The Snowball Effect (11 page)

And I wasn't going to be like that. Yeah, I got annoyed with Riley sometimes. But only when I knew he was right. He knew what was good for me.
He
was good for me.

I hated buffets.

I loved chicken.

I loved Riley.

It's not like I was ever going to see Slurpee Guy again, anyway.

 

As I stumbled up to my kiosk later that morning, Rodney grinned at me and walked over.

“Rough night?” he asked.

“Too much tequila,” I mumbled. “I think this is what a hangover feels like.”

Rodney was no stranger to spending mornings hung-over in the center of the mall. He immediately went on a newsstand run and brought back Gatorade and Excedrin (for me) and Cool Ranch Doritos (for himself). I drank half the bottle of Gatorade, popped a few pills, and then sat on my stool and stared off into space for who knows how long.

I almost didn't recognize Christine when she walked up to the kiosk swinging a bag from the maternity clothes store. It looked like she'd gained another twenty-five pounds since the Old Crew reunion dinner.

“Hey there, Miss Lainey,” she said with a big smile. Of all Kara's jock friends, she was the one who'd always tried the hardest to be my friend even though I usually never hung out or talked to her if Kara wasn't around. Since she'd found out Mom died, she'd been calling every few days to check on me. I only answered the phone about twenty percent of the time. I couldn't tell if she felt bad for me or if she was just excited that someone else in the Crew had a kid. Even though I didn't, really.

“How's it going?” I asked.

“Not bad. Guess what!”

“What?”

“We're getting an apartment!”

“Really? Wow.” I'd always assumed Riley and I would be the first ones to get our own place. We should have been.

“Yeah, I know! Crazy, huh? Anyways, we were thinking about going Dumpster diving tonight if you and Riley want to go.”

“I thought you didn't do that anymore,” I said. Christine hadn't invited us Dumpster diving in forever. She and Wallace used to go just about every week and dig food out of the grocery store Dumpsters and pick up anything else they thought they might be able to sell at the flea market. After she got pregnant, she decided Dumpster diving was disgusting and wouldn't let Wallace do it anymore.

“Yeah, well, we're going to need new furniture for the
apartment, so Wallace figures if we start now, we might be able to find some good stuff by the time we move in.”

I nodded. “Yeah, okay. We'll come.”

“Sweet. We'll pick you up around midnight, 'kay?”

I nodded and Christine strolled off.

 

After I told Vallery I wanted to go out that night, she decided she had plans.

Well, she said she had them all along.

Whatever.

If Collin would just fall asleep, then I could carry him out to the van when Christine and Wallace showed up. He'd sleep through the whole thing. But of course Collin did not just fall asleep after I changed him into his pajamas and dragged him into bed with me. After I got tired of reading him the same Dr. Seuss book seven times, I let him watch TV. When I got up to go to the bathroom, he ran into his room. It didn't seem worth the effort to drag him back, so I let him play and checked on him every few minutes. He'd thrown all his pillows and sheets and clothes and toys on the floor. He was evidently playing some sort of game where he couldn't touch the carpet. He hopped all around the room to get from his dresser to his bed to his closet and back again. He sang the dish detergent jingle over and over: “CUT THE GREASE!”

When Riley got there, I was back in my bed. I'd turned the TV up louder so I couldn't hear Collin.

“Shouldn't he be settling down?” Riley asked. “Where's Vallery?”

I shrugged. “She went out. I told her we were going out with Christine and Wallace but she left anyway. She's pretty hell-bent on that schedule she came up with.”

He looked at his watch. “We're supposed to go out with Christine and Wallace?”

“They want to go Dumpster diving,” I explained. “And look for new furniture. They're getting their own apartment.”

Riley nodded. “That's cool. You're going to take Collin out at ten o'clock at night?”

“No, they're not getting here until midnight.”

“When's Vallery coming back?”

“I don't know. She'll probably come back at six in the morning, just so I have to keep Collin all night.”

“You're seriously going to take Collin out at midnight?”

I shrugged.

“He's five years old, Lainey.”

“He'll sleep in the van.”

“I don't think this is a good idea.”

“I don't think it's up to you.”

Riley stood in the doorway and stared at me.
What are you doing?
I asked myself.
Stop fighting with him
.

“Well, I don't think I'm going,” Riley said.

“That's fine,” I tried to say in a friendly way. But then I added, “I don't remember inviting you.”

“You specifically said that
we
were supposed to go out with Christine and Wallace tonight.”

I shook my head. I was out of control. I had no idea why I was being such a jerk. Maybe Collin's obstinacy had rubbed off on me.

Riley sighed. He came in and sat next to me on the bed. “Lainey, I don't know what to do anymore.”

“About what?”

“You.”

“What about me?” I asked, like I didn't know.

“Honestly?”

I nodded.

“Honestly, you're being a huge bitch. I'm just trying to help you, and you don't appreciate any of it. I know you're going through a rough time—”

“Shut up, Riley.”

“Lainey, no, let's talk about this.”

“I don't want to talk about anything.”

“Lainey, come on.”

“Shut up, Riley. Just shut up.”

Riley stood up. I looked away from him. He stomped down the steps and then I heard the front door slam shut behind him.

A moment later Collin appeared in my door. “Indoor voice!” he shouted, and then he ran away.

 

Christine drove and Wallace sat shotgun. I was in the backseat between Owen (starting to nod off) and Collin
(wide-awake). There were Cheerios crushed into the floor and seats and there were fast-food bags everywhere. Christine shared the van with her mom and had tried to convince me that I should leave Collin at her house, but I liked her mom too much to do that to her.

It was trash night in Christine's neighborhood, but we knew we wouldn't find much. The trash in nicer neighborhoods was much better.

Riley took me to see the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra once when his dad got free tickets from work. We made one wrong turn, and suddenly we were on a street full of strip clubs and drug dealers. It didn't make any sense to me that such debauchery would be one wrong turn away from the symphony. Fortunately things weren't like that in Corben; you had warning that you were driving into the ghetto. So we slowly drove through the slums and worked our way to the neighborhoods with better trash.

“Where are we going?” Collin asked.

“Just driving around,” I said.

“McDonald's?”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“Collin, you're not hungry.”

“We can stop if you want,” Christine said.

“No. He's not hungry.”

Collin started to cry.

“I've got a Fruit Roll-Up,” Wallace said.

I leaned forward and took it from him. “Thanks.”

“Sure.”

I gave it to Collin and he stopped crying. He held it out to me. “Open please,” he said.

I shook my head. “You can do it.”

That would keep him occupied for at least five minutes.

As we drove, Wallace and Owen jumped out a few times to inspect something on the curb, but after an hour we hadn't had any luck, so Christine drove to the apartment complex to show us their new place. Of course, it was nearly two in the morning, and we could only look at the outside. Collin's head was turned away from me. I thought he'd fallen asleep, but I didn't want to look and risk waking him up.

“You should check the Dumpsters,” Owen suggested. “I bet they have five or ten around here.”

“Good call,” Wallace said. He looked back at me and Owen and nodded with approval. “Very good call.”

At the second Dumpster they found a few prospects and set them aside as they dug around. I slid up to the front seat next to Christine. I glanced back at Collin and his eyes were shut, thank God. He looked all sweet and angelic, the way kids only look when they're asleep.

I hadn't done any actual diving and I was feeling pretty worthless. The least I could do was make conversation.

“So,” I said to Christine, “how's it going?”

She shrugged. “Fine. We've got a billion things to do
before the move. It's crazy.”

“It happened pretty quickly. I didn't even know you were thinking about moving.”

“Well, Wallace wanted to and I didn't really care too much. But he started looking at apartments and we found this one for really cheap. We couldn't turn it down.”

I nodded. “Cool” was all I could think of to say.

“Riley didn't want to come out?” she asked.

I shrugged and hesitated a little too long before I said, “He was tired.”

Christine looked at me. “You have a fight or something?”

“Not really.”

She reached over and touched my shoulder. “You know, I'm here if you ever want to talk. About anything. About boyfriends or raising kids or anything.” She put her thumb and pinky up to her ear and mouth. “Just call me.”

I nodded. “Thanks, Christine.”

Wallace came back up to the door and I moved back to my seat. “Let's ride down a few more streets,” Wallace said. “I'm feeling lucky.”

Christine drove out of the apartment complex, and we drove up and down streets until we found trash piled up on the curb.

“End table!” Wallace called out when we were halfway down the block.

“Hush,” Christine said. “Collin finally fell asleep.”

“End table!” Wallace whispered.

Christine pulled over to the curb, and Wallace and Owen hopped out. They inspected the end table. Out of the corner of my eye I saw someone walking toward the curb.

I didn't think Dumpster diving was technically illegal. And if it was, it shouldn't have been. I mean, it was trash. But some people didn't see it that way. When we used to go real Dumpster diving behind the supermarket, we always brought a few cardboard boxes along so we could tell anyone that we were moving soon and looking for empty boxes. If people came along and saw you taking food—even from a Dumpster!—they just assumed you were doing something wrong.

I turned to look at the guy approaching the curb. He wore a bathrobe and slippers and carried a trash bag. He dropped it by the curb, glanced at Wallace and Owen, and then lifted his hand in a polite wave. Just before he turned and walked back toward the house, I recognized his scruffy face and long hair.

“Slurpee Guy,” I said aloud. The windows were tinted (by Wallace in an attempt to make the van look more hip; instead they were spotted with air bubbles), so I knew he couldn't have seen me.

“What?” Christine called from the front seat.

Collin stirred beside me. “Nothing,” I said. Collin's head bobbed around for a second, and then he rested it on his shoulder and snored a little.

I'd seen him again. That had to mean something, right? That couldn't just be a stupid coincidence.

Don't see signs,
I told myself. Sometimes things happened and they didn't mean anything. Sometimes a dream was just a dream. A coincidence was just a coincidence.

Forget about it. Don't be Mom
.

 

My ringing cell phone woke me up early the next morning. Too early—and I didn't even have to go to work. I looked at the caller ID and saw Riley's name. I hit the “reject” button and sent him straight to voice mail. I knew I'd had a terrible attitude, but that wasn't any excuse for him to call me a bitch.

I got out of bed and found Vallery in the kitchen. “If Riley comes by, don't let him in,” I said.

“Have a fight?”

“Just don't let him in.” I went around and checked that the doors and windows were all locked. Not that I really thought Riley would resort to crawling in through a window.

Vallery followed me into the living room. “Collin's asleep in his own bed.” She pointed at her watch. “And it's after eight
A.M
. Please tell me how you managed that. Is he still sick? I thought you said he was better.”

I thought about lying, but then I decided to go for the truth. “I took him Dumpster diving last night. He didn't fall asleep in the van until around two. Then when we got
home, I carried him in and he didn't wake up, so I left him in his bed.”

Vallery nodded. “I'm not even going to ask what you mean when you say ‘Dumpster diving.'”

“All right,” I said. I went to my room and got back in bed.

 

I napped most of the day, which turned out to be a stupid idea. At eleven that night I sat in bed wide-awake, and for the first time I wouldn't have minded watching Collin. At least it would have given me something to do. I could still hear him in Vallery's room, reciting his favorite TV commercials every few minutes. Finally I slid out of bed and got out the shoe box of pictures that Riley was storing under my bed along with his crazy scissors and scrapbook papers.

Mom's peak picture-taking years were the first few years of Vallery's life, and then again when she got Collin. The in-between years, the Lainey years, hardly exist. I came across a few pictures of me that my second-grade teacher took and sent home. Some Polaroids of us that one of her boyfriends had taken. A few pictures from one Christmas when I was ten. But mostly Baby Vallery and Little Collin.