Confessions of a High School Supermodel

Chapter 5

5

Maddie got up from the table, raced back to her room and began frantically tearing apart her purse.  She emptied its contents out onto her bed and began sorting through the various receipts, crumpled candy wrappers, pens, chewing gum, Band-Aids, hair ties, and crushed Tic-Tacs. 

It wasn’t in there.

She searched her wallet once, then twice.  It wasn’t there either.  Where had she put it?  Where is it, where is it, where is it???  her mind screamed.

Think Maddie…  You crumpled it up and… stuck it in your pocket?

Yes!  She had crumpled it up and put it in her jeans pocket!  She began frantically looking for the jeans she had been wearing to the mall.  They weren’t wrinkled in a pile on her floor where she had left them.

Maddie dashed down the hall to the laundry room.  Maddie usually stayed far away from the laundry ever since that day when the dryer had broke and she’d tried to get her underwear to dry faster by putting it in the microwave.  Bad move.  Well, how was she supposed to know all it would do was melt the elastic?  Maddie had ended up with a disgusting, stinking pile of melted rubber and had had to go to school commando that day.  Since then, she’d steered clear of helping mom do her laundry.

“Mom!” she yelled.

“MOM!”

Please don’t let the washing machine be on!  she thought desperately.

Maddie skidded on the hardwood floors and slid into the open door in her socks.

Uh oh.

Maddie looked with an overwhelming feeling of dread at the washing machine, which was happily humming, mid-cycle.  For the countless time that day, Maddie felt like crying.  It’s ruined.  The business card is ruined.

Her mom poked her head in.

“What were you calling me for?  I’m doing your laundry!”

Maddie could only shake her head.

“Nothing mom.  Forget it.”

Maddie’s mom shrugged.

“Your clothes were filthy.  You should really give them to me sooner so I don’t have to go in your room and get them.  Oh, and you keep leaving paper in your pockets!  Don’t you know it’s going to ruin the entire load of laundry?  Remember what happened when you left that tissue in your pocket?  You almost broke the washing machine.”

Maddie’s head snapped to look at her mother.

“Did you take the little piece of paper out of my pocket?”

Her mom looked at her strangely.  “Yes, of course, I always check.  I know how careless you and your sister are.  One of you is probably going to wash a twenty dollar bill one of these days.  Why?”

Maddie’s eyes immediately jumped to the wastebasket in the corner.  Slowly, she peered inside.  There, right on top of the pile of trash, was that stupid little business card crumped up into a ball.  Maddie’s shoulders sagged with sudden, overwhelming relief.

“Thanks mom.  I thought I had lost, ah, an important phone number.”

“Well, you be more careful next time!”

“I will.”

Maddie grabbed the business card out of the trash and hid it in her fist.  It wasn’t until she was back inside her bedroom with the door shut that she let herself carefully smooth it out, treating it with infinitely more care than she had just a few hours earlier.