Read Online Everything Is Fine. by Ann Dee Ellis - Free Book Online Page A

she says.
    I turn and start down the hall, but then she says, “Maz?”
    “Yeah, Mom?”
    “Could you shut the door?”
    She is still sitting on the edge of her bed like it’s a regular Thursday.
    “Okay.”
    I shut the door and stand there for awhile.
    I stand there.
    And stand there.
    And stand there.
    I stand there until I hear Colby knocking on the window again.
    My mom is taking a shower and Colby Dean is waiting for me to let him in.
COLBY IN THE WINDOW
    “So?” he says.
    “So what?” I say back, and I put a strand of hair in my mouth. I wish I still had the oranges.
    “How do I get in?”
    “How come you want to? It’s eight o’clock.”
    “Just do,” he says.
    I think about that as I lean against the counter.
    “Okay.”
    Then I open the window and pull off the screen and Colby climbs into my house.
OLIVIA
    Olivia is or I guess was nine years younger than me.
    She never saw a boy come through our window.
SUGAR
    Colby crawls through the window and knocks down the calendar from last year that’s still up, breaks two glasses, and gets
     his hands all wet because the counter has juice on it.
    “Sick,” he says.
    “Sorry,” I say.
    “Don’t you clean?”
    I look around the kitchen.
    It never really looks all that good since I got in charge.
    I don’t say anything.
    He washes his hands and then sits at the table so I sit at the table.
    “Do you want a marshmallow?”
    “Okay.”
    I get out the bag.
    “Do you want them cooked?”
    “No,” he says, and stuffs three in his mouth.
    Then we are quiet. Colby’s eyes are a little cross-eyed without his glasses and he has spiked his hair down the middle. He
     looks sort of weird. Not like Colby.
    “Did you do your hair?”
    “Uh no, Bill Clinton did it for me,” he says, even though his mouth is full of white foam.
    “Oh,” I say. “I like it.”
    “Of course you do,” he says, and he looks down at his arms. “Do you think I’m getting natural guns?”
    “Not really.”
    “You don’t?”
    “No. I mean, not really.”
    “Oh.”
    “Why? Do you want them?”
    “Sort of.”
    And then we sit.
    Then he says, “I’m probably getting contacts.”
    “Oh,” I say.
    Then he says, “Colored ones.”
    “Oh.”
    “Do you want to know which color?”
    “Okay.”
    “Yellow.”
    I eat a marshmallow and he’s just looking at me.
    “Don’t you think that’d be cool?”
    I eat another one.
    Then I say, “How’s Dixie?”
    Colby turns sort of red. “She’s cool.” He stuffs three more marshmallows in his mouth.
    Then he says, “My mom said she’s trashy.”
    “Trashy? She said that about her sister?”
    Colby nods. “She just said that she dresses slutty and that she better do it while she can because Mom says her boobs are
     going to drop and her butt will get big.”
    “Oh,” I say.
    I eat another marshmallow and my stomach is getting inflated.
    Colby is drawing circles on the wood table with his finger. “I know it’s weird how my mom says stuff like that about her own
     sister.”
    “Oh,” I say.
    He looks at me. “Aunt Dixie did say one thing about you, though.”
    “She did?”
    “Well, about your . . .” and then he mouths the word MOM and looks out the door toward the hall.
    “What?” I say, but I say it soft.
    “They were over for a barbecue and me and Aunt Dixie got left alone at the table.”
    He takes another marshmallow and says, “Can you melt this one for me?”
    “Later,” I say. I want to know what Dixie said.
    “Okay,” he says. Then he wipes something from his nose and looks at it.
    “What did she say?” He is taking forever.
    “She started asking things about you and your mom and crap.”
    “Like what?”
    “Like,” he says, and then he stops and his eyes drop.
    “What?”
    “Like she’d heard what had happened to Olivia and all that.” He stops again and we sit. Then he says, “And she said it was
     so crappy how people talk about your mom the way they do.”
    I feel something sink in