Spaced Out

Game Over, Man. Game Over.

At eight-thirty PM the spaceship hadn't crashed yet and Lily Abadie still thought all she'd lose tonight was her virginity.

She thumbed the home button on her phone and the time materialized on the screen. Derek would get here in forty minutes. She had to boot her parents from the lake camp before he pulled up.

Lily hefted her duffle bag and the pink gift bag she toted onto the sagging bed. The quilted comforter she smoothed was clean even though age and wear made it forever dingy and threadbare. Every summer, her family spent most weekends in this elevated cottage out on the water. Simple cabins propped on thick wood pilings lined the banks of Lake Pontchartrain. When the weather got hot and school let out, the brown waters teemed with jet skis and speed boats. Everybody cooked out on their back decks and hooked catfish off the piers with bits of hotdog for bait.

Lily breathed deep. A musty smell pervaded the place. The odor of open windows all summer, of letting the overhead fans circulate stale air instead of running the rattling window box units. An evening breeze whistled through the tattered screen that covered her bedroom window. Wind brought the scent of mud and damp with it.

"I don't know," Lily's mom muttered. Estelle Abadie slouched in the bedroom's entrance. Shoulder hitched against the doorframe, she folded her arms. Lips compressed in a severe line.

"It's two weeks, mom." Lily unzipped her stuffed-to-bursting bag and dumped its contents onto the bed. "You and dad are like fifty minutes away."

"Less than thirty." Jack Abadie chimed in as he passed them, carting a cardboard-box load of groceries into the kitchen.

"See?" Lily said over her shoulder.

The hard set of mom's jaw tightened. Slender fingers twined in the thick braid draped over her shoulder. They worried the tight loops of her ash-blond hair. The ginormous diamond adorning her left hand glittered with her fingers' motion. The bright stone flecked rainbows onto the walls.

Barging into the bedroom, mom sighed and cast her hands to her sides. "You'll have a roommate in the dorm. And neighbors." She joined Lily bedside and tried bumping her out of the way so she could take over folding the clothes which Lily, of course, always folded wrong. "You won't really be by yourself."

A gentle knock of Lily's hip nudged mom away. She placed the pink gift bag well out of reach too. "I want to get used to you not being around. Dad's always cooking and you're always doing my laundry." She gave mom wide eyes. "You won't be in Georgia with me."

A sharp turn angled away mom's body. Attention fixed on the screened-in window. Hands tucked under her armpits. "I just don't know."

"Stella." Dad popped his silvery head into the bedroom. "If she can't handle two weeks twenty-some-odd minutes away, she won't handle months and months of independence hundreds of miles away. A trial run is a good idea. Relax. She'll be fine."

"You don't know that." Mom's tirade continued as she stalked from the bedroom towards the front of the camp. Dad followed. Their argument muffled to a string of strident tones ghosting through the walls. Lily rolled her eyes. At least they left her alone.