Ghost Of A Smile (working title)
an excerpt

Kendall padded down the quiet hallway, one hand touching the reassuring wall, the other clutching her lower abdomen. Her favourite King Kong slippers had good leather grips on their bottoms, so she felt a bit more secure. She got to the end of the hall and saw that the bathroom door was firmly closed. Exuberant showering sounds came from behind the solid wooden door.

“Leslie! I have to go!” Kendall said, rapping on the door with her knuckles.

“Go downstairs!” The muffled voice yelled over the water.

Kendall ground her teeth, feeling her stomach give an urgent lurch.

“FINE!” She grunted, walking carefully down the narrow back stairs that led from the bathroom down to the kitchen of the lovely old house. Even though the stairs were her nemesis, having tripped her a mere week ago and leaving her with remarkably colourful bruises on her lustrous golden skin, Kendall loved them. They were painted a pale yellow-beige, like the walls, and had been polished to a deadly, slippery shine.

Kendall made it into the sunny kitchen and slid past Freya, her other roomie who was nose-deep in the newspaper, a cigarette jutting from her thin lips. Kendall could only see the top of Freya’s cropped red brush-cut and her blunt fingers as she turned the next page of the Mercury with a snort.

The next thing Kendall saw made her belly gurgle in deep protest. The small powder room off the kitchen had been her last chance. Its door too, was firmly closed.

“Grace! I gotta get in there!” Kendall groaned, leaning against the wooden door and bunching her hands in her Spiderman flannel night-gown.

“She’s been in there forever with the TV guide,” Freya said from behind the paper. “Geez, Grace, shake a leg! The kid looks green as the mold on your baked beans!”

“My beans are fine!” Came a truculent voice from behind the door.

“Grace!” Kendall yelled.

“Ok, ok, geez, if it’s an emergency, why didn’t you say?” There was a muffled flush, the fumbled sounds of her third room-mate hitching up her jeans and the trickle of the sink’s running water. The sound was torture for Kendall. She felt her belly push urgently against her hand and crossed her legs for good measure.

Finally, the door swung open to Grace’s surprised face. She was taller than Kendall, but most everyone was. She wasn’t as tall as Win, but had her high school friend’s gawky build. Grace was the oldest of the four. She had jet black hair in a sensible bob and thick horn-rimmed glasses that looked great on her. She had light mocha skin, that was smooth, soft and the envy of the house. She gave Kendall a quick, apologetic smile and held the door open for her as the girl scurried in.

“Sorry,” Grace whispered, closing the door behind her roomie. The TV guide was folded under the taller girl’s arm. She guiltily replaced it on the small square Formica table in the middle of the kitchen.

“She looked pretty bad,” Freya mentioned, turning another page of the paper. She stubbed out her cigarette and went to light another one.

“Yeah. You don’t think it was my beans do you?”

“Grace,” Freya said, matter-of-factly, lowering the paper to regard the fourth-year student.

Grace leaned against the counter, watching Freya nervously.

“If you wouldn’t leave ‘em in there ‘til the end of time, things like this wouldn’t happen.”

“I only made them… geez, it was two weeks ago wasn’t it?”

“Uh huh,” Freya assented, striking her Zippo and getting her next smoke started. “That’s why I only eat at McDonald’s.”

“Freya… God! Those things’ll kill you! All that grease, and filler… and…They inject their fries with beef fat! So I’ve heard…”

“Uh huh, well, no mold yet, or food poisoning. So I think I’ll stick with good old Mickey Dee’s. Hey girl, looks like the weather is going to get worse before it gets better.” Freya laid the paper down and Grace leaned over her shoulder. The forecast for the rest of the weekend and into the next week looked grim.

“Just great. So much for the outdoor concert tomorrow. Maybe they’ll have tarps or something.”

“Mm, too bad patio weather’s just about done,” Freya said, standing slowly from the wooden chair and hiking up her camouflage pants. She hooked her thumbs in her belt and cocked and eye at the bathroom. “You ok in there kid?”

Kendall had heard all the conversation. There were no secrets in the land of vents, cool air intake returns and wooden floors that echoed everything.

“No problem, fine, really--”

“Good,” Freya said, checking the window and the sky for the forecast rain. “Nothin’. I’m taking my bike. Won’t get many days left for Chahley to get her wheels spinnin’.”

“You know how dangerous motorcycles are, don’t you?” Kendall heard Grace through the door and smiled at her roomie’s sounds of concern. She also heard Freya snort as she rummaged for her helmet.

“Get your gear together fast enough and I’ll give you a ride to school,” was all the redhead said.

“Oh! Ok! Hang on…”

Kendall heard Grace thunder up the stairs in her bare feet and winced. She had not been the only one to take a tumble down the slippery “servants’” stairs. Grace, for all her name implied dexterity, was clumsy and prone to bumping into things. Although not accident prone in the same degree as Win, the tall girl was still a bit awkward when it came to navigating anything that happened to be in her way. Of the four of them, Leslie was the one with the most grace, a fact the bottle-blond never ceased from rubbing in, in her subtle, nasty way.

Kendall leaned back on the toilet, feeling her belly. After the first rush of relief, she thought she was done and the agony lessened. But she still felt pain coiling in her belly. It felt like it was coming sort’ve from one side, but she couldn’t be sure. She didn’t feel confident leaving the small powder room yet, so she hung in there, trying to relax her body.

Kendall’s eyes wandered over the small cubby-like room’s décor, although she couldn’t fully appreciate it with her glasses upstairs in her room. Only one eye could really give her any information, but she knew the room from many past visits. It was painted a lovely lime green on one wall which helped make the room bright and pleasant. There were deep wooden shelves running almost all the way to the ceiling. The girls had each claimed a shelf for their towels, make-up and bric-a-brac. The shelves were, of course, in various states of tidiness, with Kendall’s being the second neatest. She looked up at her shelf, glad she’d thought to put her Panda clock on it. It was a medium-sized round clock, also green, which had two panda bears on it eating bamboo. One of the bears was painted directly onto the metal of the clock, while the other was a moving mechanism that “ate” bamboo with the ticking of the clock’s innards. Kendall stared at the clock trying to figure out if it was 8:40am or 9:40am. It was hard to tell from the blur. In any case, she had plenty of time before class, and her homework was finished. She only had a bit of reading to catch up on for a test the next day, and she felt fairly confident about that.

A wave of pain lurched across her belly, twisting and pulling. Kendall moaned, holding herself morosely and wishing she knew what was wrong… Contrary to Freya’s accusations on the quality and age of Grace’s home-made beans, Kendall didn’t believe they were the cause, mostly because after having a look at them the night before and giving them a practiced sniff, she figured that eating them would probably kill her. So, she’d had french toast instead. One of the other wonderful things that had happened after moving away from home was the discovery that she could eat anything she wanted, whenever she wanted. The strict regimen of her parents’ house and their rules didn’t apply anymore. She didn’t have to endure Sunday dinners with her brother’s endless disgusting descriptions of what they had done to frogs and the like and she didn’t have to count on Tuesday’s supper offering up a tasteless turkey casserole. This also meant, that although Kendall’s cooking skills were literally nothing to write home about, if she wanted to cook french toast for supper she could. Equally well, cold pizza for breakfast. She didn’t have to worry about what her Mom would think or what her brothers would do, or even if her father would approve or disapprove. She wasn’t completely off the hook though. With three new people to deal with, it hadn’t exactly been a walk in the park.

Freya Whitlock was one of the easier ones to get along with. She was, as Grace had described her, “worldly.” She’d travelled, worked in a variety of places; not just student summer jobs, and had her own motorcycle. She smoked, swore, drank, ate nothing but take-out and kept the hair on her head cropped short and dyed a vivid red. Although Kendall had never seen her with a boyfriend, the older student had alluded to fun times, parties and often didn’t come home at night on the weekend. Grace just shook her head and fished out yet another homily that she hoped would eventually penetrate the butch woman’s pierced ears, but so far with no luck. Freya pursued her studies lackadaisically and had switched her Major twice. But, she didn’t hassle anyone and took everything in a laid-back manner and a with a generous helping of salt.

Grace Murray was a tall, lovely girl with almond eyes, a generous smile and a heart of gold. Except if she really had had a heart of gold, she would’ve sold it to help somebody. Her parents often called the house, sent packages, which the student usually shared with her mates and had visited already, even though it was only October. Grace favoured Thrift Store clothes, somewhat like Winnifred had, because she said she could always find pants long enough for her legs and shoes that were wide enough for her large feet. She inevitably met people there that she brought home for supper and this had resulted in some awkward confrontations, when the strays didn’t feel like leaving. Thankfully, Freya had no compunction about showing them the door and let Grace’s barrage of words bounce harmlessly off her denim back.

“You lie down like a mat, girl and people’ll walk all over ya,” was her rejoinder, when she’d booted a vagrant from the girls’ house.

“But he doesn’t have anywhere to go--” Grace blurted, scouring her stew pot with a plastic blue brillo pad.

“Sure he does, the next sucker that invites him over!”

“Freya, Grace was just trying to be friendly,” Kendall had defended.

“Don’t you start,” Freya grinned around her cigarette. “Were you going to give him your bed and sleep on the couch? You ever try and delouse a mattress? It’s not fun, kiddo.”

“Don’t call me kiddo!” Kendall snapped.

“When you’re old enough to buy your own beer, I’ll call you whatever you want.”

“Augh!” Kendall groaned, hiding her head in her hands.

Leslie had sauntered in at that point, flipping her long, slippery blond hair. “Is he finally gone?”

“Yes,” Grace and Freya answered.

“Good. You know one day you’re going to invite a killer or rapist in here, you know.”

“I’ve heard it before Leslie, you don’t have to say it again…”

Freya snorted at Grace’s hypocritical stand on the offering of advice.

“He didn’t seem that dangerous,” Kendall said, looking up from her hands, “Just kinda dirty.”

“Yeah, well, that’s how it starts. Then he invites his dirty friends over and – BOOM!”

“Boom?”

“Oh yes, it happens all the time… Home invasions, rapes…”

“This isn’t Scarbaria Leslie,” Freya said, sending a smoke ring up to the ceiling.

“Oh, and I suppose the Bull Dyke doesn’t let anything scare her?” Leslie snipped, hands on hips.

“I dunno, do you?”

“Fuck off!” Leslie yelled, grabbing her white vinyl shoulder bag and making a b-line for the door.

“Niiiice come-back, Barbie!” Freya shot back as the front door slammed shut.

“Do you have to bait her Freya?” Grace asked, stacking the last of the dishes.

“Well, it’s not like we have cable,” Freya smiled.

Kendall covered her giggle with her hand.

Grace rolled her eyes. “Well, I should get upstairs, I have to play catch-up with some reading.”

“Whatever. Say, thanks for the stew, it was pretty good. What was that chewy stuff called again?”

“T.V.P.,” Grace smiled, perking up.

“P.V.C.?” Freya grinned.

“No--! God… It’s textured vegetable protein; it’s tofu, sort’ve. Good, and a cheap meat substitute. I figure I can make my money last until Christmas no problem if I keep shopping at the health-food store.”

“Hmm.. T.V.P. Cool. I thought it was meat,” Freya said. “Not as good as a triple bacon burger with all the fixin’s, but good.” The redhead stood and clapped Grace on the shoulder. “No more strays, ok? Or I’ll talk to Marnie at the Thrift Store and get you banned.”

“You wouldn’t!”

“Try me,” Freya said, with another grin and picked up her motorcycle helmet. “Anyone need a ride into town?”

Kendall felt the urge to follow the boisterous woman and experience the freedom the motorcyle’s powerful engine’s roar always made her imagine, but she chickened out. She may have remade herself in the new city, but “K” was still leaps and bounds away from the crazed rebel Kendall wished she could be.

“Thanks, but I’ll take the bicycle. I could use the exercise,” Kendall said.

“Sure,” Freya smirked, adjusting her chin strap before walking out the front door.

Kendall looked after her mournfully.

Grace scratched her chin. “She couldn’t really ban me, could she?”

“I wouldn’t put anything past her Grace. I mean, I’ve only known you guys 6 weeks, but I’ve never seen Freya back down on something she’s said, or promised to do.”

“Hm, good point. By the way, any idea who pissed in Leslie’s cornflakes?”

“The Diva eats cornflakes?”

“Haha! Touche,” Grace smiled. “Well, ok, I’ll try and restrain my Samaritan nature. Maybe I’ll just volunteer at the soup kitchen another day this month.”

“Geez Grace, you put the rest of us to shame. Anything in your past you’re not telling us about? Trying to joggle the Karma back to the good?”

“Err, well, of course not, K,” Grace smiled anxiously, then busied herself at the sink once more.

Kendall had felt she’d gotten a bit close to something there, but she didn’t pursue it.