Read Online The Stuff That Never Happened by Maddie Dawson - Free Book Online

writing on it. And I’ve run out of money, so I figure I’ll just go try to help my family,” I said.
    “But why don’t you just wait until the end of the quarter? Haven’t you already paid for the whole quarter?”
    “I haven’t paid the rent for the quarter, and my dad can’t help me—”
    “Wait,” he said. “There are only five more weeks left. You can find a way to support yourself for that long, can’t you?”
    I shook my head.
    He looked down at the ground and cleared his throat, and then he looked up at the sky and squinted off in the distance and shifted his weight to his other foot. He said, “I think you should stay. You’re an idiot if you give up your whole life just to try to save your parents. Why don’t you stay with a friend for a while? Or get a part-time job as a waitress. You could make enough money to eat.”
    “Maybe, but my mom is obviously having some kind of crisis. And my dad might even be a serious alcoholic by now. Who’s going to help them if I don’t?”
    Just then Jay came up behind me, as he liked to do, always scaring the hell out of me by running up and grabbing me. I saw Grant flinch as I was tackled and nearly lost my balance on my platform shoes. I yelled, “Jay! Will you stop it?” but he was laughing as he wrapped his arms around me and rocked us back and forth.
    “Jay, this is my friend Grant,” I said, struggling to duck out of his grasp, “so behave yourself, will you? We’re having a conversation.”
    “Hi, man,” said Jay. “Babe, I got us a gig at the Bluebird tonight.”
    “Really? The Bluebird?” I said. We’d always wanted to play there. It was a real townie place, not just for students. “Are they paying us?”
    “Twenty-five. And free drinks.”
    “See?” said Grant. “Work is already coming to find you.”
    Jay looked more closely at Grant, with a quizzical who-the-hell-are-you smile. I could tell that he was going to try to stake out his territory in front of Grant. Like the way a dog has to pee on something to show he owns the place. And sure enough, there went his hands, snaking their way around to the front of my shirt, heading over to my boobs.
    Grant said something about suddenly remembering that he had someplace he had to be. “Good luck to you,” he said to me. “Hope you get back to painting.”
    “Stop it,” I said to Jay, and slapped his hands away. He pretended to slap me back, and we got into a tussle, slapping at each other in a stupid, playful way, and when I looked around, Grant was pedaling off. His butt wasn’t even resting on the seat; he was standing up as he rode, swaying back and forth, with those hopeless, job-interview khaki pants bound around his ankles with a rubber band.
    “Who was that guy?” said Jay, and I said, “Oh, he’s just some guy who enjoys telling me how stupid I am for going back home. He thinks I can just crash someplace until the end of the quarter.”
    This was a sore subject. Jay lived with three other guys, but he had his own room, and anybody but Jay would have invited me to come and live there with him. Two could fit in that single bed just fine. But he and I both knew that this would violate something very basic in our relationship that I was just beginning to understand: he was never going to be willing to help me with anything.
    The next day, with my portion of the twenty-five dollars from our gig, I packed everything I owned in my beat-up blue VW. I kept losing heart for leaving, though, and when I finally went out to the car with the last of my stuff, I decided to give the universe one more chance to reverse its signs. If the radio was playing a happy love song, I’d call up Jay and tell him he had to let me live with him, and if it was depressing, I’d go home to my parents.
    The next song was “No More Tears” with Barbra Streisand and Donna Summer, which was a problem. Are women happy or sad when they’re singing, “Enough is enough” with their fists pumping in the