Some Place Better Than Here

Chapter 8: Please Mr. Postman

If my vicious cat claws were properly manicured, I would have reached through the receiver and clawed his face off.

"Again, I am personally sorry—"

"I sure as shit bet you are because you've had the shittiest customer service, and I'm glad this call was recorded for ensuring quality purposes because your quality has been shit. Bye."

I smacked the phone back on the receiver. Congratulations. You caught me being a red-hot liar already. I actually smacked the phone down on the brim of the receiver, so I lifted it up again and then smacked it dead on. God, how annoying.

Scattered in shapeless piles on my bed were all Jim's depressing bills and bank statements. Jim's a freaking gorilla when it comes to money, and we're like a quadrillion dollars in debt. So, like the teenage girl I am, I dramatically threw myself down on my bed, and cuz my mattress is a wobbly piece of crap, all the papers bounced up and drifted onto the floor, scattering half underneath my bed and half underneath my dresser. I snatched the pillow next to me and screamed burying my face into it.

My Goodness Lord. The test results came in and told me that no civilized human can survive thirty (freaking thirty) days without a phone.

Thank Jesus I'm a bitch from Venus.

While mulling over the death of my already non-existent social life, my OCD got the best of me and told me to start cleaning my room. Cleaning's like crack. Try it. Not crack, cleaning. Except, this sweeping motivation I had to suddenly become a maid died a swift, painless death when I dragged my wooden vanity chair across the carpet and saw Danny's jean jacket. When I picked it up, wanting to know what size Danny wore (medium, for the record), his scent immediately rolled into my nose. I tossed it on the floor. After all, it was just going to Goodwill. What do those bums care?

The rest of the shit on the floor, such as all those awful outfits I tried making look like they were purchased at Urban Outfitters, were on their way to the Laundromat. So while snatching up my mess and shoving it in the laundry bag, I thought of how Danny probably had maids to do this. Or at least a woman to do the domestic shit. It bothered me that I was expending innocent brain cells even thinking of him.

I don't even know why I "forgot" to give him his jacket back. Worse than my negligence, why didn't Squeegee Boy ask for it back?

Boys confuse the hell out of me. It was irking me that I couldn't place what goddamn scent that was on his jacket, so I picked it up again to decipher. Most likely it was deodorant. Now, whether it came from his chest or his pits, it was a tolerable boy smell. Most boys don't smell good, like at all.

Slipping a tank over, like, the only bra I ever wore (owning other bras is entirely pointless) I got changed to leave my house. Really all because (not to complain or anything, but I am just as deep in debt as Jim is, except my bad credit lies with Karma) I'd end up, like, missing my period or something stupid if I didn't return Danny's jacket.

DANNY

By two in the afternoon, I declared it was all over. The entire night—the carousel, the fireworks on the beach, the endless midnight country drive when the rest of the world was asleep—had all been a fluke.

"Danny!"

Mom yelled for me. I turned around to see her standing on top of the three cement steps that led up to the front door. While looking up at our house from the driveway, especially given the stark contrast with Mom's slender figure, our house looked and felt impractically large.

"Do you want lunch?" she asked.

Do I want lunch? Hah.

Our home at 21 Eneleda Crescent had been transforming. No, not any renovations or anything, but all that had been hidden away, pushed back in closets and stuffed in drawers for years, had recently coughed up all over the place. Boxes began piling on boxes, starting from the front foyer at the base of the stairs, down the hallway, and all the way into the kitchen. Mom had begun her crazy packing ritual.