Charmed Thirds_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [50]
“And people pay you for this?” I asked skeptically.
“Yes!” She was very proud of herself.
“Why would anyone put more money into a house they want to sell?”
“This is not designing for living, it's designing for leaving.” My mother draped her arm around me apologetically, feeling sorry for this daughter of hers who was so in the dark about the most obvious truths. “My work creates a faster sale and more money for the seller. Sometimes it's simply a rearrangement of furniture and a removal of clutter. But some rooms are in such disarray that they require a total overhaul.”
“Like mine,” I said dryly.
“Yes!” She was too excited to notice that I was insulted. “I've reinvented it as a guest room, inspired by the casual elegance of a Caribbean resort. But for your sister's room, I wanted to try my hand at something entirely different . . .”
She crossed in front of me to open the door, leaving me in a fog of perfume. Nothing could have prepared me for what was inside: a burst of blue. Baby blue, to be specific.
She had reimagined Bethany's room as a baby boy's room.
My mother started talking very, very fast, her excitement now bordering on mania. And psychosis. “It was my intention to do a baby girl's room, which would be practical because of Marin, but then when I was shopping for bumper sets I saw this adorable one with the blue choo-choos and I thought, This is how I want to transform this room! So I just went with it.”
I looked around the room, at the Dr. Seuss books on the blue shelves next to the teddy bear sitting in the blue rocking chair across from the blue diaper stacker on the blue changing table under the blue choo-choo mobile . . . and I couldn't help but wonder how much this fake nursery looked like the real nursery in which the older brother I never met was discovered blue in his crib . . .
I thought maybe this was a cry for help. That by doing something so drastic, so over the top, she was begging for a long overdue discussion of that which is never discussed.
“And Marin can still sleep here,” my mom breezily continued, unaware of my discomfort. “She's surrounded by a pink and sparkly feminine aesthetic at home, so I don't think that sleeping in a blue room a few times a month will—how should I put this?—make her more masculine, now, do you?”
This was the creepiest thing I've ever seen. And there was only one way to escape.
“Mooooom! WHERE! IS! MY! STUFF!”
“Jessica Lynn Darling, don't get so testy,” Mom said testily.
It worked.
“First of all, anything in this room was left behind when you went to school. If these things were so important to your well-being, why didn't you take them with you?”
I was so freaked out that I wasn't even thinking in English anymore. I was thinking in some made-up language spoken by asylum inmates (which will come in handy when I have my mom committed). I couldn't form a single word, let alone a sentence that could express how supremely horrified I was. My mother misinterpreted my silence.
“See?” my mother said, fluffing her bangs in the choo-choo mirror. “You know I'm right.”
“Just tell me where my stuff is,” I said, when the powers of speech had returned.
“Stored in the basement,” she replied. “In a properly labeled container.”
I went into the cellar and found the large bin she was referring to: JESSIE'S JUNK.
And so, for the next few hours, I sat on the floor of the dim, dank basement, sorting through my junk. The mosaic picture of me and Hope brought a drizzle of tears to my eyes. The ME, YES, ME T-shirt that Marcus gave me to wear for my graduation speech created a steady rainfall. But the “Fall” poem, proof of how far we've come, all the way to being “naked / without shame / in Paradise . . .” Well, this brought on a torrential thunderstorm of tears. I might still be drowning downstairs if my dad hadn't come to get me with his corny Christmas cheer.
“Ho ho ho, Notso!”
I wish I could get high on frankincense or buzzed on myrrh, just to get me through these next few days until Marcus comes home. His last poetry