Raking my fingers through my hair to make sure none landed on me, I felt something cold and wet inside my shirt. I quickly shook it out and watched as one lone maggot landed on the ground, still moving. I ground the disgusting thing into the remains of the carpet with my shoe until it was just a pasty, wet smear.
Spitting and gagging, I ran into my bathroom and went straight to the sink. After splashing cold water over my face and peering intently into the mirror, I was sure with the reasonable part of my brain that there weren’t any more maggots on me, but the unreasonable part felt like they were crawling through my scalp and down my neck.
I had come into this part of the job completely unprepared. Tearing off my shirt, I dug around in my drawer for an old turtleneck. There was a bandanna in my sock drawer from when we had Wild West Days at school, so I took it out and tied it around my head to protect my hair from whatever else I was going to find as I cleaned.
Armed with the neck of the shirt pulled up over my mouth, I walked back to the living room. Taking a deep breath, I grabbed the shovel again and tried to pry the stack of newspapers off the carpet. The tip of the shovel dug into the brown fibers as I jammed my foot on the blade to try and work the papers free. Finally, with a wet tearing sound, the small stack broke free of the floor, and I was able to heave it into the trash can. A big patch of the carpet had come up with the papers, and I could see the hardwood floors underneath. I poked at the floor with the metal shovel. Instead of being solid, the wood felt spongy and soft. We definitely couldn’t keep the carpet the way it was once the place was cleaned. I wondered how much it would cost to replace an entire floor.
Dark clouds were rolling in as I dragged the bag toward the window, making it seem like dusk even though it was only four o’clock. As I balanced the bag on the sill, I could see the last rays of watery sunshine glowing behind the clouds in the distance as the sun began its roll toward the ocean. The weather didn’t usually make much difference to me, because we always kept the curtains closed in the front of the house. I shoved the bag out the window and heard it join the others with a soft sigh.
“Hello?” The voice came from outside. I sucked in my breath and froze. It came again. “Hello?”
Pulling the turtleneck off my face, I stuck my head out the window and tried to manage a normal-looking smile. Mrs. Raj. Even though her house was a pretty good distance from ours, she seemed to think that living next door was an excuse to constantly monitor what we were doing.
“Oh, hello, Mrs. Raj.” I sounded remarkably normal, even though I was a little out of breath.
“Doing a bit of early spring cleaning, I see.” She stood at the corner of our house where the walkway ended. Her eyes darted to the growing pile of garbage bags, and then back to me.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. I forced a little laugh. “I didn’t have anything else to do on vacation, so I thought I’d help Mom out. Just getting rid of a few things.”
She pursed her lips and looked at me. “I’ve heard teenage girls can be rather untidy,” she said. “It’s nice to see you making a go of it.”
Her dog, Tinto, strained at the end of his leash, trying to sniff some of the bags. I hoped she had enough sense to pull him away before he chewed a hole in one.
I’d always begged Mom for a dog, but with her breathing problems, we could never get one. Not that I’d want a dog like Tinto—even calling him a dog was generous. He looked more like a long-haired white rat on a leash and was always barking in that high-pitched yap that could be heard all over the neighborhood.
“Tinto, no!” Mrs. Raj called, pulling him back toward the street. He lifted one flea-bitten leg and peed on the bags as a parting gesture. “Come away from there. I don’t want to have to give you another bath today.” Mrs. Raj bent down and picked him up, nuzzling him on the nose. “My precious baby.”
“Well,” I said, giving her a little wave, “have a nice walk. You should probably hurry; it looks like it might rain.”
“Yes, we will,” she said. She tried to peek around the curtains at my back, so I reached down and held them closed with one hand. “I notice your mother’s car hasn’t moved from the driveway all day. Is she out of town?”
I kept the smile plastered on my face as my insides were screaming for her to mind her own business. “No. She’s home. She’s just not feeling well, so she didn’t go to work today.”
“Oh, I see,” she said. She raised her eyebrows. “Is there anything I can do?”
“No, thank you,” I said. “We’re fine.”
“All right, then,” she said, and turned like she was going to walk away.
I exhaled, unaware that I had been holding my breath. I started to pull my head back inside the window when she spoke again.
“Oh, Lucy, dear,” she called from the sidewalk.
I bumped my head on the bottom of the window as I stuck it outside again. “Yes?” I said brightly through the pain.
Mrs. Raj indicated the growing pile of black trash bags with her hand. “You’re not going to leave those bags there, now, are you? You know the town council has rules about compounding garbage that is visible from the street. It would reflect badly on all of us to start a garbage dump on the side of the house.”
The whole place is one giant compounded pile of garbage, I wanted to scream. But instead, I smiled sweetly and said, “Only until trash pick up day. I’m going to get tags for extra garbage.”
Mrs. Raj sniffed from the sidewalk. “Well, that’s very good, dear,” she said. “As long as it’s gone on trash day. We can’t have garbage piling up around our neighborhood, now can we? What would people say?”
“No, we certainly can’t,” I said. “Have a nice walk, Mrs. Raj. I have to get back to work.” I pulled my head in the window and pulled the curtains closed before she had a chance to reply.
“We can’t have garbage piling up around our neighborhood,” I mimicked as I worked my way back to the living room. No, we certainly could not. Instead, we’d keep it here behind closed doors and live with it every second of our freaking lives.
Mrs. Raj and all those people who were just like her were the reason that I had to get rid of all this crap before anybody could see. Snooty, too-good-for-you busybodies with nothing better to do than to stick their nose in our business. I’ll bet Mrs. Raj had been killing herself trying to get in here for years. She was just the type to get invited over to the neighbor’s so she could feel that she was so much better than them. Than us. I couldn’t let her have the satisfaction.
My phone rang once, so I pulled it out of my front pocket and flipped it open. It was a text from Kaylie asking when I was coming over. I couldn’t believe it had gotten so late already. I texted her back that I still had a lot of work to do, trying to stall for time. Anytime I thought about Josh and the look on his face when he asked me to come to the party, I could feel a zing of energy course through my whole body. It would be totally amazing to stand in the crowd watching him play, knowing that he had asked me to come. But it was crazy to leave here, wasn’t it? There was no way I could hang out at a party with things the way they were. What if someone came by? And all of that time wasted—it wasn’t like I had so much to start with. I would have to come up with something so that Kaylie wouldn’t hate me and Josh wouldn’t think I was a total loser for not showing up. A few seconds later, the phone rang for real.
“Hey,” Kaylie said. “What could you possibly be doing that takes all day?”