Running With Scissors_ A Memoir - Augusten Burroughs [74]
Natalie laughed. “Oooh, prissy Miss Hope has a temper,” she taunted. “Temper, temper, temper.”
Hope took a deep breath, let it out, and blotted the book using the hem of her shirt. She began to hum “The Impossible Dream.”
“That’s right, you just ignore me,” Natalie said. Then she reached forward and began scratching Hope’s head vigorously with both hands. A flurry of dried white skin cells rose like dust from Hope’s head.
“Mmmmmmm” Hope moaned, felinelike. “That feels good.”
Natalie stopped instantly. “You’re pitiful.” She stomped away and went back to the refrigerator. Opening the crisper drawer, she removed a slice of American cheese. It had been left unwrapped and even from across the room, I could see the smooth, plasticlike texture of the firm slice. Natalie bit into it, made a face and spit into her hand. “God, there’s nothing to eat in this house.”
“Agnes went shopping,” I said.
“When?” Natalie asked.
“I don’t know, maybe an hour ago. A few hours ago. I lost track.”
Natalie walked over to the trash can near the sink where I was leaning. She dropped the cheese into the can and then did a double-take at my head. “What did you do to your hair?”
I shrugged. “It’s semipermanent. It’ll come out after ten washings.” Out of boredom, I’d dyed it brown with Just For Men. I thought it made me look like a dashing young news anchor.
“It looks like a wig,” Natalie said.
“It does sort of look fake,” I agreed, setting my glass in the sink.
Hope glanced up from her book. “I think it looks good,” she said.
“Nobody asked you, snowgirl.”
“Fuck you,” Hope said.
“Just try it,” said Natalie, “and I’ll stick a meat cleaver up your cunt.”
Hope slammed her book shut. “Natalie, you are so foulmouthed. What’s the matter with you, hm? All day long you whine about wanting to go to Smith and you can’t say ten words without using the F-word.”
“That’s right, Hope. I’m just a foul-mouthed whore. I’m your little slut sister.”
“That’s enough,” Hope said.
“Go fuck yourself,” Natalie gave her the finger. Then she turned to me. “Let’s go to McDonald’s. Let’s get some McNuggets.”
“Oh, bring me some?” Hope said sweetly.
Natalie snickered darkly. “We’ll bring you a dead squirrel if we happen to see one on the side of the road.”
“I don’t even like the McNuggets,” Natalie said. “I just get ’em for the hot mustard sauce.” She licked her fingers, making a sucking noise.
We were sitting at a red plastic table in McDonalds. We’d had to scrounge around in the pockets of our dirty clothes and in the sofa just to get the measly four dollars we needed to even come here. How much lower would we sink?
“You know what we need? We need to get jobs, get the fuck out of that crazy house,” Natalie said, dipping a McNugget into her sauce.
“Yeah, right. Jobs doing what? Our only skills are oral sex and restraining agitated psychotics.”
She laughed. “How pathetic and true. But seriously, we should walk around today and look for work. I’m just talking about being a clerk or something. I mean how hard is it to run a cash register?”
Considering I couldn’t even do long division, the idea of running a cash register made me as anxious as running a nuclear reactor. “I don’t know,” I said. “It seems like you have to have experience for everything.”
“Well,” she said, glancing around the restaurant, “we could always start here.”
“At McDonald’s?” I dipped into the red barbecue sauce.
“Yeah. I mean, we could work here for a couple months, get some experience and then get a really good job at like Beyond Words bookstore or Country Comfort or something.”
“I guess,” I said.
“C’mon, hurry up and finish. We’ll get a couple applications from the manager. And after we fill them out, we’ll walk around town and look for Help Wanted signs.”
I shrugged. Why not? At least it was something to do. “Okay.”
We emptied our trays into the trash and asked the counter girl for a couple of applications. After filling them out we left. As