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TWO YEARS LATER
IT WAS OCTOBER 29th and freezing: a wet, miserable cold. The air was thick with rain and thunder, puddling in the street, those little pools that look gently shallow and then swallow a whole wheel of your car.
As the windows rattled, I made dinner for myself. Dinner for one. Unglamorous and comforting, the crinkle tear of silver foil, the warm dampness of plastic-cooked food. I watched the peas shiver in their compartment as they spun lazily in the microwave. There was a fuzzy noise from the TV in the living room.
When the food was done (ding-ding-ding!) I chucked the tray onto our smooth-topped kitchen island, a bland expanse of pebbly white, popping the microwave shut with my hip. I dug out a clean fork and started eating.
I was halfway through when the phone rang. I leapt up, crossing the room towards it, its lemon-yellow receiver rattling in its shell. This had been my routine for the past three nights. Crinkling foil, flat, chewy turkey steak, shivering peas. I down a cup of milk and then the phone rings noisily.
"Hello?" I jammed the phone to my ear, an ache of plastic. I glanced at the small digi-clock on the counter, its blinking-red numbers reading seven o'clock, 7:00, on-and-off. "Mom? Dad?"
"Hey, kiddo." My dad's voice squeezed down the phone, crackly and warm. "You holding up alright? How was school? Tommy OK?"
"I'm fine. School was fine." I replied, my stomach leaping. "Tommy's OK. He's in bed right now." A coil of the phone cable was wrapped around my finger. I twisted it round again, a ringlet curl, and imagined the coppery-gold wires trapped inside, buzzing with my voice. "He fell asleep early."
"Oh, what a relief." My mom has many sayings, a plethora of which have sprung up from our move to Hawkins. They're small-towney sayings, often optimistic, and sound like they could be written in jolly fifties cursive. What a relief! She continued anxiously, "And he ate all his dinner?"
"Mmm-hmm." I eyed the soapy pile of dishes in the sink, circling on a plastic-rubber spoon poking out from between two coffee cups. I deflated slightly at the thought of having to clean up before my parents got home. "How's Nana?"
"Nana's all better." My mom's voice thinned out, sounding tired. "Just a bad cold."
Here, bad cold does not mean bad cold. It means warm forehead, chest-cough, sore throat. I can still hear Nana's warm voice over the phone, 'Nothing to worry about, Sarah.' She'd call every day, each day piling it on, milking this dull sickness, until my mom was so consumed by guilt that it was impossible to ignore.
