Stressed Spelled Backwards |Lesbian Story|

Chapter 7

Along the way to our apartment, I walked past a store with a mini popcorn machine on the display. It looked too adorable with all the red vintage color and wheels, and it was on sale. With the lovely popcorn maker, we could enjoy the fresh popcorn in minutes!

The next thing I knew, I was carrying the popcorn machine home. In the back of my mind, the little voice told me this was why I was poor, but I tried not to pay too much attention to it.

Karmen opened the door for me. She was in a towel, and her body glistened with water as if she'd just finished taking a shower.

"What's this?" she asked.

"Hmm...our groceries?" I said, feigning the obvious financial mistake I'd just made.

"Azra, don't tell me you just bought a popcorn machine," she said. Well, she already knew it from the picture on the box, so there was no need to explain.

"But it's too cute!" I said. "Look! It also comes with the wheels! And we do need some popcorns for Netflix and chill, don't we?"

"How much is it?" my best friend said. Normally, Karmen wasn't the type to worry about spending money, but now it seemed she couldn't underestimate the power of being broke anymore.

"It's only thirty dollars," I said sheepishly.

"I work my butt off at the deli so that we can have a roof over our heads," she complained, sounding more and more like a mom. "And you spent...wait...is it only thirty bucks?"

"Yeah!" I perked up.

"Oh, wow, that's cool!"

"I told you." I grinned at her and went to install the popcorn machine on our kitchen counter. I asked Karmen to put the corn in while I sorted out the groceries into the fridge. Afterward, we were watching the machine in fascination.

At the same time, Elise came through the door.

"What are you guys doing?" she asked.

"Elise, come and see this," I called out to her. Elise came over. We crowded around the machine. It started running and making a little humming sound as it dispersed the heat. Then popcorns started bubbling out from the kettle. We were like children happy to see the funny course of the production.

"Isn't it cool?" I giggled. The popcorns came out nice and hot and buttery, but the problem was the machine wouldn't stop running, and we found out pretty quickly that we had put too much corn in it, so now it started flooding over to the kitchen floor. Then the machine made a weird noise before spitting out bright sparks instead of popcorn. We jumped up with a yelp.

"Azra, turn the damn thing off! Turn it off!" Karmen yelled. Elise was clinging to her as she screamed. I panicked and pulled out the plug. But it messed up the electric socket and the current went haywire and exploded into a mushroom of white smoke. Elise jumped onto Karmen's arms in shock. The towel that wrapped around Karmen came loose and dropped to the floor, but at the same moment, the power went out. Everything turned pitch-black like a cave. I realized it wasn't just our apartment. The whole building also suffered the outage.

"Oh uh," I said in the dark. The three of us just stood there with our mouths hanging open as Celie burst through our door ten minutes later.

"Who did this?!" she bellowed, shining the flashlight at our faces.

We all pointed to the popcorn machine.

The chaos took place afterward, and it lasted about half an hour to die down. Mad didn't do it justice to describe how our landlady was. When the power got back up, she handed us a bill for the damage. We had to pay $350 for a new socket and burned wires. Celie had warned us that if we ever made one hassle in her building again, she'd start handing us our suitcases and throw us out.