Page 41 of The Vacancy In Room 10

“Santa Mierda, no,” I hear Rosa say softly from somewhere behind me, but I don’t care. I grab an oversize cluster of helium balloons, take a dinner fork from a table, and start stabbing at them, the deafening pops attracting everyone’s attention.

“Heeey, everyone!” I yell.

“Oh, shit,” Crystal says, and she tries to stop me and take my fork, but I’m too far gone to listen to reason. I see the faces of mostly strangers, but Becca and Andrea and a few others are familiar and staring at me like I’ve gone completely mad. Fair.

“Who wants to see a scene!?” I yell and pop one more balloon until I have most people’s attention. “The home-wrecking bitch here doesn’t want a scene, either. She only makes scenes behind people’s backs! Not in public. God for-fucking-bid! Did everyone congratulate Reid on his engagement and their baby news?”

I see Reid give a group of friends a terrified look.

Then Becca comes over trying to be some sort of savior and touches my shoulder. “Okay, honey, come on.”

“‘Honey’? Really? Get the fuck outta here,” I say, pushing her off me. “You knew. All of you knew!”

“You’re embarrassing yourself. Stop,” Reid says with a stern tone, grabbing my arm hard. His nostrils flare.

“No, YOU embarrass me! You embarrass yourself. Get your hands off me.” I push him.

Kimmy tries to retaliate and protect him, but I turn around before she can reach me and push her so hard, she falls into the food table. It buckles, and Kimmy is lying on the ground with a five-tier coconut cream cake fallen on top of her, bawling and screaming that I’m a psycho, which I agree; right now, I sort of am.

Barry, of all people, hooks my arm in his and says let’s go, that security is coming, and all of us rush toward the sliding glass doors.

“Take that, Barbie!” Jackie slurs as we exit, throwing a bacon-wrapped shrimp as one final blow, but it hits the glass and falls to the ground with an anticlimactic plop, and we all sprint to the minivan and tear out of the lot as fast as we can. The girls hoot and holler in triumph for a while, but then it’s quiet.

The whole ride home is quiet, no music, just the hum of the highway. Crystal lays my head in her lap and strokes my hair as she and Jackie softly crunch on the purse-shrimp they stole. No one says much for a while, and then Jackie speaks.

“Let’s egg his house.”

“Oh, yeah,” Crystal agrees. “The son of a bitch.”

“It wouldn’t be an unreasonable thing to do,” Rosa adds to my surprise.

I sit up. “He lives a few miles up west on White Pine,” I say.

And Crystal starts fist-bumping and chanting, “Hell yeah, egg his house, hell yeah.”

“No, I mean I just want to go there. He still has stuff he never gave back to me. I want it. And I mean, I know he’s not home.”

“Fuck yeah you do. Let’s go,” Jackie says, and for the next few miles their enthusiastic support becomes a little much as they make up a variety of chants like “Fuck, yeah, get your shit. That guy sucks, sucks a dick,” and other such masterpieces.

When we pull up, the sight of our house takes my breath away. I once thought about setting the place on fire. Well, to be fair, I dreamed about it. The sleeping kind of dream, not the fantasy kind; it doesn’t count as a psychotic thought, since you can’t help what you dream about. No one was hurt, even in the dream, but I was allowed at least a modicum of satisfaction, knowing that nobody else would ever sleep in my bed or enjoy my coveted soaker tub with the must-have jets. Knowing that our years of photos together would curl up on the sides and melt and boil before meeting the rest of our earthly belongings as ash in a puff of rolling black smoke above our house.

I don’t want to burn it down anymore. I just want what’s mine. I tell everyone I’ll just be a few minutes. First, I punch in the garage code.

My giant, very expensive tool collection is exactly where I left it in the corner, because everyone knows Reid can’t even change a light bulb. He thought the tools should stay with the house, but they’re mine. Barry pops the hatch when he sees me waddling out with the toolbox and helps me throw it in the back. I hold up a finger telling them I won’t be long, and I go around to the side door where a spare key is hidden in a cactus pot, and I let myself in.

So much of the house is the same. The paintings I bought from art fairs all hang in the same places, the plates I picked out sit dirty in the kitchen sink, a quilt my mother made is draped over the couch. I left so quickly, I didn’t take much. He’s made it impossible for me to come back. I pull the quilt off the couch with a violent tug and wrap it around my shoulders.

I walk upstairs and hesitantly push open our bedroom door. The satin bedding I got at Nordstrom is still on the bed, with tiny birds embroidered into the sides of the pillowcases. The bedframe and nightstands we bought together are there; mahogany, timeless. Even most of the framed photos on the dressers are the same, except that the ones with me have been replaced with ones of Kimmy. When I open my closet, all of her clothes are hanging there, and I do think about getting the house paint from the garage and flinging it all over the room like a Jackson Pollock. But I don’t.

I sit on the bed. It feels as if someone died. There’s a hollow flutter between my shoulder blades; the feeling of slipping on a stair, or leaning back in a chair just a hair too far. It feels like falling. I lie down on the bed. I let myself, for just a moment, even though it’s almost unbearable.

Across the room, I see a few boxes of diapers and a baby mobile with little moons and stars hanging from it, and it’s all confirmed. The house my family was supposed to grow up in belongs to someone else now, and I have no family. Suddenly I don’t want anything in here anymore besides my quilt. I numbly walk outside, knowing it’s for the last time. It’s time to go.

Outside, I head to the waiting van parked on the side of the street when I see my herbs. It’s stupid to be triggered by herbs, but they were mine. Each one has a Popsicle stick in the soil with a label like Super Sage and Rockin’ Rosemary. I loved to garden, and we said we’d plant these and keep them alive—we’d give them funny names...for our kids. To get them excited about gardening and cooking the way I was. Reid surprised me with them after a particularly hard loss; the last loss we had. It was a sweet gesture of hope, and look at them now...they’re letting them die.

Tears stream down my face against my will, and I drop to my knees and begin tearing all of the plants from the ground. I’m sobbing and digging and trying to collect them all in my arms when I see a red flash of light in the darkness and hear some warning shouts from the girls in the van.

A cop has pulled up. I’m certain one of the nosy neighbors called them as soon as they saw me pull up. I don’t stop, though. I keep pulling my herbs and trying to save them by not tearing any of their precious roots. I can’t stop crying. I can’t stop.

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