Chapter 8 April 12, 2008

Dear Jonathan,

Maybe you were right. Maybe mom is changing. I heard her leaving the house at like 4 AM in a battered old car with a man.

I thought she was leaving on another nightly fling (God HEAVEN knows what she does) but then when I got out of bed, what freaked me out was who I saw in the house.

I wasn’t planning on getting up that early at 4 AM but I heard the clashing of pots and pans and somebody talking to Melissie. At first I thought we were being robbed by an incompetent fool but then that wouldn’t make sense if mom was just in the house five minutes ago, so it was probably some friend she brought home last night since they were both drunk. The last time she brought one of her friends over, they were down to thirty one bottles of beer on the wall by the time they passed out. Most people would assume it would be me getting trashed instead of my mom.

Then I remembered, we had our door lock fixed, despite our crappy door that would blow over if the lightest breeze touched it, so it was indefinitely a robber (plus what could they steal? A yellow stove and a pink tv?) I decided to see who it was and tell whoever it was to shut the hell up and get out of the house when I saw this old granny there. In the kitchen…making cereal… and cleaning our kitchen?

I asked who the hell she was as Melissie was tinkering away at her xylophone toy oblivious to the intruder and she surprised me by saying she was the nanny mom had hired to look after Melissie while she was at work and I was at school. Mom got a job? She never told me that. I guess that’s why we’re not out of a home yet. Then I started freaking about how we would pay for the nanny. You know me, I’m a worrywart.

When I asked her how much she charged and took out what little money I had on me, she waved it away and said it was okay to wait till my mother returned from work. Plus, she liked looking after kids.

I still worried about our near empty bank account and wondered if we could afford a nanny, but it was still a nice change of pace as I finally had time to watch tv and do what actual teenagers did. Just usually they didn’t do it at 4 in the morning. I was enjoying the reruns of “Sim Friends” when…

… the tv shorted out halfway through the episode and my breakfast. (The nanny even prepared breakfast for us!) It was a good episode! I was sitting there in shock, staring at the tv, holding my bowl of cereal for like 5 minutes before I realized our tv was dead. Of all the times for it to die, it dies on me, the time when I actually had time for it. As usual, mom probably forgot to pay the bill after she hit on the mailman.

The tv came back on two hours later, (so I guess it was a power outage) while I was taking a cat nap since I got woken up so early. Needless to say it scared the crap out of me. Melissie had gotten tired of her toy and resorted to staring at the funky stain on the carpet which was the result when mom had tried to cook chili and ended up spilling the entire vat of that molten crap when she managed to trip on a flat surface. Doesn’t that remind you of the time she when you came over to help me with homework and she splattered the macaroni and cheese all over our math homework and we actually had a legit excuse to why our homework wasn’t done? (I still can’t believe he sentenced us to detention for a week when we actually told the truth for once!)

But next thing you know, the school bus was honking at me and I then I realized, it was the first day of school. I had grown used to waiting for you to pick me up in that moving piece of junk that belongs in the junkyard (seriously, you should’ve taken your older brother’s offer and bought his car for half price. It would’ve saved me the experiences of riding in that station wagon.) and this time it turned out to be huge, yellow and twice the length of my house.

Well, first day of school, here I come. Wish me luck!

With all my love,

Christine