FIC: Secondhand
Title: Secondhand
Rating: PG
Warnings: Swear words. That’s it. Promise.
Summary: His new flatmate is more than a little weird. Also, she’s a girl.
A/N: My 2011 ficathon piece. Many thanks to elvisvf101, who helped me to get rid off all British spelling in my bid to hide my authorship. Also, without him, I think I would have never found a way to write the ending to this story.
***
…but my lonely is mine. Now your lonely is somebody else’s. Made by somebody else and handed to you. Ain’t that something? A secondhand lonely.
~ Sula, Toni Morrison
***
Problem was, he hated dogs. And cats. And hamsters, don’t even get him started on hamsters. Greedy little fuckers. They never eat all the crap they stuff into their cheeks, and at night, they chew on the bars of their cages and make a hell of a lot of noise. His sister had one, once. Didn’t live long. Bummer. He grins, and revels in the knowledge that now that he no longer lives at home, he will never have to bother with pets again.
And in walks his new flatmate, a hamster cage under one arm, a basket with a cat under the other, and just as his jaw drops, a Pekingese trails after her heels.
“Hi, I’m Mina,” she says, and beams.
***
He commuted to college in his first year, an hour long bus ride each way. Then he’d finally had enough, and moved out. He had some money saved up, and took a job as a night guard in the pathology department of the adjoining medical faculty. He didn’t mind the dead, at least they were silent. But even with his savings, and the money from the job, he had to take a flatmate to be able to afford the tiny house. It was almost derelict, had no central heating, and the lock of the backdoor didn’t work, but for Joe, it was heaven. Bliss. Solitude. Freedom. Or at least it was supposed to be.
“Mina,” she says again, slower this time, and he frowns. “You didn’t say you had pets.” She giggles. Lord help me, he thinks. This is a taller version of my little sister. “Lots of people don’t like pets, so I didn’t mention them. But don’t worry, they’ll grow on you.” The cat climbs out of its basket. It’s white, and immediately lets out a feral hiss. She tuts and picks it up, cradling the demon to her chest. “This is Artie.” She nods her head in the direction of the dog. “That’s Robbie, and this is Legolas.”
“You have got to be kidding me.”
“Why?” She fastens her big blue eyes on him, and blinks. Yep, exactly like his sister.
***
Joe wants to be a pathologist someday. Seems like a good career. People always die, and as an undertaker, he’d be more concerned with the living, the leftovers, as his uncle Bob calls them. His family has run a funeral home for five generations, so really, it’s not as if being normal was ever an option.
The other students picked up on his oddness before Welcome Week was over, and he’s been alone pretty much since. It’s no biggie, it really isn’t. They just don’t get his humour, and that’s fine. He doesn’t mind being alone. Well, not much. He still wishes Zach wouldn’t have moved away to bask in the glory of Ivy League, but what can you do, his best friend has always been a genius. And they skype, and play WoW together online whenever they have time. Last time they spoke, Zach literally fell out of his chair to roll around on the floor laughing when Joe told him about Mina and her menagerie. Zach knows how much Joe hates pets, and he also knows that Una’s hamster didn’t die as much as it was set free in the garden. In the middle of January.
Mina isn’t a freshman, she’s a transfer student. She used to go to Brown (more Ivy, Joe thinks and snorts), but apparently, didn’t like it there and moved. Nobody ever calls for her, and since she set up her computer in the living room, Joe also knows that she doesn’t ever skype with anyone. She also doesn’t bring a ton of girly girls over to braid hair with or something, which marks a difference from his sister. Three weeks into them living together, the fridge suddenly starts filling up with carrot cake, brownies, and bagels, all wrapped in Starbucks napkins.
“Got a new job?” he asks, and sidesteps the cat.
“Uh huh,” she yawns in response, and takes the coffee mug out of his hands. “This was for me,” he grumbles, and returns back to the counter to pour himself a new one. Mina doesn’t apologise. He’s noticed that she doesn’t do it on principle, not even when she clogged the downstairs toilet with her tampons.
“Help yourself to the bagels and cakes,” she says, and yawns some more. Noticeably less bright today, Joe thinks, and sits down at the table too. His Ma raised him right, so even if people generally think he’s a crazy dick, he knows how to make conversation and how to behave around ladies. He just doesn’t want to do it very often. He’s also not sure that Mina really is a lady. Still, he tries to be polite. “How do you like the college?” Braiding her long blonde hair (he found out on day two that the girl sheds more than all her pets taken together), Mina gives a tiny shrug. “It’s okay.” He doesn’t even know what her major is, he realises. Actually, he doesn’t know a damn thing about her other that her pets are house-trained (a small bliss) and that Legolas the Hamster is the noisiest animal in the world. Perhaps it’s time for a little Q and A. He figures he should start with the easy stuff.
“Miss you friends from Brown?”
She just stares at him for a moment before walking out. She slams the kitchen door behind her and a bit of paint rains down from the ceiling.
Huh. He didn’t see that one coming.
***
“So, she’s kinda weird,” he concludes, and in the window on his computer screen, Zach nods pensively. They have googled Mina, and found plenty of pictures of a laughing, beaming girl on the homepage of Brown’s Drama Department, always wrapped around people, receiving kisses and holding hands and looking for all intents and purpose like a runner-up to some sort of stupid casting show.
“So this girl moves to Fort Collins, goes from uber-popular cheerleader type to social outcast, owns a hamster named Legolas and hangs out with you...” Zach’s voice trails off and after a minute or so, he adds “weird” for good measure.
Joe grins and takes a bite of pizza, careful to munch right into the microphone. “You’re friends with me. You should understand the appeal.” Zach tries to keep his face straight, but fails. “Dude, you and me, we were the only people in the whole town who don’t like to do crazy, life-threatening stuff outside. Like ski, or something.” There is truth in that, but Joe knows that there is no way in which he and Zach could not have been friends. They grew up on the same street in a suburb of Loveland, shared their Ninja Turtle action figures, snuck glances at the dead people in the basement of Joe’s house, and once painted ol’ Mr. Hancock’s toenails after the man had passed away and the funeral home was just about to fill up with his relatives. Good thing Joe’s mother never found about that, she’d have probably tossed the both of them in the old man's grave too and shovelled it up after.
“So how’s Yale?” Joe asks, and Zach makes a face.
***
In the middle of the night, Joe is once again reminded of the reason for hating all animals that ever lived. The essay (an unfinished mess) looms on his computer screen and the deadline on the horizon. The problem is that he just can’t focus because of all the noise coming through the thin wall from Mina’s room.
Joe takes a deep breath, and tries to ignore it. The three most common causes of death in the United Stares are- his hands stop moving over the keyboard, and the rest of his thinly stretched patience disappears. Shooting out of his desk, he bangs his fist against the wall.
“MINA, MAKE THAT DAMN HAMSTER STOP CHEWING ON THE BARS OF HIS CAGE OR I WILL FLUSH IT DOWN FUCKING THE TOILET!”
Predictably, Legolas is unimpressed, Mina still asleep, and Joe ends up writing the essay in the kitchen, where it’s not much quieter. He goes and buys himself some top of the line earplugs the very next day.
When his professor hands him his essay back with a grin, and says that it was a very funny first sentence, but unfortunately, not entirely accurate, Joe just sinks his head on head on the desk and bemoans his harsh fate. He tapes the essay (an offensive C-) on Mina’s door, highlighting the first sentence with yellow marker.
“The three most common causes of death in the United States are heart diseases, cancer, and hamsters.” Secretly, Joe thinks that he’s probably right.
***
When November inches closer (this town always seems to skip autumn and jump right into bone-freezing, teeth-chattering winter), Mina and Joe spent more and more time together. No heating didn’t seem so bad when he moved in in summer, but now he finds himself glad for Mina and her menagerie, and dog, cat, girl, and boy often huddle close together on the couch, watching whatever is on TV. They bond over America’s Next Top Model (Joe swears it’s just for the hot girls, not the actual modeling and emotions and crap), Monster Trucks, re-runs of Quincy, and Letterman, whom they both love as much as they find Kimmel annoying, which is to say, a lot.
Joe has learned that Brown is no-go, and doesn’t mention it again. The same goes for her family, friends, and eating habits. Seriously, don’t mention five portions of fruit a day. She’ll tear you a new one. Like everything else, Joe has learned this the hard way. She’s a weird girl, really weird, and really untidy, but Joe doesn’t mind, at least not too much. He hides his toothbrush and a few clean plates in a drawer of his desk, and ignores the girly stuff spreading out everywhere. If things get to messy, he simply takes a broom and sweeps all her crap right in front of her bedroom door and then the door will open, swallow it all up, and spew it out again a few days later.
Right now, he can see one of her bras draped over the television antenna, and her empty backpack on the fridge. The rest of her belongings are scattered all over the ugly flower print carpet she insisted on putting between couch and TV. Time for the ol’ broom, he thinks, but doesn’t move. It’s too cold. Beside him, Mina huddles deeper into the blankets. Her icy feet are pressed to his sweatpant-clad legs. Man, if he wanted that, he’d go and find himself a girlfriend. “Maybe we should look into moving,” he says. She nods, and that’s that.
***
They start looking for a new place the next morning, but there’s simply nothing there, especially nothing that would allow “your three fucking pets,” as Joe puts it right before he kicks against the overflowing rubbish bin.
“You could find a new roommate, I’d understand”, she says in a little voice, and damn, if that’s not a bit of an apology for the inconvenience, he doesn’t know what is. “‘S not what I meant, stupid,” he mutters, and picks up the phone again. Only one way out of this cold, cold mess.
“Hey Ma, can you check whether any of your customers vacated houses in my price range?”
***
They move three days later. He thinks his mother might have pulled a few strings with the heirs to the estate of the poor sod who died, and Joe resolves to get his mother a really good gift for Christmas.
The house is in a neighbourhood full of old people (go figure) in Loveland (his mother is ecstatic), not Fort Collins (Joe is not), they have to drive forty minutes to college, but the central heating is the very best thing in the whole wide world. They build two snowmen in their yard. Robbie’s pissed on both within the hour. The rent is a joke, but one they laugh about every day. The two-storey house has wallpapers that look as if they’ve been on the walls for a century (which makes sense, given that the previous owner died aged 102), but Mina brings home promotional poster from work, and suddenly, everywhere Joe looks, he finds finds stylised mugs and cakes and frappucinos and that damn mermaid with two tails. There could be worse things to look at, but he adds some Foo Fighters posters from his old room back at his parents’.
The best thing apart from the central heating is the fact that they have two bathrooms. Mina of course claims the bigger one because it has a tub. That means that Joe has the downstairs bathroom, which is tiny, and windowless, but it’s his own and he doesn’t have to extract a disgusting ball of long blonde hair from the shower drain every other day, so he’s secretly quite happy with the arrangement. The hair and the animals are the only two things that really bug him about his roomie.
Because the house was certainly not intended for inhabitating only two college students and three pets, they even have two spare bedrooms (tiny, but spare). Joe immediately declares that one is for Zach when he comes to visit. The cat claims the other one, and they just leave the window open so that Artie can come and go as he likes. Once there is no more litter box (because now there is a garden), and the hamster moves into the living room where Legolas can be as loud as he wants to without pissing of Joe in his bedroom, Joe doesn’t really mind the animals so much, which means he now doesn’t mind Mina at all.
***
Because Joe doesn’t have a car, Mina drives him everywhere. Because Mina drives him everywhere, Joe’s mother brings a huge meatloaf once a week, and cake every other Sunday. They don’t have the heart to tell her that the cake is really not necessary because of all the food Mina brings home from the café, but it’s a nice gesture, and maybe Joe missed his mother, just a bit.
***
One Sunday shortly before Christmas, another blonde bursts into the house and coos over the pets and flushes her tampons down the toilet even though there is a bin with a very crude but instructive drawing right next to it (turns out that just because Mina now has her own bathroom, she doesn’t refrain from using Joe’s).
Joe turns beet-red, and by the time Mina comes home, she finds her roommate and a girl shouting at each other at the top of their voices. “Umm, hi,” she says, and waves, and the two squabblers fall silent.
The girl is maybe a year younger than the two of them, but her eyes are the same blue as Joe’s, and their ears look pretty identical too. “Hey, you must be Joe’s sister,” she surmises, and smiles. Mina didn’t get into into Brown for nothing.
The girl’s face splits up in a smile that can only be described as radiant, and she hurries over and immediately hugs Mina. “Yeah, I am, I’m Una, nice to meet you. Ma told me so much about you!”
Joe glares holes into his sister’s back and shakes his head angrily. “No, not nice to meet you because Una here is leaving right about now.”
“Joey, don’t make me call Ma cause you know I will.”
Joe’s jaw drops. “What are you, five?” “No, smart,” Una fires back, and Mina pulls a chair closer. This is going to be interesting, she thinks, and begins to munch on a leftover pastrami bagel.
***
On campus, they don’t really spend much time together. Different majors, different libraries, and different schedules. But whenever he does see her, which is rare enough, she is always alone. Doesn’t make much sense, Joe thinks. Mina is funny enough, and quite generous, and also pretty. In his experience, that usually makes girls popular. And it’s not as if she’s shy, she talks his ears off half the time.
The last day before the winter break, he is waiting for her in the parking lot, leaning against her old red Volkswagen convertible. Mina is a bit late, and it’s really cold, and Joe forgot his gloves somewhere, so he slips his hands into the sleeves of his anorak and jumps on the spot, up and down, and up and down. His breath comes out as misty white clouds, and he hopes she’s not going to be much longer.
When she finally hurries towards him, he can see a boy wistfully staring after her. He’s tall and attractive and just the kind of guy he’d expect Mina to be with, looks-wise. “You got an admirer,” he says, and she opens her door first and then tosses him the keys. He opens the door on the passenger side, slips in, and gives her the keys back. They move with practised ease, and Joe sinks back into the seat. The backseats are littered with empty paper mugs, chocolate bar wrappers, notebooks, textbooks, lipgloss, and empty can of hairspray, and who knows what else. Only the area around the passenger seat is clean because Joe refuses to ride to and fro in a pile of trash.
The guy walks past their car and tries to catch Mina’s eye, but she busies herself with the ignition. “Not your type?” Mina shrugs, and backs out of the parking slot. “I’m here to study, not make friends. I just want to graduate and get out of here.” Once they hit Cleveland Avenue, Mina relaxes, fishes a chocolate bar out of the never used ashtray of the car, and takes a bite. “Hey, wanna watch a movie tonight? Your choice.”
“Yeah, sure,” Joe says, and thinks that watching movies is making friends, and that Mina is full of shit. Wisely, he doesn’t say so. The woman is driving after all.
***
They are decorating their Christmas tree. They only have the decorations his family no longer uses, meaning the ugly and the broken ones, but it’s his very own Christmas tree, so Joe doesn’t mind. By the look of things, neither does Mina. She’s wearing a faded red sweater with a smiling snowman, and has a Santa hat perched on her head.
“You going home for the holidays?” Joe asks as he fastens a pink Barbie bauble to the tree. Mina shakes her head. Well, at least she didn’t storm out this time, Joe thinks, and snaps his fingers at her. “Christmas Elf, pass me the next bauble.” Mina giggles, and reaches into the battered cardboard box to produce a maroon object of indefinable shape. “What on earth is this?” Joe snatches it out of her hand. “A clay reindeer, what else.” He made it for his Grandma Smith in kindergarten, and since she passed away three years ago, she must have kept it until then and his Ma didn’t throw it out after. He swallows and fastens the reindeer to the last free branch.
By the time the box is empty and Joe has climbed down the small stepladder, Mina is gazing at their tree with shimmering eyes. He knows what this is about: nobody wants be lonely on Christmas. Where on earth are her folks? And then it dawns on him. Thanksgiving came and went without Mina going anywhere, all the while he was with his family, stuffing his face with turkey. Aw, crap, Joe thinks.
“Mina, I hope you’re not crying because you don’t know what to get me for Christmas. I’m happy with a handwritten promise that you clean up after yourself once a month. But for my Ma, you better go get some perfume or something. Una likes everything pink, or at least she did when she was five. For my Dad and Uncle Bob, we gotta go shopping together. And I’m sure you can find something for Grandma and Grandpa Wilson. I usually get them gift vouchers for the steakhouse round the corner.”
Mina quickly wipes the tears away and tries to fake a smile. Pathetic, Joe thinks. “Why would I get your whole family presents?”
“Because it’s rude to come to Christmas dinner, breakfast, and lunch without,” he answers, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world, and leaves the room.
***
Mina fits right in. She is sitting between Uncle Bob and Grandpa Wilson, and jokes with Una, and eats everything his mother puts in front of her, even the vegetables, and when she laughs, he thinks that this is actually the best present he could’ve given her. Bummer he already forked out thirty bucks for a waffle iron.
Zach joins them on the morning of Christmas day: he has his own stocking after all. He and Mina get on like a house on fire, and it’s not long before they all find themselves on the living room floor, chunky controllers in hand, and battling it out on the old Nintendo 64.
***
Joe comes home from the New Year’s Eve shift at the pathology (they pay double on major holidays), and finds his roomie sobbing on the floor. She holds a crumbled letter in her hands, and the beasts are draped around her like living blankets.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she says, and then starts to cry in earnest. Oh crap.
“Want me to call Una?” Joe asks immediately, and shuffles his feet. For all his curiosity about Mina’s past, he doesn’t want no part of a crying girl on his living room carpet. Especially if the carpet is pink and flowery.
His hand is at the phone before she can mumble yes, and by the time Una arrives, dressed in a sparkly golden party dress, a pink anorak and snowboots, the two of them are sitting on the floor together, and Joe strokes Mina’s hair.
***
“So, what’s the deal with the two of you?” Zach asks, as they load up his battered station wagon. Time to return to the world of the rich and smart. He’d rather stay home.
“She’s my friend, I think,” Joe says, and secretly puts a paper bag with the Nintendo 64 in the trunk. Late Christmas gift. He got the impression that Zach was kind of lonely at college, and he doesn’t have an annoying sister or dirty roomie with a bazillion pets to keep him company.
“Is she your friend like me, or is she your special friend?” The emphasis on special makes Joe wince.
“She’s my friend like you. Only she has better hair. Look, it’s freezing out here. Are you packed up yet?”
Zach shakes his head, and grins. “Yeah.” They embrace in a quick and manly fashion, and then they joke about Una’s stupid hair style, and Grandpa Wilson’s silent but deadly farts.
Joe watches the station wagon drive away, and stands rooted on the icy street, hands in his pockets, smile straining against his skin until it hurts.
***
Apparently, having seen her crying has broken some sort of barrier in their relationship, or maybe it was the Wilson family Christmas extravaganza, who knows, but things change in the new year. Mina tries to clean up after herself, and they make sure to have a daily meal together. That means that they post their work and class schedules on the fridge, and Joe kind of likes it. He buys some Spongebob magnets, and Mina adds some alphabet ones. Soon, Spongebob exclaims “buy chese” on their fridge. They don’t have enough e’s.
Una comes by more often than not, and it’s no longer unusual to find Joe, his sister, and Mina watching America’s Next Topmodel or Monstertrucks together. Una even takes to braiding Mina’s hair, and vice versa, which restores the image Joe has of how girls normally behave.
One morning in late February, as he’s just getting home from work and she’s just finishing breakfast before heading out, Mina puts down her spoon a little too forcefully and gives him an inquisitive look. She has splattered milk over half the table, tiny little white drops on the used wood. Of course, she makes no move to wipe them away.
“Why do you want to be a pathologist, when you could be an excellent living people doctor?” She does that sometimes: asking really uncomfortable questions without preamble or apology. Joe thinks it’s a bit cheeky. It also reminds him of Zach, which definitely works in Mina’s favour.
Joe bites into his peanut butter jelly sandwich, chews, and answers with his mouth still full. “I’m not exactly a living people person. I don’t think I’m a people person period, but the dead won’t care about that when I cut them open.”
She squints at him, and looks very discontent. “That’s stupid. You could have more friends, if you only made an effort.”
Not really the thing he likes to talk about at six in the morning, his loner ways. Feeling put on the spot (his Ma always says that he has a bit of a temper), Joe gives a little shrug. “I didn’t notice you bringing home many people.”
He realises a little too late that that was more than a little unkind, and tries to soften the blow with a kick against her shin. She pales, but keeps sitting. “And what’s wrong with that?” Unlike him, she doesn’t sound defensive, just sad. For what feels like the longest time, he watches her stare at her cereal as if it’s a bottomless pit of all things wrong with the world. Just goes to prove his point: he’s not a people person.
But then, at 6:00 in the morning in his kitchen, with milk stains on the table, and a soggy sandwich in hand, Joe comes to a startling revelation. Mina isn’t just people, she’s his friend, and he is hers, and friends tell friends the truth, even when it’s uncomfortable. Time to man up, he thinks, and voices what he only discussed with his Ma and Zach and Una because he had to talk to someone, didn’t he? He takes a deep breath, the kind one takes before jumping off a cliff into the ocean, not that he’s ever done that. But he imagines that it would feel the same: daring, scary, new.
“You like people. You like old people, young people, animals, my sister, me, Zach. Hell, my Grandma invited you to tea and you went and had a blast!” Mina plays with her cereal, scooping it up on her spoon and then submerging it in the milk again. She doesn’t meet his eyes, and Joe feels like shit (brave shit, but shit) when he continues.
“You’re a people person. But you try to pretend that you’re not and that’s what’s stupid, not me.” He thinks of the countless pictures of a very sociable Mina on the Drama Department homepage and then of how here, he is the only person she ever spends time with. Well, other than his family. He knows that if if she let herself, she’d be surrounded by an army of friends, one chummier than the next. He puts his sandwich down, and tries to give Mina what he thinks is a reassuring smile. “It’s fine, not having plenty of friends. Quality over quantity, you know. I’m picky. You can be picky too. Just stop hiding.”
Mina doesn’t answer, but her chin wobbles a bit, and damn it, her eyes get all... wet. It’s time to shut up now because otherwise, she’ll cry, and he’ll have to call Una, and his sister is not exactly a morning person and she’ll chew him out for making Mina cry, even though he only meant well. So they’ll talk about the whole thing later, much later, later as in maybe never because Joe doesn’t fear many things, but he fears girly tears.
Mina continues to wobble, but also chucks milk-soaked Corn Pops at him. Joe thinks that’s an improvement. After a while, she gives him a tiny, absolutely tiny smile and looks a bit mushy.
“So you picked me?” she asks and Joe swallows, throat a bit dry (must be some stray bite of his sandwich) and then shakes his head.
“Na, I picked Legolas.”
And then he grins, and she grins, and in his cage in the living room, Legolas the hamster merrily chews on the pink bra Mina has tossed on the top of his cage yesterday.
*** The End ***
Rating: PG
Warnings: Swear words. That’s it. Promise.
Summary: His new flatmate is more than a little weird. Also, she’s a girl.
A/N: My 2011 ficathon piece. Many thanks to elvisvf101, who helped me to get rid off all British spelling in my bid to hide my authorship. Also, without him, I think I would have never found a way to write the ending to this story.
***
…but my lonely is mine. Now your lonely is somebody else’s. Made by somebody else and handed to you. Ain’t that something? A secondhand lonely.
~ Sula, Toni Morrison
***
Problem was, he hated dogs. And cats. And hamsters, don’t even get him started on hamsters. Greedy little fuckers. They never eat all the crap they stuff into their cheeks, and at night, they chew on the bars of their cages and make a hell of a lot of noise. His sister had one, once. Didn’t live long. Bummer. He grins, and revels in the knowledge that now that he no longer lives at home, he will never have to bother with pets again.
And in walks his new flatmate, a hamster cage under one arm, a basket with a cat under the other, and just as his jaw drops, a Pekingese trails after her heels.
“Hi, I’m Mina,” she says, and beams.
***
He commuted to college in his first year, an hour long bus ride each way. Then he’d finally had enough, and moved out. He had some money saved up, and took a job as a night guard in the pathology department of the adjoining medical faculty. He didn’t mind the dead, at least they were silent. But even with his savings, and the money from the job, he had to take a flatmate to be able to afford the tiny house. It was almost derelict, had no central heating, and the lock of the backdoor didn’t work, but for Joe, it was heaven. Bliss. Solitude. Freedom. Or at least it was supposed to be.
“Mina,” she says again, slower this time, and he frowns. “You didn’t say you had pets.” She giggles. Lord help me, he thinks. This is a taller version of my little sister. “Lots of people don’t like pets, so I didn’t mention them. But don’t worry, they’ll grow on you.” The cat climbs out of its basket. It’s white, and immediately lets out a feral hiss. She tuts and picks it up, cradling the demon to her chest. “This is Artie.” She nods her head in the direction of the dog. “That’s Robbie, and this is Legolas.”
“You have got to be kidding me.”
“Why?” She fastens her big blue eyes on him, and blinks. Yep, exactly like his sister.
***
Joe wants to be a pathologist someday. Seems like a good career. People always die, and as an undertaker, he’d be more concerned with the living, the leftovers, as his uncle Bob calls them. His family has run a funeral home for five generations, so really, it’s not as if being normal was ever an option.
The other students picked up on his oddness before Welcome Week was over, and he’s been alone pretty much since. It’s no biggie, it really isn’t. They just don’t get his humour, and that’s fine. He doesn’t mind being alone. Well, not much. He still wishes Zach wouldn’t have moved away to bask in the glory of Ivy League, but what can you do, his best friend has always been a genius. And they skype, and play WoW together online whenever they have time. Last time they spoke, Zach literally fell out of his chair to roll around on the floor laughing when Joe told him about Mina and her menagerie. Zach knows how much Joe hates pets, and he also knows that Una’s hamster didn’t die as much as it was set free in the garden. In the middle of January.
Mina isn’t a freshman, she’s a transfer student. She used to go to Brown (more Ivy, Joe thinks and snorts), but apparently, didn’t like it there and moved. Nobody ever calls for her, and since she set up her computer in the living room, Joe also knows that she doesn’t ever skype with anyone. She also doesn’t bring a ton of girly girls over to braid hair with or something, which marks a difference from his sister. Three weeks into them living together, the fridge suddenly starts filling up with carrot cake, brownies, and bagels, all wrapped in Starbucks napkins.
“Got a new job?” he asks, and sidesteps the cat.
“Uh huh,” she yawns in response, and takes the coffee mug out of his hands. “This was for me,” he grumbles, and returns back to the counter to pour himself a new one. Mina doesn’t apologise. He’s noticed that she doesn’t do it on principle, not even when she clogged the downstairs toilet with her tampons.
“Help yourself to the bagels and cakes,” she says, and yawns some more. Noticeably less bright today, Joe thinks, and sits down at the table too. His Ma raised him right, so even if people generally think he’s a crazy dick, he knows how to make conversation and how to behave around ladies. He just doesn’t want to do it very often. He’s also not sure that Mina really is a lady. Still, he tries to be polite. “How do you like the college?” Braiding her long blonde hair (he found out on day two that the girl sheds more than all her pets taken together), Mina gives a tiny shrug. “It’s okay.” He doesn’t even know what her major is, he realises. Actually, he doesn’t know a damn thing about her other that her pets are house-trained (a small bliss) and that Legolas the Hamster is the noisiest animal in the world. Perhaps it’s time for a little Q and A. He figures he should start with the easy stuff.
“Miss you friends from Brown?”
She just stares at him for a moment before walking out. She slams the kitchen door behind her and a bit of paint rains down from the ceiling.
Huh. He didn’t see that one coming.
***
“So, she’s kinda weird,” he concludes, and in the window on his computer screen, Zach nods pensively. They have googled Mina, and found plenty of pictures of a laughing, beaming girl on the homepage of Brown’s Drama Department, always wrapped around people, receiving kisses and holding hands and looking for all intents and purpose like a runner-up to some sort of stupid casting show.
“So this girl moves to Fort Collins, goes from uber-popular cheerleader type to social outcast, owns a hamster named Legolas and hangs out with you...” Zach’s voice trails off and after a minute or so, he adds “weird” for good measure.
Joe grins and takes a bite of pizza, careful to munch right into the microphone. “You’re friends with me. You should understand the appeal.” Zach tries to keep his face straight, but fails. “Dude, you and me, we were the only people in the whole town who don’t like to do crazy, life-threatening stuff outside. Like ski, or something.” There is truth in that, but Joe knows that there is no way in which he and Zach could not have been friends. They grew up on the same street in a suburb of Loveland, shared their Ninja Turtle action figures, snuck glances at the dead people in the basement of Joe’s house, and once painted ol’ Mr. Hancock’s toenails after the man had passed away and the funeral home was just about to fill up with his relatives. Good thing Joe’s mother never found about that, she’d have probably tossed the both of them in the old man's grave too and shovelled it up after.
“So how’s Yale?” Joe asks, and Zach makes a face.
***
In the middle of the night, Joe is once again reminded of the reason for hating all animals that ever lived. The essay (an unfinished mess) looms on his computer screen and the deadline on the horizon. The problem is that he just can’t focus because of all the noise coming through the thin wall from Mina’s room.
Joe takes a deep breath, and tries to ignore it. The three most common causes of death in the United Stares are- his hands stop moving over the keyboard, and the rest of his thinly stretched patience disappears. Shooting out of his desk, he bangs his fist against the wall.
“MINA, MAKE THAT DAMN HAMSTER STOP CHEWING ON THE BARS OF HIS CAGE OR I WILL FLUSH IT DOWN FUCKING THE TOILET!”
Predictably, Legolas is unimpressed, Mina still asleep, and Joe ends up writing the essay in the kitchen, where it’s not much quieter. He goes and buys himself some top of the line earplugs the very next day.
When his professor hands him his essay back with a grin, and says that it was a very funny first sentence, but unfortunately, not entirely accurate, Joe just sinks his head on head on the desk and bemoans his harsh fate. He tapes the essay (an offensive C-) on Mina’s door, highlighting the first sentence with yellow marker.
“The three most common causes of death in the United States are heart diseases, cancer, and hamsters.” Secretly, Joe thinks that he’s probably right.
***
When November inches closer (this town always seems to skip autumn and jump right into bone-freezing, teeth-chattering winter), Mina and Joe spent more and more time together. No heating didn’t seem so bad when he moved in in summer, but now he finds himself glad for Mina and her menagerie, and dog, cat, girl, and boy often huddle close together on the couch, watching whatever is on TV. They bond over America’s Next Top Model (Joe swears it’s just for the hot girls, not the actual modeling and emotions and crap), Monster Trucks, re-runs of Quincy, and Letterman, whom they both love as much as they find Kimmel annoying, which is to say, a lot.
Joe has learned that Brown is no-go, and doesn’t mention it again. The same goes for her family, friends, and eating habits. Seriously, don’t mention five portions of fruit a day. She’ll tear you a new one. Like everything else, Joe has learned this the hard way. She’s a weird girl, really weird, and really untidy, but Joe doesn’t mind, at least not too much. He hides his toothbrush and a few clean plates in a drawer of his desk, and ignores the girly stuff spreading out everywhere. If things get to messy, he simply takes a broom and sweeps all her crap right in front of her bedroom door and then the door will open, swallow it all up, and spew it out again a few days later.
Right now, he can see one of her bras draped over the television antenna, and her empty backpack on the fridge. The rest of her belongings are scattered all over the ugly flower print carpet she insisted on putting between couch and TV. Time for the ol’ broom, he thinks, but doesn’t move. It’s too cold. Beside him, Mina huddles deeper into the blankets. Her icy feet are pressed to his sweatpant-clad legs. Man, if he wanted that, he’d go and find himself a girlfriend. “Maybe we should look into moving,” he says. She nods, and that’s that.
***
They start looking for a new place the next morning, but there’s simply nothing there, especially nothing that would allow “your three fucking pets,” as Joe puts it right before he kicks against the overflowing rubbish bin.
“You could find a new roommate, I’d understand”, she says in a little voice, and damn, if that’s not a bit of an apology for the inconvenience, he doesn’t know what is. “‘S not what I meant, stupid,” he mutters, and picks up the phone again. Only one way out of this cold, cold mess.
“Hey Ma, can you check whether any of your customers vacated houses in my price range?”
***
They move three days later. He thinks his mother might have pulled a few strings with the heirs to the estate of the poor sod who died, and Joe resolves to get his mother a really good gift for Christmas.
The house is in a neighbourhood full of old people (go figure) in Loveland (his mother is ecstatic), not Fort Collins (Joe is not), they have to drive forty minutes to college, but the central heating is the very best thing in the whole wide world. They build two snowmen in their yard. Robbie’s pissed on both within the hour. The rent is a joke, but one they laugh about every day. The two-storey house has wallpapers that look as if they’ve been on the walls for a century (which makes sense, given that the previous owner died aged 102), but Mina brings home promotional poster from work, and suddenly, everywhere Joe looks, he finds finds stylised mugs and cakes and frappucinos and that damn mermaid with two tails. There could be worse things to look at, but he adds some Foo Fighters posters from his old room back at his parents’.
The best thing apart from the central heating is the fact that they have two bathrooms. Mina of course claims the bigger one because it has a tub. That means that Joe has the downstairs bathroom, which is tiny, and windowless, but it’s his own and he doesn’t have to extract a disgusting ball of long blonde hair from the shower drain every other day, so he’s secretly quite happy with the arrangement. The hair and the animals are the only two things that really bug him about his roomie.
Because the house was certainly not intended for inhabitating only two college students and three pets, they even have two spare bedrooms (tiny, but spare). Joe immediately declares that one is for Zach when he comes to visit. The cat claims the other one, and they just leave the window open so that Artie can come and go as he likes. Once there is no more litter box (because now there is a garden), and the hamster moves into the living room where Legolas can be as loud as he wants to without pissing of Joe in his bedroom, Joe doesn’t really mind the animals so much, which means he now doesn’t mind Mina at all.
***
Because Joe doesn’t have a car, Mina drives him everywhere. Because Mina drives him everywhere, Joe’s mother brings a huge meatloaf once a week, and cake every other Sunday. They don’t have the heart to tell her that the cake is really not necessary because of all the food Mina brings home from the café, but it’s a nice gesture, and maybe Joe missed his mother, just a bit.
***
One Sunday shortly before Christmas, another blonde bursts into the house and coos over the pets and flushes her tampons down the toilet even though there is a bin with a very crude but instructive drawing right next to it (turns out that just because Mina now has her own bathroom, she doesn’t refrain from using Joe’s).
Joe turns beet-red, and by the time Mina comes home, she finds her roommate and a girl shouting at each other at the top of their voices. “Umm, hi,” she says, and waves, and the two squabblers fall silent.
The girl is maybe a year younger than the two of them, but her eyes are the same blue as Joe’s, and their ears look pretty identical too. “Hey, you must be Joe’s sister,” she surmises, and smiles. Mina didn’t get into into Brown for nothing.
The girl’s face splits up in a smile that can only be described as radiant, and she hurries over and immediately hugs Mina. “Yeah, I am, I’m Una, nice to meet you. Ma told me so much about you!”
Joe glares holes into his sister’s back and shakes his head angrily. “No, not nice to meet you because Una here is leaving right about now.”
“Joey, don’t make me call Ma cause you know I will.”
Joe’s jaw drops. “What are you, five?” “No, smart,” Una fires back, and Mina pulls a chair closer. This is going to be interesting, she thinks, and begins to munch on a leftover pastrami bagel.
***
On campus, they don’t really spend much time together. Different majors, different libraries, and different schedules. But whenever he does see her, which is rare enough, she is always alone. Doesn’t make much sense, Joe thinks. Mina is funny enough, and quite generous, and also pretty. In his experience, that usually makes girls popular. And it’s not as if she’s shy, she talks his ears off half the time.
The last day before the winter break, he is waiting for her in the parking lot, leaning against her old red Volkswagen convertible. Mina is a bit late, and it’s really cold, and Joe forgot his gloves somewhere, so he slips his hands into the sleeves of his anorak and jumps on the spot, up and down, and up and down. His breath comes out as misty white clouds, and he hopes she’s not going to be much longer.
When she finally hurries towards him, he can see a boy wistfully staring after her. He’s tall and attractive and just the kind of guy he’d expect Mina to be with, looks-wise. “You got an admirer,” he says, and she opens her door first and then tosses him the keys. He opens the door on the passenger side, slips in, and gives her the keys back. They move with practised ease, and Joe sinks back into the seat. The backseats are littered with empty paper mugs, chocolate bar wrappers, notebooks, textbooks, lipgloss, and empty can of hairspray, and who knows what else. Only the area around the passenger seat is clean because Joe refuses to ride to and fro in a pile of trash.
The guy walks past their car and tries to catch Mina’s eye, but she busies herself with the ignition. “Not your type?” Mina shrugs, and backs out of the parking slot. “I’m here to study, not make friends. I just want to graduate and get out of here.” Once they hit Cleveland Avenue, Mina relaxes, fishes a chocolate bar out of the never used ashtray of the car, and takes a bite. “Hey, wanna watch a movie tonight? Your choice.”
“Yeah, sure,” Joe says, and thinks that watching movies is making friends, and that Mina is full of shit. Wisely, he doesn’t say so. The woman is driving after all.
***
They are decorating their Christmas tree. They only have the decorations his family no longer uses, meaning the ugly and the broken ones, but it’s his very own Christmas tree, so Joe doesn’t mind. By the look of things, neither does Mina. She’s wearing a faded red sweater with a smiling snowman, and has a Santa hat perched on her head.
“You going home for the holidays?” Joe asks as he fastens a pink Barbie bauble to the tree. Mina shakes her head. Well, at least she didn’t storm out this time, Joe thinks, and snaps his fingers at her. “Christmas Elf, pass me the next bauble.” Mina giggles, and reaches into the battered cardboard box to produce a maroon object of indefinable shape. “What on earth is this?” Joe snatches it out of her hand. “A clay reindeer, what else.” He made it for his Grandma Smith in kindergarten, and since she passed away three years ago, she must have kept it until then and his Ma didn’t throw it out after. He swallows and fastens the reindeer to the last free branch.
By the time the box is empty and Joe has climbed down the small stepladder, Mina is gazing at their tree with shimmering eyes. He knows what this is about: nobody wants be lonely on Christmas. Where on earth are her folks? And then it dawns on him. Thanksgiving came and went without Mina going anywhere, all the while he was with his family, stuffing his face with turkey. Aw, crap, Joe thinks.
“Mina, I hope you’re not crying because you don’t know what to get me for Christmas. I’m happy with a handwritten promise that you clean up after yourself once a month. But for my Ma, you better go get some perfume or something. Una likes everything pink, or at least she did when she was five. For my Dad and Uncle Bob, we gotta go shopping together. And I’m sure you can find something for Grandma and Grandpa Wilson. I usually get them gift vouchers for the steakhouse round the corner.”
Mina quickly wipes the tears away and tries to fake a smile. Pathetic, Joe thinks. “Why would I get your whole family presents?”
“Because it’s rude to come to Christmas dinner, breakfast, and lunch without,” he answers, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world, and leaves the room.
***
Mina fits right in. She is sitting between Uncle Bob and Grandpa Wilson, and jokes with Una, and eats everything his mother puts in front of her, even the vegetables, and when she laughs, he thinks that this is actually the best present he could’ve given her. Bummer he already forked out thirty bucks for a waffle iron.
Zach joins them on the morning of Christmas day: he has his own stocking after all. He and Mina get on like a house on fire, and it’s not long before they all find themselves on the living room floor, chunky controllers in hand, and battling it out on the old Nintendo 64.
***
Joe comes home from the New Year’s Eve shift at the pathology (they pay double on major holidays), and finds his roomie sobbing on the floor. She holds a crumbled letter in her hands, and the beasts are draped around her like living blankets.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she says, and then starts to cry in earnest. Oh crap.
“Want me to call Una?” Joe asks immediately, and shuffles his feet. For all his curiosity about Mina’s past, he doesn’t want no part of a crying girl on his living room carpet. Especially if the carpet is pink and flowery.
His hand is at the phone before she can mumble yes, and by the time Una arrives, dressed in a sparkly golden party dress, a pink anorak and snowboots, the two of them are sitting on the floor together, and Joe strokes Mina’s hair.
***
“So, what’s the deal with the two of you?” Zach asks, as they load up his battered station wagon. Time to return to the world of the rich and smart. He’d rather stay home.
“She’s my friend, I think,” Joe says, and secretly puts a paper bag with the Nintendo 64 in the trunk. Late Christmas gift. He got the impression that Zach was kind of lonely at college, and he doesn’t have an annoying sister or dirty roomie with a bazillion pets to keep him company.
“Is she your friend like me, or is she your special friend?” The emphasis on special makes Joe wince.
“She’s my friend like you. Only she has better hair. Look, it’s freezing out here. Are you packed up yet?”
Zach shakes his head, and grins. “Yeah.” They embrace in a quick and manly fashion, and then they joke about Una’s stupid hair style, and Grandpa Wilson’s silent but deadly farts.
Joe watches the station wagon drive away, and stands rooted on the icy street, hands in his pockets, smile straining against his skin until it hurts.
***
Apparently, having seen her crying has broken some sort of barrier in their relationship, or maybe it was the Wilson family Christmas extravaganza, who knows, but things change in the new year. Mina tries to clean up after herself, and they make sure to have a daily meal together. That means that they post their work and class schedules on the fridge, and Joe kind of likes it. He buys some Spongebob magnets, and Mina adds some alphabet ones. Soon, Spongebob exclaims “buy chese” on their fridge. They don’t have enough e’s.
Una comes by more often than not, and it’s no longer unusual to find Joe, his sister, and Mina watching America’s Next Topmodel or Monstertrucks together. Una even takes to braiding Mina’s hair, and vice versa, which restores the image Joe has of how girls normally behave.
One morning in late February, as he’s just getting home from work and she’s just finishing breakfast before heading out, Mina puts down her spoon a little too forcefully and gives him an inquisitive look. She has splattered milk over half the table, tiny little white drops on the used wood. Of course, she makes no move to wipe them away.
“Why do you want to be a pathologist, when you could be an excellent living people doctor?” She does that sometimes: asking really uncomfortable questions without preamble or apology. Joe thinks it’s a bit cheeky. It also reminds him of Zach, which definitely works in Mina’s favour.
Joe bites into his peanut butter jelly sandwich, chews, and answers with his mouth still full. “I’m not exactly a living people person. I don’t think I’m a people person period, but the dead won’t care about that when I cut them open.”
She squints at him, and looks very discontent. “That’s stupid. You could have more friends, if you only made an effort.”
Not really the thing he likes to talk about at six in the morning, his loner ways. Feeling put on the spot (his Ma always says that he has a bit of a temper), Joe gives a little shrug. “I didn’t notice you bringing home many people.”
He realises a little too late that that was more than a little unkind, and tries to soften the blow with a kick against her shin. She pales, but keeps sitting. “And what’s wrong with that?” Unlike him, she doesn’t sound defensive, just sad. For what feels like the longest time, he watches her stare at her cereal as if it’s a bottomless pit of all things wrong with the world. Just goes to prove his point: he’s not a people person.
But then, at 6:00 in the morning in his kitchen, with milk stains on the table, and a soggy sandwich in hand, Joe comes to a startling revelation. Mina isn’t just people, she’s his friend, and he is hers, and friends tell friends the truth, even when it’s uncomfortable. Time to man up, he thinks, and voices what he only discussed with his Ma and Zach and Una because he had to talk to someone, didn’t he? He takes a deep breath, the kind one takes before jumping off a cliff into the ocean, not that he’s ever done that. But he imagines that it would feel the same: daring, scary, new.
“You like people. You like old people, young people, animals, my sister, me, Zach. Hell, my Grandma invited you to tea and you went and had a blast!” Mina plays with her cereal, scooping it up on her spoon and then submerging it in the milk again. She doesn’t meet his eyes, and Joe feels like shit (brave shit, but shit) when he continues.
“You’re a people person. But you try to pretend that you’re not and that’s what’s stupid, not me.” He thinks of the countless pictures of a very sociable Mina on the Drama Department homepage and then of how here, he is the only person she ever spends time with. Well, other than his family. He knows that if if she let herself, she’d be surrounded by an army of friends, one chummier than the next. He puts his sandwich down, and tries to give Mina what he thinks is a reassuring smile. “It’s fine, not having plenty of friends. Quality over quantity, you know. I’m picky. You can be picky too. Just stop hiding.”
Mina doesn’t answer, but her chin wobbles a bit, and damn it, her eyes get all... wet. It’s time to shut up now because otherwise, she’ll cry, and he’ll have to call Una, and his sister is not exactly a morning person and she’ll chew him out for making Mina cry, even though he only meant well. So they’ll talk about the whole thing later, much later, later as in maybe never because Joe doesn’t fear many things, but he fears girly tears.
Mina continues to wobble, but also chucks milk-soaked Corn Pops at him. Joe thinks that’s an improvement. After a while, she gives him a tiny, absolutely tiny smile and looks a bit mushy.
“So you picked me?” she asks and Joe swallows, throat a bit dry (must be some stray bite of his sandwich) and then shakes his head.
“Na, I picked Legolas.”
And then he grins, and she grins, and in his cage in the living room, Legolas the hamster merrily chews on the pink bra Mina has tossed on the top of his cage yesterday.
*** The End ***