Day 8
Asher
After two hours of watching a movie with our parents, I snuck away to the bathroom, opened her bedroom window, and then told everyone I was going to bed.
I felt like crap so I’m sure I looked it.
Totally believable. Twenty minutes later, when everyone moved down to the fire pit with giant margarita mugs in hand, I slipped in through the window and went to work.
Sometimes the beauty of a prank is in the spontaneity of it.
The thrill of being caught, the last-minute problem-solving.
It took me an hour just to tape the Saran Wrap to the baseboards and stretch it in a giant haphazard weave across the room, making sure I covered every square inch.
Of course, if I had planned things out like Sidney, I would have realized I should start the mayo at the far end of the room, and work my way back to the window.
Sidney wouldn’t have had mayonnaise-covered shoes sitting in her room all night.
But even if those sneakers smell like mayo for the rest of my life, it will be worth it to think about Sidney sliding across the room when she got back from her date.
It’s a sweltering hot day, and I spend it on the lake, swimming the shoreline after lunch and lying on the dock through the afternoon.
“Ash!” I’m sitting on our deck reading a book when my mom’s voice rings out of the kitchen.
It’s close to dinnertime, and I take my book with me, knowing I’m about to be enlisted for some sort of food prep.
But Mom isn’t working on dinner, she’s purging or something.
The table is covered with the contents of our fridge as my mom holds a package of some sort of meat up to her nose.
She thrusts the package at me. “Smell this.”
“Um. Okay?” I sniff the package she’s holding out toward me. “It … smells like meat, I think.”
“Like good meat?”
“Yes?” I don’t know if I’ve actually smelled raw meat before. “It sort of smells like nothing?”
She nods at me, like I’ve just confirmed she’s not losing her mind, and turns away from me, pulling another white Styrofoam package out of the refrigerator and giving it an appraising glance before sniffing it.
I’m about to ask her what she’s doing when I smell it.
I can’t pinpoint exactly what it is, just that it’s wrong and out of place, and bad.
“Go smell the drains in the bathroom,” Mom says with a sigh. “Maybe something’s backing up?”
I don’t know if that’s how plumbing works, but Mom looks so frustrated sitting on the floor of our kitchen sniffing all of our food that I’m not going to question it.
“Where’s Dad?”
“I sent him to the store for baking soda boxes.”
I nod, even though the longer I stand here, the less I believe baking soda is going to fix this problem.
In the bathroom I smell the sink drain, and the tub, and then the toilet, just to cover all of my bases. But now that this odor has invaded my nose, it’s all I smell.
Smells are weird. On one hand, they’re unmistakable.
The smell of pancakes on the griddle can take me back to Saturday mornings at my grandma’s house the second I smell it.
I can tell if a pool has too much chlorine without ever getting in the water.
But right now, the smell overtaking our house is like a word stuck on the tip of my tongue.
Every time I think I can name it, it’s just out of reach.
I go from room to room, pulling up blinds and opening windows as far as they’ll go.
First the living room, then my parents’ room, the bathroom next to it, and then my room.
I might throw up. There’s nothing different about my room, except for the overwhelming smell.
Whatever is in this house, my room is ground zero.
“Mom?” I shout toward my doorway as I start to pull things away from the wall, looking for vents. The only explanation for a smell this bad is that something has died somewhere.
My mom stops a few feet back from the door. “Oh god,” she mutters.
“I think something died in here. Maybe we should have Nadine call somebody?”
“I’ll go up to the house.”
This isn’t going to be fixed quickly, but Mom still sprints out of the house, as if every second she wastes will count.
I’m headed across the room toward the last small window when I see the pile of mayonnaise-coated socks and shorts from last night. There’s a towel, too. But without even smelling it, I know it can’t be the cause of this.
Oh crap.
Out the window I can see Mom crossing Nadine’s yard, closing in on the back porch. I throw myself at the window and yell her name. She stops in her tracks.
“Has Sidney been here?” I’m trying to keep my voice in check, but I can hear the annoyance.
Mom is far enough away that she’s almost yelling for her voice to carry far enough. “What? Why?”
“Mom. Yes or no? Has Sidney been in the house today? While I was gone?”
She nods, and takes a few more steps toward Nadine’s house.
I’m out of my room and through the house in a heartbeat, and before I know it, I’m across the yard and practically sprinting down the sidewalk toward the deck.
Sidney’s sitting at the little plastic table, rocks spread in front of her, and when my feet pound on the wood planks, her head snaps up.
The look on her face when she sees the annoyance on mine is enough to confirm my suspicions.
“What did you do?”
She narrows her eyes at me and turns back to her rocks, swiping her brush across a shiny black one. “You can dish it out but you can’t take it?”
Sidney
“You started it.” When it comes out of my mouth I regret how much I sound like a bratty eight-year-old, but I don’t regret saying it. I’m not sure why I even have to explain it to him. This is what we do, it’s who we are.
“In what delusional world did I start any of this?”
“Pffsh.” It sounds like a wild animal is stuck in my throat. “I still smell like mayo, Asher.”
“And before that?”
“Hey, you deserved to wake up and regret you ever drank that much. I was covered in bug bites from babysitting you, just so you wouldn’t die in a puddle of—
“—my own vomit.” Asher rolls his eyes. “I know, I know. I wasn’t that drunk, Sidney. You could have left anytime you wanted.”
That sounds like an accusation and I don’t appreciate it. Wasn’t that drunk? He was drunk enough to kiss me. “And before that?” Before that, he kissed me. And I regret asking, because I don’t actually want him to say it out loud.
“Before that, I put Kool-Aid in your shower. You smelled like cherry. My whole house smells like something died. My mom is losing her shit in there.” He nods up at the house and my eyes follow.
Crap. Crapcrapcrap. “I didn’t mean—”
“Just come fix whatever you did. We’ve searched the whole house. What did you do, stick something in the vents? Put some sort of slow-release capsules into our drains?”
I wish I’d thought ahead enough to do any of those things. “I put a fish under your bed.” I don’t meet his eyes. “Well, not a whole fish, more like fish … parts, I guess. But they were wrapped in paper, like at the grocery store and—”
“Caleb teach you that trick?” He shakes his head. “Paper, Sid?”
“I didn’t realize. I mean, it was all frozen, and I just thought…”
“Our houses are a million degrees; you obviously weren’t thinking.”
There’s nothing I can say, so I just shake my head. He’s right. I was so mad last night, so worked up after my mediocre date, after finding my room like that when I was already mad at him about the kiss. I wasn’t thinking, wasn’t acting like myself at all.
He’s already walking away from me. “Just fix it.”
If Asher weren’t in front of me, I would sprint to the house to tell Sylvie how sorry I am.
But instead I leave a healthy distance between us, so it doesn’t feel so much like I’m being summoned.
Asher can be a real drama llama when he wants to be, but when I step into the kitchen and see the counters covered with food and the fridge swung open, completely bare, I know this isn’t one of those times.
And the smell … oh man. I am in so much trouble right now.
My skin prickles at the thought of facing Sylvie and Greg, and my parents, when they hear about this. “Where’s your mom?”
Asher is standing at the edge of the living room, where the little hallway branches off toward his room on one side and his parents’ on the other. “I told her to hang out at your house and take a breather.” He shoves his hands into his shorts pockets. “She doesn’t need to see this.”
I wonder if it’s him he’s worried about looking bad, or me. Either way, I’m thankful I don’t have to see Sylvie right now, while I’m the reason her house smells like this. Asher walks toward his room and I follow.
He doesn’t look at me, and I don’t say anything. When his bedroom door opens, I’m hit by a second, stronger wave of stench. Crap crap crap. “Fix it,” is all Asher says as he closes the door behind him, entombing us in the smell.
“This isn’t what I thought it would smell like,” I mutter as I get down on my hands and knees in front of his bed.
“What did you think it would smell like?”
I grope a hand around under his bed. “Like the seafood section at the supermarket?” It’s not actually a question, it’s the truth. I thought it would smell like the little space around the lobster tank. But the truer answer is that I didn’t think.
Asher shakes his head. My hand fumbles on something wet and soft, and I almost hurl right on the side of his bed, but I make myself hold on to it and pull it out. The newspaper is soaked through, disintegrating in my hands. All around it, the carpet is wet.
“Sidney…” Asher’s voice is a perfect balance of disgust, disappointment, and sadness. I don’t know if I’ve ever been so shamed by the use of my name. “What were you thinking?”