The Good Son by Carolyn Mills (free e reader txt) 📗

way in silence. At one point, he informed me that I’d be sleeping on the couch. “Hope that’s okay. Or, if you want, you could sleep on the floor in my room.”

“Whatever,” I said, but my stomach flip-flopped anxiously. I didn’t want to sleep on a couch or on the floor. I wanted a bed. I wanted my own bed, in my own room. With Mom close by. I wished for probably the hundredth time that Lorraine and Linda had never invited her to that stupid retreat.

Ricky’s house was different from how I remembered it. The living room was dark, even though it was still early afternoon, and as we passed through it, I could smell cigarette smoke and something rancid, like dirty socks or wet shoes. Someone had left a banana peel beside a half-eaten bowl of cereal on the coffee table. The kitchen was even worse. Unwashed dishes sat in goopy rings on the table. It stank in there, too — a mixture of stale cigarettes and sour milk. I didn’t know how Ricky could stand to live like this, when our house on Lindell Drive was always so clean.

“Sorry about the mess,” he said, as if reading my mind. “We’re kinda slobs here.”

“It’s fine,” I said, but some of the dismay I felt must have leaked into my voice because Ricky smiled at me apologetically.

“Not quite what you’re used to, eh?”

We had Kraft Dinner and hotdogs for supper. I cleared a spot for us at the table, wiping it down the best I could with a cloth that felt greasy. Stan, Ricky’s roommate, wandered in while we were eating.

“Ah, so here’s the little sister,” he said. “Big weekend away from Dumbford, eh?”

I nodded.

“Not everyone in Dunford is as stupid as your ex-girlfriend, Stan,” Ricky said, pouring himself a second glass of milk.

“No? What about you, Zoe? Are you any smarter than this meathead of a brother of yours?”

I glanced at Ricky nervously. “I’m only in grade six —” Before I could finish, Stan started laughing.

“Oh, well, then there’s time for you yet.” He took a beer from the fridge and walked into the living room. My last few bites of KD stuck to the roof of my mouth like glue.

I decided that first night to sleep in Ricky’s room. His bedroom wasn’t as messy as the rest of the house, although he did have to kick a pile of dirty laundry out of the way to make room for my sleeping bag. Despite Mom’s reminder, I didn’t brush my teeth. I didn’t forget, I just didn’t want to touch anything in the bathroom; the spray of tiny hairs that ringed the sink made me want to gag.

Stan was getting ready to leave when Ricky and I got up for breakfast. “Where’d you sleep?” he asked me. “I was expecting to find you on the couch this morning.”

I scuffed my toe against the dirty linoleum. “On the floor in Ricky’s room.”

“I bet that dingbat brother of yours didn’t even give you an air mattress, did he?” He turned to Ricky. “What the hell is wrong with you? You make your kid sister sleep on the floor? You’d treat a dog better.” He grabbed his lunch pail and banged out the back door.

Ricky had to work that morning, too, so I was left alone with instructions to “do whatever I wanted.” I was used to being on my own, but it felt strange to be sitting on Ricky and Stan’s sagging brown couch watching cartoons. At home, I would curl up under the afghan that was always neatly draped over the back of the sofa, but here, I didn’t want my bare skin touching anything. I ended up bringing my sleeping bag out of Ricky’s room and wrapping myself in it like a cocoon.

The hours dragged by. I made myself a peanut butter sandwich, adding my plate to the pile of dirty dishes on the counter. Then, because I had nothing else to do, I took out my homework. I had some math questions, which were easy, but I also had to write a fake letter to our principal expressing my opinion on our school switching to uniforms. Our teacher tried to convince us that the school was seriously considering the idea, but I knew the whole thing was made up. We all did; she did this assignment every year and word got passed on. Still, in order to make my letter convincing, I pretended to be really worked up. When I was done, I found myself staring at the walls.

Eventually, I got so bored that I cleaned the kitchen. Mom would be horrified if she saw how Ricky was living. And even though I resented having to scrub all those disgusting dishes, not to mention the counters and the table, I felt better after everything had been washed and wiped down. Like I could breathe properly again.

Ricky was genuinely impressed, I think, when he came home. “Holy shit, Zo. I should bring you here more often. You didn’t have to do that, though.”

I shrugged, like it was nothing. I was actually glad Ricky was home again — that’s how bored I was.

“Oh, hey, I got you something.” Ricky shoved a box toward me. It was an air mattress. “I got a pump, too,” he told me.

When Stan walked in later and saw the kitchen, he whistled, and I flushed with embarrassed pride. We ordered a pizza and ate it in the living room. Stan and Ricky drank beer. I sipped milk from a satisfyingly clean glass.

“Why don’t we watch a movie,” Stan suggested, and I gladly agreed. I wasn’t up to making conversation, especially not with Stan who seemed to set traps with all his questions, then laughed when I was too confused to answer.

“Leave her alone,” Ricky kept saying, but even I could hear the lack of conviction in his voice. The knowledge that Ricky would be bringing me home again the next morning, before his Sunday