C. Omololu - Dirty Little Secrets

“Are you okay?” Kaylie asked. She leaned her face in closer to mine. “You look funny.”

I plastered a smile on my face. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

“Maybe later I could come and help you, so that you could get out of there,” she said. “You never let me come over to help, even though you’re all alone with her.”

As she said that, the backs of my eyes started stinging, like I was going to start bawling. The worst part was there was nobody who could help me—nobody that I could even tell. Dad had made it clear that sending money every month was about as much involvement as he wanted with us, and all he’d do was tell me to call 911. Or worse, call them for me. He’d probably be relieved if I could persuade Phil to move back in with me afterward so that he wouldn’t have to deal with it, but I wasn’t convinced that Phil would see things my way. What if I told him what had happened and he called the police? Sara would definitely not see things my way and would have the house surrounded by flashing lights in no time. I had effectively been an orphan for the past eight hours or so, and I had to keep the biggest secret of my life all to myself.

“No. Thanks,” I said. I rubbed my eyes with the palms of my hands. Kaylie looked at me like she wanted me to say more. “Why . . . why do you even bother?” I finally asked.

“Bother with what?” Kaylie looked genuinely confused.

I was sure that my nose was bright red by now and that I looked even more pathetic than usual. Luckily, nobody around seemed to be listening. “With me,” I said quietly, wiping my nose to make sure there was nothing dripping. “You’ve got Vanessa and all of your other friends. I just wreck your plans.”

She sat back in her chair. “Are you serious?”

I didn’t say anything else. I knew that I sounded like a whiny pain in the neck, but it might be easier if I just got rid of everyone—all two of them—in one quick afternoon. Maybe after all this was over I could make new friends—have a boyfriend, even, but things were getting too complicated right now.

“First of all,” Kaylie said, “you don’t wreck everything. Okay, yeah, you bail on me sometimes, but you’ve got a lot going on. Do you remember art class last year?”

Of course I did. Kaylie sat at the next table while my partner was the annoying Miles Harris, pitcher for the baseball team and all-around idiot who threatened to ruin my favorite class. I tried to ignore him, and all the girls in the class who would always find excuses to come by our table, by drawing pictures of the house I was going to design someday. Kaylie started talking to me toward the end of the year, first asking to borrow a pen or some paper and later asking me to tag along with her when she went out on the weekends.

“You were the only one who wasn’t dying to sit next to Miles—you even seemed irritated by him. You’d just sit there drawing these really amazing pictures, and your projects were always so much better than mine. It was like you had more important things to deal with than the hottie sitting next to you. I wanted to find out what your secret was.” She laughed.

If Kaylie ever did find out the real secret, she wouldn’t think it was so funny. “I don’t have a secret,” I lied.

“Yes, you do,” she said. I felt a momentary flutter of dread, but I knew she wasn’t anywhere near the truth. “Your secret is that you really don’t care about all the stuff that goes on in school. You’re somehow removed from it all.” She sat forward again. “Which is why this whole Josh thing is so awesome. I just don’t want you to walk away from him.”

“I’m not,” I said. “It’s just that tonight . . . I can’t come tonight.” I didn’t want to tell her how much I really did care about what Josh thought and what he was doing. And who he was doing it with. Leaving yourself vulnerable was the quickest way to have anything good taken away from you. If I’d learned anything from Mom, it was that.

“Well, I’ll totally keep an eye on him for you,” she said. “I’m not going to let him get away, in spite of you.”

I managed a smile. “Thanks, Kay,” I said. I tossed back the last of the coffee in my cup. “I really do have to head back,” I said, and stood up.

Kaylie sighed. “If you say so. Do you want me to walk with you?”

“No, it’s cool. I have to stop at Safeway.”

She leaned over the table and gave me a hug. “I’ll call you if anything good happens.”

I nodded and picked up the second cup of coffee I’d ordered.

“Didn’t you just have coffee?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “This one’s for Mom. I promised her I’d bring some back with me.” The one thing I didn’t have set up in my room was a coffee maker, and I was going to need all the help I could get if I was going to keep working until late at night.

“Don’t let my mom hear you say that,” she said. “She already thinks you’re the perfect daughter. She’s always joking that she’d like to adopt you and have you come live with us.”

I could never tell Kaylie how perfect that would be. As much as I wanted to grow up and be on my own, I wished for someone to take care of me so I wouldn’t have to worry all the time. I thought of my mother’s sheet-covered body lying in the hallway at that very second. Every time I started to feel guilty, I had to remind myself that I was doing it for all of us. But that still didn’t change the fact that Mom was dead, and I was sitting here talking and drinking coffee. I wondered what Kaylie’s mom would think about that. “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m not so perfect.”

Josh was busy up front, so I just walked out the door without another word. It was probably best this way. It felt like a solid lead ball was sitting in the pit of my stomach. I couldn’t stand thinking about him at the party tonight. As much as I liked to think I was special, there would be so many girls there, he wouldn’t even notice I was missing. He’d probably be going out with someone else by the time vacation was over.

Walking home, I carried a bag from the grocery store and balanced the coffee in one hand, hoping that and some egg rolls from the deli would keep me at least until tomorrow. I’d really wanted fried rice, but as I bent down to look at it in the deli case, all I could think of was the maggot I’d brushed out of my shirt earlier. As much as it used to be my favorite food, thanks to one lone, preadolescent fly, fried rice was probably lost to me forever. I’d also loaded up on more rubber gloves and those paper face masks that supposedly protect you from chemicals and irritants. We should probably have been living in these all along.

The walk was short, but it felt good to be out in the cold air. I zipped my jacket up to my chin so only the top of my head and my face were freezing. It was starting to get dark, and most of the houses still had their Christmas lights on outside, which made the cold darkness seem not so bad. Like it had a purpose, even.

As I walked up our street, I looked in the windows of the houses I passed. I could see people sitting down to dinner, or the blue glow on the walls from the TV.

The Callans a few houses down had their curtains open, and I could see the Christmas tree all lit up by the window. I was sure Mrs. Callan would be in the kitchen cooking, waiting for Mr. Callan to come home. Hanging out in their house had made me realize that not everyone had parents who loved their stuff more than they loved their kids.

The air smelled like a campfire, and I thought about how nice it would be to sit by a warm fire on such a cold night. Maybe we could get the fireplace working again once everything was done. Phil and I would keep a big stack of wood on the porch and feed it to the fire every time it started to die. Maybe we could have regular movie nights in the winter, where we’d invite people over, make popcorn, and sit in front of the fire, watching movies with all the lights off. At this point I should have probably stopped with the “maybes” and “what-ifs,” but whenever the now got bad, thinking about the future always made me feel better.