When I pulled into the driveway of my house, the woman who’d offered me a ride earlier in the day was just pulling out. Cummings’ Emergency AC Repair.
“Back so soon?” Mom was surprised to see me.
“Hey, Mom, I saw the air conditioner lady earlier today. Why didn’t she fix it?” The house was still hot and the fans were still whirring.
“Some part they don’t keep in stock. She’ll be back tomorrow. Her name’s Delores Cummings but she likes to be called Dee. Oh, and Baby . . . it’s not all bad news. Dee helped me move your bed into the third bedroom and guess what? You’ve got your own air conditioning room unit. Dee says the central air vent doesn’t reach into that room for whatever reason.”
I went to my new bedroom and opened the door. The room unit was belching out cold air with a fierce rattle guaranteed to drown out any competing noise. I thought regretfully of the barking tree frogs I wouldn’t be able to hear at night anymore. But it was cold and cold was good. And there were actual blinds that covered the windows. No more early morning wake-up calls from Billy the bug man.
There was my bed all made up with the pink patterned cover. And there was the side table with the green plastic vase and the gorgeous pink blossoms. I looked around the room imagining my stuff in it—plotting how to make it look like more than the boring cubicle it was. I noticed Mom hadn’t moved the framed photograph from the other room which was fine with me since I had my own favorite posters which would be arriving with the moving van. I was already scoping out where they would all go. But my mind kept going back to the picture that somehow inserted itself into my dream. Dad must’ve put some love into it when he picked it out for me. I couldn’t just abandon it to the now empty bedroom that would eventually get turned into an “office”—our family’s code word for junk room.
I found a hammer in the garage and re-hung the photo, centered directly over the bed in my new room.
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By the time I brought my dad home from work that night, I was a lot more familiar with Sugar Dunes, Florida and the Crystal Point Yacht and Country Club.
After dinner I set up my laptop in my room and Skyped with Perry. Everything seemed almost normal. Almost like I was back in Cali, sprawled across his bed working on homework together. Almost. But after a while, we both had other things to do. Truth was, I was getting tired. I hadn’t slept well the night before, but I was going to have no trouble sleeping tonight.