Ficlet 2- Roger and Maureen's Spring Cleaning
Roger was bored. Mark was at work, Collins was tutoring, Benny was a jerk, and Maureen was who knows where. He had been sitting on the roof strumming his guitar absently, when Maureen showed up. She was poking around in one of the closets when he came back into the loft.
"What are you doing Re?" he asked. "We don't have anything worth stealing around here."
Maureen stood up and turned around and Roger stared at her head. Today she was sporting purple streaks in her hair. Last week they had been blue. She caught the direction of his look and grinned.
"You like?" she asked. "I decided that it was time for a change. Joanne thinks I'm crazy though."
Roger agreed with her about that. "So how's it going with Joanne?" he asked. He and Mark had just now started speaking to Maureen again after she had broken up with Mark.
"It's going great." she said. "Anyway, I was bored and I thought it was time to come over here and help you clean this place up."
"No way." Roger said. "No cleaning. You're just going to take everything out and then leave me with the mess when you get tired of the work."
But it was too late. She was already taking boxes out of the closet. "We'll just do this closet today okay?" Maureen said.
Roger sighed. "Like I have a choice now." he muttered, and joined Maureen on the floor. Together they went through the first box. It was full of Mark and Roger's report cards from middle and high school.
"Ooh," Maureen said. "Let's see what we got here. Mark: A's and B's. Roger: C's and D's."
"School wasn't really my thing okay? Can we please move on now?" Roger snapped.
So they moved on through the second box. It held old clothes that Roger decided to throw out. The interesting stuff was in the last box though. It held old photo albums and keepsakes.
"So who's this?" Maureen asked, holding up a picture of a blond guy.
Roger looked at it. "Oh that's this guy named Adam Pascal. My sister had a huge crush on him a while ago. I think he looks like me." he said.
"I don't think so." Maureen said. "He's dreamy, and you're, well you're just Roger. There's totally no resemblance at all."
Roger just rolled his eyes and kept looking through the boxes. There were several photos of him and Mark as kids and teenagers.
Suddenly Maureen exclaimed, "Oh my God!" She was holding up a picture. It was of a young Roger holding a blue cloth. On the back it said: Roger at 13 with his favorite blanket "Flufkins".
"Flufkins?" she asked laughing. "At thirteen too. That's so cute!"
Roger narrowed his eyes. "Shut up.", he warned.
Then Collins came in. "Hey you guys. What's up?" he greeted.
Maureen shot Roger a wicked grin. "Well…" she said slowly.
"I mean it Maureen, shut up." Roger growled.
She smiled at him. "Okay Roger, I won't say anything." Maureen said. Then she got up and headed toward the door. When she passed Collins, she slipped the picture in his hand. "See you two later."
Collins waved at her and then looked at the picture in his hand. A slow grin spread across his face and the taunting began.
