Wallflower In Bloom by Claire Cook Page A

thought for another minute, then unplugged the surge protector and plugged both chargers directly into the outlet. I mean, maybe I’d get lucky and the house would be struck by lightning and fry them both. It would probably take me at least a week or two to replace them. Maybe longer.
    I walked slowly and carefully into my bathroom and washed down another four Advil with tap water. I considered throwing up, but I didn’t want to lose the Advil and I didn’t really have the energy anyway, so I just peed again. I looked at the shower for a long, spacey minute, maybe more, and thought about how good it would feel to finally get out of my T-shirt and sweats and feel clean again.
    “Later,” I said. My voice was low and raspy, as if I’d been out all night, laughing and talking with friends.
    When I finally made it to my kitchen, my first thought was that I’d been robbed. There were Devil Dog wrappers everywhere. I picked up the clear cellophane wrappers as fast as I could, trying not to count them as I threw them away. I can’t believe I ate the whole thing flashed through my head from an old commercial I could no longer attach a product to.
    I opened the tiny refrigerator. I stared at the eggs for a while but couldn’t quite picture getting them from the shell into a pan and onto a plate. I shut the refrigerator door and opened the freezer. A plastic container filled with frozen Afterwife chicken-and-Gorgonzola pasta called out to me. I plopped the whole thing onto a plate. Liquid fat sputtered and spattered all over the walls of my little microwave as I nuked it, but I didn’t have the wherewithal to do anything about it. I poured a glass of ginger ale to settle my stomach and carried the whole thing back to my bedroom.
    I ate every single bite, then put the plate on my bedside table. I thought about closing the blinds, but it seemed a lot more efficient to pull the covers over my head. Alka-Seltzer, I thought, I can’t believe I ate the whole thing was a commercial for Alka-Seltzer.
    I fell asleep again like a ton of bricks, maybe two tons. I dreamed about Ethan, my boyfriend from my postcollege stint in Denver, who’d ruined everything by inviting me to Sunday dinner with his family, because it made me realize that if I stayed, Sunday dinner would never be with my family. “Why?” Dream Ethan said. He was standing on the corner in the threadbare flannel shirt he always used to wear, but his eyebrows were gray and a baby was peering over his shoulder from his backpack. “These could have been your eyebrows.”
    I turned away and suddenly I was walking down Main Street in Marshbury and Mitchell was on the same sidewalk, riding a golf cart in my direction. His drum set was somehow slung over his shoulders, and he had long, limp, stringy hair again, just like when we first met.
    I didn’t like the way he was looking at me, so I turned and started heading in the opposite direction. A group of junior high boys came out of nowhere and surrounded me.
    “What a porker,” one of them said.
    “Whoa,” another one said. “She’s a tusker, a real tusker.”
    Maybe the second boy was sticking up for me. “What’s a tusker?” I asked.
    Sajid Khan came out of nowhere. “Silly girl. A tusker is an elephant.”
    “Really?”
    He nodded. A pretty girl came out of nowhere, too, and powdered his nose. “And now you have to dance or I want my postcard back,” Sajid Khan said.
    “I don’t want to dance,” I said.
    “Dance, dance, dance,” they all started to chant, even Ethan and the baby, even Mitchell, who was flooring the golf cart and heading straight for me.
    The chant turned into a knock on the door. A loud knock. A knock that just wouldn’t go away.
    “What?” I said. I opened my eyes. Downstairs, someone was knocking like crazy on my door.
    I tiptoed halfway down the stairs and sat down. My front door had a glass insert, and if I turned my head just right, I could see who was out there without being