My crap day starts off much like my crap night ended.
First off, I have no phone. Don't ask how I got the waterlogged ruins of it out of the toilet; I don't want to talk about it. Second, I spent an hour looking for that damn dog and I never did find him. But that's okay because the shelter called at the crack of dawn this morning and said they'd picked him up last night. All I have to do is drive twenty minutes out of my way and pay a fine to pick him up.
“Okay,” I say as I pull over again and smooth out the directions I printed off the computer. I know, I know: nobody uses printed directions anymore. But my phone got fried with poop water last night, so GPS is kind of off the menu. “This shouldn't be too hard. I can figure this out.”
I glance up and wrinkle my face. I grew up in this town, but as soon as I graduated high school, I moved as far away as I could, settling in So Cal for school. Since I figured I'd never be back here, I sort of … obliterated any directional memories of this place.
I am so lost right now, I think as I look up and Bella starts to whine from the backseat.
“I'm gonna be late, Brooke,” she says, dropping the word 'auntie' altogether. “I hate being late.”
“Yeah, I got it, baby,” I say as I look around and stare at the quiet roads and the towering trees. I am so out of my element here. Somewhere in this dew drenched forest is Bella's school. It's a different one than I went to as a kid, so I have literally no clue where it is. Once I get her successfully dropped off, I get to search for Grace's preschool and then I get to go to my first class at Humboldt State.
At this point, I'd settle for any one of those things going my way.
“It's not even that hard to get there,” Bella says snootily, a dramatic sigh interrupting the snores of her dozing sister. At least one of us is having a good time here. How much would a full-time babysitter cost? I wonder. A nanny? A governess? At this point, I'll take what I can get. Although I'm sure my new job at the strip club won't cover it. I'll be lucky if I can afford gas, the rent on my sister's house, and food for the kids.
My heart starts to flutter with panic, but I clamp down on it. One thing at a time.
I throw the directions on the passenger seat and pull back onto the road. With a little luck and some snippy directions from Bella, I manage to find the school, dropping her off with a narrow eyed attendant who looks about as pissed as the kid is at me for making her late.
With no time to worry about that, I head off in search of the preschool. That one's a lot easier to find … but waking Grace up from her nap?
Holy hell.
Grace screams when I gently nudge her awake, flailing around and burying her face in the puffy pink coat I dressed her in. When I try to unhook her from the car seat, the straps start to look like tangled snakes and I can't figure the damn thing out. By the time I manage to get her free, she's in a real mood, red-faced and screaming.
I rush her up to the front door and try to pass her into the arms of the teacher.
Only … she won't let go.
“Come on, Gracie, baby. Auntie Brooke has a finite population sampling class that she's going to be fifteen minutes late to.” The kid has no sympathy for me, tearing a button off my shirt as I pry her away from me. The teacher gives me a look, but I don't have time to spend talking to her this morning.
I race back to the car, my white button-up flapping in the center, flashing my pink lacy bra. I'm starting to think things can't get much worse when my heel snaps and I go flying onto the pavement.
Fuck.
That really hurt.
I am in way over my head here.
They're monsters. Fucking monsters. Even the baby.
“Listen, Kinzie,” I say as she hauls out and kicks me in the ankle. I grit my teeth, but I'm kind of busy here. I've got a fat chihuahua tucked under one arm and some old, gross toothless one under the other. One of the things my brother neglected to mention to me was that his dogs are ridiculously cat aggressive.
Sweet.
Now I've got Hubert trapped on top of the fridge, the twins in the backyard throwing mud clods at each other, and Kinzie screaming that she wants me to die.
This is gonna be a fan-fucking-tastic two weeks.
“Can you please take the dogs upstairs and put them back in the bathroom?” I ask as I try to hand her one of the disgusting smelly rat creatures. I miss my life so bad right now it hurts. The Strip, the hot sun, the sexy tourists, the smell of iodine at the shop. I make myself take a deep breath.
“They don't like being in the bathroom,” Kinzie says, crossing her arms over her chest as she glares up at me, brown eyes taking me in like she's not impressed. “Why is your skin all splotchy?” she asks. “And what happened to your hair?”