Free Gone With a Handsomer Man by Michael Lee West

in school, the same guy I’d blown off at First Baptist. He passed me a note, You’re totally rad. Go out with me.
    The darlingest guy in school wanted to go out with me? I was totally rad? I was flattered but couldn’t respond. My heart felt all crinkly, like a green pepper that’s been left too long on the countertop.
    Aaron kept passing notes. After six weeks, I wrote back, OK . We became the new “it” couple. The popular girls had never talked to me, but now they all wanted to be my best friend. In a polite way, they wanted to know how a girl who wore un-hot clothes could snag the hottest boy. I found their interest disturbing and kept my distance.
    I stuck close to my real best friend, Rayette, who lived on a rice farm, and told her I wasn’t going to repeat the mistake I’d made with Coop. She called me a fool but gave me a pack of Trojans, just the same.
    One night, when Aaron and I went parking at the lake, he put his hand up my dress, and I didn’t stop him. I couldn’t see into the future, of course. I couldn’t know that a year later, Aaron would go to Clemson and die of alcohol poisoning at a frat party, or that once again I’d be moping on Aunt Bluette’s porch, listening to sad love songs. The night I gave myself to Aaron, he was the furthest thing from my mind. I opened my arms to a young, gray-eyed man in a gray Mustang while Celine Dion sang “My Heart Will Go On.”
    Cheesy, I know. It was the right song, wrong man. My heart didn’t go a damn place. I put it in a jar, added vinegar and dill, and totally pickled it.

ten
    I dreamed that Bing was a giant cockroach, and he mistook the Spencer-Jackson House for a petit four. I awoke at dawn, clawing air, thinking I was trapped on a layer of raspberry jelly.
    Then I realized the pinkness was coming from the toile wallpaper. The design showed a girl feeding chickens while a man in a wig sat on a horse watching from afar. The pattern repeated over and over, hundreds of girls, horses, pullets, and wigged gentlemen. I made up stories for them. One man had come to buy eggs and another was a stalker. Another had come home from war and the chicken girl was the daughter he didn’t know he had.
    What a pity life didn’t offer multiple-choice solutions. If it did, I wouldn’t have gone to that pub. I would have stayed home and eaten coffee cake, leaving crumbs for the roaches. I wouldn’t have kissed Coop O’Malley—not that I hadn’t enjoyed it. I had. But lawyers didn’t take up with criminals unless they were getting paid by the hour.
    Since I couldn’t go back to sleep, I prowled around the house. I found an old Electrolux in the hall closet and dragged it down the stairs. Aunt Bluette used to say it was impossible to cry and clean house at the same time. I’m sorry to report she was wrong. I was weepy-eyed when I started vacuuming the dining room. By the time I reached the kitchen, I was bawling.
    I cried because I didn’t know the law and because I’d thrown dangerous objects. I cried because Bing was a dog-stealing, womanizing asshole. I cried because I’d be homeless in just a few hours and because I was spit polishing a house that wasn’t mine. I cried harder because the living room was pink and filled with breakable knickknacks. Then I laughed because I wouldn’t have to dust.
    I was acting just like Mama. When I was eight, she finally escaped the peach farm by marrying Donnie Phelps, a school bus driver by day, beer guzzler at night. Mama and I went to the dollar store and filled our cart with doodads for Donnie’s trailer. It was a triple-wide, beige with white shutters and a front porch. Mama fixed it up right nice, adding wicker from Pier 1 and a straw rug she found at a garage sale. We’d sit up at night and watch the traffic on Savannah Highway. Aunt Bluette lived just beyond the curve, but Mama said we were taking a break from family.
    When Donnie wasn’t driving innocent children to Musgrove Elementary, he restored antique