Free Cruising Attitude by Heather Poole Page B

Driver, are we going the right way?”
    I barely heard him say, “Yep.” U2’s “Sunday Bloody Sunday” blared from the speakers behind me.
    When we stopped at a red light, a man bundled up in a ski jacket with a matching ski mask approached the driver’s side of the car holding a stack of magazines. He flashed the driver with whatever was hidden behind a lone copy of the New York Post while smiling at me. The driver didn’t look, but waved him away with a flick of his cigarette.
    “Is this neighborhood safe?” I asked.
    “Yep,” he said, and then he cranked up the stereo even louder.
    The houses never did spread out, but eventually the trees grew taller and the restaurants began to look a little more inviting. When we stopped in front of a white wooden three-story house sitting behind a boarded-up fruit stand, the driver didn’t say a word. He just popped the trunk and helped us get our bags out. The front light flicked on and a girl I would never see again opened the front door, told us her name, and invited us to come in.
    Once inside Georgia and I stood on an Oriental rug in the dimly lit foyer, taking things in. Only a few steps away, a dark wooden staircase led up to the second floor. At the very top of the stairs I could see a bathroom. From where I stood below, it looked like the bathroom light was the only light on upstairs. To our right an archway opened up to a living room. A woman sat on the sofa watching television. Fashion, travel, and beauty magazines fanned out across a glass coffee table that now acted as a footrest.
    The girl who’d let us in whispered, “I’d introduce you to her but I can’t remember her name. I’ve only been here a few weeks myself and we just met today.” As she buttoned up her black peacoat, she nodded at the two French doors to our left. “That’s the room. Take the two beds by the window. Keys are on the dresser. Feel free to take two drawers each in the wooden dresser next to the closet.” Then she was out the door and gone, off to meet a few friends and roommates at the local pizzeria, leaving Georgia and me all alone. Well, almost all alone.
    Georgia peeked back into the living room. “Hi! I’m Georgia and this is Heather! We’re moving in.”
    Staring straight ahead she said, “Marge.” Georgia and I just looked at each other.
    Not one to be easily deterred, Georgia sang, “Nice to meet you, Marge!”
    “Likewise,” she mumbled. That was our cue to go check out our room.
    Twin beds lined the walls, six of them, which meant there would be six of us sharing a closet, one teeny-tiny closet, without a door.
    Georgia sighed. “You’ve got to be kidding me. This just is not going to work!”
    We had no choice but to make it work.
    “Maybe we can purchase some cardboard drawers to place beside our beds,” I suggested, after noting that’s exactly what the others who were not there had done. After further inspection, I added, “What doesn’t fit inside our two drawers we can keep packed away in our suitcases under the bed.”
    After we unpacked as much as we could, which wasn’t much, we decided to take a look around the big, dark, creaky house. The first floor consisted of the large bedroom where Georgia and I now lived, a living room where Marge continued to camp out for the next twelve hours, and a pretty big kitchen. I peeked inside the fridge and noticed that everything had been labeled with different names. Same went for the pantry. Upstairs we found three other bedrooms. These were large rooms that looked more like army barracks than actual bedrooms. Two rows of unmade bunk beds stretched across the floor from one end of the room to the other. The occupants of these rooms were nowhere to be found, but a couple of suitcases were lying on the floor against the wall, unzipped, with clothes eager to escape.
    The bathroom, located on the same floor, was shared by all of us. Each night from that night on I’d march upstairs and scribble my name on the