The house was a suburban two story house. So much for lucking out and being reincarnated to a rich family. Maybe her karma was wrong because of how she reacted during the attack. What if she could have turned the truck far enough to the right? Would have she have ended up in a rich family or at least made the transition with clean underwear?
“Now straight to the bathroom,” her mother said.
I hope she didn’t think I would sit around stinking like I am, she thought. She had to waddle a bit as the poop was stuck to her bottom. Worse, it was starting to cool. Her pee stained thighs felt as if they were freezing.
Her mother led her to the bathroom and left her standing inside. “Don’t move. I’ll get a trash bag.”
Deborah looked longingly at the bathtub, but she stood on the cold tiled floor until her new mother returned.
“I think everything from the waist down is a loss.” She shook open the trash bag and set it opened on the floor.
Deborah kicked off her shoes and stepped inside the trash bag. She looked at her mother, but shrugged and lowered her pants and panties down into the trash. She looked down at her poop-streaked legs and sighed.
“Would you like me to help you clean up?” her mother asked.
The woman might be her mother, but Deborah still felt like she was a stranger. “I can handle it, mother.”
“Okay, I will lay some clothes on the sink for you.” She left.
Deborah took toilet paper and tried to get the worse of the mess off her legs and bottom. She let the paper drop into the trash bag. The shower that followed made her feel somewhat clean again. The water washed away the smeared poop, the horrible smell that seeped into her skin, and the clammy feeling of cold pee, but it didn’t make her feel truly clean again.
When she emerged from the shower, the disgusting trash bag was gone. Clean panties, jeans and a T-shirt lay on the counter. She dried off with a fluffy white towel and dressed into the new clothes.
When she left the bathroom, her mother noticed right away. “I put your backpack on the bed up in your room. Work on your homework until I say you can come down.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Deborah. She walked up the stairs and into a hallway. She didn’t know which was her room, but she knew it was the one with the red backpack on the bed. She looked in all three bedrooms until she found the one that was hers.
The room was smallish. It contained a twin bed, a writing desk with a Macbook on it and a large chest of drawers. A bookshelf stood by the window, filled with horrible romance novels. Deborah shuttered at the sight of them. The room was overly neat. That told her that information about herself would be easy to find or not there at all. The red Jansport on the bed showed the most promise of having the information she sought.
She unzipped the backpack and dumped the contents onto the bed: five spiral notebooks, a physics textbook, a Pre-Calculus book, and an English book lay on her bed. She opened the small pocket on the backpack and took out a cell phone, a little brown leather calendar, and a romance novel with a bookmark in it.
She picked up the little leather book and opened it to the first page. Inside in very neat handwriting was her class schedule. She groaned when she read the list of classes. Physics AP, Pre-Calculus AP, English AP, Fundamentals of Computers, Spanish II, and Study Hall. At least she had a study hall.
She had taken German in high school, but she didn’t remember much. The only Spanish she knew was from coworkers. She hoped it would be enough. She would have to seriously study to catch up. She’d also taken Physics and Calculus during the two years before she ran out of money and had to take that job at the department store. If her father wouldn’t have fronted her the money for truck driving school, she would still be working retail. During the past twelve years, she wished she would have stayed in retail. Her truck would not have been hijacked and her father would not have died of a heart attack the day she was arrested.
She opened the calendar to the current date. Every date had the date each homework assignment was due. Her new life had been incredibly organized.
She started on the pre-calc assignment. It took her over two hours to do. There were at least twenty-five complex problems and she had to read the text portion of the chapter and consult her notes to even know what to do. All the problems were even numbered problems, so she couldn’t look for answers in the back of the book. She had to solve the odd problems anyway so she would know she was doing the problems correctly.
