“Suit yourself.” Bobby left us alone.
Vern sipped the foam off his beer as he hovered his finger over the envelope icon on my phone’s homepage. “Can I do the honors?”
“No… Fuck. Fine. I don’t care. Lay it on me.” I braced for impact.
Vern cleared his throat and tapped the icon, then dramatically scrolled to the first missed text from my mother. It took several swipes before he found it. Adopting a horrible imitation of Stella Devereaux—the metric ton of motherly concern included—he read.
“Sweetie, I’m home from church, and you aren’t here. You know I don’t like it when you forget to leave a note. What if something happens?
“Sweetie, what time did you get up this morning? I spoke to Fred next door, and he said he saw you leave the house around eight. I’m sure I heard you milling about in the middle of the night. If you don’t get a full eight hours, your body doesn’t repair itself properly, and you can be more prone to illness. I don’t want you to compromise your already weak immune system.”
“Fred needs to mind his business.” I closed my eyes and sank lower in the booth, the vinyl squeaking under my ass, punctuating my slow descent into madness.
“Oh god.” Vern snorted. “This one’s epic.Sweetie, did you have a bowel movement this morning? I noticed you aren’t eating the bran cereal I bought. I hate for you to risk constipation or, god forbid, colon cancer. Remember what Dr.Evans said? I would appreciate it if you filled in the chart I left in your room. It saves me from having to ask all the time.Dude, dude, duuude. What chart?”
I buried my face in my palms. “Please don’t ask.”
“Is it a poop chart? Oh my god, it’s a poop chart. You have a poop chart. I have to call Lex.”
“Fuck off.”
“Do you have to tell her the size and consistency, too?”
I shot myformerbest friend the finger, which only encouraged more laughter and indirectly—unintentionally—answered his question.
“Give me my phone back. The humiliation has gone on long enough.”
Vern disagreed and held the device out of my reach. I didn’t have the willpower to fight. What did it matter? The stigma that was Stella Devereaux had belonged to me and me alone since a crisp winter night in 2001, when I came screaming into the world. Living in Elk City, Oklahoma, with its population a smidge over eleven thousand, meanteveryoneknew paranoid, slightly unhinged Stella Devereaux.
“I’m not finished,sweetie,” Vern mocked, using my mother’s favored term of endearment. “I’ll skip to the good ones.” He skimmed the messages and cleared his throat. “Sweetie, please turn on the fan when you shower. I noticed an excess of condensation around the mirror. Condensation grows mold, and mold aggravates your asthma. Plus, you know your lungs are sensitive to drastic changes in humidity. You don’t want to end up with pneumonia again.”
Another scroll. Vern sipped his beer with a smug grin. It was only funny because it wasn’t him suffering. “Here’s a good one.Sweetie, I don’t see any dishes from your breakfast. Did you eat this morning? Is your appetite off? I thought you looked a littlepeaked yesterday. Did you take your temperature when you got up?”
I groaned. “She’s going downhill.”
Vern snorted. “I’m pretty sure she went downhill years ago.”
“Shut your fucking mouth and give me my phone.”
“No.” He scrolled and sipped and scrolled and sipped, then almost choked on his ale when he found an especially good one. “Oh my god. Your mother gives me life.”
“Try living with her.”
“She wants to know what color your urine was first thing when you got up and suggests you increase your fluids today. In case you’re coming down with something.”
“Yep. On it.” I drained my Coke via the straw, slurping the dregs around the melted ice cubes at the bottom of the glass. “Another one down. Are you almost finished?”
“I—” At a noise from outside, Vern glanced over my shoulder to the window. Cringing, he laid the device face down and slid it across the table. “You be fucked, my friend.”
“Nooo.” I spun to see what he was looking at, but I knew.
The sound of crunching gravel was familiar. Swirling lights reflected against the glass as Sheriff Barclay screamed into the parking lot and swung his Ford F-250 cruiser around, halting when he was parallel to the building and in perfect view of every patron inside the bar.
“Fuck my life.”
Vern dissolved into laughter.
“You’re batting a hundred, kid,” Bobby called from behind the bar. “What did I tell you?”
