“Are you asleep?” Levi asks.
“No,” I say.
“Are you considering our sage advice?” he asks.
I say nothing.
“That means yes,” says Seth.
“It’s good advice,” says Eli.
I just sigh, then lift my head and take another long sip of whiskey.Chapter Thirty-SevenCharlieI’m in the cereal aisle again, trying to decide which anthropomorphized cartoon animal has the sort of sugar that I want right now.
Which cereal will quell the hollow, gnawing feeling in my chest?
Will Froot Loops make me feel better about tanking the most significant relationship of my life with one bad decision?
Will Cookie Crisp let me go back in time and take Rusty to the playground instead?
Perhaps Tony the Tiger, who seems very charismatic, can give Daniel the give her one more chance talk.
It’s six in the morning. I didn’t sleep for shit last night, even though I was up late with Elizabeth, drinking Slurpees in the 7-11 parking lot because we’re classy like that. She still thinks I should go to the hearing. I disagree, and since it’s my life, I get to decide.
Fuck it. I want Lucky Charms, because those marshmallows are delicious. My arms are already full, because yet again I underestimated the amount of stuff I’d be buying this morning, so I put my phone on the shelf by the Cheerios, grab the Lucky Charms, shove the box under one arm, and promptly knock several boxes of Grape-Nuts and Raisin Bran off the shelf with the huge bags of tortilla chips I’m holding in my other hand.
“Dammit,” I whisper under my breath.
I put everything on the floor. I pick up the cereal, put it back. I put the Lucky Charms back, remember why I’m there, grab it again, shove it under my arm, pick up the tortilla chips and the salsa and the queso dip and then finally maneuver myself to the checkout, where I take a plastic bag because obviously I forgot the reusable ones.
Then I put my pity food into my car and drive off.It’s close to noon when I realize I left my phone in front of the Cheerios. I’m at work, shaping a dovetail joint on a side table, when I suddenly have a vision of it, sitting there in front of the yellow box where I put it down for just a second.
I don’t know why I didn’t put it in my pocket. I just didn’t.
I borrow the phone in the office and call the grocery store. While I’m on hold I sit back in the uncomfortable upholstered chair from 1970, a spring sticking straight into my butt, and look at the knickknacks that Donna, who runs the office, keeps on her desk. One is a small ceramic dog peeing on a ceramic fire hydrant, and I wonder why on earth anyone would want such a thing.
“Hi. Miss?” the voice on the other end of the phone says. “No one’s turned it in and there’s no phone in the cereal aisle.”
For a moment, I just look at the peeing dog.
“It’s not there?” I echo. Somehow, that hadn’t occurred to me — Sprucevale is a small, safe town, so I assumed I’d just waltz back to the store after work and grab my phone.
“Sorry,” he says. “But I’ll put a bulletin out for it if anyone’s seen it.”
I lean back in the uncomfortable chair and do my goddamn best not to cry, because of course I did something dumb and lost my phone. I mean, I’m constantly misplacing it — I found it in my medicine cabinet a few weeks ago with no memory of putting it there — but this is the first time it’s actually gone missing missing.
Shit. Now, on top of everything else, I probably need a new phone.
“Thanks,” I say, give him the office number, and we hang up.
Then I go to the bathroom, and for the first time ever, I cry at work.I’m watching stupid TV that night when Elizabeth knocks on my door. I’ve still got my coveralls on, and I’m probably coating my whole apartment in sawdust right now, but I just can’t be bothered to care.
“What?” I shout.
The door opens, because it wasn’t locked.
“You stopped answering your phone again,” she says.
“It got stolen,” I say, still slumped on the couch.
Elizabeth frowns in alarm and comes inside. She has dry cleaning in one hand, and it swishes inside, the light plastic rustling.
“What happened? Was it stolen at work? Did your car get broken into? Did you—”
“I left it in the cereal aisle for six hours and someone took it,” I say.
I see her eyes flick to my coffee table, which has an empty cereal bowl, a giant bag of tortilla chips haphazardly opened, and the jar of queso dip on it.
“Oh,” she says. “Well, I hope they find it. That sucks.”
“I called. They didn’t,” I say.
“Did you go check yourself?”