onto a stretcher.
Batting fruit flies out of my face, I pull the pail out onto the floor, grab the ends of the bag and pick it up like a dirty diaper. The Dumpster is in the basement. I hate going down there. Creeps me out.
The cool cement of the garage sends a jolt up my bare feet into my shinbones. The slap of each step echoes around the walls. I glance over my shoulder, thinking about all the horrible rape stories that take place in underground parking lots—and slam face-first into George.
“Hello, Sammie,” he says.
Up close like this, George is enormous, a wall.
“And what are you doing with bare feet, you little rascal?” He reaches out and slaps my butt.
A stupid laugh comes out of me. I skitter away toward the Dumpster.
“Sammie-girl, how is your mother? She’s still in the hospital, yes?”
“She’s better.” The bag drips as I chuck it into the big steel bin. “She just had a—She fainted.” I head back to the door.
“Are you home all alone?” George’s voice echoes.
“She’s fine.”
He walks alongside me. “You give any more thought about the class?” His eyebrows form an A-frame over his glasses. “I told you that I’m coaching the drama, yes?”
He’s told me—about a hundred times. He complained that he used to coach great theatre actresses in Romania, but here all anyone wants to do is get acting jobs on crappy TV shows. If he’s so great, how come he’s stuck managing this dump?
“Thinking about it.”
“Don’t waste time thinking,” he says as he plucks my wrist up. “You got something.” My hand is sandwiched between both of his now. “I know what I’m talking about. You have great potential.”
I catch his wink through the tinted glasses he always wears.
“Ha ha,” I say, and pull my hand back. Marlene would be pissed off with me for not telling him to eff off. But I’m not sure if he’s technically done anything that bad. Plus, there’s the fact that George is the only thing standing between us and the street.
I reach the basement door and unlock it. “I’ll ask my mom.”
Pulling the door open for us, he follows me into the hall. “We’ll work it out, Sammie-girl,” he says, and pats my shoulder with a heavy thump.
I step away as he pokes the elevator call button. “I’m gonna take the stairs,” I say. “I’ll see you.”
I slip into the stairwell and run two at a time back up to the ground floor.
In the living room I open the sliding door and the windows and then go back into the kitchen and open up the fridge: nothing much here. The cheese that Ruby and Lou bought. Milk’s about to expire. In the freezer there’s a loaf of bread. I throw a slice in the toaster.
These jeans are cutting off my circulation. Probably why I can’t think straight: I’m strangling from the waist down. I undo the zipper and head for my bedroom.
Once my shorts are on and my sweaty socks off, I grab a duffle bag and start chucking in underwear and T-shirts. The floppy straw hat that Drew gave me for my birthday last year is scrunched on the floor of the closet. I’m lonesome just looking at it. I put it on my head. The smell of the straw reminds me of Drew at the Hollow Tree Ranch. You’re bad. You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
The toast pops. Back in the kitchen, there’s no clean knife. I wash and dry one quick, grab the peanut butter and slather it on, take a big bite and feel better.
Back at the open balcony door, I take in fresh air and look at the shrubs and trees, and try to feel normal. Now that I’m here, I don’t want to be. I want to be back at Jill’s where it’s clean. Not cleanliness clean. I mean where it doesn’t feel dirty with bad memories.
Once I’ve popped the last of the toast in my mouth I head back to the kitchen. “Dirty dishes piled in the sink and on the counters. How can she live like that?”
There’s still a jungle’s worth of fruit flies staggering through the air. I walk over to the counter, pick up the soap and squirt some over the pile of dishes. The washcloth is hard and crusty.
I turn on the hot water. It ricochets off the top plate and gets me in the face. Shit! I swing the tap to the side. There’s barely room to rinse one cup. But