Free Fear and Laundry by Elizabeth Myles

more real dates than I do,” I complained to the cat. “What do you think of that, huh?” He nipped my finger, drawing a tiny spot of blood.
    ***

    A fter washing my bitten hand in the bathroom, I found Lia and Jake in the kitchen. Jake had apparently decided to stay in with us after all, and they were arguing over which movie to watch. 
    “You’ll just pick Pretty in Pink again,” Jake replied when Lia told him she wanted to choose, “for the millionth time.”
    “For your information, I was not going to choose Pretty in Pink .”
    “Or Some Kind of Wonderful ,” he said.
    Lia paused. “It’s an underrated film, you know.” Lia wasn’t a big movie fan; she really only liked John Hughes movies that were almost ten years old. Some Kind of Wonderful was a particular obsession with her, at one point prompting her to spell her name with an “e,” so she was Lea, like Lea Thompson. She’d have chopped all her hair off and streaked it just like Mary Stuart Masterson’s, too, if Elyse hadn’t put her foot down.
    “Right,” said Jake.
    “If you don’t like it, you don’t have to watch it,” she told him. “Who even invited you, anyway? Don’t you have anything better to do than crash my life?”
    “Hey, guys,” I jumped in, making them aware of my presence. “What’s for dinner?”
    Lia said she knew we’d just had pizza for lunch, but without her parents around to force her to cook she’d opted to thaw another one out anyway. She hooked her thumb at the oven and I saw the interior light glowing. And now that she mentioned it, I smelled warming pepperoni.
    “So you’re all set to spend the night?” she asked, crossing to the sink to wash and dry her hands. I said yes, and told her about my mother’s date.
    “This George guy’s a paper salesman, right?” she said, opening a cabinet and pulling out plates and glasses. “You think if she marries him, he’ll give us a deal on cardstock for the zine?” She’d always wanted the Slate to have a nicer cover, she explained, but the paper was way too expensive.
    “Funny.” Pimping my mother out in exchange for paper, I said, was the most hilarious idea I’d ever heard in my life. Lia smiled and opened the freezer, scooping ice cubes out with her hands and depositing them tinkling into the glasses.
    “What movie do you want to watch, Nic?” Jake asked, leaning against the counter.
    “Do not let him pick,” Lia ordered me, reaching into the refrigerator for a two liter bottle of Diet Coke. It hissed as she twisted off the cap, the neck of the bottle fogging up. “It’ll just be something nightmare-inducing.”
    Jake protested.
    “I’m serious,” she said to me while she poured the drinks, “Every time I let him talk me into watching something it turns out to be super weird. And usually gross.”
    “Exaggeration,” said Jake. He’d taken a quarter from his pocket and now played with it, spinning it around on the counter.
    “Really.” Lia narrowed her eyes at him. “What about that Hellriser movie?”
    “ Hellraiser ,” he corrected.
    “Whatever. I couldn’t sleep for a week after watching it. I was worried the guy with the nails in his head,” she used her pointed index fingers to mime nails sticking out of her skull, “would pop out of a crack in the wall and kill me while I slept.”
    “That’s because you didn’t pay attention,” said Jake. “Pinhead would never just pop out of the wall for no reason.”
    “He appears when summoned,” I concurred.
    “And not to kill people,” Jake explained, “but to drag them into a hell-dimension and torture them for eternity.”
    Lia flipped him off. “We’re watching The Breakfast Club .”
    “What?”
    “End of debate.”
    He started to say something else but she cut him off. “If you don’t like it, you can get lost.”
    The oven timer beeped and Lia turned around to shut it off. Jake put his quarter back in his pocket, scooped a soda glass off the counter and walked