Us girls meet together every other month for what we liek to call a girls night. Our husbands take our children and we talj about the types of things that women talk about. In the last month, both Karen and Mellissa’s husbands passed away; one found dead in his bathroom, the other left stabbed to death down the street. We like to discuss tragic events and how we can help eachother out. Stacie shares with us how the deaths have effected her husband. She explains that he is out of the house more frequently and she thinks he is having an affair. Nancy shares about her trouble with her teenage daughters and with her husband aswell (isn’t it awful to complain after 2 women’s husbands just died?) We each speak of our own problems over snacks and wine. We enjoy ourselves and finnally decide its time to conclude our dinner.
“Now, Stacie and Nancy are next, how would you like us to kill your husbands.”
many people would say that an awning protects from rain or snow or sleet. i’d say that it does much more than just protect from precipitation. it blocks beautiful things, like the sun shining in a window, especially through mine in my south facing apartment on the 12th floor. that’s why i took my awning down. and any umbrellas. why live at the beach in the shade. embrace the sun, get a tan. even the weather will be apart of it. if you’ve ever learned the water cycle, you’d know that places with more water will have more rain. since the shore is so close, the weather can get rough. but rain is just apart of life. you can’t have good weather all the time. atleast not in new york.
the beach is my favorite place. the only place i could ever love. fresh salty air. hot sand. cold (yet sometimes lukewarm) water. seashells. i love them. i collect them. i have a shell wall in my apartment. i glue all the shells i gather onto the wall. it’s really pretty. the only thing better than seashells is sea glass. it’s so unique in such a mysterious yet beautiful way. a piece of glass, broken many years before, gets tossed and turned around the ocean until it’s soft. they have memories. just like water. just like the sea.
a couple of blocks away from the dayton towers, where i live, is the bay towers. that’s where darla lives. we don’t have cars so we bike to meet up with eachother. she used to live at the jersey shore, so she’s grown up at the beach. i grew up in a small town in vermont. when i was 16, we took a trip to a beach in maine. it wasn’t the best, but i still fell in love. that was the first time at the ocean. ever since i came from vermont at age 17, i never went back. i’m 22 now. i’m in college, studying marine biology, yet most of my studies are online, so i can still fit a visit to the sand in everyday. i made the money to go to college in a smoothie shop a black away. also by lifeguarding, babysitting, and food delivery. on a special occasion i’d find a rare, gorgeous shell and some people pay good money for things like that.
We always watch tv. My siblings and I. The TV is controlled by our maid, who doesn’t speak or move or eat. She does what we tell her to do.
“Hey maid,” Teddy said, “Why do you take care of us. It’s pointless it’s not like you help anyway.”
She didn’t reply. She never does. Shes ungrateful that we give her a job that will last her lifetime. Mary throws the remote at her, launching the battery straight at John. She always does this. Out of all 4 of us, Mary, my twin sister, tries to provoke our maid most often. She ignores the childish girl always. Unlike Mary, our oldest brother John has never spoken to the maid. I think of him as a wimp. It’s not like she’s gonna yell at us, or tattle on us to our parents. We don’t have a mother and our father takes care of his multimillion dollar buisness across the country. Teddy tells me that our father is a liar and a manipulator, but i know my father doesnt lie and, honestly, I don’t know what a manipulator is. Mary and I wake up and start our walk to the living room. We are planning on ordering the mini automobiles to make our trip less dreadful. I peak into John’s room and automatically notice the vacancy of his bed. “Hurry up George we’re gonna miss SpongeBob.”
We race to our living room, telling the maid to turn on the television as we run. To our surprise, it doesn’t turn on. A lone battery is sitting on the couch next to a picture of John, along with our maids lifeless body.
John went missing, the maid was gone. The police showed up and asked to speak with a parent or guardian. Teddy, the oldest in our situation explained that John was the closest thing to a caretaker. They asked about our father and our maid. We describe our father’s business with enthusiasm, yet they look into our eyes, with sadness and suspicion. They later ask questions about our maid and how long we’ve had her for. Me and Mary have had her since we were born. Teddy and John only met her after we were born, when our mother died. ————————————————————————
ONE WEEK LATER:
Turns out our father used to sell drugs and eventually got caught. Mary and I wandered around our house, exploring all the rooms we had never been in before. In the meanwhile, Teddy has been interviewed for the past week, and he hasn’t been allowed to come see us.
We’ve found a lot of random things in the rooms we’ve never ventured into before. A room with a lone desk. A room with carpeted walls. Another with TV walls.
We find random letters in a box:
“10/13/2031 I don’t know how much longer I will last. He’s getting worse. They will soon come and I will soon be ready.”
and another stating
“10/25/2031 I can be her. If I live I am her.”
Mary and I think nothing of it.
Today, Mary and I have decided to leave the house. We haven’t left since our maid’s death. We adventure into the backyard, something we haven’t done in the past couple of years. We play around a bit and then notice a small crack in the fence. There’s a piece of paper shoved into it.
“Dad is taking me with him. He says that John is in a better place. I found a picture labeled with our mother’s name. Yet it’s too late.”
Taped to the back of the slip of paper is a picture of our mother. Our maid.
