Guests Read online

  Guests

  Written by Samuel S. Crawford

  Part 3 of “Rules of Life”

  Chapter 1

  Mom and Dahlia come into the room behind me. I pull out the cowboy hats from my luggage. Before anyone can stop me, I throw them on the ground and stomp them.

  Dahlia yells, “Don’t!” and Dad demands, “What the fuck are you doing?” and Mom says, “Oh, really?”

  Dad comes over and shakes my shoulders. “Calm down!” he yells over and over. While he does this, I pretend to be somewhere real nice like Rome or Ireland or Disney Land. When he finally lets go, I run into the bathroom and lock the door. Nobody follows me, but I can hear Mom explain about Lauren G. and Missy A. and Big Bear.

  I run the shower and get in without even taking off my clothes. A couple of minutes later, Mom knocks, but I tell her to go away. I tell her I want to be alone, and she say ok. Then Dad knocks and tells me that everybody is going to dinner. Through the door, he yells, “Are you coming, or not?”

  “Not,” I say. Then he says, “Ok, bye,” and I hear the door shut. After everybody has gone, I take off my wet clothes and hang them up to dry. I get out of the shower, then I make the water so hot that the whole room steams up like a sauna. I trace pictures in the mirror, and then I say, “One day you’ll have proper friends who love you more than anybody else.”

  From the other side of the door, I hear Mom say my name. “What the fuck!” I yell. Mom says, “Don’t say ‘fuck.’” Then she asks, “Will you let me in?” She sounds real sad, and even more defeated than normal, so I tell her I’ll get dressed and come out.

  After I dry off, I find Mom sitting on Dahlia’s and my bed. She asks me to sit next to her, but instead, I sit on the other bed. Mom says she is sorry and I say ok. Mom says she wasn’t trying to be mean, that she was trying to save me money. I say she doesn’t know what she is talking about. “You don’t even have friends,” I say. Mom says that’s true, that she has Dahlia and me instead.

  “And Dad?” I ask. “And Dad,” she says.

  I ask, “Why’d he have to shake me like that?”

  And Mom says, “Your dad has a problem with his temper.” Then I say, “No shit.”

  And Mom says, “You’re a resilient girl. I wish I were as tough as you.” I ask Mom, “How so?”

  And she says, “You don’t let anyone keep you down.” Then Mom asks if I want to meet Dahlia and Dad, and I say no.

  Mom asks, “Want to do our own thing?” and I say ok.

  Mom and I are sitting in this tiny French restaurant, chomping on bread. After we order, I ask if we shouldn’t also get something with meat. I quote Dad’s “A meal isn’t a meal without meat.”

  Mom doesn’t answer, but she offers me a sip of her wine. Then she says, “One day you’re going to do great things, kid.”

  I ask, “Like what?”

  And she asks, “What happened to the biologist dream?”

  I sip Mom’s wine until she makes me give it back. Then I ask, “Why do you love Dad?”

  Mom rubs her forehead. Then she says, “Sometimes you have to make the best of a situation.”

  I ask, “Are you in love with him?” and Mom tells me that you can love somebody without being in love. She says, “One day, you’ll learn that there are more important things than love. One day, you’ll need a real job, and health insurance, and a car, and car insurance. You’ll have your own house and you’ll have to pay for that house, and those are all great things, but they can also trap you.”

  I ask, “Do you feel trapped?” and Mom says no, but I think she is lying.

  I say, “I’m never going to marry anybody unless I know that I could be in love with them for the rest of my life.”

  I say, “I’m never going to settle for anything else.” I say, “I’m never going to be trapped.”

  I say, “I’m gonna have the happiest marriage in the world.”

  And Mom says, “Sure, honey. If anyone can make it happen, you can.”

  It’s the morning of Mom and Dad’s wedding renewal and Dahlia and I are taking turns buttoning Mom into her dress.

  Dahlia is yelling, “Suck in, suck in!” and Mom is yelling, “I am sucking in!” and I’m taking pictures of everybody with Mom’s phone.

  After she’s all buttoned up, Mom looks in the mirror. She says, “I almost feel young!” and Dahlia says, “But Mom, you are, like, so young!”

  There’s a knock on the door, and Dad yells, “It’s me!” and I yell, “Who’s me?” and Dad yells, “It’s your father!” I open the door just a crack, and Dad asks how much longer we are going to take. Mom says, “We’re almost done.”

  Dad says, “I’m going to head out.” Then he asks, “Is anybody going to come with me or what?”

  Dahlia and I have a quick and silent argument about who will get to stay with Mom. Dahlia whispers, “You’ll hurt Dad’s feelings if you don’t go with him.” I say the same thing back to her, but then Dahlia yells to Dad that I’m coming with him, and Mom says, “please,” so I go.

  Dad’s wearing a real handsome suit, and when I tell him this, he claps me on the back and says he’s gonna take it back to the store when the day is over. “Smart, huh?” he asks, and I say, “Sure, Dad.”

  Dad makes us take the stairs instead of the elevator. Even though I know it’s a dumb request, I ask Dad if we can take a taxi to the park. Dad says, “I’m five times your age!” Then he

  tells me to stand on a bench. He says, “I’ll give you a piggy-back ride,” like I am a kid or something. I’m not wearing the best shoes for walking, so I say ok, and get on.

  Dad asks, “Should we run?” and I say “No!” But then Dad starts to run and all I can do is hold on and scream.

  Outside of the park, I make Dad stop at this stand selling roses. “So I can make an aisle,”

  I say.

  Dad says, “Ok,” then he hands me his wallet. “Buy whatever you want.” “How much can I spend?” I ask.

  Dad says, “I don’t know, be reasonable.”

  So I buy roses of every color, and ditch the receipt when it’s given to me.

  Even before we enter the park, I can see this series of huge, orange curtains hanging over what looks like a main path. Dad asks, “What are those? Those are awful.”

  “They’re art!” I say, and skip ahead so that I can be under them. The fabric hangs just a little out of my reach.

  Dad joins me. He shakes his head and says, “That’s not art.” I ask, “Can you pick me up so that I can touch them?”

  Dad says, “I’m tired.”

  I look around and ask, “Where are all the strawberries?"

  Dad laughs at me. Then he tells me I have ten minutes before Mom and Dahlia arrive. Dad’s scowling around at all of the park-goers, muttering, “God, I wish everybody would go away. God, I don’t remember there being this many vagrants here thirty years ago.”

  I start pulling the petals off of the roses, and placing them all around this Imagine mosaic.

  Dad says, “What the hell are you doing?” I say, “Don’t swear at me!” Then I say, “Say you’re sorry,” and Dad says, “Sorry. What the heck are you doing?” I tell him I’m making an aisle for Mom to walk down, and Dad says, “You better hope the wind doesn’t pick up and blow all your roses away.”

  But the wind stays quiet, and people are real nice and walk around my flower petals, and Mom and Dahlia arrive before Dad gets too impatient. I see Mom before Dad does, and for one wild second, I want to run at her and stop her from walking down my flower aisle. But Dahlia is practically frog-marching Mom closer and closer to where we are.

  I say, “Wait a second! Who is gonna marry you guys?” and Dad looks at me like I’m an idiot. He says, “
This is just ceremonial.” And I say ok. Then Dad kisses Mom on the cheek, and grabs her hand. Mom smiles. She looks real beautiful, like a princess or a queen. Then Dad pulls out a ring from his pocket and asks, “Thirty more years?” and Mom nods. She looks at Dahlia and me and says, “Thirty more years.” And then she lets Dad put the ring on her finger and Dahlia claps and cheers, but I don’t clap. I don’t say anything, but when we walk out of the park, Dad and Dahlia marching towards wherever we are going next, I hang back and take Mom’s hand. The two of us stroll real slow underneath trees that are black against the sky and when Dad yells at us to hurry up, I yell, “Mom and I are walking at our own pace and you can wait for us or not!”

  Chapter 2

  For the first year ever, Maisie, Bane and I are on our way to Camp Chattawanga! Maisie is sitting in the front of Mom’s van, even though Mom promised that seat to me in April, back when Dad still lived with us. When I remind Mom of our agreement, she sighs and asks, “Is this really worth a fight?” Since Dad left, Mom doesn’t remember hardly anything, not Maisie’s mock trial competition, not that Bane is deathly allergic to strawberries, not even that she banned me from Chattawanga after I cut the ends off of Maisie’s pig tails.

  On the radio, a British man is telling the true story of a girl in Africa who got raped by her neighbor and had four children by the time she was seventeen. When the story started, Mom would turn down the volume whenever there was a word like, “ejaculation,” or “forced,” but she stopped doing that after a while. Now we are allowed to hear all of the words. We are even allowed to hear “penis.”

  The way it works with the three of us kids is that I hate Maisie and Maisie hates me and Bane doesn’t hate anybody. We’ve been in the car for three hours. So far, Maisie has pinched me four times, but I’ve only hit her twice. The second time I hit Maisie, Mom asks, “Why can’t you girls be like Bane?” and I say, “Because Bane has a penis and we don’t.”

  Bane smacks me and says, “Azalea, don’t be gross.” Then he raises his eyebrow and whispers, “Want to see something?” I shrug. After making sure Mom isn’t looking, Bane opens his backpack and pulls out a knife in a leather pouch. “Dad gave it to me,” he says, unsheathing it and balancing the blade on his knee. He points to an engraving in the metal, “Stansanoff,” he reads, “and, it’s a Case knife. Pretty cool, huh?” I nod. Then he asks, “You see this part?” and he points this creepy-looking hook at the end of the handle, then he snaps his hand towards the back of Mom’s head and whispers, “Its weighted, see? If you get someone, say, where the spine joins the neck, they could actually die!”

  “Cool,” I say, just ‘cause I can’t think of anything else. Then I say, “Don’t let Mom see,” and Bane nods.

  “That’s what Dad said too,” he says.

  The way it works with the three of us kids is that Maisie is named after Mom’s mom and Bane is named after Dad’s dad and I’m not named after anybody because I was never supposed to be born. That’s what Maisie says anyway.

  Once an hour Mom turns down whatever she is listening to and reminds us exactly how much this camp is costing her (one thousand, six hundred dollars). Technically, she should be paying two thousand, four hundred dollars, but the camp gave her a buy two, get one free deal. Nobody says so, but I know I’m the free one.

  By the time we get to Chattawanga, Mom is so sick of us fighting that she doesn’t even come into the camp to drop us off. At the camp’s entrance, she gets a real important call from Mr. Levy. Mr. Levy is Mom’s boss and I hate him because he is always trying to take a hug or kiss from me. “Take” because he doesn’t ask. He just runs at me with open, sweaty arms, and I have to dodge him. By now, I’ve told him about eight million times that I don’t hug or kiss anybody; not Mom, not Maisie, not Bane, nobody.

  Mom puts Mr. Levy on hold. Then she tells Maisie, “I love you,” and Bane, “You are one handsome guy,” and me, “Don’t cause trouble, make friends.”

  The reason Mom tells me to make friends is because Marcus Kirton is my only friend, and he is seventy-eight and the evening security guard at the Natural History Museum. I bring him Mom’s cooking and in exchange, he lets me poke all of the animals, even the tigers and the monkeys, even the dinosaur bones.

  Right before Mom pulls away, Maisie pinches the back of my arm so hard it hurts until I can’t see Mom’s car any more. I slide my finger across my throat and say, “I’m going to kill you, Maisie Stansanoff.”

  I don’t know where to go because everything is quiet and grey and nobody seems to be around. Bane knows where to go though. He hikes right up to a large cabin and knocks and knocks. Even though the lights are on in the front room, nobody answers the door. Right after Mom left, Maisie sat down and started working on the lanyard she got last week at Art & Stuff. Art & Stuff is a camp they run at the elementary school but I don’t go because that camp is for babies and I go to fencing camp instead. When I first told Mom that I wanted to go to fencing camp, she said nobody fences, but then I went on the internet and I found a camp right in the middle of Ventura Blvd. Bane thinks it’s cool that I fence, and even though fencing is my thing, he says he’s going to start fencing next year. Maisie doesn’t want to fence because she is afraid she’ll get hurt. She’s afraid of everything that is slightly interesting or cool. She only likes stupid mock trial. You can hardly ever get her to shut up about it. I hope they have fencing at this camp.

  Bane is still knocking and knocking and Maisie’s lanyard is almost finished, and I’m standing between the two of them, looking for my jacket ’cause it’s starting to get real windy and cold.

  “I’m starving,” says Maisie, not looking up from her lanyard.

  “I’m cold,” I say.

  “I don’t think anybody is here,” says Bane.

  Maisie says, “Of course people are here. Mom wouldn’t have abandoned us in the middle of the forest.” Then she looks up from her lanyard and asks, “Would she?”

  Maisie says she saw a bulletin board back by the entrance of the camp. She asks, “Wouldn’t that, like, have instructions on what to do in this situation?” I don’t know how she could see anything so small, but the sun has begun to go down and my stomach is making all kinds of weird sounds. As we walk, Bane sharpens the end of a stick with his knife. When Maisie sees, she asks, “Where’d you get that?”

  Bane shrugs. He says, “Dad told me all the boys here would have knives.” Then I ask, “Why didn’t he give me a knife?”

  And Maisie asks, “Why would you want one?”

  When we get the bulletin board, there isn’t anything posted there except for the name of the camp and the dates of the sessions: June 16th-28th, July 5th-17th, August 4th-16th.

  I ask, “What’s today?” and Bane says it’s June ninth. Then all three of us go quiet for a while.

  Bane asks, “Well, what the fuck are we going to do now?” and Maisie says, “Don’t swear!” and I say, “Let Bane swear all the fuck he wants! We’re all going to die!”

  Bane, Maisie and I all share a phone, but we didn’t bring it with us because Mom says kids who bring phones to camp are just asking for someone to steal from them.

  We walk back to the cabin because at least there is a porch and a light and a little overhang in case it rains. Maisie says that since she’s seen almost every episode of Survivor, she should be in charge. She says the first thing the survivors do is elect a leader and the second thing they do is find water and the third thing they do is build the fire. I say that I should be in charge. Then I ask, “Do you remember what a crappy leader you were during that Zoo camp?” Bane says he doesn’t give a fuck who is in charge as long as he doesn’t get eaten by a bear.

  Bane and I race around, trying to open cabin doors, while Maisie stands, complaining about the cold, making fun of how hard I’m breathing.

  After about an hour of Bane trying to shimmy open the cabin’s front door with his knife, he says, “Well, fuck,” and smashes a window with the knif
e’s hilt.

  I yell, “Bane!” and Maisie yells, “Bane!” and Bane yells, “What!” and then he smashes the rest of the window, and disappears inside.

  We hear him say, “It’s nice in here!” and something that sounds like furniture moving around.

  Then he sticks his head out the window and we call, “Let us in!” and he asks, “What’s the password?”

  Inside is almost as cold as outside, but there is a TV and a wood-burning stove and a pile of magazines with naked girls in them. Maisie says, “I think this must be where the counselors stay,” and I say maybe, and Bane takes a couple of the magazines into the little loft and says, “Don’t come up here. Don’t bother me.”

  Maisie says to put my clothes in one of the dressers. After we unpack, she tells Bane to come downstairs, but Bane says he won’t and since he is a lot bigger than her, Maisie has to leave him alone. Instead, she tells me to check the tap, and we taste the water in little sips that become gulps. There isn’t anything in the fridge, but in the freezer there are ten pizzas and three hundred popsicles. In the cabinet next to the fridge there are enough boxes of mac n’ cheese to last anybody years and years.

  Maisie asks, “Do you want pizza or mac n’ cheese?” and I say both, and she says, “You can’t have both,” and I tell her that she isn’t in charge of me. When she asks, “Want to bet?” I tell her she is acting like a real jerk. Then she grabs me and puts me in a headlock. She sings, “Azalea,” and pinches my side. Then she yells, “Say that I am in charge,” and when I say, “I won’t, I won’t,” she punches me in the stomach so hard I think I will throw up.

  Bane hears us, so he comes back downstairs, but he doesn’t say anything about me crying. He asks, “What’s going on with the food?” And Maisie responds, “What? I’m supposed to cook just because I’m a girl?” Bane gives her a look, then he comes over to help me up. “Why’d you have to punch her?” he asks and he lets me put my head on his shoulder.