Lachlan, who had been listening to us talk, shot me an appraising look.
“You’re truly not enjoying your new beauty, are you?”
“I’m just…trying to get used to it,” I said. “Please believe me, it’s much better than being stuck in the ugly witch form.” I didn’t want him to think I was ungrateful that he’d removed the geas. “But it’s still so weird to suddenly look so different.”
“You’ll get used to it,” Bran promised me again.
I hoped he was right but at the moment, I didn’t see how it was possible.
I mulled over the strange experience in the grocery store all the way home. But when we got to the entrance of my apartment building, I saw something that pulled me out of my contemplative mood.
The ground was littered with cigarette butts—the detritus of my mom’s worried midnight vigil, as she waited for me to get home the night before.
Feeling embarrassed about the mess, I knew I had to pick up the butts before one of the other tenants complained. So I sent the guys in with the groceries and started picking up the little white butts, each one decorated with a pink smear of my mom’s lipstick.
I was just finishing up when a shadow fell over me and someone said,
“Emma? Little Emma—is that you?”
Looking up, I saw our landlord, Carl Groperson, standing over me. He was short, pudgy, and balding and he was chomping on the stub of a cigar that smelled like dirty socks. His clothing matched his looks. He was wearing a stained, white sleeveless T-shirt that was too short—it didn’t quite cover the bottom of his hairy belly, which hung out over the waistband of his sagging jeans. To complete the look he had on flip-flops that showed his dirty, hairy toes. Ugh!
“Oh, hi Mr. Groperson.” I straightened up, trying to keep a neutral expression on my face as I hastily stuffed the handful of cigarette butts into the pocket of my jeans.
Our landlord was a jerk. He’d raised the rent on my mom four times since we’d been living in his apartment building because he knew we couldn’t move. The only other apartment complex in Frostproof was a smoke-free one where you weren’t allowed to even smoke outside—let alone inside. As addicted as my mom was to her “cancer sticks,” as she called them, there was no way we could move in there.
So Groperson knew he had us where he wanted us and he continued to raise the rent. Meanwhile, my mom hadn’t gotten a raise at work in over three years and my tips at the I Scream weren’t exactly fabulous. So we were barely scraping by—not that our pudgy landlord cared.
But jerk or not, I knew I couldn’t afford to offend him, so I tried to smile, though the expression felt wrong on my face.
“Is that you, Emma?” he asked again, frowning as though he couldn’t be sure. Well, I did look a lot different than I had the last time I’d run into him.
“Uh, yes. I, um, I dyed my hair,” I said, groping for an explanation for my new looks.
“You sure did somethin’ to yourself.” Groperson’s piggy little eyes crawled over my body in a way that made me feel really uncomfortable. I was wearing my own clothes again, but none of them fit right and the oversized T-shirt I’d put on to hide my new figure suddenly didn’t feel baggy enough.
“Well, it was nice seeing you,” I said as brightly as I could. “But I have to get back to my mom.”
I started to walk past him but Groperson blocked my path.
“Hang on.” He frowned at me and my heart started pounding.
“Yes, Mr. Groperson? Is there a problem?”
“You bet your boots there’s a problem, Missy.” He took the soggy end of the cigar out of his mouth and gestured at me with it. “Your rent is due. In fact, it’s overdue.”
“I thought rent wasn’t due until the end of the month,” I protested uneasily. “It’s only the twenty-first—that’s a whole week early.”
“The rent’s due when I say it’s due,” he snapped, waving his soggy, smelly cigar at me. “So you tell your mom I want my money!”
He was looming over me and making me feel really nervous. Up close, I could smell more than his cigar and my nose was telling me he probably hadn’t bathed in at least a week, if not more. Ewww… My stomach did a slow forward roll of disgust and I was glad I’d skipped breakfast.
“I…I wish I could help you, Mr. Groperson,” I said, stuffing my hands nervously into the pockets of my jeans and taking a step back. “I mean, I wish I could get you your money early, but my mom doesn’t get paid until the end of the month and I don’t have any money.”