Dirty Little Secrets

Kaylie’s mom didn’t have to be to work until late, so she’d given me a ride home on the way. Like always, I waited until she had driven around the corner and was safely out of sight before I headed for the front door. Our little gray and white house really didn’t look that bad from out here. If you were paying attention, you could spot the black mold gathering along the edges of the living room windows and the way the curtains were pressed against the glass by stacks of boxes. Those were just small hints about what was really behind the shingled walls, but nobody on the outside ever noticed.

I kicked at the tufts of grass as I slowly made my way toward the porch. Even though Mom had to park the car in the driveway because of all the junk that filled the garage, from out here the house looked pretty normal.

All of our secrets started at the front door.

The TV was on too loud, as always, mercifully covering any noise I made as I came in. Standing on my tiptoes, I peeked into the living room over the tops of the newspaper piles and bags of junk that flooded every inch of open space in the house. Mom wasn’t in her usual spot in the vomit-green recliner, and the lady on television was trying to sell genuine synthetic sapphires to nobody. I let myself relax a little—maybe I could make it to the safety of my room without another confrontation.

Hurrying past the kitchen and down the hall, I glanced around the narrow pathways we’d carved in the piles of newspapers and garbage over the years. It had gotten easier to get around since I’d grown tall enough to see over the top of a lot of it. Mom was only about five-foot six and she didn’t stack things higher than she could reach. When I was smaller, I used to pretend I was walking at the bottom of the Grand Canyon with the cliffs rising over my head, only instead of a steel blue sky with puffy white clouds, there was a cracked plaster ceiling and a burned- out lightbulb.

At the bend in the hallway, a tall pile of National Geographics had fallen over and blocked the narrow pathway that led to her room. That’s really going to make her mad, I thought as I turned and walked toward my room. Mom didn’t go into her room much anymore, but I wondered why she hadn’t straightened up the pile right away. Even with all this stuff crammed into the house, having things out of place made her even crazier. Especially if she thought I’d had something to do with it.

That’s what last night’s argument had been about. As usual.

I’d been throwing clothes in my backpack to go to Kaylie’s when I heard her shouting from the living room, “Lucy!”

I pretended not to hear her until she called for a third time, then I pushed my door open and yelled down the hall, “What?”

She squeezed past the piles of newspapers and overflowing plastic bags in the hallway until she could see me. Her red hair showed an inch of gray at the roots, and wiry strands of it were hanging in front of her face. She put her hands on her hips, and I watched her ropy veins wiggle and move underneath her chapped, red skin. “What did you do with them?”

I shut my eyes and slowly opened them again. Here we go. “With what?” I asked, keeping my voice as even as possible. Any hint of sarcasm would send her over the edge, and I really, really wanted to go out tonight.

“You know what. My good scissors. The ones with the black handles.”

“I haven’t seen your scissors, Mom,” I said, allowing just a hint of a sigh to creep into my voice as I tried to duck back into my room.

“Lucy Tompkins! You never put anything back where you found it. I need those scissors and I can’t find them anywhere.” She leaned forward and tried to peer over my shoulder and into my room. I quickly stepped into the hallway and tried to block her view, although I knew she’d be in there looking through my stuff within seconds of my leaving.

Her eyes began to fill with tears. “I need them right now. There’s an article on dog training I wanted to clip for your sister, and I always keep my good scissors on the table right next to the chair. Now they’re missing and I know you took them.”

In a voice you’d usually use on a three-year-old I said, “Honestly, I didn’t do anything with them.” For once, this was the truth. I hadn’t touched her stupid scissors. “Kaylie’s coming to pick me up in a couple of minutes, so I have to finish here.”

The tears were starting to spill over her eyelids and run unchecked down her cheeks. “After sixteen years, this is what I get? No help at all? You’re just going to run off with your friends and leave me here alone? Can’t you spare two minutes to help me look?”

I backed into my room and left her standing in the hallway looking old and defeated. God, I couldn’t wait to get out of here and get my own place. I’d live all by myself and not answer to anybody. Less than two years—I just had to keep telling myself, less than two years and I could leave this all behind like Phil and Sara had.

I finished packing, but a lump of guilt settled into my chest. I listened to her shuffling around in the living room until I couldn’t stand it anymore. In a few minutes, I’d be out of here, hanging out with Kaylie at the movies, but I knew she’d spend the next twelve hours sitting on the recliner watching TV by herself, which despite everything made me feel kind of bad.

Lifting my backpack onto my shoulders, I checked the time. Kaylie wouldn’t be here for a few more minutes, and it would make Mom happy if I at least made an effort. It’s not like I had a prayer of finding her stupid scissors in the avalanche of garbage, but I could fake it. At some point, I’d just started to go along with her and pretended everything was normal and this was the way everyone lived. It was easier that way.

I squeezed through the hallway and spotted Mom sorting through a stack of pictures in the living room. “Did you find them?” I asked hopefully.

She looked up from the pictures like she’d forgotten I was in the house. A frown settled on her face as she refocused her anger on me. “How could I find them when I have no idea what you did with them?”

I looked around the room, trying to concentrate on all the horizontal surfaces where a pair of scissors could be set down and never seen again, like some crazy picture from one of those I Spy books. I inched my way over to the recliner. “I think I might have put them back over here,” I said, as cheerfully as I could manage. I picked up a plastic bag from the drugstore and looked inside.

Mom leaned over and snatched the bag from my hands. “Don’t touch that,” she said. “I need those things for work.”