Mothers & Other Monsters: Stories by Maureen F. McHugh

Author:Maureen F. McHugh
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2008-05-07T22:18:00+00:00

My morn and dad were still asleep when I got up. I was late for school the next day and missed first period General Math, which was no great loss.

When I got home, my mom was waiting for me and she started in on me again, so I said, "I'm going."

She grabbed me by the arm but I just twisted out of her grip and ran out the door. I went to see Lacey but she was in the house so I went up to the cemetery and found our blanket and wrapped up in it. I couldn't face going home yet, and I didn't know what to do. It was chilly, but not really cold. I sat leaning up against my great-aunt's tombstone in the sun. My parents had argued until two or three in the morning and I was tired and I fell asleep there.

I woke a couple of times and then suddenly it was dark and I'd gotten cold. It wasn't completely dark, because the moon was up but it was strange and creepy to be walking home in the dark. My mom was waiting for me, still mad. We had another fight, and I told her I was afraid to come home to a psycho mom. She said the school had called and said I was tardy and I said that maybe if she got up and sent me off to school like a normal mom, I wouldn't be tardy.

My dad came out and said I wasn't being fair and they told me I was grounded for a week.

I didn't get to go out to the cemetery until my punishment was up. I called Tye Petrie and told him I'd been grounded. We didn't talk about it on the phone. Tye didn't like to talk on the phone. He just told me he'd see me in a week.

He was waiting in Mrs. West's yard, and Lacey was happy to see me. I did all the things she liked, rubbing my knuckles in her ears and scratching her chest to apologize for not having seen her.

"What happened?" he asked.

"My mom and dad were having an argument so I came out to the cemetery and I fell asleep and I didn't get home until about nine."

"Yeah?" Tye said. He looked tired. He'd been suddenly getting taller and he'd gone from looking like a little middle school kid to looking like one of the juniors. He even had a little bit of a mustache.

"Did you go crazy?" I asked.

"Yeah," he said.

I wanted to know what it was like to go crazy. "What did you do?"

"Just, sorta went crazy."

That's all he would say and then neither one of us knew what to talk about. "When I woke up at the cemetery," I said, "it was already dark. Scared the living shit out of me," I said.

"Brittany," he said, "you shouldn't be out alone after dark."

"I didn't expect to be out after dark," I said, irritated.

"No, really. I mean, I ...

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