"Hey. Lover girl." DeeDee slapped on her innocent and questioning face, avoiding response which would only be further affirmation of her present itching-heart state. It was itching, not aching, to rewind. After all, she hadn't known him that long.
"Your asshole brother, is waiting for you. You can escape with me tonight; get your pajamas."
"No," DeeDee paused to question herself and what was spilling from the side of her mouth as she mechanically exited the passenger seat.
"It's fine. I'll finish, homework."
"If you say so." And she ripped out of the driveway, out of the cull de sac, out of earshot.
The porch light was off. She had to rely on her ears to fish out the house keys.
"Damnit." DeeDee ran her knuckles up and across the bottom of her bag, wriggled into side pockets, ducked down into the sack, and finally grasped what she thought were the keys with two fingers. It tinked like keys, was cold like metal.
"Shit." And the keys hit the cement with a, pling. DeeDee hurled her bag to the side in frustration and got down on her hands and knees, arms sprawled out and hovering over the ground.
"Draykhun? Babe? Wkhat are you doo-ink?" In her hounding for the fallen trinket, she hadn't noticed the father squeak open the front door and peep out at her ridiculous silhouette splattered across the front porch. Finally her fingertips rode over something bumpy and cool and she fisted them, hopped up, and squeezed past Mr Palek, pecking his coarse, weary cheek followed with a,
"Found the keys. Night daddy."
DeeDee's room had been left in shambles that morning. Denim carpeted the floor, lonesome socks were sprinkled across her crumpled bed sheets flung off in a rush, and underwear drooped from between drawers. There were balled up essays and theses dumped wherever she had been sitting at the time and cups of room temperature water whose former sweat had left years of rings on polished wood were overwhelming every open flat surface of each piece of furniture. She had no reason to be anything but a slob at this hour and her limbs landed with a clunk at all four corners of the bed. Sleep didn't feel like coming tonight. So, DeeDee rolled onto her back, neck nestled between the canyon made by both pillows, and let her thoughts leak into existence now.
That afternoon, she had been summoned after class by Ms Capillary with a severe mouth and troubled eyes. Shock leapt around in her chest as she collected her things and approached the altar. It had to be purely business. Ms Capillary's greeting was a question.
"Have you heard, Miss Palek?" And she continued with, "I'm sure you are aware, but it has come to my attention and I must inform you that your mother has now been hospitalized." DeeDee's formerly blithe expression dipped with the ambush of perplexing news. There went her invincible cool, down the slimy craw of Ms Capillary like her cream-and-sugar-with-a-dash-of-coffee in the coordinating frog splotched mug. She was a mouthful, subtly bitter, this woman. She could expand a vowel farther and longer than anyone known; she enjoyed the suspense, of course. However, her conjured dramatics were a rather quick accusation on the student's part and this student was more concerned with the tone than her words sending the saliva off in a hurricane. She had a way of making DeeDee Palek, unaware daughter, feel like the sloppy, unwanted, poor excuse for a human being she was. She had no hint the mother was ailing. She wasn't home to see the father slide his hands out of his Dockers pockets and relieve the mother of what she was raised to accept as fulfillment when she had to lean against the wall with a rushing head. She had been tucking away skin-stretched limbs for years beneath baggy matching separates. Her heart was finally all her body had left and it started eating that too.
The house was a silent black cavity. The walls were grey without light. They seemed to sigh in grief, collapsing on each other and making the hallway crooked and winding. DeeDee had been sped home immediately after hitting the pavement mid-way between room 212 and 318. Two minutes earlier, she'd nodded and stepped out of Ms Capillary's fish tank seemingly collected and speechless from news that shook the ground so hard she crumbled.
"Do you…need anything? Lie down, jesus christ, you're making me nervous." Boy pointed with his thumb to the kitchen, offering her a drink to boost her blood sugar, perhaps, but her head felt massive and hollow. Everything echoed from a distance.
"Hey uh, I drove you home. You all right now? I gotta get back to chem.." She waved him away. He shrugged, exhaled, and rolled his eyes towards the door. Whipping his coat from off of the back of the couch, he showed himself out.
Kiki was rolled up in the nook of the cushions and instantly her ears perked up, pointy and alert. The orphaned feline was Katia's. Ms Role claimed not to be zoned for cats, or any animal for that matter. So, it was a travel-size essential. Katia was madly in love with her and insisted she visit anyway.
And DeeDee left the thought alone.
"Dee." He waited, neck craned across the doorway. Even Dorian was sedate tonight. Mr Palek was in the hospital beside Mrs Palek, wilting in his perch by the window; a six storey view. Dorian needed a new game to distract him from his grieving.
"But it's almost nine." She sat up while arguing though and jammed her feet back into her flip flops, knowing a sincere dispute wouldn't change the course of a fourteen year old's mind.
DeeDee rammed the keys into the ignition and pulled into reverse with the passenger door swinging open. Dorian flopped around, trying to jump into the moving vehicle. He held his breath in his cheeks, dove into the seat, and landed face first in the cup holders. With all limbs safely folded inside, the door was shut and DeeDee tore out of the driveway and toward the nearest Movie Mania.
"Shit, sis."
"Watch your fucking language, kid."
Ripping into the Greenwich Plaza, Movie Mania was at the center of the mix; The Bread Store, Hungry Hornito's Mexican Lounge, Karkisian Jewelers, Mama's Dry Cleaning, and Night Light the topless bar. It was a square building, all gray cement that melted into the gray sidewalk and a blue roof closer to white from sunburn. This block, the next on the other side of Pelmer Street, and the one across displaying the 56 gas station and Speedy Mart were dead quiet. The lights at Dalton's Pharmacy flooded out of the automatic doors as a stout young man waddled back to his car, swinging a rustling plastic bag in the crease of his plump hand. The movie store looked as empty and lifeless as it was outside. DeeDee began to question why she gave in, fearing the most gruesome kidnapping, mugging, and random drive-by that could take place in this coat of dark. It was thick, heavy, and tepid outside the car; it got like this at night this side of the suburb. The streetlights' orange trickled far off from the center of the plaza. It was the kind of quiet no one wants to disturb so, the minute the siblings had slammed their doors, they paused to appraise the echo and how far it could be heard from before hightailing it toward the building.
Dorian hurled open the swinging door and let DeeDee catch it before it crashed into her face. He was safe inside with his sister who was both disgruntled but close enough to step on his heels by now. There were no employees at the counter and no customers anywhere to be seen, no shuffling on the worn down maroon carpet, and no offspring screaming at the try-me-out video game controllers. Dorian veered off to the left of the store in the aisle assigned to Gamebox-compatible discs for rent. DeeDee's eyes circled the room, reading the "Seven Nights For The Price Of Five!" deal plastered on the entrance, though backwards from this side of the door. She knew exactly how long he would take purveying the aisle, picking up only select boxes it seemed until he'd picked up every single one, reading the synopsis, and placing it back to move onto the next. He would stand at the middle of the shelf with his arms folded, all his weight on one leg, the other in front of him. His hand might go up to his chin occasionally in thought; his face was focused and rigid. Once found, he never moved from his spot on the carpet so, with a hesitant, pondering bend, he'd dig for an available case behind the display cover of one that had caught his interest, flip it over with a nonchalant and mature appraising eye, and then slip it back into place, deciding he wasn't interested. This went on for on average half an hour before, with case in hand, he scanned the shelf one last time and scuffed back to DeeDee, eyes still on the synopsis.
She sunk down into a recline against the farthest corner of shelves holding New Romantic Releases and was submerged beneath the aisles of Comedy, Romantic Comedy, Action, Drama, Romance, and Horror.
"Oh, jesus, hi." DeeDee's eyes zipped up from a pair of worn rubber-bottom sneakers to a pair of familiar green eyes and a charming mouth.