5. Caution Slippery When Seen
CAUTION: SLIPPERY WHEN SEEN
CHARLIE
S omehow, I made it through the weekend with a translucent wall separating my townhome and my very cute neighbor’s. It was tough. After realizing how much Owen could hear, I felt like I had to spend the rest of the weekend whispering whenever I was home.
Within moments of my alarm going off, a knock sounds at our front door, and I know it’s Leandro and Josh, here to finish the job.
Reese wakes up even earlier than I do, so she went down to answer the door while I got into the shower.
Since I’m not downstairs, where there is no real wall, I’ve got music playing, and I’m singing along.
There’s nothing like rocking out in the shower to start your day off energetically.
When I start washing my hair, the song Unwritten by Natasha Bedingfield comes on, and I am lathering up the shampoo like it’s never been lathered before, all while releasing my vocal inhibitions.
Reese and I have our own rooms, but we share this bathroom, and we always joke about how the water from the shower head comes out like gentle rain, so I especially belt it out at the line about feeling the rain on my skin.
And with an impressive but unfortunate feat of timing, the water stops allowing me to feel the rain on my skin at the exact moment I’m singing about it.
It just… stops . I mess with the faucet, turning it off and back on.
Hotter and colder. But nothing comes out of the shower head besides a few straggling drops.
Did the workers seriously just turn off our water without even giving us a warning? I’ve got a giant beehive-shaped lathering of shampoo on my head right now! And not just on my head—it’s running all down my body.
There are very few things that make me really mad.
I’m talking like maybe three. I can’t think what the other two might be at this exact moment, but I do know that the third is turning off the water while I’m covered in shampoo.
I step out of the shower, grab my towel, wrap it around me, and storm down the stairs, ready to give those guys working on our place an earful.
Normally, there’s not much anyone could possibly do to get me to appear in only a towel in front of anyone .
The only way I’m doing it now is because a) I don’t know the workers, and they’ll go off and forget about me the moment they’re done here, and b) because I’ve got the fuel of anger, frustration, and righteous indignation propelling me down the stairs.
I start saying, “Did you seriously just turn off the water right in the middle…” before I even get far enough down the stairs to see into the kitchen.
Once I do get to where I can see, I try to take in everything at once.
The plastic that used to be my wall but is currently lying in a heap on the floor.
The plastic on Owen’s side all folded up.
The water that has sprayed everywhere in my kitchen and is still dripping in some places.
The workers that are looking up at me sheepishly.
And Owen. Standing like he’d just been talking to the two men, his eyes frozen on me.
Me and my piled-high shampoo suds that are probably not quite so high now, based on how much is running down my torso and arms. And me, standing there wearing only a towel, with nothing but the thin railing of the stairs between me and Owen’s gaze.
This is a nightmare. It has to be a nightmare.
Leandro scratches the back of his neck. “So, um, funny story. We were taking down the plastic so we could work on your repairs. We got your neighbor’s side down just fine.
But when we were pulling the staples loose on your side, Josh reached a little too far, fell off his step-stool, and wouldn’t you know it?
He landed right on your pipe. Not only that, but the hammer in his tool belt hit at just the right angle to puncture the line.
That’s why there’s water everywhere. And because I knew you didn’t want to come down to a swimming pool, we, uh, had to shut off the water to your place.
Reese, whom I hadn’t noticed had followed me down the stairs, holds a towel out to me and asks, “So, what does this mean for repairs?”
I take the towel from her, and with a hand on each of the top corners, hold the towel in front of me like a screen, blocking the view of my body all the way up to my eyeballs.
Leandro lets out a sigh. “It means we’ll need to bring your plumbers back to fix this before we can continue. But don’t worry—we’re going to get you taken care of. Eventually.”
Josh, looking extra sheepish now, wordlessly grabs a gallon of water from the one part of my counters that is still intact, walks over to the stairs, and hands it up to me with a grimace.
I have to let go of one of the corners of the towel to take it from him, which makes it less like I’m hiding behind a big shield and more like I’m hiding behind a small tree’s trunk.
Then I brush some of the shampoo from my eyes and say, “Thank you.”
They’ll get it taken care of… Eventually .
I breathe out a defeated sigh, then take my gallon of water and head back upstairs to finish off my shower in a less rain, more garden-hose kind of way.
While I’m trying to rid my body of this much shampoo using a single gallon of water, I become more and more determined to avoid Owen at all costs, at least while the wall is down.
And let’s be real, probably for weeks after because that’s how long it’s going to take for my dignity to recover.
Work today was busy. And not the “Oh, wow, it’s quitting time already?
” kind of busy. More of the “I’m so exhausted, I can barely drive myself home” kind.
I do manage to drive myself home, though.
And when I get to my front door, there’s a sticky note on it from Reese that reads brACE YOURSELF.
And then in smaller writing below it, it reads, Just a reminder that I’m going to a concert with Miles tonight and won’t be back until late.
I take a deep breath and go inside. I don’t head to the kitchen first—I stop by the downstairs bathroom and turn on the water, then let out a breath of relief when water actually comes out. I was finding soap suds in random places on me all day.
Then I brace myself and head to the kitchen.
There is no new wall up, which I had already guessed, and the thin plastic is back up.
The place actually doesn’t look too different from how it looked all weekend.
I assume they fixed the pipe, since we have water, but not a swimming pool amount of water.
This time, though, there’s a door cut into the plastic just to the side of where my sink usually is.
It’s about as high as a regular door, but only as wide as the space between studs.
I’m guessing they did it so they can travel between the two townhomes without having to go outside.
The only thing holding the plastic sheeting door closed is four pieces of blue painter’s tape.
It’s fine. I can handle this. No big deal. I’m too exhausted to not handle it, anyway.
I search upstairs in both my room and Reese’s for any sneaky people hiding, change into my comfiest clothes and fluffiest socks, order Chinese food, do a quick sweep for bugs, and when my food comes, I sit on the couch to eat it.
In fact, sitting on the couch feels so good that when I’m finished, I decide to stay there and just read a cozy mystery.
It’s not often that I get a quiet night like this, and I’m going to just soak all the relaxation in.
I’m in the middle of chapter four when I hear Owen answer his phone and say, his voice getting more muffled as he walks further from our makeshift wall, “Oh, hi, sis! Do you mind if I put you on speaker? I’m in the middle of doing laundry.”
I’m trying very hard to pay attention to my book as the main character is realizing that the victim was someone she knew, but all I can seem to picture is Owen doing laundry.
Is he sorting his clothes before putting them in the washer?
Folding them? Dang, if the image of him sitting on his couch, folding clothes on his coffee table, isn’t getting me right in the feels.
You are avoiding him. Focus!
And I can. Mostly. That is, until he comes back out of his laundry room, and I can hear their conversation better. They’re mostly just talking like brother and sister, shooting the breeze. It’s obvious that they have a good relationship, and it’s cute hearing him in this role.
I’m ignoring. I’m totally ignoring.
Then I hear Owen say, “Oh, Mom is calling.”
“Don’t answer it!” his sister says in a rush. He asks why, and she says, “Because I want to tell you first.” Pause. “But I don’t want you to panic.”
“You do realize that saying ‘don’t panic’ is the easiest way to get someone to panic, right?”
She lets out a tight chuckle. “Okay, but seriously, don’t.”
“Where are you?” he asks warily.
“The hospital.”
“What? Why?”
I close my book. There’s no way I’m going to be able to focus on it now.
“I was hanging out with a bunch of friends just in front of the KOBL building. It’s right by the quad, and there’s a BBQ and a table, and some good cement.
Several of the guys were riding on skateboards, doing tricks, as we were all just talking.
There’s kind of a half wall going up on one side of the area where we were, because there’s a sidewalk up there.
So, of course, there was also a railing.
But the railing wasn’t right at the edge, and the space between it and where the wall dropped off was wide enough for a skateboard. ”
I can tell that Owen is up and pacing by the way the sound of his sister is changing, like it’s getting closer and clearer and then further and more muffled. He hasn’t said a word throughout her story, but I can almost feel his nerves.