook page for her campaign. After all that work, the girl had better win.
We went back to Extended Stay America and picked up Desi, then headed to Pleasant Ridge Pizza. The pizza parlor was decorated with lots of wine bottles and mirrors, and there were autumn leaves painted on the window. We sat down in a booth, and I handed over the money to Desi, who said her homework for life skills class was to order food.
“I wish my homework was buying pizza,” I said after Desi went up to the counter.
“Last year in health we had to buy condoms,” Clarissa said. “Did you have that class?”
“Yeah, with Ms. Nunez. I wouldn’t do it. I told her lesbians don’t need condoms.”
“Oh, you,” Clarissa said, nudging me with her foot. But then her mood changed to serious. “It makes me so mad that the bank is going to get away with it,” she said. “I was just reading how MegaBank dumped lousy mortgages on the government, helped cause the mortgage crisis that created a recession, and then got billions of dollars from the government. Now they’re making money hand over fist while people are still screwed. And they took my house. I wish there was something we could do.”
“We could burn down the house,” I suggested. “Then they wouldn’t be able to sell it.”
“Too dangerous,” Clarissa said. “The fire might spread.”
“Break the windows? Lots of graffiti? Bring down the price they get for it?”
“Yeah, that might be good,” Clarissa said. “Shame on you, MegaBank! That kind of thing.”
“I’ll tell you what I should really do,” I said. “Drive my mom’s SUV right into it. It would ruin the house but wouldn’t hurt anyone.”
“Yeah, it would,” Clarissa said. “It would hurt you.”
“No, it wouldn’t,” I said. “That car is like a freakin’ tank. And it has airbags. I’d be fine.”
“I’ve had enough of stupid people I care about driving into solid objects, thanks very much,” Clarissa said. “Anyway, think about a demolition crew. They don’t just go around driving into things. They use wrecking balls. And heavy equipment.”
“Heavy equipment like bulldozers?” I asked, thinking of the bulldozer parked in Bluebird of Happiness Court.
“Like bulldozers,” Clarissa agreed, her eyes lighting up as the thought leaped from my mind to hers. Stuff like that made me think we were meant to be together. “I would totally drive a bulldozer into my old house.”
“Yeah, but I should be the one to do it,” I said. “I’d be better at it, no offense.”
“No, if anyone is going to do it, it should be me,” Desi said from behind us.
We turned. Desi was precariously balancing three plates of pizza and two cups of soda. Clarissa reached out and grabbed a slice before it hit the floor.
“It should be me because I won’t get in any trouble,” Desi said. “They don’t put people with Down syndrome in jail.”
“My pizza was supposed to be no cheese,” I said.
“Oops, sorry, I forgot,” Desi said.
“Des, that’s a serious life skills fail,” Clarissa scolded. “You should go get Lexie a different slice.”
“She can go get her own slice,” Desi said through a mouthful of pizza. “I’m busy eating.”
“Wait, are you guys serious about this?” I asked. “The destroying the house thing?”
“Absolutely,” said Desi. “It’s the right thing to do.”
Clarissa nodded. “Playing by the rules has gotten me nowhere. I want revenge. It’s personal.”
I picked up my slice and began eating it, telling myself it was Desi’s fault I was eating nonvegan food. The pizza was mouthwateringly delicious, the oozy hot cheese sliding into my mouth.
“I talked to the pizza man behind the counter about my campaign,” Desi said. “He was very nice. He said he’s going to have a Desi For Queen special. $9.99 for an extra-large pizza with one topping.”
“Wow, that’s brilliant,” I said.
“That’s why I should drive the bulldozer,” Desi said. “Brains, beauty, and pizza.”
“Des, you can’t be the driver,” Clarissa said. “They’ll never let you get your driver’s license if you do something like this.”
“My driving lessons aren’t going very well,” Desi said. “I don’t think I’ll ever be good enough to get a license anyway.”
“If we really did this, it would have to be a secret forever,” I told her. “Can you keep a secret?”
“Yes,” Desi said.
“You cannot,” Clarissa said disgustedly.
“I can so,” Desi said.
“Like what secrets have you kept?” I asked.
“Like—” Desi shut her mouth. “You’re trying to trick me! You’re trying to trick m
e!” She shoved my shoulder, way too hard.
“You know we’d probably all get caught,” I said. “We’d have to be prepared for that. Are you willing to go to jail, plus our parents will all be really pissed? You know we’ll get caught.”
But in a way, this would kind of be my dream. Going to prison for what I believed in, and for destroying stuff, just like Nelson Mandela! Well, maybe not just like. But what could make it clearer that I was not like my parents?
Clarissa got a wicked gleam in her eye. “They can’t catch us if we do it right.”
Chapter Twenty-seven
Clarissa
Lexie and I sat in her entertainment room, watching a DVD called When I Grow Up I Will Be…A Heavy Equipment Operator that we had gotten out of the library. I’d insisted that we could find out anything at the public library, including how to drive a bulldozer, and I was right.
The DVD started out with a jaunty song about different professions. “I want to drive an ambulance and go through red lights, I want to be a guitarist and play music all night,” it warbled. “I want to be a conductor and take your ticket on the train, I want to be a nurse and help kids who are in pain.”
“I don’t know if this is going to help,” Lexie said.
“No, it will,” I insisted, snuggling closer to her. She was always such a Debbie Downer. “Give it a chance.”
The movie explained that the blade of a dozer can move up to seventeen tons.
“That would definitely knock a hole in the house,” I said.
“You can tell just by looking that driving a bulldozer is fun…but you have to be careful because it can also be dangerous,” the movie cautioned.
Driving a bulldozer looked a little more complicated than I had imagined. There was no steering wheel, just a bunch of joysticks. And I wasn’t sure if they were even called joysticks. It didn’t look very intuitive. Plus, instead of a gas pedal and a brake, there was a decelerator.
The movie showed a bunch of different kinds of heavy equipment, mostly yellow Caterpillars. Lexie started telling me this detailed story about a strike at Caterpillar that had been cruelly broken by the heartless bosses, and then something about weaponized bulldozers that killed Palestinians. I told her to focus on learning how to drive one.