Chapter 3
ANTI-MEAN GIRLS
Cricket
If I could’ve swirled down the drain with the last of that shower water, that would’ve been fabulous.
But I didn’t, so now I’m accompanying Mabel, my host, into a large Victorian-style house that looks like it was once a pink-and-yellow gingerbread castle.
Heath’s brown-pigtailed, hazel-eyed daughter Lavender is with us. She’s told me she’s six but almost seven, loves cats except for the really hairy kinds, and she was asked not to come back to summer camp after dressing like Aunt Pip and meowing too much.
That tracks with the cat-ear headband and the black leotard with the tail and the whiskers drawn on her face, plus all of the meowing I heard while her father was asking me questions in the bathroom, though I don’t know what dressing like Aunt Pip entails.
She’s adorable.
And she’s seen me naked too.
I’ve likely scarred her for life.
Not to mention what I did to her father.
“I can’t believe I punched him,” I whisper to Mabel, who’s smartly put together, also in all black, and who carries an air of competence with her. I can’t tell if she’s my age, several years younger, or several years older.
She’s classic like that.
“My fault.” She turns the handle on the ornate door with a stained-glass inlay and ushers me into a foyer with a crystal chandelier, thick plank flooring that seems original, and an antique sideboard with a decorative ceramic vase with dried lavender in it.
The smells of coffee and cinnamon rolls tease my nose as we walk farther into the house.
“We have a system for letting him know when new guests arrive, and I was the broken link.”
“I know a boy named Linc,” Lavender announces as Mabel steers me down a hallway lined with ornately framed pictures of women of all ages, sizes, and races against the pink floral wallpaper. “He’s dumb. He doesn’t think dragons and unicorns can have babies.”
“Together or on their own?” Mabel asks.
“Meow.”
Mabel doesn’t blink. “Did you tell him either can happen?”
“Meoooowwww.”
“And?”
“And he said I was stupid and didn’t know anything.”
“That’s what people who choose to stay ignorant will always say when presented with facts they don’t like.”
“That’s what I told the principal too. Ginny! Ginny, can you play with me? The naked lady punched Daddy and he needs to say words he doesn’t say in front of me.”
We’ve reached an eat-in kitchen with a tall ceiling, black-and-white mosaic tile floor, antique cabinets, vintage appliances, and a large table with high-back chairs at the back of the house.
And there’s Ginny—Ginny Rhodes, the woman who reached out to invite me here.
She’s loading a dishwasher.
I interviewed her once at my previous job for a story about reality TV child stars whose parents had mismanaged their money and left them broke, though she asked me to not name her specifically.
We’re roughly the same age, but where I spent my teenage years doing normal things, she spent hers doing a homeschool-slash-travel show called On the Rhodes with her mom and older twin siblings.
Her five minutes of internet infamy—as an adult—happened not long after our interview.
Around the same time, I got downsized from the paper.
After three months of unemployment, I took the first job I could find, doing video lifestyle segments for Cheeky-Cheeky—not real journalism, my family likes to say—and now, Ginny’s the closest thing I have to a friend who gets it.
My friends back home? Half of them think I should shake it off, and the other half think I did this to myself.
Sort of like one of my sisters thinks I should shake it off and get over myself, and the other thinks I did this to myself.
But Ginny—Ginny’s been kind and understanding.
She looks mostly the same—curly light brown hair, warm blue eyes, and an hourglass figure under a bright sundress—but I’m nothing like the professional quasi-journalist and content creator I was before my world fell apart.
I’ve lost myself.
The massive amounts of hate mail and comments and DMs judging me and yelling at me and telling me to do things to myself that no one should ever be told to do—well.
Who could have the most embarrassing moment of her life broadcast around the world and then handle that much hate and feel like she even wants to still be herself?
Even the supportive comments didn’t help.
Except Ginny’s.
Ginny didn’t say ignore the haters, all of these trolls have small dicks and miserable lives or your beaver is fire.
Ginny said I get it, I know what you’re going through, please come to California and let me and my friends help you recover.
We’ve been in near-constant communication for the past five days, and her hug makes me feel like we’re family.
“Two minutes, Lav,” Ginny says to the young girl as she steps around the scarred wood table in the middle of the kitchen, and then she’s grabbing me in a hug like we’re besties who’ve been separated for years.
A shorter woman with bright green spiky hair, crow’s feet at her eyes, and a warm smile who introduced herself as Samantha welcomed me last night and showed me to the little house across the garden, so I hadn’t seen Ginny yet.
My towel starts slipping on my head again.
Ginny straightens it as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. “Oh my stars, Cricket, I’m so glad you’re here. And I’m so sorry we got our communications with Heath mixed up.”
I’m a crier.
I cry at weddings.
I cry at funerals.
I cry at awards ceremonies and I cried when I met all four of my nieces and nephews the first time.
Crying has never been something I’m ashamed of, but now—now, it makes me feel that much more broken.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you when you went viral,” I sob on her shoulder.
She squeezes me tighter. “We barely knew each other. Oh, honey. Let it all out. You’re safe here.
What can we get you? Breakfast? Do you need clothes?
Heath will get the bathroom fixed up for you in the mother-in-law house so you can have as much privacy as you want, but you’re also welcome here in the main house whenever you want to be here. Day or night. Anytime.”
“This is a pick-your-own-path recovery center,” Mabel agrees beside us.
“Kitchen’s always open. Explore the buildings if you want.
We’ll get you a map with the property boundaries.
Only rules are that we show everyone kindness and respect, don’t enter anyone’s bedroom without permission—sorry again about the mix-up with Heath, completely my fault, won’t happen again—and the grapevines are off-limits.
You can look, walk through, but please don’t touch.
Beyond that, do what you need to, where you need to. ”
“Can I—” I start, then have to gulp hard to swallow back another sob. “Can I rinse my hair in the sink?”
“Absolutely,” Mabel says like the question isn’t weird at all. Normal people rinse their hair in the shower. “Were you on shampoo? Do you need conditioner?”
“I—yes. Conditioner would be amazing.”
“Brand preference? Can’t guarantee we have it, but we all use something different.”
“No. No preference. Thank you.”
“What we’re here for. And I’ll get you a fresh towel.”
So this is what Ginny meant when she said Mabel’s the best kind of big sister.
The kind of big sister that has been in short supply most of my life.
Both of them, actually.
Women who don’t blink when you walk into the house in a robe that’s almost too small, with soapy hair, and after punching the general contractor who also lives here.
If I were at my parents’ house in these circumstances, I’d be drowning in shame.
But right now, I feel welcomed and understood.
I swallow the urge to start crying again.
“I’ll finish up the dishes and clean it out for you.” Ginny gives me one last hard squeeze, then lets me go. “Lav, you headed to summer camp today?”
The little girl meows and shakes her head.
“She’s joining us for the day,” Mabel says.
Ginny squats down to Lavender’s level. “How delightful. Want to squirt cleaner in the sink?”
“Meow meow meow!”
Ginny points me to a bathroom off the kitchen where I do a fast change into fresh clothes—Mabel grabbed some for me from my suitcase in the closet in the mother-in-law quarters—and then I get my hair rinsed and conditioned in the kitchen sink.
When I’m done, I straighten and find a nearly nude old woman watching me from the dark wood-trimmed doorway that leads back to the hall of pictures.
I barely stifle a scream.
She grins, her face breaking into a sea of wrinkles, her saggy naked boobs perking up a little. I think she’s wearing underwear, but I’m honestly trying not to look.
She straightens the pearls around her neck, then touches her short silver hair. “People shouldn’t be such prudes. If you want one of those cinnamon rolls, better get it now.”
I’m trying very hard to keep my eyes trained on her face, but it’s impossible to not notice that one of her sagging breasts has a smattering of scar tissue where her nipple would otherwise be.
She points at it. “Burned it off in a fried chicken accident. Girls were hanging lower than I thought.”
“That must’ve hurt.”
“Not as bad as being married did.”
“Cricket, meet Aunt Pip.” Mabel sails back into the kitchen. “She owns this place.”
“I don’t owe a play,” Aunt Pip says to Mabel.
“Place. You own this place.”
“Oh. Yes, I do. Outlived my bastard of a husband, so I’m using everything I’ve got to do things he would’ve hated.”
“She told me she was planning on reading a book all morning, or I would’ve prepared you already,” Mabel tells me. “What you see is—well, it’s what you get.”
My eyes get hot again.
I instantly love Aunt Pip as much as I instantly love Mabel and Ginny, even if Pip’s near nudity is making me flash back to my own most traumatic moment.
“Is it just the three of you?” I ask Mabel. “No, four. I met Samantha last night.”
“There are seven of us here these days,” Mabel replies. “Whenever you’re ready, you can meet everyone else.”