Mine and Mine
“What did you do that for?” Julio asks.
“I already told you, my dad works late tonight.”
“Cleaning offices?” He asks.
I whack him over the head again. It is the middle of the afternoon and I am free from worry that anyone might ruin this party. My dad stopped noticing around the time my mother left that I even exist. I am still waiting for the lesson on how to cook eggs in the microwave. (I had to look it up on YouTube.)
Julio pouts and I start tearing out perfume samples from last summer’s fashion magazines. I flip to an ad with a model that looks like Kimmie and kisses a bottle of sunless tanning spray. I heard Kimmie lost her dad when she was young too and I understand this ghost. The video of her and Julio in the bathroom and then the picture of her and the thing we all call Smoke makes it much easier to insult her whenever I can and say stuff like, “We all had a good laugh, about how scared you were of Soccer Boy that you put on a wig for half the year.” But she didn’t say much to that.
“Kimmie knows about the train,” Julio says. “She wants to go.”
“I was there when you told her,” I say. But I don’t ask him why he wants her to go and there are things I pack by myself like Bev’s old dress where I’ve stored my cash and my dad’s high school ring, the one he gave to my mom and doesn’t know I have. So it seems I’m stuck with this lying girl, this sticky rice side, and a boyfriend who can’t seem to make up his mind. Maybe if I could make that microwave egg right now I’d have more sense and turn us all around instead of being scrambled and believing sizzling super boys are on the other side of where we’re going.
Is that what happened to you mom?
I ask, but she doesn’t answer. I don’t know what this means.
Julio reaches for the last slice of pizza. “What you don’t know about stealing,” I say.
That slice disappears from his hands.
“Kimmie didn’t invite you to her party,” Julio says. He says it like he is trying to get even with me for taking his pizza. (Or maybe he’s sour because of all those purple, blue, and black blooms on his back he got from his last conversation with his dad.) Of the three of us, he needs to leave and find a better home.
“I already told you, my dad works late tonight.”
“Cleaning offices?” He asks.
I whack him over the head again. It is the middle of the afternoon and I am free from worry that anyone might ruin this party. My dad stopped noticing around the time my mother left that I even exist. I am still waiting for the lesson on how to cook eggs in the microwave. (I had to look it up on YouTube.)
Julio pouts and I start tearing out perfume samples from last summer’s fashion magazines. I flip to an ad with a model that looks like Kimmie and kisses a bottle of sunless tanning spray. I heard Kimmie lost her dad when she was young too and I understand this ghost. The video of her and Julio in the bathroom and then the picture of her and the thing we all call Smoke makes it much easier to insult her whenever I can and say stuff like, “We all had a good laugh, about how scared you were of Soccer Boy that you put on a wig for half the year.” But she didn’t say much to that.
“Kimmie knows about the train,” Julio says. “She wants to go.”
“I was there when you told her,” I say. But I don’t ask him why he wants her to go and there are things I pack by myself like Bev’s old dress where I’ve stored my cash and my dad’s high school ring, the one he gave to my mom and doesn’t know I have. So it seems I’m stuck with this lying girl, this sticky rice side, and a boyfriend who can’t seem to make up his mind. Maybe if I could make that microwave egg right now I’d have more sense and turn us all around instead of being scrambled and believing sizzling super boys are on the other side of where we’re going.
Is that what happened to you mom?
I ask, but she doesn’t answer. I don’t know what this means.
Julio reaches for the last slice of pizza. “What you don’t know about stealing,” I say.
That slice disappears from his hands.
“Kimmie didn’t invite you to her party,” Julio says. He says it like he is trying to get even with me for taking his pizza. (Or maybe he’s sour because of all those purple, blue, and black blooms on his back he got from his last conversation with his dad.) Of the three of us, he needs to leave and find a better home.
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