The Entirely Fabricated Story of Lizzie Nickerson

Chapter 60

After school, Lizzie followed Carson and Simon off of the bus into the hot breath of the city.

"Later, Lizzie," said Carson.

"Okay," she replied, never sure how to respond when someone said, "Later."

She unzipped her hoodie and tied it around her waist. She knew she looked like a dork but it was a small price to pay for relative comfort.

"Blazing heat and blinding light," wrote Finnish poet, Greger Korhonen of summer. "O, suffocating, hellish, inferno." Poetry had been indecipherable to Lizzie so she avoided it, which is too bad because in Korhonen she may have found a kindred spirit.

As heatwaves rose from the sidewalk, she thought about her usual after-school routine and how much she appreciated routines. Every school day except Tuesday (when Lizzie was coerced into accompanying her Aunt Sonya to the supermarket) she'd retreat to her chair at the window and read until Sonya's work day was finished, usually around 5:30 PM. Lizzie would then emerge from her room, out to the kitchen, and watch her aunt prepare dinner.

Since it was Wednesday, Lizzie didn't need to worry about grocery shopping. She was eager to get out of the heat and read about why hot water freezes faster than cold water, the amount of oxygen produced by oceans, and how the hum of alternating currents is different around the world.

As she walked, Lizzie noticed that almost all the vehicles parked along her side of the street were either gray, silver, or white, except for a cranberry-colored car parked across the street from Taco Bell. She also noticed that her deodorant had stopped working.

She trudged past the familiar unoccupied red brick building with the green-striped canvas awning. When she noticed a lumpy white stripe of bird poop baking in the sun on the back of one of the orange vinyl chairs, her brain connected the dots, envisioning a straight vertical line from the edge of the awning (where a bird must have perched) to the targeted chair. 

Lizzie noticed Blinky the local black and white cat lying in a shady spot next to a neighbor's boxwood shrub. Lizzie was glad it wasn't eighty-three degrees yesterday when she and Sonya walked back from the Kroger lugging bags of groceries.

She found her keys, unlocked the front door of the apartment building, and then climbed the stairs to the third floor. She was surprised, startled, actually, to find Sonya waiting for her in the kitchen.

"Lizzie, are you mad at Scooter?"

"Oh, geez. This is Wednesday. We're not going grocery shopping again, are we?"

"No. No shopping."

"Then why aren't you working in there?" She gestured toward the adjoining living room.

"I'm on a short break. Why haven't you been answering Scooter's texts?"

"Are you reading our texts?"

"No, of course not. I got a call from Scooter's mom."

"Is she reading our texts?"

"No, she's not." Sonya smiled. "She said that she and Scooter are coming to Cincinnati this weekend! She said Scooter texted you about it but you didn't answer and he wondered if you were mad at him."

Lizzie had been avoiding Scooter's texts. She had legitimate concerns that something else would slip out that she wasn't supposed to talk about. So his texts kept piling up, and when she noticed the unanswered backlog, it made her very anxious.

"Oh, geez," said Lizzie as she checked her phone and the long list of unanswered texts. "I must have missed that one."

"Aren't you excited that he'll be here in a couple of days?"

"I didn't have time to be excited." She slipped out of her backpack. "I just got home and you started asking me all those questions. Well, actually only one question, but it seemed like a lot."

"I didn't mean to ambush you. I was worried that something might be wrong."

"All day long I need to concentrate really hard on not saying anything about accidentally killing that guy with the fishbowl."

Sonya winced.

"You know how hard that is with people asking about it all the time? My brain is exhausted from having to be so careful and trying not to say something wrong. I'm too tired to be excited and I'm dying hot." She opened the cupboard and grabbed a drinking glass. "I need water. My brain feels dehydrated."

She filled the glass from the water pitcher and gulped.

A Zoom Meeting ringtone from the living room grabbed Sonya's attention. "I need to get back to work. You need to text Scooter."

She watched Lizzie drink.

"Okay?"

Lizzie nodded. After she gulped a second glass of water, she read a few of Scooter's texts on her way to her bedroom, dragging her backpack behind her. A new crop of anxieties pushed into her thoughts as she continued reading. She felt like a different person since she'd last seen Scooter. Would he still want to be friends with a homicidal maniac?

Seated in her chair at the window, Lizzie spent the next two hours reading and re-reading Scooter's texts. The more she thought about him, the more she realized that she missed him. She wondered what she should write. Maybe she could start off by saying she'd heard he was coming to Cincinnati this weekend. But that would involve a lot of slow typing. She needed something shorter and so she texted: Hi.

He responded almost immediately.

Scooter: Hey, Lizzie. How are you?

Lizzie: Good.

Scooter: I'm coming to Cincinnati on Friday with my mom.

Lizzie: Good.

Scooter: Our hotel has a pool. Maybe you can come over and swim.

Oh, geez, that sounded like one of the worst ideas Lizzie had ever heard. The thought of jumping into deep water and splashing around and hoping you didn't drown made her stomach hurt. Lizzie didn't even own a swimsuit. What kind would she get, anyway? Not a bikini and not one of those horrible things where your whole butt sticks out. Never. She was still getting used to her ears sticking out. And if you wore one of those one-piece swimsuits, people would say you look like an old lady. Still, that would be better than having almost your whole body sticking right out there for everyone to see. Whatever kind of swimsuit she bought, it would need to be blue. Or green. But not red. No. Never. Not red.

Lizzie kept her eyes on her phone when Sonya entered. Seeing Lizzie's distraught expression, she asked, "Is something wrong?"

"Scooter wants me to go to a hotel swimming pool." Tap, tap, tap went the toe of her shoe.

"Oh. Well, maybe that could be fun."

"That doesn't even make sense. What's so fun about swimming pools? I don't even have a swimsuit and I could drown."

"Maybe you and Scooter could do something else."

Lizzie didn't respond.

Sonya said, "I just wanted to remind you that we have our appointment Friday morning at The Cincinnati Academy of Science and Technology."

Lizzie's eyes were locked on her phone.

"Do you want me to see if I can schedule the appointment for another time?"

"No. I want to get it over with."

"Aren't you excited about going there?"

"I just finally got excited about seeing Scooter so I haven't really had time to get excited about anything else. And if he's gonna make me go swimming, that's not exciting."

"Lizzie, you don't have to go swimming if you don't want to."

"Oh, geez. I don't seem like a very fun girlfriend, do I?"