Dirty Little Secrets

I kept the smile plastered on my face as my insides were screaming for her to mind her own business. “No. She’s home. She’s just not feeling well, so she didn’t go to work today.”

“Oh, I see,” she said. She raised her eyebrows. “Is there anything I can do?”

“No, thank you,” I said. “We’re fine.”

“All right, then,” she said, and turned like she was going to walk away.

I exhaled, unaware that I had been holding my breath. I started to pull my head back inside the window when she spoke again.

“Oh, Lucy, dear,” she called from the sidewalk.

I bumped my head on the bottom of the window as I stuck it outside again. “Yes?” I said brightly through the pain.

Mrs. Raj indicated the growing pile of black trash bags with her hand. “You’re not going to leave those bags there, now, are you? You know the town council has rules about compounding garbage that is visible from the street. It would reflect badly on all of us to start a garbage dump on the side of the house.”

The whole place is one giant compounded pile of garbage, I wanted to scream. But instead, I smiled sweetly and said, “Only until trash pick up day. I’m going to get tags for extra garbage.”

Mrs. Raj sniffed from the sidewalk. “Well, that’s very good, dear,” she said. “As long as it’s gone on trash day. We can’t have garbage piling up around our neighborhood, now can we? What would people say?”

“No, we certainly can’t,” I said. “Have a nice walk, Mrs. Raj. I have to get back to work.” I pulled my head in the window and pulled the curtains closed before she had a chance to reply.

“We can’t have garbage piling up around our neighborhood,” I mimicked as I worked my way back to the living room. No, we certainly could not. Instead, we’d keep it here behind closed doors and live with it every second of our freaking lives.

Mrs. Raj and all those people who were just like her were the reason that I had to get rid of all this crap before anybody could see. Snooty, too-good-for-you busybodies with nothing better to do than to stick their nose in our business. I’ll bet Mrs. Raj had been killing herself trying to get in here for years. She was just the type to get invited over to the neighbor’s so she could feel that she was so much better than them. Than us. I couldn’t let her have the satisfaction.

My phone rang once, so I pulled it out of my front pocket and flipped it open. It was a text from Kaylie asking when I was coming over. I couldn’t believe it had gotten so late already. I texted her back that I still had a lot of work to do, trying to stall for time. Anytime I thought about Josh and the look on his face when he asked me to come to the party, I could feel a zing of energy course through my whole body. It would be totally amazing to stand in the crowd watching him play, knowing that he had asked me to come. But it was crazy to leave here, wasn’t it? There was no way I could hang out at a party with things the way they were. What if someone came by? And all of that time wasted—it wasn’t like I had so much to start with. I would have to come up with something so that Kaylie wouldn’t hate me and Josh wouldn’t think I was a total loser for not showing up. A few seconds later, the phone rang for real.

“Hey,” Kaylie said. “What could you possibly be doing that takes all day?”

“Just some stuff around the house,” I answered. “Did you go shopping?”

“Yeah, I got an awesome new bag. What time are you coming over?”

It felt like last night with Josh was a part of another lifetime. I looked around the room and felt the crushing weight of the stuff wash over me. All of a sudden I felt exhausted, like the only thing I wanted was to curl up in bed and sleep for weeks.

“About that,” I said. “I don’t think I can make it tonight. Something came up.” I winced as I said it, knowing she wouldn’t let this one go easily. You’d think that all my lying over the years would have made me better at it. You’d think.

There was silence on her end for a long moment. “Something came up? Are you seriously trying to tell me something came up that’s more important than seeing Josh play? At a party that he asked you to go to?”

“It’s just—”

“No. Way.” I could picture Kaylie holding her hand up to the phone. “I don’t want to hear any of your excuses.” Her voice was getting louder. “I’ve been planning all day for tonight. You can’t let me down like this—you can’t let you down like this. Josh is totally dying to see you tonight, and you’re saying something else came up?” She was really on a roll, so I just waited until it wound down, trying to come up with a good reason why I couldn’t go have the best night of my life.

“I can’t—”

“At least meet me at Sienna. In twenty. Then you can explain all this to my face.”

I knew that if I didn’t go to the café she would try to come over here. “Okay—” But the phone went dead.