Crushed (5 page)

So far, he still had
n’t done anything
.

Her
assumptio
n was that he needed to have her
ar
ound. Cleo was sure he found her
to be more of a c
onvenience than a nuisance. She
was his built in babysitter for Luci, his personal shopper an
d chef. Albeit “chef”, in her
mind, wa
s used loosely as her
culinary abilities were far from exemplary. More like questionable, as the burned
hamburger attested.

“Now what?” Luci asked as she propped her scrawny elbows on the countertop.
“Are we going to eat that?” Her eyes crept toward the sink and the charred chunks
in the pan. Her nose scrunched in derision.

“No
. I’ll just
start ov
er,” Cleo
stated with a sigh. “And you, Sw
eet Pea, can set the table
.
When you’re done, get started on your homework until dinner’s ready.
I’ll help you afterwards if you get stuck. But I want you to at least try to do as
much as you can on your own.
”

Luci
sighed. Most likely over the injustice of being asked to work on her assignment alone.
“Should I set two places or three?” she asked as she went to the cupboard.

“It’s probably ju
st going to be the two of us,” Cleo told her as she
sidestepped some burger bits that
had landed on the floor. She
doubted Paul was coming back.

Luc
i busied herself with her duties as Cleo went about her own
. The water was already boiling, waiting for spaghetti
noodles to be dropped in
.
She turned it down as she
started the hamburger over again.

While it was
browning she
cleaned up the hardening grease splatters and meat chunks. It was an unnecessary
mess, but that was Paul for you.

Her home life was far from
ideal
. B
ut she
constantly told herself it could be worse.
Paul drank. A lot.
There had been a few times over the years when he’d lost hi
s temp
er.  She
’d ended up with a fist to the stomach or a blinding slap to the face. But not often.
And he’d never touched Luci. She
wouldn’t have tolerated that.

Instead, he was an obnoxiou
s, whiney, ‘poor-me’ drunk.
The kind that felt like he was entitled to more than he had just…
because
. They
didn’t get along and
she
tried to stay out of his way. F
or the most part,
they
managed
to coexist.

Although, the past summer had been rocky for them. Cleo had found herself antagonizing
him, which wasn’t hard to do. While she had never liked Paul, she’d come to hate him
in the past half year.

Her
mom had had her faults,
lots
of them.
B
ut she was still her
mother.
Luci was the only connection Cleo had to her. Luci was her only family. Losing their
m
om had been hard on both of them. Cleo counted on Luci
as m
uch Luci
counted on her. She would do whatever she
had to
do to be sure that she and Luci
could stay together. If that
meant
she had to deal with Paul—right or wrong—she would deal with Paul. And his temper.

He kept a roof over their
heads. It was a smallish house, just a rental.
It was decent enough. But i
t was
nothing fancy—or even inviting. It was simply livable
with its stark white walls, gray carpeting and white and silver flecked linoleum.
She
would’ve liked to hav
e been able to at least paint thei
r bedrooms but the landlord wouldn’t allow it.

Sometimes
Paul
grudgingly gave Luci a bit of spending money when she begged him for it
. H
e paid for her schoo
l lunches. Usually. He gave Cleo
fifty bucks a week to put toward
groceries for the three of them. It didn’t go far. She had to buy the rest. She usually
packed her
l
unch for school. Anything else she needed, she bought herself. She
never asked Paul for a dime.
He wouldn’t have given it to her even if she had. So she saved her
self the humiliation of asking. Some weeks it was hard enough to
get grocery money from him. She
’d learned early to get
it first thing Friday afternoon;
payday.
If
she
could catch him before he headed out to the bar.

If only Paul spent as much on groceries as he did on cigarettes and alcohol,
Cleo knew they
’d be all set.

She
finished making the spaghetti
. S
ince Paul had left and wouldn’t be around to grumble,
she
only used half
of the hamburger she’d browned. She
put the rest in the fridge for another meal. Noo
dles were far cheaper so
she and Luci
filled up on them with sauce, light on the meat.

“So tell me more about these girls,”
Cleo said as they
sat down to dinner. “Tell me again how you met them?”

Luci reached for a
second
piece of garlic bread
.
Cleo
swatted her hand away. “Not until you eat your green beans.”

“I hate green beans,” Luci moaned.

“Yeah, me too,”
Cleo
agreed
with an encouraging smile
. Emma’s mom
, Patty Donovan,
had given them to
her
, fresh out of the garden.
She
hadn’t wanted to be rude by not taking them, or letting them go to waste.
She
was pretty sure Mrs. Donavon knew this. It was just another one of the dozens of
ways she trie
d to help watch over Luci and Cleo
.
“But since you hate all vegetables I thought, why not green beans for tonight?”

Luci pouted as she took a tentative bite.

“So, these girls?”
Cleo
pressed.

“
We met during
lunch,” Luc
i said around a bite of noodles. S
he’d already abandoned the green beans.

“Don’t talk with your m
outh full, Sweet Pea, it’s rude. And pretty gross,
”
Cleo
admonished
.

Luci rolled her eyes as she made a point of swallowing.

“I don’t have lunch with J
ill
or
Bridget
,” she began
in a voice that fully implied how unfair this was. Cleo
immedia
tely empathized because again, she
understood the trauma lunchtime could bring
.
“A
nd I didn’t know
where
I was going to sit. So I was just standing there feeling stupid and Micah Carter…he’s
so cute…he was like
whoah
!” Luci opened her eyes wide to emulate him. “And I didn’t know what he was talking
about
. T
hen he pointed behind me and Addison and Marissa were there
. H
e was like…‘You guys all look alike! I must be seeing triple’! So that’s how it started.
They laughed and we found a table
. T
hen I had a class with Marissa after lunch.”

“You really look that much alike?”
Cleo wondered. She
tried
to keep the skepticism out of
her
tone.

“Well, yes,” Luci
decided
. “I mean, we all have long blond hair and blue eyes. Well, we are different because
of our bangs. And they don’t have freckles,” she admitted with a bit of disappointment.
“But mostly we’re the same height. Okay, maybe I’m a little bit shorter. But when
we were walking down the hallway at the end of the day, everyone stared,” she admitted
with a giggle.

Cleo
had to wonder if it was the twins alone—not only
twins
but new girls in school—that were
really
the cente
r of attention. But no way was she
about to burst Luci’s little bubble of happiness by pointing that out to her.

“
Who do you have lunch with?” Luci
wanted to know.

“I got lucky. I’ve got lunch with Emma aga
in this year. And Melanie,” she
added as an afterthought.

Luci looked pleased for her sister.

“Do you have Jill and Bridget in any of your other classes?”
Cleo
asked. They were her two best friends from early on in elementary school.

Jill’s
mom, Teri Abernathy,
had known their
m
om. She hadn’t known her well. J
ust in passing because of birthday parties and s
leepovers both girls
attended. The Abernathy
s were
great about
inviting Luci over now. Or if Cleo
ever needed somewhere for h
er to go,
Teri
had told her
the offer to take L
uci overnight was always open. She
’d only taken her up on it a few times.
She
didn’t want to take advantage of the situation
. A
nd they invited Luci over frequently anyway. Jill’s family had kind of taken Luci
in the
same way Emma’s had done with Cleo
.

Luci
nodded and made a point of swallowing again. “They have lunch together but I have
Bridget in my gym class and I have Jill in art and math.”

“That’s good,” Cleo
said.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, “and I also have Addison in my language class. But I had that
first hour and we didn’t get to be friends until later. But now I think first hour
will be a lot more fun.”

“So, other than making new friends, what was your favorite part of the day?”
Cleo
wondered as
she
hurriedly
forced down a bite
of
green
beans.

Luci’s smile was so huge it took over her face and made her crinkled up eyes sparkle.
“Cleo…oh…my…
gosh
! You should
see
the library! It’s
huge
! And there are no baby books in there. At all. I mean, like, no picture books for
the kindergartners like there was in the elementary school library. This one? It’s
full
of books that
don’t
have pictures.
And we get to go twice a week. But we can only check out two books at a time.
I’ve already started a list for this year but I’m not even half way done with writing
them all down. I can’t wait! We get to go for the first time tomorrow! I saw it today,
but only because I got to go in before the bell
had ru
ng. And I didn’t get to look around too long because the librarian told me I should
probably find my first hour class. But tomorrow?! Is going to be so awesome!
”

“Did you go into the libr
ary without permission?” Cleo
suspiciously wondered.

“Well…maybe. But I’ve been waiting all summer to see it!”

Luci’s smile was infectious and
Cleo
grinned back, happy to see Luci happy. And not surprised that the books made her sound
even happier than her newfound friends did. Books, after all, were Luci’s passion.

So,”
Luci
said a
fter swallowing another bit
e
of beans with a grimace
, “how was your first day?”