Page 11 of She’s a Doll

I didn’t want to.

I didn’t know why.

It had to be Grandma. No one else ever came here. She had probably lost her house key in the bottom of her jumbo-size tote bag again. Maybe she’d had an argument with Auntie Dawn. They were always arguing about something. That was what sisters did, apparently.

Another knock.

Cookie kept barking, his voice fevered and ferocious.

Slowly, I strung the towel back over the rack and made my way out of the bathroom toward the front door, weaving around cabinets, boxes, and piles of old clothes. Cookie was already at the door, howling now as he scraped at the wood.

“It’s OK,” I told him. “Cookie, it’s OK. Sit. It’s just Grandma.”

But when I opened the door, it wasn’t Grandma.

It was Kyle.

He smiled at me through the security door, his coppery hair shorter than I remembered, his arms pink with sunburn.

He was holding a bottle of vodka.

“Hi. Sorry, this is kinda random. You just seemed really sad, so I thought I’d bring you something to cheer you up.”

“Oh . . . um . . . I’m fine, actually.”

He kept standing there, smiling, holding out the vodka like he expected me to reach through the security screen and take it.

Cookie pushed up behind me, his deep, slobbery baying loud enough to stab like knives into my ears.

“How do you know where I live?” I asked, almost shouting.

“Krissy has your address in her phone contacts.”

I was suddenly painfully aware that I was wearing pajamas⁠—my Hello Kitty pajamas⁠—at a decidedly uncool time of the evening to be getting ready for bed. “She does?”

He slowly retracted the vodka bottle. “Do you want me to go?”

I could’ve said yes.

I could’ve closed the door.

I wanted to.

But it felt mean to turn him away after he’d driven across town. Also, the vodka bottle was unopened. He’d probably bought it just for me. No one had ever bought me a drink before. “No. You can stay. I . . . um. Let me just put the dog in the other room. Then you can come in.” I closed the door, grabbed Cookie by the collar, and dragged him into Grandma’s bedroom. He didn’t go willingly, barking and wrenching my arm the whole way.

“Fuck,” I hissed as I shoved him into the room and slammed the door. “Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.” I looked around the hallway. Cluttered, claustrophobic, and lined with boxes full of stuff, half of which Cookie had knocked over in the tussle. “Fuck.”

Uncertainty corkscrewed in my gut.

Not even Krissy had seen the inside of my house. She’d picked me up plenty of times. She was the first to get her driver’s license, and compared to mine, her car felt like a spaceship. She didn’t know my grandma kept so much stuff inside. No one did. Would Kyle tell her? Would they call her a hoarder?

I should’ve told him I wasn’t in the mood to hang out.

Or, better yet, I should’ve just not gone back to the door.

The security screen was closed. He couldn’t get in.

Except that would be weird; I’d already told him he could come in, and he’d been nice to me before. Krissy would be upset if I was shitty to her brother . . . and I didn’t need another reason for Krissy to be upset with me.