"Just write a book" they said. "It'll be easy," they said, "Everyone gets published these days." Yeah, well, it's a little harder when your editors are gods that will turn you into a gecko and use you as a ping pong ball if you don't write them exac...
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SO...we totally ditched Grover.
I know! I know! I literally promised. But listen, there's literally the only so long you can expect someone to hang around when you're rambling about how they're going to die. I don't want to die. Percy didn't want to die. No one wants to die.
Grover had an anxious bladder, so as soon as we got off the bus, he beelined for the bathroom. He made us promise to wait for him.
Percy promised and I nodded vaguely, because by this point we had decided we weren't staying, so I wasn't about lie again. As soon as he was ought of sight, we got our suitcases, slipped outside, and caught the first taxi up town.
♆
YOU KNOW HOW I SAID NOT TO TRUST ADULTS? I wasn't talking about my mom. Write that down. Sally Jackson is a total, absolute exception, because she's probably one of the best people in the world.
So, of course, her life has totally sucked. Mom wanted to be a novelist, so she did everything she could to save up her own money for collage. A good one, with a solid creative-writing program. Right before she could, her uncle – who had been raising her since her parents died in a plane crash – got cancer. Because Mom was a good person, she dropped out of school in senior year to take care of him.
After he died, she had nothing.
Percy will probably say that Mom got a break when she met our dad. I don't really believe that. According to mom, he was rich and important, and he loved her a lot. Not enough to stay, though. Not enough to use those riches to take care of her, instead of sailing across the Atlantic and leaving her poor and alone. Again. She deserved better.
(I thought the editors would make me take this part out, but apparently Dad agreed enough to leave it in. I'm sort of impressed. He can get extra onion rings for that.)
Finally, she married Gabe Ugliano. He must have been nice at some point, otherwise Mom wouldn't have married him, but I don't remember that. Percy nicknamed him Smelly Gabe.
And I know what you're thinking. "Wow, Attie, that's so rude!" It's true, though. The guy reeked. He smelt like he'd rolled around in a dumpster for a living instead of managing an Electronics Mega-Mart. And besides, it's not like he doesn't deserve it.
Our wonderful return, for example.
I been hoping Mom would be home from when we got there. I couldn't remember exactly when her shift ended. Alas, I was wrong. Smelly Gabe was in the living room – meaning right in front of the door, so no escape – playing poker with his buddies. ESPN blared from the TV, despite the fact that none of them were actually listening. There was a thin carpet of junk and trash over the actual carpet on the floor.
