Free All Alone in the Universe by Lynne Rae Perkins Page A

any day now. I sort of hoped that I wouldn‧t be. I sort of hoped some other option might come along.
    One day Marie told me that her dad had girlfriends besides her mother, that they both drank too much sometimes and then they had arguments where they threw things. The gold grapes flying though the air, the lamp with the figurines.
    “At each other?” I asked her.
    “No,” Marie said. “Just across the room or at the wall or something. Just to make some noise.”
    I looked over at her. She was staring straight ahead, out from under her long bangs, out from behind her beige makeup that ended like a mask at her chin and the sides of her face. Her eyes were watery. Then she turned to me. She peered out through the mascara and said, “I bet that don‧t happen at your house.’
    “No,” I said. I couldn‧t even imagine it.
    Marie sighed. “My dad is such a jagoff,” she said. “I can‧t wait till I‧m eighteen.”
    It turned out that Bobby Prbyczka was in Mom‧s class at school in September. And in October and November, of course, until the Prbyczkas drove off into nowhere in their big, shiny car. A few weeks into school Bobby started showing up in clothes that didn‧t seem to have been washed lately. Then they were the same clothes day after day.
    “I feel sorry for him,” Mom said. “He actually smells, and the other kids don‧t want to be around him.”
    She gave Bobby a bag, and she told him to put his dirty clothes into it and bring it over to our house. She washed them, folded them, and ironed the shirts and pants. Some things she even, mended. At school one day she had Bobby stay inside for recess, and she helped him to wash himself. In minutes the water in the sink was a dark gray.
    “Good Lord, Bobby,” she said, “when was the last time you took a bath?”
    “I think we‧re out of soap,” he said. “And anyways, my dad don‧t make us take baths.”
    “Oh, he doesn‧t, does he? Well, what about your mother? What does she say about that?”
    “She don‧t say nothing. She ain‧t there.”
    This stopped my mom in her tracks. But not for long. “Where is she?” she asked Bobby.
    It turned out that the Prbyczkas were separated. Mr. P. said it was his damn house and he wasn‧t going to move out, so Mrs. P. was staying with her sister for now, until she could find a place where there was room for the kids.
    Mom started packing Bobby a lunch, and she made him eat half of it before school started. She made him brush his teeth. “I can‧t feed the whole family,” she said, “but it‧s hard to teach when you can hear someone‧s stomach growling.”
    One day Mom opened Bobby‧s laundry bag and pulled out four or five shirts. Men‧s shirts. “Well, if he thinks I‧m going to do
his
laundry,” she said, and she stuffed them back in the bag.
    When I asked Marie if it was true, she rolled her eyes casually and said, “Yeah, her and my dad had a fight. So what else is new? They think they‧re Liz and Richard. She‧ll stay at my aunt Renées for a couple weeks. Then my dad will show up there with flowers or something, and she‧ll come back.”
    She stopped walking, put a finger to her lips, and narrowed her eyes. Then she brightened a little and said, “Huh. It‧s lasting longer than usual this time. Maybe they really will split up.”

eight
     

     
    I WROTE A STORY FOR E NGLISH CLASS IN WHICH ALL THE AMIN characters died horrible deaths. At the same time I was writing an extremely optimistic story for science class that was a lot of work because it had to use three scientific facts as plot elements, and it had to be sort of technically accurate.
    By the time I got to the English one, which was supposed to have a tragic hero with a “fatal flaw,” I had to hurry. I went for broken hearts, fatal diseases, car accidents, and poisonings. And a drowning. The fatal flaw of my heroine was forgetfulness. She kept forgetting to return phone calls, look both ways, label containers