Sunday, March 26th, 2017: I awoke to a pounding headache and the odd remnants of a very realistic dream.
Just kidding—it wasn't a dream; I also woke up to the sight of the phrase '2 weeks—bitch better have my money' scribbled onto my left wrist with the distinct scent of permanent sharpie still attached.
So, naturally, I did what any other level-headed 17-year-old high school girl would do.
First, I screamed. Then, I convinced my loving and perturbed father that everything was alright, and I had just witnessed a spider crawling across my stomach when he burst into my bedroom with his aluminum Louisville slugger. And then... I called up Stella Anderson, interrupted her classy mother-daughter tea and crumpet breakfast time, and told her what curse had befallen upon me the night before.
And, of course, instinctively, she initially claimed that I just had to be lying. And then I asked her 'why in all hell would I call you at ten a.m. on a Sunday morning just to tell you the lie that Miranda Lively dragged me deep into the Wisconsin wilderness at probably the height of witching hour in the middle of the night and slit my wrist for blood to fuel her own monetary spells and order me to retrieve your father's credit card number just for kicks?' And then Stella fell quiet for a moment... and then she delivered to me some pretty tough news.
Her dad's in China for work the next three weeks out, and neither Stella nor her mom knew any of his main bank account information.
Which... yeah, that was a hard pill to swallow, but it's not like I was actually going to just give Miranda Lively Stella Anderson's father's checking account information to save my own ass... I mean, that would just be downright unethical.
Instead, I assured Stella that she should not fret, for I had just conducted a brilliant plan. One that didn't involve calling the police and getting Miranda all boiled up to kidnap me and slit my wrists again when they found absolutely nothing wrong or shady about her hidden lifestyle choices, too.
But I didn't tell Stella the plan. Because I didn't actually exactly really have one.
Not yet, that is.
After my intense phone conversation with Stella, though, I figured I had plenty of time to organize and carry out some sort of active scheme or another. I mean, I did have two full weeks from... I guess the night before, and I was sure my big clever brain could come up with something by then. And, if nothing really occurred to me by that time, I figured I could always sneak off to Ontario over spring break and then mysteriously never return to Talket County ever again.
But then, in the mean time, it seemed that a surprise blizzard (or not so surprising extreme drop in temperatures during the transition from deep winter to early spring in mid-Wisconsin) was beginning to brew outside.
And then, of course, later that evening, the slightly wealthy Ms. Bodenhigger, who lives down the street in a well-off home shielded from the rest of the world by an army of dense fir trees, was in desperate need of a babysitter because her regular nanny was conveniently snowed-in in the next town over (within, somehow, a matter of hours since the blizzard had begun and left an accumulation of two whole inches) and needed to get herself to her late-night job by five o'clock. And, since her only two last resorts were her divorced husband who lives with a scandalously new, younger wife in Miami and her eighty-year-old mother who is currently recovering from a recent biking accident in the local nursing home, she ended up calling every one of all five households on the block until she reached my dad and I's home phone number, where she pleaded with me for a full thirty-five seconds before I caved and agreed to watch her eight-year-old daughter for most of the night.
Which, then, brings us here.
"Make sure to give her plenty of water and, for god sakes, do not give her any catnip," Ms. Bodenhigger instructed as she swung her leather red Ralph Lauren handbag over her shoulder, of which was covered with a puffy hot pink coat sleeve.
And, FYI, the Bodenhigger's do not own a cat.
"Um, okay," I responded, observing her as she inched her way from the kitchen counter beside us to the front door ahead.
"And there's leftover apple pie in the fridge, chocolate ice cream in the freezer, and some Pepsi cans on the back porch, but don't let her have too much sugar, dear, please," she continued, now reaching for the door handle in front of her.
I stared at her as she proceeded to whip the glass-framed exit way out in front of herself.
"Any questions?" she asked, glancing back over at me.
I paused and glanced around the silent, spacious kitchen and dining area for a moment.
"Uh, yeah," I began, turning back to her. "Where... is she?"
The mother froze and glared at me for a second, and then looked away as she yelled out her daughter's name.
"Briana!"
I followed her gaze as a short, skinny girl with dark hair and pale skin sprinted into the room, pretty much a spitting image of her mom, other than her small size, that is. She skidded to a stop in her blue and white stripped knee-highs and black short-shorts about a foot away from the edge of the dining table on my left.
"Bri," the mother started, grabbing my attention back. "I want you to be good for..." She paused and scanned my image for a second. "Her."
She nodded, and then twisted back to the half-opened door in front of herself.
"I'm always an angel, mom!" the young girl, Briana, yelled out from the dining area.
"Yeah, yeah," the mother muttered out as I watched her step out into the chilling cold wind. I waited for her to shut and seal the glass gate behind her back, and then turned toward the little girl close by on my lefthand side.
"Hi," she greeted with a smile and a bit of a wave. "I'm Bri and..." She paused to throw her hands behind her back and rocked on her heals a bit. "I want to be a ghost when I grow up!"
I smiled back at her.
"Oh, yeah?" I questioned. "A... ghost?"
She nodded her head so ferociously I was genuinely afraid she was about to put herself into a whiplash coma.
"Like, for the haunted walks on Halloween, or..." I began, though I trailed away pretty quickly after I reminded myself that I was communicating with an eight-year-old.
"No, a real one," she shot back, and then hopped both of her feet forward a step. "What about you?"
"Me?" I asked, cocking my head to the side a bit. "Well... I'm Emma, and, when I grow up, I want to be... Buffy the Vampire Slayer."
Bri dramatically threw her head down, bent over and let out a good laugh. I let myself chuckle out a bit, too.
"That's silly," Bri stated, straightening her back once more before shaking her head at me. "Vampires don't even exist."
I maintained my smile and raised a brow at her.
"Oh?" I muttered.
Bri threw her arms above her head and spun a full three-sixty degrees in place.
"Nope!" she shouted as she twirled.
"Well," I began as she stumbled back to a stop and faced me once again. "I never said it was a wise, million-dollar net worth career... but, anyway, are you hungry?"
Bri jumped on her toes a tad.
"Yes!" she yelled. "And I want caviar!"
I stared at her as her excitement fell to a quiet smile.
"You want," I started, smiling back a little. "Caviar?"
Bri nodded subtly.
"Well..." I went on. "Do you guys... have caviar?"
She shrugged.
I pursed my lips for a second, and then turned toward the kitchen on my right.
"Well, let's look for some... caviar," I declared, now stepping up to the side of the big black fridge across the room. "Not even sure where that type of cuisine would be stored, though, actually..."
I reached out to open the refrigerator door, and then scanned the array of condiments on the inside front of it. I looked at the shelves full of regular refrigerated items, like cool whip containers probably full of leftovers, stacks on stacks of YoPlait dessert-flavored yogurts, and a half ton of Lunchables pizza trays, and, after that, turned back around to see Bri approach my side.
"Maybe it'd be in the pantry..." I began to her. "Do you guys have one of those? Or a cupboard? Or a basement? An attic, maybe? Or..." I glanced back at the fridge. "Maybe it's in the freezer..."
I began to push the fridge door shut, but Bri screamed out and threw her hands against it to stop me.
"Wait!" she yelled. "It's in here..."
I pulled the door open once more and allowed it to swing back on its hinges as she slid in front of me and opened one of the middle drawers. She then yanked a clear bag from it, spun around, and held it up for me to see.
"These are—" I started to read the bag's plain black label. "Wisconsin dairy cheese curds..."
I lowered my eyes to the bottom of the bag, where a mound of yellow-colored nuggets rested.
"No," Bri stated, throwing the bag down to her side. "It's caviar. And it's classy."
I raised my eyebrows as she spun away from me and ripped the ziplock bag open.
"Okay," I mumbled, now stared aimlessly into the fridge behind her while she stepped away. "Well, do you want anything besides caviar for dinner?"
"Maybe..." Bri began from somewhere behind my back. "Broiled lobster with garlic lime and basil butter."
"My god," I uttered, now slamming the refrigerator door closed and turning to see her backside standing in front of the counter ahead and to the right. "Why does your mother only have enough to give me four bucks an hour when you all seem to fly out to Dubai for dinner every Friday night?"
I brought my hands up to my waist as Bri turned around to gaze over at me, one of her hands currently in the process of stuffing her cheeks with a good handful of cheese balls.
"You'll only get paid if I don't get any injuries," she stated through choppy bites, already snatching up another fifty-six grams of cheesy snacks.
I stared at her a second, and then nodded.
"Good to know," I said.
Then, suddenly, Bri dropped her fistful of cheese to the tiled floor below and screamed out.
"I forgot—my show's on!"
She then spun around on her slick sock bottoms and shot both out of the room and around the corner. I stepped up to the side of the abandoned cheese curds on the ground ahead, and then stared down at them for a second.
"Bri?" I shouted out.
She took a moment to respond from the other room.
"Yeah?"
I continued to face the mess of cheese in front of me.
"Do you guys have a dog?" I asked.
"Yeah!" Bri answered. "His name is Chubs!"
I glanced up from the cheese, finally.
"It's fine, then," I commented, just to myself, now proceeding to walk away.
"Emma!" Bri went on. "Come watch this with me!"
I stepped around the counter edge ahead and turned to make my way into the spacious, high-ceiling living room nearby.
"I'm coming, don't worry!" I yelled back, right before approaching the side of a roomy red three-seater sofa and giant silver (fake) fireplace. After that, I scanned the far wall, noting a wide flat-screen TV of approximately sixty whopping inches and a tall glass-shelf display case full of miniature electric guitars and lion figurines, not one item over five inches in diameter, and then turned to where Bri sat, on the other couch to the right, with a tilted iPad sitting in her lap.
"Seriously," I started to her. "Do all of your babysitters only get four dollars an hour?"
Bri continued to flip through images on her tablet as she responded to me.
"She'll give you more if you do the dishes and there's no dog poop on the floor when she gets home," she declared.
"Oh, really?" I questioned, stepping forward to take a seat next to her on the burgundy sofa's edge. "Well, that shouldn't be too hard."
"Yeah, but," Bri objected, glancing up to gain my eye contact for a moment. "Chubs has chronic diarrhea and he's supposed to wear his special diapers but he gets them off sometimes and—" She stopped to take a big inhalation. "Then it just gets everywhere."
I narrowed my brows at her.
"Oh?" I replied.
She nodded, and then returned her attention down to the iPad.
I guess the disbanded cheese curds could really help him out, then.
"Where... is Chubs now, though?" I decided to go on to inquire.
"I don't know," Bri said. "Okay, watch!"
She threw her head upward and pointed at the television set across the way. I followed her gaze, and then watched as the tube flashed on and a picture of two (seemingly) grown men in oversized white bonnets and bibs looked to be in the process of wiping their tongues against the bottom of another man's hairy feet, of which were covered in all angles by some thin, pureed green substance while he rested on an air hockey table on his back. At the bottom of the screen, then, read in bold, black font: 'Lick that Sick Shit, Kid!'
I widened my eyes a bit at the sight.
"Oh, my..." I muttered.
Bri, however, hugged her stomach and bent over the edge of the couch in a crippling hard giggle. I glanced over at her for a second as one man's voice on the television yelled out 'trick or treat, eat my dick-stink feet!', and then raised the corners of my mouth slightly as she leaned back and looked at me.
"What show is this, exactly?" I asked.
Bri continued to laugh as she answered me.
"It's a webshow," she said. "And they're all the KKK."
I dropped my forged smile and inched my gaze back to the TV.
"Um..." I began, scanning the faces of the two old boys currently licking the pale and hairy older man's heels, now noticing that the both of them had a medium mocha skin tone. "Wh—What did you say there, Bri?"
"They're the C-K-K," she repeated, though, drastically different than before. "It stands for Crank Kings of Kroger."
I breathed out a thick puff of air and turned back to her.
"Oh, thank god," I uttered, shaking my head a bit at her. "That's not what... I thought you said the first time."
Bri shrugged and twisted back to face the television screen.
"I said the C-K-K," she defended, shrugging. "They buy random things from Kroger every week and then do sick things with them."
"Oh, I get it," I remarked right after. "CKK. Sick." I nodded at Bri, though her eyes were now completely glued to the TV set across the room, and then shifted in place to add my gaze on top of hers.
"Clever," I mumbled to conclude my epiphany.
I then watched as the screen flickered to an image of a tan man in his late twenties with some kind of leaning tower of gelled hair sitting on top of his head, smiling into a newscast-style microphone (one with the phrase CKK imprinted on it in bright red lettering), and then raised a brow as he began his situational commentary.
"Now that's some real sick shit, bitch! But, oh, what's this?" He stopped to take a white, blank notecard from the cameraman behind the picture. "We've got more coming up on the list!" He paused to enthusiastically bounce up and down in place. "And it looks like we've got a gift for our friend Derick!"
The camera then shifted, again, to another guy with light skin and a gold tracksuit.
"Oh, really, Mick?" this new man questioned into an identical microphone of his own. And, just as soon as he finished his cheesy inquiry, some silver, slimy (and hopefully dead) creature with gills was slapped across his right cheek by another person who was only partially in the frame.
"Oh!" he yelled out, squinting his eyes as the thing was flopped to the floor. "Was that a fish, Mick?"
The picture shot back to the first boy.
"It was the biggest fish there is, Derick!" he replied. "At least... the biggest one there is at Kroger!" He stopped to arch his back in cheap laughter. "But, we still have to see what sick things we have to flip... after this short break!"
The picture faded to black, and then a new picture of Jennifer Aniston rubbing white facial cream onto her cheeks was brought into focus, an Aveno-branded lotion bottle clearly displayed beside her.
"Who doesn't love radiant, beautiful skin?" she began.
And, though I have to admit I'm just such a sucker for radiant, beautiful, and expensively perfect skin tones, I glanced away from the television for a second, to the floor, and caught a glimpse of a small, furry tan canine with a blue and red plaid collar begin to trot into my direction from the other side of the room.
"Awe," I cooed. "Is this little Chubs?"
I leaned forward and reached both my hands out to him as he approached the sofa area.
"Probably," Bri answered, leaning back to rest her heels on the large wooden coffee table in front of her and partially in front of me.
"Oh, come here, little guy," I went on as he began to wag his short, curly tail and stepped up to my offered hands. I then proceeded to pet his thin, poufy fur coat with both palms as he halted to sit right next to, and sort of on top of, my left purple sock-covered toes.
"Wait, does he still have his diaper on?" Bri, after a short moment, piped up once more.
"Uh," I started, continuing to rub his fuzzy ears. "No, but I think he's fine, actually, right now."
Bri threw her feet down to the floor and hurried to sit up.
"Don't let him sit on your feet!" she suddenly shouted.
"What?" I questioned, still not removing my hands as I turned my head to look over at her.
"Just don't!" she yelled, throwing her hands up above her head, and then smacking them back down on the couch cushions.
I narrowed my eyebrows, and then returned my gaze back onto Chubs, who was now turning his sit into a squat directly over my left foot. And, in the exact same moment that I became aware of this, I felt a hot, liquid-like substance begin to seep onto the top of my thin sock fabric.
"Chubs!" I screeched, immediately grabbing at my left calf, bending my knee, and jerking my foot up near the side of my chest.
And, apparently, while I did this, a large portion of the smelly substance was actually tossed from the tips of my toes to a middle area of the bright white wall behind the sofa I sat on.
I know this because I followed the dog's excrements as it flung from my foot to the wall paneling, whipping my head to both watch it as well as avoid a run-in with my nose or mouth in the process.
"Oops," I mumbled, staring at the dog's diarrhea as it now began to drip down the wall.
"Ew!" I heard Bri condemn as I snapped my head back to the dog, who was now scampering from where I sat to the television against the far wall, liquid brown waste actually dribbling from his behind onto the spotless white carpet the entire way there.
"Chubs, stop!" I yelled, slamming my foot back to the floor and shooting up to a stand. "Wait, stop!"
I rushed forward and up to his backside, then knelt down and reached my hands out to his sides. Before I could catch a grasp on his furry skin, though, he darted to the right, tossing remnants of his sloppy puppy poo to the left as he hurried away from my fingertips.
"No, Chubs!" I shouted, bouncing back up and chasing after his trail.
However, I was soon to find out that his tracks were just as slippery as they were messy and stinky, because... well, my left foot just so happened to step directly into the center of the marked path as I was beginning to scurry away from the side of the television, causing my legs to slide out from underneath my body and forcing the rest of me to tumble down onto my backside, part of my left shoulder painfully crashing into the leg of the display cabinet next to me. I winced as I lay, then, staring up at the dimmed lights in the high ceiling above me, until I heard the variety of knickknacks on the shelves I had just collided with begin to tap and shift unsteadily with the shaking aftershock of the whole cabinetry. And then, as I saw one flip over the edge of the top ledge and begin to hurl itself into the direction of my nose via the law of gravity, I used my elbows to throw myself onto my right side, afterward covering the side of my face with my palms for a moment. After all of that, then, I peeked over my shoulder and saw that a figurine depicting a lion with a very exaggerated, ferocious teeth-bearing facial expression was glaring directly at my back from the diarrhea-infested carpet fibers as Bri could very vividly be heard cackling from across the room. Whether she was laughing at the twisted sick show that was bound to lose viewers after it ran out of relevant rhymes or my terrible misfortunes, I guess we may never know, but I'd take my chances with the latter if I had to.
"Oh my," I mumbled, staring at the figure for just a second. After that, though, I pulled myself back up to my feet and continued my chase along the trail of Chubs's excrements. Even, probably, with a line of his waste running up and down the back of my shirt, I wasn't going to let that dog throw his junk all over everything in the Bodenhigger's home, partially because I'm really just that considerate of a person to other peoples' possessions, but mostly because I really wanted more than just twenty bucks for the whole night.
So, I followed the drizzled path left for me to chase around the corner ahead, through the hallway, and then through the side entrance of the kitchen area, where I glanced up to see Chubs feasting on the cheese blocks left for him by the far counter, his trail completely surrounding where he now sat.
"Okay," I muttered out as I slowed down to tiptoe up to his back side. I glanced up to the countertop ahead for a split second, and then leaned forward to snatch an empty, clear tall glass from it before crouching down beside the dog. I aimed the open end of the glass at the area below his tail and, after that, snapped my free hand out to grab him from underneath his stomach.
Of course, though, that plan failed, and Chubs spun around to race away from my grip once more.
"Chubs!" I shouted, hurrying right after him, holding the cup out to at least try to catch some of the dribblings coming off of his hind end. "Stop it! Halt! Cease! Desist!"
"Chubs!" I heard Bri screech out from somewhere else while I continued to chase the dog with my hand outstretched and my back hunched over.
And then, after another moment, Bri leaped out in front of both me and him and snatched him up from his sides in her hands. I froze, then, and straightened my back to see her hold him as far away from her body as possible.
"Got him!" she exclaimed, now glancing up at me. "He's a slippery one."
I nodded at her, blank-faced, and then held out the glass underneath his dripping bottom.
"Sure is," I uttered, staring at the clear tumbler as its base very slowly became tinted with deep brown fluid.
"Here, take him," Bri began to me. "And I'll go get his diaper."
Before I could even start to utter a response, though, she thrusted the leaking dog away from the glass I held and into my arms.
"Oh," I grunted out as I wrapped my elbows around his back after Bri let him go and before he could slide to the ground below. I glanced up as Bri turned to jog out of the room, and then decided to steadily lower myself to my knees and place the stained glass atop the carpet, afterward grasping Chubs's sides with my hands and pushing him away from me just as she had, all the while aiming his liquid feces above the cup below.
And then, as nothing but the sound of a Taco Bell's Crunchwrap Supreme commercial from the slightly distant TV filled the air around us, I had nowhere else to stare except into Chubs's deep brown and partly cloudy eyes.
"You know," I began toward him. "I used to have a dog. Her name was Princess Buttercup."
Chubs did nothing in response but blankly blink at me and continue to drip into the glass.
"But my dad accidentally ran over her when I was nine," I went on.
And then, abruptly, a warm stream of dark yellow liquid coming from the direction of Chubs's lower abdomen began to splash me... on my nose and mouth.
"Ugh!" I shouted out, immediately turning my head to the side and tossing the dog down to the floor. I then shot up to stand, pulled my already waste-stained heather gray sweater away from my black tank top undershirt and popped it over my face, afterward using it to rub all of the dog's urine off of my nose and cheeks.
"Got it!" I could hear Bri yell from far away as I did so.
And then, somehow, as soon as I was finished and glanced up, I could see Bri walking up to me with Chubs in her arms, fully diapered and all. She stopped, though, when she saw that my partially pee-soaked sweater was in my hands and not over my body, and then smiled.
"Did he pee on you, too?" she giggled out.
I smiled a little back and nodded as I stepped over to the coat rack by the front door nearby to hang the soiled shirt up on a peg next to my own brown peacoat.
"Don't worry, though," I stated as I turned back to her. "It's not the first time I've been bluntly sprayed in the face with fresh urine."
Bri erupted into a fit of laughter and bent over as she put Chubs back on the floor.
"You're a weird babysitter," she commented, now collapsing to sit on the ground as I stepped up in front of her. "But you're funny, too."
"Well," I replied, raising my hands to my hips as I looked down at her. "I'll take any compliment I can get, so thank you."
She gazed up at me and paused for a moment.
"Here, I'll help you clean the floor," she declared, now stepping once more directly in front of me. "I want mom to let you come back again."
"Oh," I said, moving aside as she pushed her way into the kitchen beside us. "Thanks, there, Bri."
I watched her walk up to and sift through a low-level drawer, then spin around with two green matted hand towels and a gray Walmart bag.
"Yeah," she went on, now making her way up to a tall cabinet and stretching her hand as high as she could out to it, though her arm span wasn't quite enough.
When I noticed her struggle, I stepped over to her side and opened it for her.
"The spray bottle," she said, stepping back to point up into the cabinet before I proceeded to take down a white and blue 'Ultimate Pet Stain Remover' bottle and hand it to her. "Thanks."
She took it and spun around, then stepped back around to the living room area; I followed as she spoke up once more.
"My mom got rid of the first nanny because she said she 'licked poles too much'. I don't why she would wanna do that, though."
I raised my eyebrows as Bri knelt down beside one pile of dog poo, and then decided to pick up the growling lion from the floor and put it back in place before proceeding to crouch down beside her.
"Oh, yeah?" I questioned. "I don't, either."
"Yeah," Bri answered, taking one towel and handing the other to me before spraying the affected carpet area very strenuously with the bottle she held onto. "And that was right before my dad left, too. I think he was upset about the nanny leaving, though, too; she was really nice."
"Oh?" I inquired as she began to scrub away at the flooring.
"Yeah," she continued. "And then mom yelled at him when he left, 'You had better leave... and take Jenny with you!' " She ceased scrubbing and glanced over at me. "Jenny was the nanny's name."
I nodded quietly at her, and then began to scrub the floor alongside her once she proceeded to yet again.
"Mom was real upset about it," Bri commented, right before she shuffled to the right a bit with the bottle and plastic bag, following the trail of droppings. "And I've only ever seen dad on FaceTime since he moved away." She squirted the carpet and began to rub areas farther away from me. "I don't know why licking the poles was that big of a deal, though."
I kept silent and crawled around her side, now taking the bottle and spraying a few different areas of my own as another commercial, this one advertising some seafood restaurant in Las Vegas, filled the background with noise.
"But my new nanny is okay," Bri said with a sigh. "I just liked Jenny more. She wasn't so old and boring