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“Pit. The other kid is Puke.”
“I don’t want to know, do I?”
“Probably not.”
“What’s Mason?”
“Boss. Bossman. Big Daddy if you really want to get under his skin.”
Somehow, I feel like calling MasonDaddyis not a good idea for me.
“I better get back out there,” Ian announces, heading toward the door when Mason comes into view through the bane of my existence— a window that shows the garage. I can feel him watching me all day, waiting for me to crack.
This time is no different. His eyes bore into mine through the glass and the thick layer of dust does nothing to stop the weight of that stare. Like a hurricane. He pauses for a moment, then his gaze sweeps over to Ian and his jaw ticks.
Then he looks away.
“Yeah, you better go,” I roll my eyes. “Wouldn’t want you to get whipped for speaking to the lowly office maid.”
My mother has been giving me an allowance since I was seven years old.
When I was a child, it was a dollar for every household chore I completed. Two for vacuuming, because she hated it. I hated it, too, but I came to secretly enjoy sweeping up the debris and hearing the decrepit Hoover crackle as it cleaned our old carpets.
After . . . Dad . . . things changed. The allowance was no longer about household chores, but instead, about days that I was the perfect little soldier, fighting in her political warfare as she clawed her way to the top and eventually, governor.
Ten dollars turned into a hundred. A hundred turned into a thousand. Mom became governor and I became her perfect little doll that she could dress up and parade around as if to say,look, I was a single mother for years and my child is near perfection.
Any misstep resulted in a punishment, no matter how insignificant. And let me tell you. Mother’s punishments are more like nightmares.
Missy never fell into line. Maybe she was a “bad kid” or maybe she was just better at living her own life than me. Either way, after we moved to California, Mom’s punishments were no longer about teaching us discipline, but more about silence. The louder you are, the more it hurts.
That sort of thing.
Now that I’m making money of my own again, I won’t have to use Mom’s allowance she still transfers into my account every week.
Mason pays me, though our agreement said otherwise, but I’m not complaining. When he hands me the envelope, right along with Puke and Ian, he doesn’t say a word and I don’t bother to argue because I need his help. He’s quite literally my last option if I want to help my sister.
By the middle of the second week working for Mason, I decide to take Ian up on his offer. I bring cleaning supplies from home and smuggle them inside. Don’t ask me why. Maybe I knew I was doing something I wasn’t supposed to.
Maybe this would show Mason I’m genuinely trying to help. Maybe he’ll finally grant me an olive branch and give mesomethingto go by. Maybe it’ll just piss him off, but dammit, I’m bored and with all this time sitting around, the racing thoughts have never once stopped.
The same mantra repeats over and over like a broken record. Missy. Mom. Michael. Africa. Missy.
I can’t take it anymore.
I’m going to clean and if Mason Carpenter doesn’t like it, then I guess I’ll deal with the consequences later.
Call it “taking initiative”.
I start off by organizing the desk. I match car keys and invoices for pickup on one end and bills for drop-offs and services on the other. I move everything and scrub away the years of dirty, sticky fingerprints and even deep clean the chair.
Let me tell you . . . that chair has seen some shit.
I take apart the phone enough to scrub the gunk out of the earpiece so you can actually hear people call and then I work on the lobby area.
I mean, yesterday, an elderly womanstoodand waited in the lobby for Mason to pull her car out. I felt so guilty I offered her my chair which she took one look at and declined. I honestly can’t blame her.
People can’t sit because the chairs are either filled with magazines or car parts. So, I scrub those, too, stacking the parts on a shelf in the corner and organizing the magazines in the rack in the corner with care. I don’t know why, I just feel like they mean something to Mason. Why else would he still have them?
