Read Online Lemon by Cordelia Strube - Free Book Online Page A

the bedroom again. It’s not actually yelling. She’s not mad at us, she’s just worried because there’s nothing in the fridge for us to eat. She can’t eat because she’s got a serious stomach problem and doctors had to cut out most of her stomach. All she can eat is special gruel in cans, which means she forgets to buy real food on the way home from her bank job. After standing all day, she lies on the floor in her bedroom and rests her legs on the bed so the fluid drains from her swollen feet back into her body.
    â€˜It’s okay, Mrs. Barnfield,’ I shout back. ‘We’re eating Triscuits.’
    â€˜Isn’t there some cream cheese in the fridge?’ Mrs. Barnfield yells. ‘I thought for sure we had some cream cheese.’
    â€˜It’s okay, Mrs. Barnfield. Get some rest.’ I don’t tell her about Rossi locking herself in the bathroom because she’s got enough problems. There’s been another bank merger and people like Mrs. Barnfield are getting downsized. Already the bank has cut back on her benefits, which is a major problem because she has to take all kinds of expensive drugs for her stomach problems. Her husband’s no help since he’s dead. He was a video poker addict who took off for South Carolina where they used to have video gambling machines in every convenience store and gas station. When he couldn’t get any more cash from his credit cards, he locked himself in his car and set it on fire. So Mrs. Barnfield and Rossi haven’t had it easy.
    I’m thinking of making Rossi the star of my groundbreaking play. I started writing it last night when I couldn’t sleep courtesy of the personal-trainer drummer. My main character’s name is Lillian and she’s been laid off from a bank and dreams of starting a hat-making business, only she keeps getting sidetracked by a soap opera called Truly Loved starring liposuctioned model types who jump in and out of the sack.
    â€˜I never for one second forget that I’m dying,’ Tora says. I’d forgotten she was there. That’s how she survives in school. Nobody notices her.
    Lillian, my main character, hadn’t known that soap operas are about beautiful people humping. So there she is surrounded by hat felt and feathers, getting distracted by naked men and women going at it between the Dust Buster commercials.
    â€˜I wake up,’ Tora says, ‘and I know it’s only going to get worse.’
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜Everything.’
    â€˜Maybe you’re depressed,’ I say. ‘Maybe you should go on one of those drug trials they’re always advertising. The ones beside the ads for premature-ejaculation recruits. They pay you for that stuff, all you do is take the drugs.’ I’ve considered applying only I don’t think I’m actually depressed. Sometimes I want to kill people but I don’t think that qualifies as clinical depression. Athough it really got me down when I read about the British giving the Indians bits of blankets infected with smallpox. There was old King George stuffing himself with pheasant while the Indians were opening gift boxes stuffed with contaminated blanket.
    â€˜You should come out, Ross,’ I say through the door. ‘You don’t want to worry your mum.’ She doesn’t answer. I’ve looked in their medicine cabinet. There’s only Tylenol in there, and nasal spray. Mrs. Barnfield keeps her heavy-duty medications in the kitchen. Melody Pasternak tried to kill herself with Tylenol and ended up barfing black stuff for days. Rossi knows this so I can’t see her trying it. Melody even wrote a suicide note about how she couldn’t stand the loneliness and how Byron Whitehead had broken
her heart. Byron Whitehead is supposed to be an intellectual, he edits the school paper and writes really fascinating articles about scientific studies nobody gives a goose’s turd