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, please, this is not funny. Get up!” If wishing really worked, she would have jumped up and scared the crap out of me right then—that would teach me to leave her and try to get on with my own life. It would have been the best trick ever, except practical jokes weren’t her style.
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. This was not happening. I should have stayed home last night. Mom’s asthma was getting bad, and she always needed her inhaler when she got upset. Those stupid scissors. If I’d only taken two minutes to help her find them, everything would be okay right now.
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.
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.”