by Meg Elison
I watch the bubbly water rolling. I don’t answer, and I don’t follow the glass when she takes a sip.
“But you’re a good kid. And it’s not your fault that your mom doesn’t have much time for you. And I just wanted to help a little. I know how mean kids at school can be.”
She doesn’t have any idea. But she looks like she’s pleased with herself, and she deserves that much.
The waiter brings us salads and bread and pasta and cheese and pepper, and setting it all up is like a major deal.
Bette is absorbed in eating for just a few minutes, and I am so grateful. I work my way through everything in front of me, and they keep bringing me more tea. That part of this day could go on forever and that’d be fine. But Bette’s talking again.
She takes a deep breath. I put the straw in my mouth and pull and pull and pull.
“You have good grades. You’re savvy. You’re organized. You could really go somewhere and be something. I just want you to know that. You’re not stuck.”
She says this like I don’t know. Like I haven’t been doing the math since I was twelve. Just a few more years until I can move out, get a job, go to college if I beg for help just right. Four years of high school and planning out how I can take Andy with me. Until then, stuck is exactly the word.
She delicately pushes her fork into the sliced mushrooms on the edge of her plate, and I think of the ones growing in Andy’s dresser drawer.
Enough cold tea down my throat and I can do it. Always braver on a full stomach.
“Thank you. This all really means a lot to me.” I sound normal. Fine.
She smiles, and she looks a little like she might cry. I eat the last slice of the bread, wiping my plate clean with it. I’m hoping she’ll order dessert, but she leaves half her lunch uneaten on her plate and doesn’t mention it. Oh well.
The ride home is quiet, and I hold the bag in both hands the whole way. She pulls up to the gate again to drop me off. “Do you think your mom’s home? I could just pop in and explain—”
“No, she works really late. She won’t be home for a while yet. Don’t worry, I’ll explain it to her.”
“Well, okay. If you’re sure.”
She’s planning to hug me. I open the car door and swing my legs out, grabbing my one big shopping bag.
“I’m sure. Thank you again, Bette.” Can a person die of guilt?
She rolls down the window after I shut the door. “Oh, I forgot. Kristi said to tell you she signed you guys up for some contest with your science teacher. She said she’ll text you about it later.”
So Kristi knows you’re here. So this isn’t our little secret. Experiments in trust never seem to produce good results.
“Okay, thanks.” I’m already turning to walk away as I say it. Up the stairs quick, and I push the shopping bag in and slide through the window. I pull the new clothes out, to hide them away and calculate how long I can keep them looking new. I leave the bag directly in the middle of the living-room floor, clearing a spot between soda cans and cigarette butts, kicking aside a wet, yellowed T-shirt.
8:20 p.m.
Mom brings home tacos again. I let Andy have them. He grins and there’s shredded cheese in his teeth, and I feel that swelling slug in my chest that I can’t ever fix this for him. He’s sitting on something dry, but surrounded by waterlogged junk. It’s never bothered him; Andy doesn’t know any better. He shoots the balled-up wrappers into the shopping bag from the mall. It sits up like a bright, gold-edged bucket. The bottom of it is already wet; I can see the inky-gray water crawling up the sides.
Nobody asks where it came from.
That’s life.
Thursday 7:30 a.m.
First period is English. Honors English is for some reason a collection of the worst people in this school.
We’re reading Great Expectations. Well, somebody is reading it. I read it already. It has its moments.
Mrs. Forbes told us we could turn in the midterm essay anytime before winter break. I hope she knows that means she’s gonna get like twenty-five papers on December 22. I turned mine in right after Halloween. I wrote about the symbolism of Miss Havisham, the woman who covered all her windows, stopped all her clocks, and lived in her wedding dress with her rotting wedding cake for her whole life after she got left at the altar. I felt like I knew her.
I got an A.
I sit in the last seat on the far side of the classroom, under an open window. It doesn’t matter where I sit.
Paul DeMarco breezes past me on his way to the front of the class with his iPad in his hands. “God, it’s like a cat pissed on a bag of rotten peanuts.”
Ryan Audubon is right behind him. “No, it’s more like when my dog eats his own crap and then throws it up and then eats it again and then craps it again.”
Emerson Berkeley walks in behind them with his headphones in, doesn’t say a word to anybody. He sits in the front corner of the room. Kristi says he has this theory that it’s the easiest place for the teacher to overlook.
Paul and Ryan don’t directly address me, so we can all pretend this isn’t happening. I can look out the window and wait for Paul to get distracted by his iPad, or for Ryan to show him something on his phone, or for the two of them to focus on anything else.
But when Jane Chase comes in, I know my time pretending no one is talking to me is over.
“Layla, can I ask you something?” Her eyebrows are plucked so thin they’re like a single hair each. Her perfect hair, her shark smile. I could kill her a thousand times.
“Can’t stop you.”
“How do you get your hair to do that? I try to rat mine up to look like a scene kid or whatever, and no matter what I use it won’t stay.” She leans her cheek against her hand and stares at me.
“Natural talent.” I’m waiting for Amber Rodin or Mackenzie Biros to show up; they usually travel in a pack. People trickle through the door, but not those two.
“Really? There’s no trick to it? Like I want it super tangly, like yours. And then like really greasy at the roots, but then super dry at the ends. It can’t just naturally be like that. You must be doing something. Please, teach me your secrets.” She’s just barely not laughing. Her phone’s not out this time. She’s not recording, so I have no idea what she’s getting out of this. There isn’t even anybody around to laugh.
No, wait. There’s Mackenzie.
“Jane, come on. The bell’s gonna ring.” Mackenzie has a new leather jacket, in a really pretty shade of light blue-green. I almost want to tell her how much I like it.
Amber brings up the rear, running her fingers through her big curly hair to pull it all over to one side of her head. I should be asking her this question—I’d give anything to know how she does that. Her hair is almost as curly as mine. But it’s so shiny and long, and she can pull her hand right through it. I stare and stare.
“What?” Amber stares back at me, her green eyes narrow.
I look away.
Mackenzie is dragging Jane by her sleeve as the bell finally rings. I watch Amber’s hair as she settles a few rows ahead of me. Jane and Mackenzie laugh about something and I’m not even here. In my head, I’m in my hideout. I’m safe.
Mrs. Forbes reads a piece of my essay in her lecture today about Great Expectations. She doesn’t tell them it’s mine.
I’m so relieved.
1:44 p.m.
As soon as Mr. Raleigh tells us we can break into groups, Kristi comes and sits on the stool next to me.
“So my mom told you about the contest?” She is really committed to this black look. She has way too much eyeliner on. She looks like a raccoon.
“Yeah, but she didn’t say what the contest was, just that you wanted to do it.”
“Okay, so. We sign up to use one of the school’s cameras. They’re really good cameras, they got them from some company who just gave them to the school. The assignment is to find a really unusual biome here in our own town. So like a little bit of grass on the freeway
median with a few bugs in it or whatever.”
“Okay, yeah. We could do that. Do you have any ideas?”
“Yeah, the freeway thing. I just said it. Are you even listening?” She looks up from her black nails, already pissed at me.
“Oh, I thought that was just like an example. Not your actual idea. So how do we sign up?”
“I already signed us up. We’re a team. So like you go film the biome and identify what’s in it and then bring it to me. I have Final Cut Pro on my Mac, so I’ll do the editing and add music and credits and all that. It’ll look awesome!”
“Okay. Okay, let’s do it.”
Mr. Raleigh shows up right on time. “Alright, ladies. Did you figure out what you’re going to film?”
“Yeah, we got it.” I check his black eyes for the expression of anxious pity. He’s looking Kristi over, instead. As if her new makeup is the concern of the week now.
“Kristi, all clear on the project guidelines?”
“Yeah. When do we get cameras?”
“You’ll get permission slips today, and you can take a camera home when it’s signed and returned.”
I’m not even worried about it. Mom’s signature has never been a problem.
4:05 p.m.
“Both of our moms have to sign it. It says that, right here.”
While she walks home, Kristi is trying to shoot a video of herself that shows off all her possible facial expressions in ten seconds.
“Okay, fine. Fine, I’ll get it signed.”
She’s trying to look worried, but she wants to look worried and still pretty. It seems like a hard job.
“So I’ll get my mom to sign mine tonight.”
Andy is right at my heels. “You’re gonna have Mom sign it? For real?”
“Yes, just like she signed your field-trip slip last month,” I say through clenched teeth. I give him the pinch that is supposed to shut him up, but it doesn’t.
“You’re gonna get a camera so you can do a naked-lady show!” He puts his hands on his hips and does a weird little wiggle dance.
“Yes, I’m gonna make a naked-lady show. You’re so stupid, Andy.”
He puckers up his lips and makes kissy noises at me. He gets away too quick for me to kick him.
Kristi’s yelling, “God, I hate you! I can’t stand you! You’re disgusting!”
We both turn to look at her, but she’s acting for her phone again.
“So if we get our permissions in tomorrow, we can start filming after school,” I say, just to get her to focus.
“Maybe I should do the narrating.” She’s rewatching the video of herself.
“What? Why?”
“I’m a really good actor. I could give it some drama, you know?” She makes the word drama just a little too long.
“I guess, but you don’t know what anything is.”
She turns her screen off finally and slips the phone into her pocket. “Okay, but you could film it and then write a script, and then I could be, like, the actor. And then edit it on my computer and make it look really pretty.”
“So I’m just, like, a camera person, then? I get all the work and you get all the fun stuff?”
“Writing the definitions down is fun!”
I give her the best eye roll I can manage. We cross the street, not talking.
“Editing is hard work, too. And I have to do it, because you don’t even have a computer,” Kristi says, as if she’s the victim in all this.
I can feel my cheeks getting hot. “I can do it on one of the school computers. And you can do your own stupid homework. I don’t know why I always get stuck doing all the crap on our projects while you do drawings on the cover, or the acting. It’s not even fair.”
“Layla. Layla. Layla. I want a donut, Layla. Buy me a donut.” Andy is patting me with one sticky hand, pointing at the donut shop.
“Leave me alone, Andy.”
“Fine, then I’ll do the project myself. Since you’re being such a bitch about it. And you can use one of the crappy school computers,” Kristi says.
“Fine. And you can try and figure out what those little squiggles in the textbook mean. They’re called words, by the way.”
“Ugh. I can see why my mom feels sorry for you. Here.” She pulls two dollars out of her pocket and gives them to Andy. “So you can get a donut. Since I know you’re . . . whatever.”
Andy’s so excited about a donut, he runs off without even saying thanks. He’s still too little to really feel humiliation.
Are my eyes fire right now? My eyes feel like fire and my face is red-hot metal.
I think of a million awful things to say. I think of every curse word I have ever heard, of telling her that no one likes her because she’s a conceited bitch and that redheads don’t have souls.
I don’t say anything.
I walk fast toward the gate. I can’t even stand being close enough to hear her. But when she starts laughing, I hear that.
“Jane Chase just tweeted about you. I think I’ll tweet her back.”
I walk away fast before I say something I can’t unsay. This has happened before.
She’ll be back.
Coming through the window, I can hear my mother moving around in there. It’s too late to turn back—she knows I’m home.
Mom’s standing on the edge of the kitchen, right where the living-room carpet starts.
She’s got a big black trash bag in one hand, and she’s smoking with the other. Her clothes look like they’re hanging off of her. Her eyes are too deep in her face. It looks like she dyed her hair earlier today—it’s crazy red, like a clown or a cartoon character. Oh shit. All the signs. I hope Andy hangs out at the donut shop for a long time.
“Will you look at this place?”
I don’t say anything.
She picks up huge handfuls of everything: A glass jar with moldy spaghetti sauce running down one side. Gray socks. Wet newspaper. Chicken bones.
“This is unbelievable. I work all day and this is what I come home to? How am I supposed to make dinner? I can’t live like this.”
You haven’t made dinner in months.
I don’t say anything.
She finds that banana that I slid one foot through a couple of days ago, black and crawling with tiny flies. “Can’t you see this? Don’t you know this place needs to be cleaned up?”
Her voice is rising. I hope she gets this one out of her system fast. I really need to go to school tomorrow.
“Well? Why are you just standing there? Get a bag.”
I walk over to the giant box of giant bags and pull one off the spool. I sink down and start filling it blindly, with whatever I find when I put my hand down. I shove it full and open another.
“Don’t just set it down! Take it out to the dumpster.”
I know better than to offer resistance. I push the bag through the window and follow it out. I walk it down to the dumpster by the gate and I wait as long as I can, hoping to catch Andy on his way in and warn him. When time runs out, I jog back up.
“How the hell could that take you so long?” She’s sitting on the couch, pulling up soda cans and magazines and takeout boxes from the moat she makes around herself when she won’t get off it. “This couch smells like pee. Has your little brother been peeing here? Is he that lazy?”
The couch smells like pee because you lay on it not moving for almost nine days last month. Those were bad days. You didn’t eat. If you had stopped drinking the minimum amount of water to keep a human body alive, I would have had to get help, and I didn’t know who I would call. But you kept drinking water, and you did eventually get up. You started talking again.
I don’t say anything.
“Go empty the bucket in the bathroom.”
I go right away and suck the hose to drain the bucket into the bathtub. I’m still in there when I hear Andy come through the window. Damn it.
Out in the living room, he’s already crying, sitting on the floor with a garbage bag. He does
n’t know about not answering yet.
“I’m sorry, Mommy.”
“I brought you all those tacos. I got you that cereal you like and I put a roof over your head, and you can’t even help me keep the house from falling apart.” She’s standing right over him, waving her arms.
“I’m sorry, Mommy, I’m sorry.”
She won’t quit. She bends down and picks up an empty juice bottle. “How long has it been since you had this kind of juice?”
“A long time.” He can’t even catch his breath.
“Then how can it still be on the floor?” She’s screaming now. “How can you live like this?”
She stomps into the kitchen. I’ve seen this a hundred times, but she has never made the mistake of opening the fridge. No one is allowed to open the fridge. She tenses up like a cat hissing if you even go near it. She opens the door wide and stands there a minute before she throws up all over the floor.
The fridge went bad sometime around Easter, which was six months ago. I know the ham is still in there. I think there was chicken in the freezer. Definitely there was milk. The rest I don’t remember. The power went off the Monday after Easter, and Mom said not to open it, to keep everything cold until the power came back on.
But that took almost two weeks. So everything went bad slowly, in the dark with the door closed. The few times it’s been opened since then, the smell has been something intensely awful. Not like bad eggs, not like spoiled milk. Not like a dumpster, not like poop. Not even like all those things put together. It’s not like anything at all.
I can’t get close, but I go to the edge of the kitchen and I can see. It’s all black and green in there; the black is slick and wet while the green is thick and furry. Parts of it are moving, and I know that those are maggots. She slams the door. I’m hoping that took the fight out of her.
It didn’t.
She gets under the kitchen sink and finds a bottle of something. She takes the cap off and starts pouring it over where she’s thrown up, which is mostly boxes of expired Hamburger Helper she had stacked against the wall of the kitchen, and some spilled cereal. She pours it all over, splashing up and down the kitchen floor. Roaches stream out as the cleaning stuff drips through.