Alma Underwood Is Not A Kleptomaniac Read online

  Lenox blinks once. “Mom.”

  “What?” she asks, standing in the center of our yellow kitchen donning a sweater with a flying unicorn beneath her wiener apron, looking totally oblivious to the notion that she and our father are the strangest people in this state.

  “Nothing.” I laugh, taking my seat across from the one Holland just abandoned. Plopping the silverware and napkins in the center of the table, I grab a plate. “Let’s eat.”

  Lenox follows my lead, sliding into the chair next to mine while the twins sit across from us. Lenox and I are practically rubbing thighs, same as we always do when our whole family is wedged around a dining room table not much bigger than a card table.

  I still remember when my mom bought the table at a flea market. My father argued with her that it was meant for outdoor use.

  “Pish posh!” she’d said.

  And that was how we ended up with an old cast iron table fit with matching chairs heavier than both of my parents combined. Mom covered the top with a linen cloth the color of a daffodil after our silverware kept falling through the ornate cracks in the top.

  It's an odd furniture piece, but it has character, so I can’t say I hate it. Anything much bigger wouldn’t have fit inside this kitchen anyway.

  Beep!

  “Oh! The garlic bread is done.” With a flick of her hand, Mom pops open the door.

  Jackson’s nose wrinkles, his hand frozen on the tongs wedged inside the pasta. “You put the garlic bread in the microwave?”

  “The oven is still broken. I had no choice.” Clearing her throat, she drops the plate of bread on the table and stomps into the hall. “Harrison! Dinner. Now!”

  “I can’t eat that bread.” Jackson drops noodles onto his plate.

  “And why not?” Mom asks, coming back into the kitchen and untying her apron. “There’s nothing wrong with it.”

  “You put it in the microwave, Mom. Radiation waves can be harmful. Some studies show that electromagnetic radiation changes the DNA structure of humans.”

  “One piece of bread will not change your DNA structure, Jackson.”

  “I can’t take any chances, Mom. I have to think about my future.”

  “You’re fifteen, honey.”

  “Exactly,” he mumbles around a forkful of pasta. “Too young to die.”

  “For the love of Lucy.” Pinching the bridge of her nose, she takes a few deep breaths before sitting at the end of the table. “More for me then.”

  “I’ll eat the tainted bread.” I reach for a slice.

  “Same,” Lenox agrees, and I grab a slice for her too.

  “Don’t say he didn’t warn you.” Holland shakes her head and looks at me in mock horror when I shove the entire slice in my mouth.

  “I’m sorry. I’m here.” Dad rushes into the kitchen, stopping only to press a kiss to the top of Mom’s head before continuing his journey to the other end of the table. He sits down, staring longingly at the empty chair next to me that used to belong to Shepherd. His eyes dim like Shepherd’s dead and not just forty-five minutes away studying mathematics at the University of Michigan.

  “Dad, can you please fix the oven?” Holland stabs at a piece of chicken. “Mom is feeding us radioactive garlic bread.”

  He lifts a piece and inspects it, even going as far as to lick the edge of it with the tip of his tongue. “Seems fine to me. Eat up.”

  “See, Dad, but it’s not fine.” Jackson’s fork hits his plate with a clank. “Studies show that—"

  “Just eat, son.”

  “I’ll eat the pasta, but you can’t expect me to eat radioactive carbohydrates.”

  “I would never expect such a thing.” Reaching across the table, Dad snags two more slices of bread. “If I croak in my sleep, I want Elton John to sing Rocketman at my funeral.”

  “Harrison, good grief. Stop talking like that at the table.” Mom stabs her fork into the air. “The bread is fine.”

  “Yeah, we’ll see,” Holland mumbles.

  With a sigh, Mom gives up and we resume wolfing down piles of Chicken Alfredo until the pot is nearly empty. Jackson refrains from launching into a lecture each time Lenox or I take a bite of the bread, but that doesn’t mean he’ll let the topic drop. Before the sun goes down, my sister and I will each have received a two-page essay slid under our bedroom doors arguing why radiation waves are bad for your insides.

  We’re an odd bunch, my family and I.

  Despite my mom’s inability to see it, all of our quirks came from our creators. Our quirks, our looks, and deep hatred for Michigan State were all inherited from the two of them.

  Harrison and Clare Underwood are the kind of people to dress themselves and all five of their children in full denim and then proceed to position each person in a straddle position on a large tree branch in a city park. I’m not sure which one of them thought that’d make a good family photo, but I’m positive if you search 'worst family photos' on Google, you’ll find the Underwoods.

  The idea that we look like we were created in a lab doesn’t bode well when trying to appear not so strange. All seven of us have the same locks on our head, the color of nutmeg. Our eyes are all forest green, the only exception being Jackson and Holland who sport azure eyes. Thankfully, we all have slightly different facial features and drastically different haircuts that keep us from looking like a complete family of cloned robots.

  When my dad starts choking, grasping at his neck and flailing in his chair like a fish in one of those asthma commercials, my lips begin to tremble with the need to laugh.

  He starts howling, sobbing that his sudden death must be the cause of the tainted bread, and I lose my shit. Alfredo sauce burns my nostrils while I fight to keep it in. Lenox’s eyes are lined with laughter when she looks at me. Her long hair falls into a heap around her shaking shoulders, a big contrast to the grown-out pixie cut I have on the top of my head.

  Brushing the hair from her face, she mouths, “what is our life?”

  I shrug because I honestly don’t know. But I like it.

  3

  A Train Called Mo

  Alma

  My favorite part about giving my treasures a somewhere is the idea that no theory is too crazy or unrealistic. It’s my favorite line from Mean Girls come to life.

  The limit does not exist.

  When writing short stories about inanimate objects that people treated like trash, there is no limit I can’t surpass, no line I must halt at. The possibilities are endless, and I often allow my brain to continuously function on a loop of the most outrageous backstories one can create.

  For the cracked Polaroid camera, I’m getting some sad, heroic vibes. I’m thinking Brave Little Toaster meets Toy Story 2.

  I tuck my Hufflepuff pen in the front pocket of my overalls and slide each of my feet into an old flip flop. They don’t match. In fact, I think the right one belongs to Lenox and the left one belongs to my mom. I don’t care much that it looks like I fished them out of a dumpster. Not for where I am headed.

  As much as I love being part of the Underwood clan, I don’t spend a ton of time inside of my house. It’s too small for our family of seven. Even with Shepherd living on campus now, it still feels like we’re a bunch of sardines crammed into a foil can. I don’t enjoy feeling like a salty fish.

  My desire to feel more like a human launched me into a wondrous world of begging. I’m very good at begging. It only took me twelve days and a Powerpoint presentation to convince my parents to let me move out of the room I shared with Lenox and Holland and into the attic. With the demise of an uncountable number of dust bunnies and a yard sale to rid the boxes of junk, it was made livable.

  My personal paradise has a lack of windows that doesn’t do much for my daily dose of Vitamin D and creaky floorboards that make it hard to be sneaky. What it does have is privacy, a place to sleep, and a place to store my treasures. I don’t need much else.

  The small attic space was never meant to be a bedroom, so it’s a smi
dge cramped. But it’s my cramped space, something special just for me. In the attic, there are no arguments over who gets to decorate what wall or how many dresser drawers we each get.

  No, Sir.

  My only two walls come to a point directly above my bed. I strung fairy lights on each of them and clothes-pinned some of my favorite photos in between the lights. My twin bed has a mattress older than Reginald and a sky blue down comforter with prints of big fluffy clouds. I bought it brand new for this room. Sometimes at night, when I’m lying in bed in the highest room of the house, I like to think about what’s up there with clouds.

  Are there more treasures to be found, spinning with the wind alongside airplanes and birds? Or is there nothing to discover? I’m not sure which would disappoint me more, that there are miles and miles of a lonely sky, or that there are lost treasures that may never be found.

  A boxcar I dutifully named Mo was my first lost treasure and currently holds the title for the longest backstory. Mo has forty-four handwritten pages outlining his role as a troop transport in World War II. Mo is where I go when I need solace and a place to write about lost treasures.

  He lives in the freight yard behind our house. It takes me exactly five hundred and twenty-eight steps to get from my back porch to him. With my mix-matched flip flops and mind full of ideas, I leave the sardine can behind, step off the porch, and start my steps.

  My boxcar of choice has been parked inside the yard for as long as I can remember. It’s a rusted bronze color marred with the effects of somebody’s vandalism. Free The Pigeons is scrawled on the side facing my house in big purple bubble letters. I’m not sure what pigeons need to be freed but if anything, it just makes the boxcar more unique.

  Three hundred and twelve steps into my trek, I turn around and peer at our property. Its close proximity is the only reason I was ever allowed to venture out here as a kid. With the motel and my house door to door, my parents were able to peer out a window no matter which building they were in and ensure I was tucked safely inside of Mo.

  It made it easy for Mom to get me to come home when it became too dark and I was lost in a world of words. She’d just step outside with a pot and a wooden spoon and start banging until I came running. Now that I’m older and the freight yard is used less and less, her check-ups aren’t so frequent.

  Completing my steps, I toss my journal inside of Mo and hoist my body into the boxcar. It gets pretty dark and damp in here so I typically leave the cargo door open and always make sure I have a flashlight stashed so I can still use my journal after the sunset.

  With a quick swipe of my sandy hands down my overalls, I snatch my journal off the old ground and make my way to the right side of the boxcar—my preferred side. I’ve just made it to the Big Joe I keep in my corner when I hear the sound of shuffling behind me.

  Shit.

  Keeping my sigh internal, I spin around. “Look, Ralph, I’ll—you’re not Ralph.”

  No. The guy standing in front of me is definitely not the overweight man who’s been working in this freight yard longer than I’ve been alive.

  “Do you work here?” I pop my hip and start my inspection of the stranger who is not Ralph. He’s missing the pair of boots with the toe blown out and the gray bread that goes to his belly button. In its place is the fresh face of a young guy I’ve never seen around here before. His eyes are hooded and a muscle quivers at his jaw.

  “Well?” I prompt when he says nothing.

  He stares blankly at me, and I hold my position until he says, “No. I don’t work here.”

  “I didn’t think so.” The way he’s dressed is enough of an indicator. In cropped jeans and a baggy sweatshirt with sleeves so long they hide his hands, he hardly looks like he’s been engaging in the taxing work that is loading and unloading train cars.

  “Look—"

  I hold up my hand. “You’re gonna have to find another one.”

  “Another one?”

  “Another boxcar. Mo is mine.”

  “Who is Mo?”

  “The boxcar.”

  Amusement flickers in the dark eyes that meet mine. “You named this old boxcar?”

  “I did, yes.” I lift my chin. “I’ve been coming here for a decade. He’s mine and I don’t intend on sharing him. You’ll have to find your own.”

  A few seconds go by, the stranger and I engaging in a world-class stare down before his lips twitch with the makings of a smile. A low chuckle fills the air around us. “You're kicking me out of a rusty train?”

  “It’s not rusty, it’s well-loved. But yes, I am, there is a lovely one a few feet down.”

  “You saying you can’t share this one with me?”

  There’s a glint in his eye that makes me feel like he’s challenging me. I don’t like challenges. Not when it comes to my treasures.

  “Why would I share my boxcar with you when you could move next door?”

  “Because I’m already moved into Jo.”

  “It’s Mo, and you could move out as easily as you moved in.”

  “Oh come on. This thing is huge. You take that side, I’ll take this side. We can be neighbors.”

  Neighbors? No. Terrible plan.

  He pivots around, his slightly shadowed frame retreating back towards the left side of the car before I’m able to argue my point further. I’m left standing in the center of Mo, unsure of what to do. I can’t very well force him to leave. It’s a free country, and something tells me scaring him away won’t work. He’s bigger than me. He’s got the height I don’t and broad shoulders beneath the fabric of his sweatshirt that look perfect for body slamming me off this rig. There’s no doubt his muscle mass percentage is much higher than mine.

  I’m left with no choice.

  “Fine,” I huff. “I’ll share with you.”

  “Thanks, neighbor.” He doesn’t even glance over his shoulder.

  Sure, Mo is fifty feet long, plenty of space for two people, but that doesn’t mean I am happy about these sudden arrangements.

  I stomp back over to my side of Mo. The Styrofoam beans inside of my Big Joe squeal when I drop down. “What’s your name?”

  He looks up from where he’s now sitting, back against the wall of the car, knees pulled tight into his chest. “Rumor. What’s yours?”

  “Alma.”

  He bobs his head in what I think is supposed to be an alternative gesture for a wave. “So, what brings you here for the last, what did you say, decade?”

  “Yes, decade.” I use my pen to gesture outside. “My house is the one right across the field. Mo is my place to gain peace and quiet.” I let my eyes flicker back to him. “What are you doing here?”

  “Freeing the pigeons.”

  A beat goes by. Then, a laugh loud and boisterous rips from deep in the pit of my stomach. I clutch my middle and toss my head back, my cackle ricocheting off the walls. He’s staring at me, sporting a smirk that could win awards.

  “Well,” I say, once I can breathe again. “It’s about damn time somebody showed up and saved them.”

  His chuckle comes with a snort he quickly covers up by throwing one hand over his mouth. He doesn’t cover everything though, and I notice the laughter shining in a pair of eyes that remind me of cinnamon. It’s a shame his hair is hiding a large chunk of his face.

  My new neighbor has locks Lenox would be jealous of. The color of a dark chocolate truffle, thick hair brushes the tops of his shoulders. There’s a wave to it that makes me think he’s been stuck outside in the humidity for far too long.

  That could be why he tried to commandeer Mo.

  Turning my attention back to my journal, I prepare to pen the next greatest hero. Except I can’t concentrate. Not when there is a stranger eating a sandwich he got from somewhere inside his sweatshirt. Closing my journal, I study him from the corner of my eye. He’s taking small tentative bites of what I believe to be peanut butter, if the smell is anything to go by.

  His body language warns me not to come any close
r, with the way he’s hunched in on himself, one arm wedged between his legs and his torso, and his chin dipped low. I’m just about to ask him where he pulled that sandwich from when I notice the overstuffed duffel bag beside him and a thick quilt spread out across the cold ground.

  A thought strikes me–– one that turns my stomach into knots.

  I sit up straighter. “Hey, Rumor?”

  He lifts his gaze, chewing. “Yeah?”

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “You just did.”

  I ignore his lame joke. “Are you sleeping here?”

  He takes a bite of his sandwich. I hold his gaze while he chews slowly and his throat bobs with a swallow. “And if I am?”

  “Well, I guess I’d ask why.”

  “Because I like it here.” He pushes the rest of his sandwich into his mouth and lets his head fall back against the wall, talking with his mouth full. “And the mosquitos aren’t so bad.”

  I’m not sure how to respond, so I don’t say anything. I must look like I’m curious about something because he clears his throat and says, “this is temporary.”

  “So, you are? Sleeping here, I mean.”

  He runs his hand down his face, a low, rumbling sound escaping his throat. “Yeah, neighbor. I’m sleeping here. I’d appreciate it a whole lot if you could keep that between us.”

  I’m too startled by his request to offer any sort of objection. I attempt to dim the shock on my face but I’m not sure I’m successful in masking the way my body stiffens in shock. The questioning glance I give him isn’t enough for him to willingly offer an explanation as to why he wants to keep his living arrangements a secret. I can’t quite grasp why he’d rather stay and live here than in a home equipped with running water and air conditioning.

  I try to sympathize, put myself in his white tennis shoes, and come up with a reason as to why he’d want to be homeless, but I can’t. I don’t want to.

  What the hell kind of good Samaritan will I be if I keep quiet about a guy who doesn’t look much older than me living inside an old boxcar?