listened to see if she could figure out who it was. She must be sick or something if she didn’t bother to come out at all. Her room was so full of stuff that she hardly ever slept in there anymore, but she occasionally shoved everything off the bed if she really needed to use it.
Feeling like I should at least make sure she was okay, I headed toward her room. The
“Mom?” I bent down and threw some of the magazines off until I had uncovered her leg. I shook it. “Mom?” It didn’t jiggle like it normally would; it just felt solid and heavy. “Mom!”
Because the paths we’d carved through all the garbage over the years were only wide enough to accommodate one relatively skinny person, I had to kneel down by her foot and stretch out on my hands so I could reach her face. I frantically tossed magazines to the side until her head was completely uncovered. Her eyes were closed and her mouth had a purplish tinge around the edges. I followed her outstretched arm and saw her inhaler just out of reach on the ground. She must have been having an asthma attack when she fell, pulling a decade’s worth of magazines with her as she went.
“Mom!” I reached up to shake her shoulder, but only felt the heaviness of her body as it refused to move. “Mom!” I yelled a little louder. “Come on!”
I reached up and with a quick motion put my index finger out to feel her face. Her cheek was mottled and cold. Even though she was pale, my finger made a faint mark on her skin where I’d touched her. I scrambled backward, slipping on the magazines, and slammed into a pile of newspapers, sending them cascading down on us both. My breath was quick and short as I tossed them off me, throwing them as far as I could down the hallway until I could struggle to my feet.
Standing alone in the cold, dark hallway, I felt my teeth start to chatter, and I couldn’t keep my hands from shaking. “This can’t be real. This can’t be real,” I repeated over and over as I crouched down, pulling the newspapers off her, revealing her face one more time.
Maybe I was wrong. Maybe she was just out cold. I grabbed her shoulders and shook them so hard her head flopped from side to side. “Get up! Come on, Mom,
I dropped her shoulders back to the floor and crumpled down beside her as I realized nothing I could do was going to make any difference. This was not the way things were supposed to go. I sat, leaning carefully on the stack of newspapers behind me, trying to pull rational ideas through the swarm of thoughts running through my head.
What if the stack of magazines had fallen when I’d slammed the door last night? She was in the living room when I left, but what if they’d moved just enough to send them crashing down as she walked by? All she had to do was clip the corner of one, and the whole thing could have come down right on top of her. I wondered how long she had been lying there, her inhaler just out of reach, her breathing getting shallow and more ragged. Did she know what was happening? A chill went through me as I pictured her trapped and weak, calling my name as her voice got quieter and quieter. I could almost hear the echo of her cries in the hallway.
I stood up to try to shake off the heavy feelings that were settling inside. As I looked at her unmoving body, I knew deep down Mom wasn’t sick and she wasn’t messing around. She was really and truly dead.
chapter 3
10:00 a.m.
I pulled the phone from my pocket, my throat feeling so thick I wasn’t sure I’d be able to speak.
The phone’s display shone brightly as I opened it to dial 911, the numbers blurring through the tears that had started to form in my eyes. I blinked hard. My fingers hovered over the first number as I looked down the hall at the piles of magazines, newspapers, clothes, plastic bags, and boxes of her stuff that choked all but a few narrow, winding paths through the house. I knew it smelled like rotting garbage in here, remembered it in one of the recesses of my brain. It was the same smell of decay I always worried would follow me out of the house, clinging to my clothes like a sock to Velcro. I’d lived with it for so long, I didn’t even notice the smell anymore.
But the paramedics would.
They’d definitely notice the stink, the decay, and the sea of garbage that cascaded from the center of every room and built up along the walls like rolling waves. I looked back along the path that snaked through the hall and then took a sharp turn into the dining room. The only way through the house was along these ant tracks, and they were much too narrow for any type of stretcher to get through. It would probably take the paramedics hours just to clear out a path wide enough to get her out of here. And what if it wasn’t just them?
My mind started racing and my heart beat faster as I realized what could happen. As soon as the paramedics showed up, the news cameras would probably follow—big cameras with bright lights on top so they could illuminate the dark pathways. Newspeople had radios and sat listening to the paramedic and police reports just waiting for a story like this. I could see the teasers now—“Local Woman Dies Surrounded by Filth and Squalor—tune in at eleven.” Our house would be the spotlight report on all the networks, maybe even on some of those morning shows. I’d seen a story on the news one time about this lady who died in a trailer full of garbage. They videotaped the mess, and the perfectly overhairsprayed news anchors shook their heads at how anyone could live like that. They didn’t come out and say it, but I knew what they were all thinking: she was a freak. Who else would possibly live their entire lives surrounded by garbage? Freaks.
They’d probably want to interview me, and find out how we lived like this for so long—and because the evidence was right there in front of their faces, I’d have to tell them. About all of it. Kaylie would see it, and that would be the last time I’d stay over at her house. She’d be so disgusted by how we lived for all these years, she’d wonder how we could have ever been friends. That’s what had happened the last time a friend had come over, and the house hadn’t been nearly this bad then. I thought of the look in Josh’s eyes when he asked me to the party, and knew I’d never see that look again. I wouldn’t be able to stay here after that. I’d have to move away and change schools one more time, starting all over when I just had a lousy year and a half until graduation. Where would I even go?
I braced myself against a pile of newspapers and slid to the floor. My chest was hollow, and I’d never felt so lonely in my life. None of this was normal. If Kaylie had found her mom lying dead on the floor, she’d be bawling her eyes out. Somewhere deep down, I was pretty sure I loved Mom—the mom who used to push all the kids on the swings at school when it was her turn to do yard duty. The mom who actually hugged me as I left in the morning and stopped by my room to say good night. I could cry for that mom. I wasn’t sure how I felt about this mom.
