Better Off Dead (6 page)

As she wept into Mr. Gordo’s soft green fur, she prayed that weight would crush her. 
Please...take all this pain away. 

~*~

It was almost a nice way to wake up...almost.  Gentle morning light spilled through the curtains on her window, amber and yellow that warmed the room.  Lucy’s eyes were sore as she opened them, her vision fuzzy as she blinked.  She had big time cotton mouth, and as she licked her parched lips she tasted her grandmother’s icing, just a hint.  But then she turned her head to look at her alarm clock.  Her head, her neck, her shoulder and arm, all ignited in a fiery chorus of pain.  Her good hand shot up to hold her head and she felt something soft and fluffy against her forehead.  She pulled her hand away and looked at Mr. Gordo.

At least you’re here.
..

Lucy set him down on her bed, and then pulled herself up until she was sitting with her legs dangling off the side.  She still had on her Dr Scholl’s.  When the throbbing in her arm and shoulder cooled, and the room stopped spinning, she took a deep breath.

Something stinks!

And suddenly she realized it was her. 

The special sauce...

Lucy groaned as she pushed off the bed with her good arm and stood, wobbly on her feet.  Her head started to spin again, and the rest of her body ached.   She trudged to her bedroom door, pulled it open and walked slowly down the hall, her hand braced against the hall wall every so many steps—her head was really threatening to fall right off her poor tortured neck.

Then, just a few feet from the bathroom door, she felt the bottom of her stomach give out, and then heave.  Lucy ran through the open doorway and hit her knees in front of the toilet.  A gush of vomit leapt up out of her and made a sickening splash as Lucy’s hands gripped the cold porcelain of the toilet.

Lucy hated throwing up.  Her mind always screamed for someone to help her, to call an ambulance, for she was always certain she was going to die.  But for the first time ever those thoughts didn’t even occur to her.

I’m eighteen. 
She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and reached with her sore arm, and through the pain pressed down on the toilet’s handle and flushed. 
I can handle throwing up all by myself.

Lucy was tempted to just lie down on the cool linoleum and curl up in a little ball, maybe curl up around the bottom of the toilet, just in case she had to puke again.  But it was Sunday, and she wasn’t off on Sundays.  That meant she would have to go back to McDonalds, back to her disgrace.  The thought was almost more than she could bear.

Maybe I’ll just call off? 
She pulled herself to her feet holding on to the nearby sink. 
I don’t think they’ll really be expecting me...hell, I don’t even think I’m in shape to even get on the bus...

Her mind lost the thread of what she was thinking.  She was peering into the ancient oval mirror bolted to the wall over the sink.  Even with fuzzy patches, and more than a few streaks where the silver backing had peeled over time, she had a perfectly clear view of herself in that mirror.  And that view wasn’t good.

She took a deep, shuddering breath as she tried to comprehend that the girl in the mirror was her.

The girl looking back at her didn’t resemble her in the least.  Never mind the tacky blue polo shirt plastered to her, sticky and cold with special sauce.  This girl had some major problems.  Her hair was a greasy, tangled mess.  The ends fried at least an inch, her lustrous mane of mahogany hair now a mousy, faded-out brown, caused by sun damage and no central air, unfiltered tap water and supermarket hair product. 

Her skin was pale and sallow, and not only were her eyes bloodshot, but they had ugly dark circles under them.  And there on her chin, puffy and red, with a volcanic looking white head, pulsed her very first zit.  She’d been going to a dermatologist since she was twelve; she’d thought she would always be immune.

As she pried her gaze from that horrid pimple, she gapped as she realized she wasn’t just five pounds overweight.  No.  She was at least ten pounds—which was absurd, especially after she’d just barfed up half her bodyweight.  Yet, as she turned and gazed at herself in the mirror, she couldn’t deny it.  Her flat belly was gone.  Her perfect, perky—
real
—breasts had lost their perk, and were actually starting to sag.  She turned and looked to her rear end.  The ass she used to put a finger to and make a sizzle sound through her teeth about, just drooped—large enough that her cheap black slacks seemed on the verge of splitting.

Whatever little strength she had left drained out the bottom of her feet.  She leaned against the sink, her arms holding her up, but just barely, and tried to breathe.  But every time she looked into the mirror she just couldn’t take in any breath.  Her eyes started to burn again, and tears welled up in them.

This isn’t me... 
She gripped the edge of the sink. 
This can’t be me...

Despair flowed cold and dark through her veins.  It was almost welcome, that cold.  At least it was making her feel numb, where as the sight of herself in the mirror was making her nauseous, and the burning in her head down through her arm was enough to make her scream.  She wanted that cold despair to wash over her, make her pass out, make her vanish from sight, from the world.

This can’t be me...

Then who is it? 
whispered a mean little voice in her head. 
Who’s this disgusting, pathetic creature staring back at you from the mirror? 

The voice cackled with cruel delight. 
I thought you’ve never met a mirror that didn’t like you?  This one, it’s safe to say, hates your guts!

She something flared in her head.  Not the wicked ache and pain, nor the dizziness from before.  No, this was different.  This was hot and sharp, and wonderfully familiar.  This was her getting pissed. 

That heat bloomed with utter annoyance, and a red slash of anger, as it traveled down through her body to her chest, and then radiated through her cold, aching limbs, replacing the chill of despair in its wake.

She looked down at her hands, the chipped, uneven nails, the gnarled cuticles, the grit and gunk embedded underneath.  Lucy clenched her teeth as she balled up her hands into fists, and then beat them down hard on the sink counter, staring with utter hatred at the personal-grooming-impaired girl in the mirror.

That’s.  Not.  Me.

The mean little voice in her head started to say something, but Lucy clamped her mind down on it. 

Get out of my head, you stupid, fat, ugly cow!

Lucy pulled off the band that held her hair back in a ponytail.  Then gently she pulled the special sauce gooped polo shirt off over her head, and holding it out in front of her for a moment of contemplation, she pressed her foot down on the pedal of the small, lidded trashcan and tossed the thing in, letting the metal lid drop with an emancipating clang. 

She kicked off the Dr Schooll’s and then stripped off the black slacks, and her under-things.  She crawled into the shower and let the hot water cascade over her sore, tired body.  It felt better than good.  Lucy couldn’t remember the last time she’d just stood under the rejuvenating hot spray of a shower, with no time constraint.  Usually someone was knocking on the door, telling her to hurry up.  Or she was dashing around, trying to make her bus, so she could get to work on time.

But as she stood under that water now, a thought started materializing in her mind, like mist turning to a blazing neon sign—a huge, blinking Times Square sized sign.  Lucy could practically hear the low, deep buzz that sign emitted every time it crackled to life.

And it read: I QUIT!

I quit...

The thought just echoed in her mind, the thought turning from a mere whisper to the chant of a Super Bowl stadium crowd.

“I quit,” The words passed her lips, and then her eyes snapped open with surprise.  “I quit!”  Those words seemed to shimmer like silver, and then sparkle and shine like a really good, really expensive diamond.  The kind she’d hinted about to her father for a graduation present.  In her mind, Lucy could see that diamond hanging on a sleek platinum chain, twinkling like a star against her skin.  Not her skin now, but the radiant, creamy flesh she used to have.

And the diamond’s fiery gleam pulsed with the two words that throbbed in her head. 

I quit...I quit...I quit...

The weight that had been on her shoulders for the last six months, the pressure that had almost snuffed her out completely only a few hours ago, lifted like...like magic.  Lucy breathed in the sweet, warm air of the shower.  She raised her hot-water-soothed arms up in the air as she took another, and then another deep, wondrous breath.  Lucy screamed—screamed long and loud, a joyous, powerful scream.  And then she felt the corner of her mouth catch in an unfamiliar twinge.

She was smiling.

She was also thinking.  Thinking very hard and very fast.  She turned and grabbed the shampoo bottle from the rack and started lathering her hair in earnest.  The faster she thought, the easier those thoughts seemed to weave together, thoughts latching onto other thoughts, memories of seemingly incidental snippets of information entwining with her long abandoned hopes and dreams. 

If she wanted her old life back, then she’d have to take it back herself.  

All of this spun itself into a plan.  And the plan, if she did say so herself, was pretty damn good.  

LUCY’S HAIR
was still wet, and though she was dressed in a cheap T-shirt and a pair of sweats, she felt like a million bucks.  She’d washed and scrubbed herself until not a trace of McDonalds—or its special sauce—was on her.  Also the hot water finally ran cold.

She’d gone into her mother’s room and riffled through her drawers until she found what she was looking for: a business card.

Gram was at church, but she’d left her presents neatly stacked on the kitchen table, right next to her birthday cake.  A spotless glass dome sat atop the pedestal holding the cake. 

A piece of paper had her grandmother’s handwriting on it.

Lucybean,

Called you off from work today. 

Rest!

Love, Gram

Cool…I can
QUIT
tomorrow.

She was suddenly starved.  Her stomach growled as memories of her grandmother’s divine cake floated through her mind.  So she fetched a plate, a knife and a fork, then hacked herself off a very large piece of cake.  Even the next day the thing smelled like heaven, and as she took a bite it tasted just as good...no, better than it had the night before.  Now it tasted like freedom.  Now it tasted like having her old life back, and getting back her dreams.

Having money again.  Regaining her dimmed yet still abundant beauty.  And going to a good university, and from there having the life she’d always envisioned for herself.  To own her own multimillion dollar cosmetics line.  Maybe even branch out to movies, music and TV.  She, Lucy Hart, would be queen of her own, huge, fabulous world.

The image of her in a gorgeous Dior gown, on the arm of some handsome A-List Movie-stud, gliding across the red carpet of the Grammy’s, the Oscars, and fashion week in Paris, glowed and sparkled in her head.

It’s going to be...spectacular. 
She licked the last of the miraculous lemon cream icing from the thymes of her fork.           

But do I know what I’m doing? 

She glanced down at the business card she’d filched from her mother’s room.  Frank C Luvici.  “The C stands for Crook,” her fathered used to say about his lawyer. 

Lucy remembered that when he’d come to the house, he always wore expensive though tacky suits, and smelled of Brut cologne.  His hair was always slicked straight back, and when he smiled at her it always seemed he was undressing her with his eyes.

He had really rancid breath too.

He was scum.  And she hadn’t seen him since her father’s sentencing hearing.  He’d gotten her father a cushy stint in a minimal security prison—practically a holiday resort with armed guards.  So scum or not, he had to be good.  And a good attorney, especially a dirty, greasy weasel like Luvici, would’ve not only gotten a sweetheart of a deal for his client, but he would’ve hidden some of his client’s assets, so he would at least get paid while his client rotted in jail.

Lucy had watched a
Law & Order
or two, and since her father had been a high class lawyer, the five hundred dollars an hour kind, she’d picked up a thing or two just being around him.

She grasped the business card in her hand and flicked it around with her fingers, noting the “Home Phone” scrawled on the back. 
Sure, if Daddy—
She cringed just thinking the word. 
If Daddy has any money at all hidden—for like when he gets out and starts his new life without us!—then his snake of a lawyer would know what rock—or Cayman Island, or Swiss bank account—it  would be hidden under.   

“But why would he help me?”  Lucy mumbled as she sifted through everything she could remember about one Frank C Luvici.  A dirty piece-of-crap lawyer like that...well, any lawyer, crooked or respectable, will only help you for three reasons.  If you can pay, if it’ll make great PR for him (which equals more clients and billable hours), or...