Being polite, I inquired about her day, knowing that I was inviting a deluge of real estate talk. It was all right – it wasn’t like I had to pay attention to it, and it kept me from having to make any real conversation with her during the trip, leaving me free to devote all my attention to staring blankly out the window.
We were almost home when I saw her, and in my surprise, I couldn’t help but blurt out, “That’s her!”
“Patricia Hartman?” My mother sounded quite confused.
“No, just… umm… someone from school.” I settled back down, readjusting my MP3 player’s earbuds, and watched as we passed the long haired girl, reading even as she walked down the sidewalk. I tried to get a glimpse of the cover of the book, see if it was anything I recognized, but, unsurprisingly, it wasn’t. Then again, I didn’t spend much time cruising the stacks at the library, either. Big loss on my part, I’m sure. I couldn’t quite tell what the picture on the cover was meant to be – I thought it was probably one of those books that tried to seem smarter than it really was by pasting some abstract thing on the front and leaving the readers to figure out how, or if, it related to the actual text on their own.
I didn’t really have time to finish listening to even one song before mom pulled into our driveway. I could have walked, and probably should have more often than I did, for the exercise, but mom had offered to bring me home, and I figured, “Why not?”
Mom tossed the keys over the roof of my car. I caught them easily, giving her an uncertain, “Thanks,” in return. I wasn’t sure if that was really what I was supposed to say in that situation or not; maybe she should have, seeing as it was her who was borrowing my car, until hers got out of the shop. That seemed like it would be a bit awkward, though.
Even though my nose couldn’t decipher just what it was, a pleasant smell greeted me upon going in the front door, along with my dad’s call of, “Welcome home, honey!”
“Thanks, dear!” I replied, giggling as mom shoved my shoulder lightly. She was a few inches shorter than me, but probably a few pounds heavier.
I tossed my MP3 player onto my bed after going to collect a kiss on the forehead from my dad, who -was- still taller than me, and checking to see what he was making. I still wasn’t positive, but I knew that if he was making it, it would turn out delicious. I kicked off my shoes, started wriggling out of my ballet clothes so I could put on something normal, all the while heading towards my desk to see if my cell phone had finished charging yet.
Except that my cell phone was not where I’d left it. The charger was still plugged in, cord laying stretched across the desktop, but it wasn’t attached to anything. I slipped the leotard back up my arm, kneeling down to look under the desk, then standing back up to look in the drawer.
“Mom!” I yelled, storming back out of my room. Sure, she had been at work since well before I’d left, but there was no way dad would have done this by himself. It had to have been her plan, though what she was expecting to find on there, I had no idea – numbers for drug dealers, maybe? An orgy hotline? It wasn’t like she didn’t already know Keith. He’d eaten at our house a bunch of times, and as far as I knew, she liked him well enough.