Dirty English

by Ilsa Madden-Mills

  But no matter what she did, I was still ugly on the inside.

  “Nora? Did you hear me?” Aunt Portia said, untying her flour-covered apron and tossing it on the counter. She turned down the soft rock radio station she’d been listening to. “I’ve been talking to you for five minutes, and you haven’t heard a word I said.”

  “Sorry. What did you say?”

  “That Mila called. She’ll be here in twenty minutes,” she said, laying her cleaning cloth next to the register and glancing around the empty shop.

  Yes! Mila was coming. I hadn’t seen my best friend since the night of the incident at BA.

  “Okay. I’m going to the back to clean up the dishes,” Aunt Portia sighed.

  “Already did them while you were out here,” I said, feeling pleased at her relieved face. I guess, at fifty-three, running her own business was tough, especially when you kept bakery hours, opening at 6:00 a.m. and closing at 6:00 p.m. “And I took the trash out to the dumpster and laid out the pans for tomorrow’s muffins. You’re good to go home if you want. I’ll lock up and come by later.”

  She picked out a giant cinnamon roll and came over to my table. “Pretty soon I’ll have to start paying you for all the work you do around here,” she mused, sitting the warm bun down in front of me.

  “Just pay me with cupcakes,” I said, closing my journal. “Besides you know this place is my escape.”

  She gave me a sympathetic look. “Things any better at home?”

  “As well as can be expected. At least my grounding is over,” I said, picking at my fingernails, pushing the cuticles back until it hurt, remembering how I’d been locked in my room for five days straight, without anyone to talk to. “Dad left for a visit to Houston so who knows when he’ll be back. Mother is staying at the station apartment this week and probably next week—and the next.” I glanced up at her. “Looks like I might be staying with you for a while. Mother said it was okay, and you know I hate being alone in that monster of a house.”

  She kissed the top of my head. “You can move in with me right now if you want.”

  I smirked at her because she and I both knew Mother wanted me living at our fancy Highland Park address. Even if she was never there, I had to be. “If I moved out, people would talk. And then Mother would be angry at me.”

  She nodded. “Yeah, I know how she is, but let me know if things get to be too much. Okay?” she said, giving me one last glance as she walked back up front. After a few minutes, she went into the kitchen area, and I knew she’d be there a while, counting down the cash register.

  I turned back to my journal and opened it, looking over the list I’d written. I wondered if these bad things would make me a happy person. The intelligent part of me knew they wouldn’t. Not really. I didn’t deserve happiness anyway. But after pretending for so long and holding it all inside, I simply sought relief, just like I’d gotten at the open house when I’d let those hateful words come out of my mouth. And if saying bad things to people made me feel better, then how much better would I feel if I took it a step further? What would it take to bring me back from the shadow I’d become?

  Whatever it took to save me, I was willing to do it.

  Taking my pen, I marked through some of the items, getting it just right.

  Mila knocked on the locked shop door, and I hurriedly tucked my journal inside my backpack before I got up to let her inside the closed shop. She came in and plopped down at the booth where we always sat, wearing a pink-and-cream Liz Claiborne-type ensemble with matching shoes and a purse. To complete the look, she’d pulled her straight midnight-colored hair back with a headband. Somewhere along the way, someone had forgotten to tell Mila she was still in high school, not a career woman. When it came time to elect class favorites this year, there was no doubt in my mind that she would take the title Most Likely to Be a CEO.

  She smiled widely. “Finally, you’ve returned from the asylum! Gah, I’ve tried to call you like a hundred times.”

  I sat down across from her. “I was grounded in my room with no phone. But hey, at least I got all my summer reading done, and I made Aunt Portia a new apron,” I said lightly, glossing over how much I’d hated being denied human interaction.

  “Did they feed you bread and water?” she teased.

  “Only on the first day,” I joked back.

  What I didn’t say was that Mona, our housekeeper, had brought my meals to me each day. As per my parents, this meant oatmeal or a protein shake for breakfast, a thinly sliced turkey sandwich with a side salad of organic greens for lunch, and dinner was either grilled chicken or wild salmon served with precisely two servings of vegetables. I picked up the still warm cinnamon roll Aunt Portia had given me and took a bite, inhaling the buttery smell and savoring the sugary icing that melted on my tongue. This was heaven.

  Mila leaned in over the table. “Well, I’m glad you’re free now because Emma Easton and her cheer crew are doing a back to school mixer, and moi and you are going.” She held her hand up when I opened my mouth to interrupt her. “I know you and Emma aren’t BFFs, but the entire senior class is invited.”

  “Emma Easton slashed my tires last year, and she calls me Nerdy Nora,” I said, arching my brows. “And let’s not forget the other names she has for me: bee girl, geek girl, blonde bitch, and my favorite . . . Amazon girl,” I said, ticking them off on my fingers.

  “You forgot brownnoser. And she started the rumor about you and the janitor.”

  “Exactly! She’s hated me since I beat her out of class president. Why would I go to her party?” I asked.

  Mila seemed surprised at my declaration. “When she started the rumor about you and Mr. Bronski, you just laughed it off. Everyone thought you didn’t care. I thought you didn’t care.”

  True, her repertoire of insults had never hurt me. After all, I’d had other more important things to worry about, like my essay on the merits of Walt Whitman’s nature poetry or whether Finn would be coming home for a visit that weekend.

  “You should go and break out of this serious funk you’ve been in since Drew. You haven’t even been out on a date all summer. You need some male meat, chica,” she said seriously.

  I bit back a grin because Mila had never had any male meat. She was still a virgin, and if she knew what I’d done with my body, she’d never speak to me again.

  I nodded. “You know what, I do want to go. There’s something I want to tell Emma about her quarterback boyfriend. I figured it out last year, and she deserves to know,” I said, tapping my fingers on the table, remembering what I’d seen.

  Yeah, a bad girl wouldn’t let Emma Easton run over her.

  “Don’t have a clue what you’re talking about, but if it gets you to go, then I’ll take it,” she said with a triumphant grin. “But you gotta tell me the scoop. You’ve got this evil gleam in your eye which means you know something on somebody.” Her gray eyes focused in on me. “Yep, you’ve been people watching again. Tell me what you know, chica.”

  I laughed for the first time in over a week. “I’ll tell you this much: it involves her best friend April Novak,” I said, rummaging through my backpack. I pulled out dad’s silver flask. If I wanted to get to rehab, I better get started. I had some catching up to do.

  I unscrewed the metal top and sniffed it gingerly. Mother had let me have glasses of wine and champagne on special occasions, but I’d never tried vodka. I poured a healthy shot into the glass of Sprite I had.

  Mila’s eyes widened as she took in the flask. “Are you insane? What is that?” she whispered, furtively looking back over her shoulder for Aunt Portia.

  “Grey Goose vodka,” I said, taking a test sip and shuddering at the harsh aftertaste. “I stole a bottle from dad’s liquor cabinet, and according to the Internet, this particular brand is expensive and made in France.” I raised my glass to her. “Therefore, it must be awesome, right?” I tossed back another big gulp, trying not to grimace.

  She shook her head, and her mouth gaped ope
n. With her Emily Post-type personality, it wasn’t surprising that she’d never taken a drink of alcohol.

  “Since when do you drink?” she said heatedly, in a quiet way, sniffing my cup and making a gagging face. I laughed because vodka really didn’t have a scent.

  “Today is officially my first day of becoming an alcoholic. And this drink is making my soda very good—actually, no, I take that back. It tastes like shit, but I’m going to drink it anyway. Want some?”

  Before she could answer, my attention was caught by a black Escalade pulling up at the warehouse directly across from the shop. When two guys got out of the vehicle, a memory tugged at me, and I focused harder on them, but they were too far away and it had gotten dark outside.

  Mila let out a long sigh, pulling my attention back to her. “Anyway, you wanna hit downtown tomorrow? Maybe do some shopping at the Galleria?” she said, choosing to ignore the alcohol.

  “Is there a good tattoo place around there? If not, I wanna try this new shop that just opened around the block.”

  Her hands went nuts, fluttering up and down, like the girly girl she was. “I’ll never see you again because your mother will kill you! God, Nora, do you want to be incarcerated again?”

  Seeing her dramatic tirade triggered something in me, and I burst out laughing as she chuckled along with me. I laughed and laughed so hard my chest burned and tears streamed down my face. Embarrassed by the emotion, I tried to suck it in and stop, but I couldn’t. I gripped my waist with my hands, but it didn’t help. She eyed me, and you know that awkward moment when everyone else has stopped laughing at something, but you still are, so they start staring at you? It was like that, only worse, because she could see my hilarity had turned into something strange and dark. I pressed my hands over my mouth and stopped the awful laughter, but then the panic set in. A cold sweat rippled over me and my heart hammered, making me feel like I was going to pass out. I bent over, my body aching as if I’d just run a hundred yard sprint. I squeezed my eyes shut, took a deep breath, held it for five seconds, exhaled, and then repeated it until my heart finally slowed.

  I sat up with care, and Mila was standing and staring at me, her face washed out.

  “What was that?” she asked, blinking.

  “I think . . . I think it was my version of a panic attack,” I gasped out, wiping my face with some napkins from the table.

  “Damn. Has it happened before?” she asked in a scared voice. “Should I go get Portia?”

  I shook my head. “At the open house I had some dizziness, but nothing this dramatic,” I said, shuddering at the horrible laughter that had come out of me. Had I lost my mind completely? Had just the mention of Mother and being locked in my room sent me off the deep end?

  “You okay now?”

  I bit my lip and nodded, but I was lying.

  “Hey, maybe I’m just that funny. You think I could do stand-up?” she said.

  I shook my head at her. “I’m screwed up, Mila.”

  “No, you’re not,” she said firmly, settling back down in her seat. “Maybe a little weird sometimes, but that’s just because you read dictionaries in your sleep.”

  My eyes were drawn back to the warehouse across the street when the door opened and the taller of the guys came out. He strolled over to the SUV and popped open the back. He wasn’t facing me, but I could see he was wearing jeans and a black wife beater. I squinted, trying to make out the shadows on his muscled arms, recognizing them as some sort of tattoo. I wished he’d step into the street light so I could see him better, but he didn’t. He picked up a couple of guitars from the car, slammed the door shut, and walked back to the warehouse. My eyes followed him until he’d disappeared inside.

  Something about him pricked at me and made my stomach flutter, almost like I knew who he was but couldn’t place him. I needed to get a good look at his face.

  I called out for Aunt Portia to come over. “Who’s the guy next door?” I asked her, gesturing out the window.

  “Where?”

  “Some guy just went inside the warehouse across the street. He was driving the black SUV there,” I said.

  She nodded. “Leo Tate. He’s been renovating the old gym all summer and turning it into a health club. Supposedly, it’s going to be brand new with a pool, tennis courts, yoga classes, the works.”

  “Huh,” I said with a dismissive laugh, remembering that exercise and I did not get along, not since Mother had hired a personal trainer for me when I was fifteen, forcing me to take a 5:00 a.m. boot camp class three mornings a week. Her goal was to squeeze me into a size double zero. Ha. True, I was slimmer now, but only because I’d grown five inches, not because I could run a mile in six minutes.

  Prompted by thoughts of Mother, the filth that gnawed at me flared deep in my gut. I needed balm for my soul. I needed to lash out again at something or someone. Was it wrong? Yes, definitely. Would it make me feel better? I didn’t know, but I was willing to do anything to feel better, to stay sane.

  So as Mila and Aunt Portia talked about the new neighbors, I sat and thought about the bad things I could do. When I had my plan in place, I went to the back of the shop. There inside the utility closet, I found exactly what I needed. I grabbed a can of yellow spray paint, the same one Aunt Portia had used to repaint the kitchen’s back door. I shook it, checking to see if there was enough. There was. I stuffed it inside my backpack.

  MUCH LATER, AFTER Aunt Portia had gone home, I found myself standing in front of the new gym doors, which had the name Club Vita written in bold red letters. I cupped my hands to better see inside the glass doors, but all the lights were off. At midnight, odds were the owner had left for the night. Yet the Escalade was still here. Did that mean they lived here, too?

  Mila followed and stood apprehensively behind me. “This is the worst idea you’ve ever had, Nora,” she soothed, like to a mad dog. “What if someone sees us?”

  “They won’t. Come on, let’s do this,” I replied, taking a swig from the flask, my tongue numb to the taste. I passed it to Mila.

  “You know I love you ’cause we’ve been friends since third grade, but we could go to jail. This is trespassing,” she said quietly, her gaze jumping around the deserted parking lot.

  “You think?” I said, tucking my hair up inside my Longhorns ball cap and smiling a big Texas grin. Yep, the vodka had kicked in. “If we get put in jail, I’ll let you have the top bunk, I promise. I’ll even request silk sheets and a mint for your pillow.”

  She didn’t even crack a smile at me. I sighed. “You’ll see, Mila, this will be fun. Come on, let’s live a little.” I walked over to the Escalade, eyeing the huge vehicle. Mr. Fitness must be well-off, judging by leather interior, high-end rims, and tinted windshield. And for some crazy reason this car had caught my attention, and I was going with it. I picked up a small pebble and tossed it on the hood, and when no alarm sounded, I turned back to Mila, victory on my face.

  “What are you going to do?” she gasped. “I thought we were just checking the place out.”

  I pulled the yellow can of spray paint from my backpack. “I’m going to turn this kick-ass vehicle into a preschool bus.”

  “But why?” she said, a look of horror on her face.

  Before I could answer, it started pouring, a hard summer rain that drenched us in no time. I tossed my head back and inhaled the suddenly damp air. And as I stared into the night sky, I saw no star in sight; I had no wishes to be wished.

  No hope.

  This night would not end well.

  “Come on, let’s dance in the rain,” I said impulsively, pushing the bleakness away. I pretended to be okay and crooked our arms together and twirled her around, dancing and skipping like the professional square dancers did each year at the Fourth of July picnic in Highland Park. I wanted to be like those dancers. They seemed happy.

  “You’re acting insane, Nora,” she said in an agitated whisper, pulling away from me. I stopped and stared at her a bit dumbfounded. Mila alway
s did what I wanted. I was the dominant friend, and she was the follower.

  She bit her bottom lip. “This isn’t the time to be trying out the dosey doe. You’re going to wake the whole freaking neighborhood.”

  My spirits took a nose dive when I saw how frightened she was. She didn’t have the gumption for it, and I had no right to drag her down with me as I spiraled out of control. This wasn’t about Mila; this was about me. Whatever stupid thing I did tonight, she needed to be far away. I sighed heavily. “You’re right, Mila. Go back home, and I’ll call you when I’m leaving,” I said, taking the flask from her hand. She’d never taken a drink anyway.

  “But I hate to leave you here alone . . . in the rain. And I don’t know what you’re going to do to that car,” she said, practically wringing her hands.

  “Maybe I like hanging out in the rain,” I said with a shrug.

  She shook her head. “You’re drunk, Nora. I can’t leave you.”

  “You will because it’s past your curfew, and your parents will be mad. I’ll sleep it off in my car, Mila. Just go.”

  She stared at me for a long time. “Okay, but call me when you get in your car. Please,” she begged, looking at the flask in my hands like it was a loaded gun.

  Sweet, sweet Mila. You know those fluffy little rabbits you can buy at the pet store? The ones that come in different colors, like white, brown, auburn, and black? Apparently, there was this odd scientific study conducted in Switzerland once about which rabbit color people chose the most. They proved that 88.7 percent of people picked the white bunny to take home. As for me, I’d choose the black one every time because Mila reminded me of those little black bunnies with her gleaming dark hair, gentle nature, and instinct to run at the first sign of danger.