She's So Dead to Us

ally

“So? What do you think?”

Hmm. What did I think? I had to take a moment to sort out an answer to that one. Here’s what I came up with.

I thought that my ass hurt from sitting for four straight hours on the car ride from Maryland to New Jersey. I thought that the dingy gray condo in front of which I was now standing—discernible as my new home solely by the fact that the movers had propped the storm door open with a cinder block—was butthole hideous. Although, on the bright side, it was exactly the same butthole hideous as every other condominium on this particular block of the Orchard View condo complex, so at least it wasn’t alone in its butthole hideousness. I thought that the last time I had been in Orchard Hill, about eighteen months ago, there had been a gorgeous apple orchard right where I was standing—an orchard that actually made sense of the name Orchard Hill—and that now it was gone. So not only was there no orchard anywhere near the Orchard View condominiums, but there was also no view, because we were at the bottom of the hill from which one would have viewed said orchard, back when said orchard existed.

Sigh.

I also thought—no, knew—that the way I answered this question would determine my mother’s mood for the rest of the day. The rest of the week. Maybe the rest of the year.

So I smiled and said, “It’s great, Mom.”

Her tired, sad eyes brightened, and the tension disappeared from her smile. “Don’t you think? And, honey, it’s not forever. I’m going to put half my paycheck away every week, and Danielle says that before we know it we’ll be able to afford one of those cute little houses over by the library and . . .”

Danielle was Danielle Moore, mother of my old friend Sha

I missed the rest of my mother’s rambled promises because one of the movers—a round dude with too much facial hair—was walking by with my bike on his shoulder.

“Um . . . excuse me? Could I get that, please?” I asked, swallowing my aversion to strange men with pit stains.

He grunted and dropped my bike to the ground so hard that I swear I heard the suspension whimper. But at least it was my bike. If home is where the heart is, home had just arrived.

“Thanks.”

He grunted again. I straddled my bike. Closed my hands around the well-worn rubber grips. There was plenty of dirt stuck up in the thick treads, and I was ready to add some more. Instantly, I felt about nine hundred percent better. Nine hundred percent more free.

“Ally, where’re you going?” The light was already gone from Mom’s eyes. “Don’t you want to see your room?”

“I’ll see it later. I’m going for a ride,” I said.

“Where? I hope you’re not thinking of—”

The movers slammed the truck door shut, muffling her last words, but I knew what she had said. And we both knew that I was thinking of doing what she thought I was thinking of doing. There was no reason to confirm or deny. Without a backward glance, I rode through the gates at the front of the complex, hooked a left, and headed for town. It felt good to move. To breathe. To get the hell away from my mother and all her positive thinking. I love you, Mom, but things were not going to be the same now that we were “home.” Things were never going to be the same.