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.
At that moment the kitchen phone rang, the sound ricocheting around the still house, and I jumped, my heart beating almost visibly in my chest. Before I could think about what to say, I ran to get it just to make the noise stop.
“Hello?” It came out as more of a croak, so I cleared my throat and tried again. “Hello?”
“Joanna?” I wasn’t sure if I was relieved it was only Nadine, Mom’s supervisor at work.
“Oh, hi. No, it’s Lucy.”
“Are you okay, dear? You sound like you’re breathing hard.”
As much as I knew that I should, I couldn’t tell her what had happened. For now, that fact had to be another part of our secret. Once I told someone, I wouldn’t be able to take it back. “I, um… yeah, I’m fine. I was just racing for the phone. From the backyard.”
“Sorry about that, darlin’,” she said. “I’m looking for your mama. Her shift started at seven, but she hasn’t been in or called or anything, and that is just not like her. I came by the house a little bit ago on my break, but nobody answered the door.”
I glanced down the hallway toward the fallen pile of cheerful yellow magazines.
“Right,” I said. “I’ve been outside doing some stuff in the backyard, and I must have missed you. Mom asked me to call you, but I forgot. She’s, uh, got some sort of flu and probably won’t be in for a few days.” Mom was an oncology nurse, and the last thing they wanted was sick people down at the hospital.
“Oh dear,” she said. “Is there anything I can do?”
I thought about Mom where I’d left her lying all alone. “No,” I said. “Not really.”
“Chicken soup? Advil? I can stop by on my way home,” she said.
“Really,” I said, “we’re fine. I’ve got it under control.”
“Your mom is blessed to have you,” she said. “I don’t know what she’s going to do without you when you go off to college, especially now that everyone else is gone. It’s always hardest when the baby leaves.”
“I’m sure she’ll manage,” I said, wondering how blessed she’d think Mom was if she could see us now. I tried to tune into the conversation, but my eyes were scanning the tops of the debris piles that clogged the kitchen and the dining room. The smell was so bad in the kitchen I stretched the cord as far as I could into the dining room so I wouldn’t have to breathe it in. Even in here, the visual noise from the garbage made it difficult to see the individual pieces that made up the mountain. A plastic bag from the grocery store full of God knows what. A stack of old margarine tubs. A box full of empty egg cartons and toilet-paper tubes. A pile of clothes still on their wire hangers from some adventure to the dry cleaners years ago. And green plastic storage bins stacked so high they brushed the ceiling in every room. Green plastic bins were like crack for Mom—she couldn’t get enough of them.
“Lucy, honey?”
“I’m sorry.” I shook my head trying to pick up the last threads of the conversation. “You cut out on me there for a second.”
“I was asking you if you’d picked a college yet. Don’t you have to start applying soon?”
“Oh, yeah,” I said. “Well, really, we have a whole year before things are due. They don’t make you decide until senior year.”
“Well, you be sure to come down here soon for a visit. You haven’t been in here to see us for such a long time.”
“I will,” I said. “Soon. Oh, listen, I hear her calling me. I really have to go.”
“Okay, doll,” Nadine said. “You tell your mama just to take it easy and not worry about us. She works so hard, I’m sure she needs the rest. You holler if you need anything.”
“Thanks. I will.”
I leaned into the kitchen to put the handset back and wiped it with the sleeve of my jacket. We still had one of those big, square, wall-mounted phones everyone else got rid of years ago. A while back, Mom had bought one of those fancy digital systems with four portable handsets and an answering machine. It was good in theory, but it took less than a week for every last handset to be lost in the piles, and eventually I dug out this old mustard yellow phone and put it back on the wall. Ugly, but at least we always knew where it was.
Just talking to someone on the outside had calmed me down a little. My breathing got back to normal, and I felt like I could think straight again. Nadine thought we were fine. People all over town were doing regular things at work, spending winter break at the mall, going to the grocery store. Nobody knew. I had time.
Everybody still thought we were exactly like them—I just had to keep it that way.
I took a couple of deep breaths and looked down at the cell phone that was still in my left hand. Once I dialed those three numbers, there would be no turning back. Slowly, I closed it. There really wasn’t much reason to hurry, if you thought about it. Why call 911 when someone was so obviously dead? The paramedics couldn’t help someone who’d had their head cut off or had been shot straight through the heart—or had died under a six-foot-tall stack of
I walked back toward Mom’s room, forcing my eyes to travel past the magazines and focus on Mom’s face. She looked peaceful—relaxed, even. If you didn’t know she was dead, she actually looked pretty good. Most of the time lately her face had rippled with frown lines. At least when I was around.
I couldn’t even remember the last thing I said to her. Last words were supposed to be meaningful, about how much you loved the person and how much you were going to miss them, and the last thing she’d said to me was something about scissors. Or was it about going to Kaylie’s? Of course, she probably had other last words that nobody was around to hear. Did those count? My mind started reeling again, and I shook my arms to try to release some of the energy.
I took a couple of steps backward toward my room so I could think a little better. Here, the path was wider and you could see patches of the dirty brown carpet that covered all the floors, but only appeared here and there through the drifts of garbage, like jagged cracks in the earth. My chest felt heavy, and my breathing was fast and shallow as the panic started to wash over me again. I couldn’t possibly deal with all of this by myself.
I clicked my phone open again. This was crazy. I hit the numbers and held it to my ear, my left hand shaking so violently I had to reach over with my right hand to try to steady it. It rang twice. Three times.
