Read Online Pictures of You by Juliette Caron - Free Book Online Page B

stocked up on all sorts of fruits and veggies from every color of the rainbow. Mom would be proud. I went to see my therapist. “You’re having panic attacks,” Rose said after I told her about my breathing problems. She scribbled a prescription for generic-brand anxiety pills. I started doing squats and lunges to undo the binging damage—the bathroom scales smugly informed me of a six pound weight gain. I called NYU, where I’d planned to start my secondary education this fall and told them I wouldn’t be able to attend until January and would that be a problem? Because I needed to sort things out. I even bought a nice bamboo plant housed in a ceramic elephant to sit in the living room windowsill.
                  When my last minuscule paycheck arrived in the mail, I knew it was time to go job hunting. I still had the check from my car insurance stashed away somewhere, but I knew if I cashed it, it would be gone in no time. I decided to hang onto the money until I collected the courage to drive again, which would be soon (hopefully). My electric and phone bills loomed over me like giant, hungry spiders and I was dangerously close to losing my apartment. And then there was the roommate issue I managed to largely ignore up until now. The truth: rent was killing me. While I did live in East Williamsburg, an industrial neighborhood in Brooklyn, a place starving artists and musicians flocked to, attracted to the cheaper rent, I still struggled to scrape by and that was with Abby paying half the rent.
                  Just as I began looking for a roommate in the classifieds, there was an eerie knock on the door. It was very Edgar Allan Poe. My first thought was: It must be Hannah. She was back to claim the scrapbooks and guitar I’d stolen. I never would’ve guessed, not in a million years, who was on the other side of my grimy apartment door.
                  “Mary?” There she was: Abby’s other best friend, my arch enemy, armed with an old suit case, a grocery sack crammed with clothes, a sleeping bag and a pillow. Her zebra hair—alternating chunks of black and white—was tied back in a messy knot and heavy crimson lipstick colored her pretzel shaped lips.
                  “Hello, Abby’s friend,” she said, dropping the sack of clothes. She smelled faintly of hairspray, musky perfume and pot.
                  “Having you been smoking pot? What are you doing here?”
                  Tiger strutted into the room, wondering the same thing, his pale green eyes inquisitive. Tiger remembered Mary. Mary was around a lot. Usually when I was gone, at work or out with John.
                  “I don’t do pot. My roommates did. Drugs are stupid.” She squatted in her black velvet dress to greet Tiger on her level, scratch his furry neck. Tiger purred in appreciation. Mary purred back.
                  “Okay, okay. Good. But what do you think you’re doing here? For Abby I’ll let you stay for one night, okay? Just one—”
                  “I’m moving in.”
                  “Excuse me?”
                  Mary grabbed the sack and brushed past me, sneaking in like a yucky street rodent.
                  “Tiger, there’s an invader in our home. Attack!” I said. Tiger looked bored with the idea and curled up in a perfect circle on the recliner, ready for another nap. Maybe I needed to get a dog. A watch dog.
                  Mary wandered down the hall, her boots clunking against the wood floor, peeked into Abby’s old room, backtracked to my old room and dropped her stuff inside the door. “You moved things around.”
                  “What happened to your old place?”
                  “Got kicked out,” she said nonchalantly, plopping down on the couch. 
                  Should I have bothered to ask why they