Black Cat Weekly #98

Chapter 5-1

byHere’s the thing: if not for Stacy’s mom, none of this ever would’ve happened.

It all started one evening in late August a few years back. I was on my way home from seeing the new Tarantino movie at the triplex in downtown Eastview, my iPod blasting Eminem’s “Lose Yourself” through my earbuds. As I was going by the house—I didn’t think of it as Stacy’s house, not yet—I saw a moving truck in the driveway and two figures through the front window. Both female, one taller and thinner, the other shorter and wider.

I pulled my earbuds out and peered at the window, trying to see better as a man in blue coveralls rolled a handcart out the front door. He grinned. “Serious babe alert, eh?”

“No, I just—”

“Can’t blame you, kid.”

The man in the blue coveralls kept on wheeling his cart down the driveway. I took another glance back at the window, but the figures were gone. I was about to turn my iPod on again when I heard voices behind me.

A woman was approaching the man in blue coveralls. She looked about thirty, but it was hard to tell. She wore a tank top and cutoff shorts with lots of leg showing, her body curving and then curving again. Her hair was pulled back in a loose ponytail, a few strands sticking to her sweaty face. She wore almost no makeup, just some bright red lipstick, but the man was right.

Serious babe alert.

I wanted to go back and say hi, welcome to the neighborhood. But before I got up the nerve, the woman had disappeared into the house again. I put my earbuds back in and started to walk, hoping to catch another glimpse of her through the front window. But I didn’t.

School started a few days later. Junior year. Most everyone I knew griped about going back and so did I, but secretly I was glad. I was tired of having my mom nag me about playing too much Xbox, and eager to see the friends who’d gone on summer vacations while I’d gone no further than the town pool.

My schedule wasn’t bad, except for geometry class... and the fact that somehow all my friends had fifth period lunch and I was stuck alone in fourth. When I got off the cafeteria line that first day, I had to find someone to sit with. There were some guys I knew from playing pickup basketball over the summer, but they were all serious jocks or total dorks.

Then I saw her.

A girl sitting alone at the far corner table, the one nobody ever wanted to be at because it was too close to the trashcan. She wore a loose-fitting Simpsons T-shirt and baggy jeans. Her hair was cropped at her shoulders, neither long and sexy nor short and stylish. I figured I was better off sitting with some dweeb I only half-liked than trying to make chit-chat with this new girl. But there was something around her eyes, and in the curve of her chin. Something that reminded me of the woman in the cutoff shorts.

“Hey, anyone sitting here?”

She looked up from her soggy grilled cheese. “Um, no.”

I plopped my tray down. “I’m Brad Wilkes.”

“Stacy Dawson.”

“Well, Stacy, how do you like it here at Eastview?”

“It’s okay, I guess.” She picked up her grilled cheese, which looked as delicious as a brown sponge. “Food sucks even worse than at my last school.”

I pointed at my plate. “Stick with the pizza next time.”

“Good to know.” She looked around at the other kids, then back at me. “You don’t have to sit here, you know.”

“Well, I hate to eat lunch standing up, so...”

“What I mean is, you don’t have to sit with me.”

meMy pizza was halfway to my mouth, but I put it down and looked at her. “Yeah, I know.”

She seemed to take that in and nodded, ripping off a piece of her grilled cheese.

“So you moved here with your family?” I asked.

She chewed for a while before she answered. “Yeah, I didn’t really want to move here, this is my third new school in five years, but my stepdad got a job nearby. He thought it would be good to be close to the main office, even though he travels all the time and hardly goes in. My mom said this would be the last time we move until I graduate from high school, she swore it.”

I pried open my chocolate milk, thinking of her mom in that tank top and cutoff shorts.

Stacy must’ve seen something on my face because she laughed harshly. “You’ve seen her, haven’t you?”

“Seen who?”

“Don’t lie to me, all right? If we’re going to be friends, you’re going to have to tell the truth.”

I frowned. Who said we were going to be friends? She’d been sitting alone on her first day at a new school and I was trying to be nice. But I shrugged and said, “What do you mean?”

“My Mom. You must’ve seen her. Tall, long dark hair, looks like a supermodel. Is that why you sat here?”

I shook my head. “No idea who you’re talking about. It’s just... well, I’m an only child, and my dad ran off when I was eight, so it’s always just been me and my mom... which is just to say that I know what it’s like to feel lonely, and I didn’t want you to have to sit here all by yourself, eating that crappy grilled cheese...”

I wasn’t sure why I lied to her about seeing her mom. What did it matter? Besides, I wasn’t exactly lying, at least not about myself. Maybe that was why Stacy was looking at me the way she was, as though I’d surprised her somehow. Which made sense, because, in a way, I’d surprised myself.

Stacy leaned across the table. “Now tell me more about school lunch. Tomorrow’s chicken nuggets, right?”

I shook my head. “Get the sloppy joe. Trust me.”

She laughed, and something loosened inside me. Maybe Stacy was right. Maybe we were going to be friends after all.

After that, Stacy and I had lunch together every day. I never saw her outside of school, and I didn’t really need to. My friends and I played video games in the afternoon and pickup basketball on the weekends, and that was my life.

Then one day—this was maybe the third or fourth week of school, right when the leaves started to turn and the weather got kind of a bite—I was walking home from the movies and went past Stacy’s house. From a distance I saw a woman wobbling on an extension ladder as she tried to change a bulb above the front door. She was too thin to be Stacy, though there was some resemblance: her hair was the same dark honey-brown, only instead of laying limply against her shoulders it rolled in waves down to a tight black sweater, and when she turned, she had the same high cheekbones and full lips.

“Need a hand?” I asked, standing with my hands jammed in my sweatshirt pockets.

“Do I ever.”

What I meant was that I’d hold the ladder for her while she finished the job. But she promptly got right down and handed the lightbulb to me.

I took the bulb and climbed up rung by rung, using my right hand to steady myself against the house. This was higher than it looked from the ground, and I wasn’t crazy about heights. My belly did a little flip-flop as I reached out, slowly twisting the bulb into the socket. I felt eyes on me the whole time, and if I managed to fall, I knew it would hurt doubly-hard, between the physical pain and the embarrassment of looking like a klutz.

Luckily, I managed to twist the bulb until it stopped, and got back down the ladder without tipping over sideways. As I did, the woman ducked inside the house and flipped a switch. The bulb came on, glowing bright yellow in the dark.

Stacy’s mom smiled. My stomach did the same flippity-flop it had done when I was standing on the ladder, even though my Keds were solidly on the patchy front lawn.

“Thank you so much! I heard people were real neighborly around here, and they were telling the truth.” She studied me closely. “You must be around the same age as my daughter Stacy. Do you go to Eastview High?”

I told her that I did. “So I guess you’re... Stacy’s mom?”

Her eyes lit up. “You know Stacy?”

“Sure, I... we eat lunch together sometimes...”

She beamed. “You must be the boy she told me about. Brad, right?”

I nodded.

“It can be so hard, coming into a new school. I really, really appreciate you being so kind to my little girl.” She shook her head as if in disbelief, her long lush hair shimmering in the light from the new bulb. “She’s lucky to have a friend like you.”

I opened my mouth, starting to say that we weren’t friends, not yet, but I didn’t. Instead, I said, “I’m lucky too,” and that was it.

“Can you keep a secret, Brad?”

She said it softly, so that I had to lean in. The scent of her shampoo filled my nostrils.

“Sure, of course.”

“Stacy doesn’t like me to meddle in her business, so please don’t tell her we met tonight. Is that all right with you?”

I said it was, and watched as Stacy’s mom padded into the house, giving a little wave as she disappeared inside. My heart was still hammering the way it had as I scaled the ladder, even though my feet were firmly on the ground. I turned and headed off into the dark, looking back for one last glimpse of Stacy’s mom from behind, but she was gone.

After that, Stacy and I kept having lunch together, and soon I got to where I looked forward to it. We’d talk about movies or TV shows we’d seen and which kids we’d most like to send on a one-way trip to Mars, and trade stories about what happened in our classes. The latter led to me grumbling about the C I’d gotten on a math test. Stacy told me she was really good at geometry and asked if I wanted to study together. She said that we could go to her house after school. I said yes without a second thought.

When we walked into Stacy’s house, her mom was on the phone, pacing. She wore a skirt that ended just above her knees and a silk blouse with a bow across the front. “You’re going to love it, I promise,” she said, the word promise setting off sparks in my belly. “You just have to see it.”

promise“That’s my mom,” Stacy said, and I almost said, Yeah, I know, then caught myself.

Yeah, I know,A series of built-in shelves beside the front door held photos of Stacy and her mother, along with one of her mom and some guy, both dressed-up and posing in a chapel. Beside them was a five-sided crystal trophy with the words SALESPERSON OF THE YEAR 2002 etched across the front.