​​​Chapter Twenty-Three
Wren

Waking up is always the hardest part of the day. It involves breaking through the dark to the light, and there’s too much of it streaming through the crack in my black curtains. My eyes open to my popcorn ceiling, and I have the same thought I have every morning: I wonder what it would taste like with a little butter.

And then I remember last night. Avoiding Mom, getting too high. Forcefully sleeping through the dull cramp in the back of my head reminding me Mareck’s gone. I feel under the covers and curse under my breath. I’ve peed my bed again, a downside of needing to go and being too high to do anything about it.

The bathroom mirror confirms it: I’m a urine-soaked mess. There’s a wide breadth of limp skirt material belting around my hips. My hair is making fun of me, ringing around in jet black curly cues so I look like a half-dead Barbie doll, and any which way I turn, it’s pretty obvious that there’s no winning in this situation. So I step into the shower’s steam and soap up, washing away the glue, the urine, The Mule and her blackened face and Mareck and his ugly heart. I ignore my pin thin thighs, my chest that’s “flatter than an ironing board” as one of my classmates once so gallantly put it.

I make a better boy than most boys.

I feel better, though, in the muggy seven-by-seven room and wipe a hole in the fogged up mirror. My face, small, a peckish little hen of a nose sitting defiant and two eyes ringed with leftover mascara, not grey but not green, looking through me. In this game of chicken, I blink first. I find my eyeliner in my junky makeup drawer and go to work.

Back in my room, I stash my defiled t-shirt and underwear into a plastic bag I found in the dense waste under my bed. I change into a tight pair of jeans with safety pins saddled up the sides. The t-shirt is white, nearly threadbare. One I should wear a bra under, but I don’t.

I walk through the empty apartment with my laundry bags. Jerry and Mom work weekends, so I’ll have the apartment to myself. Usually my plans are already made. Mareck comes by. Mareck watches our TV. Mareck eats our food. Mareck goes too far with me, and I regret everything I do with him which is stupid because I know girls who do far worse. And why should I feel guilty anyways? It’s not like there’s anyone here to judge.

Mareck eventually goes home, and then I smile through dinner with Mom and Jerry who tells us about the crazy people and their broken A/Cs. Once, a lady offered him cat food as a snack. The thought is one I easily climb, thinking of Jerry and his lovable face graciously turning down a feline treat. I grab Mom’s oversized Razorbacks sweatshirt and put it on for his sake.

Today, there will be no Mareck. I wipe hard at the thought like a smudge, letting my anger eat at my hurt. At least it’s Saturday now which is a small gift from the gods. Maybe in two days The Mule will forget all about our little tiff out in The Yard. 

Maybe I should change my identity and move to Mexico. 

I think about a chocolate pudding cup, but the stench from my laundry is thick enough to eat, so I skip breakfast and head to the laundry room in our complex.

The cold hurts but snaps me awake, and I can see through the glass double doors that the laundry room’s practically empty. Inside, I pretend to read a magazine until the fat lady with her load of whites has folded the entire lot. She walks with a limp and frowns at me like it’s my fault her legs don’t work.

I take off one of my boots and dump out a sad tinkling of coins after the lady leaves. Then I start in on my search, first the tiny coin compartment in the vending machine, digging upward and onward until I’m scared I’ll lose a finger. Next, under the bench smashed against the wall. I find a quarter crammed behind one of the legs and retrieve my find along with a thread of web and a baby spider.

Yelping and smacking my hands on my pants, I’m thankful that the laundry room is empty. But then I turn around.

The Kid is staring at me slack-jawed with her hand held out. The Kid is small, half my size small. There’s a rumor at school that she was a preemie and was supposed to die but decided it just wasn’t the right time.

“For the love of Moses,” I say. The Kid takes her hand and helps me to my feet. For the first time ever, I feel like a young baby giraffe looking down on a blade of grass. The Kid wears a blue pea coat, and in the crack where the sides of it should meet, I see she’s wearing her typical garb: black sweatpants, the kind that choke off your ankles and an oversized tee-shirt with the words “Frankie Says Relax,” whatever that means. The Kid’s smart, the smartest kid in our class, but she dresses like she doesn’t believe it.

“What are you doing here? You don’t live here do you?” I dart my eyes around the room, preparing myself for a Zinberg run-in.

“No. Dad told me you’ll be joining Cornerstone. I wanted to welcome you.”

“On a Saturday?” I ask, hit with the sudden panic that my laundry smells like human waste, so I go to dump my bags in an empty washer.

“Yeah, well, Saturdays are the cornerstone of Cornerstone. So to speak.” The Kid is eyeing the place like she’s scared to touch anything. I don’t blame her. The laundry room at Legends Apartments is a decorative blend of mental hospital meets torture chamber.

“They have a real knack for ambiance around here,” I say, following The Kid’s gaze. “It’s legendary...so to speak.”

“Mmm...hmmm.” There’s something more written on The Kid’s face but I don’t probe. I wait until she gathers enough courage to let me have it. “He’s a tool. He shouldn’t have stolen your bike.”

I snort, shove in the change after adding a whopping dollop of somebody’s nearly empty Tide they left on a dryer. “That just another one of your spy tactics? Or did daddy give you my life story?” I feel kind of bad I say it and try avoiding The Kid’s eyes. But I can’t because the girl has the saddest, palest blue eyes in the world. They don’t even have the decency to cover the truth up.

“I was out in our car in the parking lot, waiting for Dad. I know what happened.” The Kid’s face looks like mine should: disappointed in the world. But I’m shocked anyone else–besides the handful of both conscious and unconscious people at The Yard–know about Mareck. I’m surprised anyone else cares.

“Yeah, well, he’s got a lot on his plate right now.” 

“That so?”

“I don’t know. Ask him yourself. You seem to be terribly interested in him for whatever reason.” I go and sit on the bench where The Kid found me on hands and knees. She sits right next to me. 

“Why are you really here?” I ask. We’re both hunched, the big and little versions of each other. The air smells like detergent and a used diaper that hasn’t been properly disposed of. The Kid rolls around options in her head and looks me in the eye again. “I thought you could use a friend.”

I snort again, this time quieter. I’ve never really had a friend. When we first moved to White Smoke, there was one girl, my mom’s friend’s daughter. But I don’t remember a lot about her. And besides, I grew up and learned what everyone else already knew about me: I was nothing more than trailer trash. So it was just me for a while until the first day of freshman year when it became me and Mareck. And so losing him isn’t just losing a small spark of love. It’s losing hope, too.

I stretch and think about it for a second, trying my best to ignore The Kid’s blue eye attempting to catch me in her periphery. I figure maybe an adventure would get me out of my head. And if anything goes south, there’s a bottle of glue ready to help dry my tears. “Well, friend. We better get going then,” I say, hand extended, and I feel the bones in The Kid’s shockingly small one. 

“Sure. But one thing.”

“What?”

“Call me Rhonda.”