Under the Stars and Stripes (Under Him)

“No rush to leave,” I say. “In fact, you really have to consider the fact that… you know…”

“That you could be a killer?” she asks.

“I was going to say considering that there’s a pandemic but thank you for making me feel like your personal Norman Bates.”

“I peg you as more of a Kathy Bates,” Justin says as he whips by. “a la Misery.”

I hate this kid.

“I do have one concern,” she tells me as she looks up. “My dad, being the control freak he is, will be fucking furious if he’s home when I move my things. So, I’ll have to do that during the work day.”

“Okay,” I tell her. “I can help you.”

“Really?” she asks like a puppy who has never been shown any kindness in its life.

“Ha ha, yes, really. We can do it Monday since the last shoot for this company is Sunday and we have that day off. Think you can survive until then?”

“Oh, yeah,” she tells me. “I was actually planning to spend the weekend at my best friend’s house anyway. Well… her parents’ house.”

She takes one last look down at the photo.

“Can you make me a copy of this?”

“I surely can.”

She turns her head to me.

“Thank you, by the way,” she says.

“For what?”

“For seeing something in me I didn’t know was there.”

The she leans over, gives me a peck on the cheek, and walks out of the studio.

Chapter Seven - Brittany

I never understood what people meant when they talked about getting butterflies in their stomachs. I always thought it was a terrifying expression, actually.

Once, when I was a kid in elementary school, I was with my mom at the local middle school track one evening where she ran a few miles every night to try to get her modeling figure back.

I was not a very athletic child and in fact I usually ended up toddling off to the bleachers to pretend I was in a fortress, and I was a princess waiting to be saved by a prince who never came.

But one evening in particular, I decided to walk with her because my father had really started laying on some heavy insults about my weight a few days before. Mind you… I was a third grader at the time, if that gives you any sort of idea what a terrible person my father is.

Still, eventually I saw my mom running and figured that I could be skinny like her if I just did everything that she was doing.

I tried to keep up with her, but the woman is an Amazon, always has been. That’s part of what made her such a good model before she had me, and it’s part of how she managed to maintain her proportionate figure afterward when she was a little heavier set.

Unfortunately, I had never run for sport in my entire life and running five miles along a rubber cement football field track was not the best starting point for a young little chunk like myself.

“I’ll catch up, Mama,” I told her, as she went on without me.

Ohhhh, how I should’ve seen the foreshadowing then. I continued to walk the length of the track, though, and at a certain point an insect started buzzing around my head.

It was too dark to see exactly where it was and swat at it, but I could hear it growing closer and closer to my ear. Then suddenly, as if it were a perfectly normal thing to do, the bug flew right into my ear canal and got lodged there in the earwax deep within.

To this day, it is the single most haunting memory of my life. I could feel its little feet scraping up against the inside of my ear, not to mention every little shake and scratch as it tried to wiggle itself in one direction or the other to find its way back out.

It was horrific. I was always a person who jumps at the sound a bee or fly buzzing in the air around me makes, but now one of those icky, spine-chilling insect sounds was magnifying just millimeters from your ear drum. It was like sitting in the orchestra pit at the world’s most disgusting musical.

I began screaming frantically and— at last— running all around the track trying to find my mother in the dark. She had a CD player (remember those?) hooked to the waistband of her shorts and those flimsy, old, black headphones you probably couldn’t even find online these days clasped over her head and resting on her ears.

There was no hearing me running around the track screaming, “GET IT OUT GET IT OUT GET OUT! GET THIS THING OUT OF MY BODY!” like a child who’s just seen the darker side of his imaginary friend as it tries to take possession of his flesh and bones.