Lark (First & Forever 5)

This place was intimidatingly nice. It was a flawless, pale gray Edwardian in Delores Heights, and given San Francisco’s housing prices, calling it a million-dollar home didn’t even sort of begin to cover it.

My job was simple. I was here to collect the mail, water Theo’s huge number of houseplants, and just generally keep an eye on things. I took my job very seriously, which was why I’d decided to move into the guest room for the week, instead of traveling the measly five blocks between my house and theirs every day. What if something happened while I wasn’t here? I’d never forgive myself.

It was odd to have both this much room and this much solitude. I’d never lived alone before. I tried to turn it into a positive by doing all the things I couldn’t do with roommates, like running around naked, blasting ABBA at all hours, and singing at the top of my lungs. That was fun at first, but by day three I was pretty much over it.

I wasn’t going to abandon my post and go home, though. Theo and Casey had put a lot of faith in me by asking me to housesit, and I was absolutely determined to show them they’d made the right call.

By day four, I was starting to climb the walls. I decided it wouldn’t be irresponsible to take a short trip to Delores Park, since it was only two blocks away. What could happen to the house in an hour? Theo and Casey left it alone for much longer than that every week when they went to their jobs at the hospital. So I went to the park, ran around, and spent a lot of time on the swing, and that helped a bit.

The house was perfectly fine when I got back. Now the question was what to do to pass the time, so I decided to play spa day. After a long shower and a weird exfoliating scrub, I shaved everywhere from the nose down, put on a facemask, and gave myself a mani-pedi, which included a fresh coat of baby blue polish on my toenails.

Then I went with more naked Lark time, because why not? That really was the best part of having so much privacy.

It was early evening by this point, so I decided to start dinner and went into the kitchen. Like the rest of the house, it was gorgeous and fancy, with pristine white cabinets and amazing stone counters. The backsplash was a mosaic made out of tiny tiles in different shades of blue, and it looked like it belonged in a museum, not in a place where someone might get ketchup on it.

I put on an apron, because cooking and dangly bits didn’t mix, turned on some music, and stood in front of the open refrigerator for a while. Theo and Casey had bought me a bunch of food before they left, and I was trying to figure out what to make out of all that healthy stuff.

They’d really overestimated me. Like I knew what to do with asparagus, or—what was that even, a cantaloupe? I’d grown up on boxed mac and cheese, not mystery melons and spiky green things.

I didn’t want all that stuff to go bad though, and all I’d eaten for the last three and a half days were the two boxes of cereal I’d brought with me and an extra-large pizza and its leftovers. So, I heaped a bunch of produce on the counter and went to work. My theory was that everything was better in butter, so I melted some in a big skillet on the stove. Then I washed off the asparaguses—asapragii?—and threw them in whole, since I didn’t recall ever seeing them chopped up.

While they were cooking, or getting ruined, or whatever, I found a cutting board, placed the melon in the center of it, and came down on it like a guillotine with a huge knife. When it split in two, a bunch of seeds in some sort of slimy, thick-looking, and vaguely cum-like goo spilled out. I made a gagging sound and muttered, “It’s like an alien autopsy,” because of course I’d started talking to myself after all this alone time.

I also discovered the melon’s interior was pale green. Did that mean it was an unripe cantaloupe, or not a cantaloupe at all? Given the current jizz-seed/melon-corpse situation, I didn’t think I was willing to taste it and find out.

Instead, I slid the cutting board off to the side and found another. Then I went to work on cutting a cucumber and a carrot into wheels. At least I knew what those were. There was a ruffly head of lettuce in the fridge too, because apparently I’d never told Casey I didn’t eat leaves. I really didn’t know what to do with that, since eating it was just not going to happen.

My carrots and cucumber still counted as a salad though, and I looked for some ranch dressing in the refrigerator. The closest thing I found was something called Green Goddess. I didn’t even know what to make of that, but the bottle told me it was dressing, so I believed it.

I also found some fancy sliced cheese in a deli wrapper. I didn’t know what it was, even after eating a slice, but it tasted pretty good so I decided it would make a decent grilled cheese sandwich.

I got some more butter and two slices of chunky, dark brown, multigrain bread, found another pan, and grilled the sandwich to perfection. At least there was one thing I knew how to make. I also managed to catch the asparagus right before it blackened and rolled the now-shriveled veggie spears onto a plate.

Once the sandwich was done, I plated it too, then carried my meal to the little table just outside the kitchen. Since it was probably tacky to apply my bare ass to my friends’ furniture, I took off my apron and lined the chair with it before sitting down.

The meal was successful overall, except that I decided only the top inch of each asparagus spear was actually food. The rest was basically kindling. While I ate, I looked out over the rows of houseplants lined up at the windows and enjoyed the view of the pretty backyard, which lit up every night with hidden, automatic lights.

I wondered if Theo, with his love of houseplants, had done all that gorgeous landscaping. He’d inherited this house, so maybe the yard had already looked like that when he moved in. Either way, with my newfound interest in plants and landscaping, I could appreciate the work that had gone into the yard to get it to look that perfect.

When I was almost done with my meal, movement out back caught my eye. Then I spotted a fat raccoon on top of the back fence and gasped with surprise. I’d known there were racoons in San Francisco because I’d seen them once before, late at night, running down the street in a gang before ducking into a water drain. I thought they were real bad-asses for surviving in a big city, not to mention absolutely adorable.

I quickly gathered some food for him. I didn’t know what raccoons were supposed to eat, but I was pretty sure what they actually ate was garbage, so I didn’t think I could really go wrong with what I tried to feed him. I arranged some veggie slices, a piece of bread, the last of my sandwich, and some of my cereal on a paper towel, then placed it outside on the patio. I left the back door open so I could see him if he decided to take the food, then stood back and waited for a while.

After three or four minutes, nothing had happened, and I was tired of waiting. I left the door open so I could check back on the raccoon picnic, then turned my attention to cleaning up the mess I’d made in the kitchen. The goal was to leave it exactly like I’d found it.

I was going to have to deal with the melon/alien spore grossness, but I ignored it for now and focused on the dishes. I’d never lived anyplace that had a dishwasher, so to me this was way more exciting than it should have been.

It was my first time using it, since all I’d done to this point was hand-wash my one spoon and the cereal bowl, and I’d eaten the pizza right out of the box. But now was the time to revel in this marvel of modern living. Okay, so dishwashers had existed for like, the last fifty years or something, but to me it was all new and very cool.

After taking my time arranging the dishes on the racks, then rearranging them a few times, I tried to figure out where to add the soap. Finally, I found a little compartment on the inside of the door labeled “detergent,” grabbed the bottle of green dishwashing soap from beneath the sink, and loaded it up. All the buttons were hidden on the top edge of the door, and I pushed one that said “super scrubber,” because it seemed like the one that would get the dishes the cleanest. As soon as I shut the door, the machine started running with a quiet whir, which made me grin.

The next step was to wipe down all the counters. I’d been left a set of instructions about what I should and shouldn’t use on them. They were made out of some kind of pretty stone, which frankly seemed extravagant and showy. If you lived in a castle in Arendelle, sure. But what average person was like, “To the mines, lads, to fetch me huge slabs of the finest marble! Then bring them forth once you’ve polished them to a high shine and install them here, so that I might stir my boxed macaroni and cheese upon them! Only then shall I have the most glorious kitchen in all the land. Other kitchens will bow down to my kitchen’s vast superiority, and I shall laugh at those mere peasants from high atop my marble countertop!” In other words, it all seemed a little hoity toity to me. And yes, I actually said all of that out loud, because being alone all the time was warping me.

When the song playing from my phone’s speaker ended, I thought I heard something outside. I shut off the music, crept around the kitchen island, and leaned over to look out the back door. Then I had to stifle a squeal of delight, because the raccoon was out there eating the cereal with his adorable little hands.

I retrieved my phone from the counter so I could get a picture, but my first photo turned out too dark. You couldn’t even tell it was a raccoon, it just looked like a bag of trash out on the patio. I tried one with a flash next, but it only lit up the doorframe, so I knew I had to get a lot closer.

I tiptoed toward the open door as quietly as I could. The raccoon either ignored me or didn’t notice I was there. Once I was about three feet from the open doorway, I crouched down to raccoon height, zoomed in a little, and pressed the button.