The Housekeeper (Camren)

Chapter 2

"Oh, I've got to get out of this rat hole." I mumbled to myself as I took a seat beside Normani at the front desk. 

Normani shot me a glance and responded, "Don't we all. I'm never going to find love if I don't leave this place. We're the only two teenagers who haven't left yet. Okay, worst case scenario, I turn lesbian for you."

I let out a loud laugh and said, "One can't just turn lesbian. You have to be born that way."

"True, but you get what I'm saying. There's no one to fall in love with out here."

With a loud sigh, I put my head down on the desk in front of me. There really was no one to love out here other than family. To be honest, I don't even know how my family found each other. I guess if two people are meant to be together, it just kinda happens over the course of time. But now that I'm think about it, I never really got the story of how my parents met. Hopefully some magic like that will happen for me. In order for me to truly find love, I'd have to leave that town, which I can't do right now.

Ever since my father died a few years back, I've sworn to my mom that I'd stay and help around the motel until Sofia was able to assume the position of housekeeper. When he was alive, things were all set and I would have been able to leave the nest just like everyone else who had turned eighteen this year. But because of his death, this motel was the only source of income that we had. We had to move to a tiny house and all of my hope for leaving was gone. I had all of this money saved up to go to California, but I had to spend it all in order to help my family out. They were more important than things that I wanted to do.

"Woah. What's that?" I heard Normani ask in a surprised voice.

I lifted my head and began to ask, "What's wha-?!"

The last bit of my question was unable to roll off my tongue when I saw a bit of smoke in the distance. Was there it a fire? If it was, that would be something out of the ordinary for our town. Fires and crimes were rare here, so when something like this happened, everyone in town rushed to the scene. That was what I was about to do with Normani. 

"Mani Bear! Let's go check it out!" I exclaimed. "Take your break now!"

She nodded, then punched out for her break. The two of us exited the motel, both in uniform, and ran towards the part of town where the smoke was rising. It turned out that the smoke was coming from the road on the outskirts of town, which didn't prevent us from running to the source. After five minutes of running, we came to a stop to see a small Lexus-brand car with smoke emitting from its engine. The driver was waving the smoke away in order to have a look, but he seemed to be puzzled. 

Due to the many times that I have heard Mr. Jacob talk about his gas station and the many times he had fixed a car, I knew the basics of how a car engine worked. Normani and I ran towards the car and its driver, which caused him to turn his attention to us. He looked shocked to see that there were actually people living out in this desert.

"Hey!" I shouted. "What's going on?"

The driver responded, "I think my car overheated, but I honestly know nothing about cars."

"Lucky for you, you happened to break down near a small town that has a very talented repairman." I referred to Mr. Jacob.

I assisted the driver in waving the smoke out of the way, and I noticed that one of his hoses went and was dripping oil all over the sandy road. This wasn't good, and he wasn't going to go anywhere unless he brought the car into the repair shop.

"Notice anything?" he asked me.

I nodded and said, "It's one of your hoses. It went and you're dripping oil all over the place. As for that shop I was telling you about, this little issue can be fixed overnight."