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Sometimes Aubrey imagines her mother dead on the couch. It wouldn’t be much different than how she is now- dull, empty eyes staring listlessly at the TV, unaware of anything else. Even the corpse’s smell might go unnoticed for days, disguised by the odors of mildewy walls and rancid takeout. Aubrey wonders if she’d even notice- if anyone would.
Then she snorts. Yeah, maybe once the utility bill comes in. The bastards at city hall would find out about the corpse on the couch and Aubrey living upstairs, and before she could even blink they’d ship her off to some shitty foster home with all the other kids no one cares about. With her luck, she’d probably end up in the same home as Basil, once his grandma finally croaks. (She shakes off memories of a kindly old woman, who gave her extra helpings at dinner and let her sleep on the couch when she needed to. Those days are long gone.)
It’s not like a foster home would be able to keep her there, anyways. She’d probably bust her way out again and head right back to live in the same little shithole again, or crash with Kim and Vance or something like that.
Aubrey shakes her head, trying to clear away the train of thought. She’s got shit to do today.
First, changing out Bun-Bun’s bedding. She attacks the task with a vengeance, whisking out the old hay and shredded newspaper and replacing it with the new. The dust always settles in her lungs and makes her cough, but it’s worth it as long as Bun-Bun doesn’t have to live in his own shit.
And speaking of living in your own shit- Aubrey nearly steps on a mouse as she passes through the living room, hauling her bag full of bunny shit and old hay out to the garbage cans. The mice should really know by now how to not get stepped on, but they get bolder every time. And her mother is still sitting blankly on the couch, exactly where she was the last time Aubrey saw her.
Once upon a time, she might’ve scolded Aubrey for being home on a school day, threatened to take Bun-Bun to a shelter or throw away her softball bat. Now she just lays there, day in and day out. Like a corpse- she’s basically dead already.
One day, Aubrey wants to turn off the TV, just to see if her mom’s still alive to scream at her.
The next thing on her list is to pick up some more dye- her roots are growing back in. There’s a couple other things she needs from Othermart, so she empties out her backpack on her bed, steals twenty dollars from her mother’s purse (she doesn’t even notice), and rides out as fast as she can.
The fresh air hits her nose like a sledgehammer. She breathes in deep, trying to get as much of it as she can while she’s still outdoors and choosing not to think about how her house’ll only smell worse once she has to step back in the door.
(Faraway Park is on the way from her house to the store. She considers stopping by, but- oh, never mind. Kel is there, stupidly tall and grinning like an idiot, playing a game of basketball with his new friends like he doesn’t have a care in the fucking world. How can some people just move on like it’s nothing? Fucking fair-weather prick.)
She buys her shit and leaves, and makes sure to avoid the park on her way back.
Aubrey’s original intention when she got home was to dump her stuff between some of the less rancid garbage bags outside, but it looks like her mom is actually out of the house for once. Must be getting low on booze or something, or maybe she really is alive after all. She laughs darkly to herself- it’s probably the first thing, but she can always hope.
Still, it means she can bring her stuff up to her room and make herself a shitty microwave lunch without having to deal with any crap (beyond the usual, at least), so at least there’s that.
As she turns to take her food outside, Aubrey kicks a beer can across the kitchen floor, and the last dregs spill out. She almost leaves it, but obligation drags her back to mop it up as best as she can with a damp rag (one of the few they have that isn’t slightly moldy). Why is she even cleaning this up? The whole house is rotten- why even bother? It’s not even her job to do this.
But she does it anyways, with the same aggressive fire that fuels everything else she does.
And then she goes outside with her shitty instant meal (which is still cold in the middle) and eats it the whole thing, even when she starts wanting to gag halfway through. She remembers picnics by the lake with her old friends, the fun and the good food- and then she pushes those memories away, because it’s not like any of the others gave a shit about their picnics after Mari died.
After lunch, it’s time for Aubrey’s final chore of the day: taking out the trash. She takes advantage of her mom’s absence to get the garbage on the other side of the TV, the stuff she usually can’t get to without blocking the screen. It smells awful, but so does the whole damn house. She can’t get away from it.
After loading up the can outside her house with bag after bag of slimy, sticky garbage, Aubrey steps back and looks at what she’s managed to accomplish.
It’s nothing, by the way. Two or three bags isn’t enough to even make a dent in the years of filth. She can barely tell that she’s done anything at all, and the can outside is almost overflowing. And the garbage collection truck only comes once a week, so for now this is all she can do.
Maybe instead of bothering with all this she should be studying, researching, looking into colleges, making her escape plan to get out of this place someday. Make an actual life for herself, far away from this shitty town with its shitty people and shitty friends.
But Mari is here, and will never be anywhere else again. That’s all stuff Mari was doing before she fucking killed herself and died alone in the same place she’d always been. Aubrey’s probably going to die here too one day.
The setting sun shines into Aubrey’s eyes. She’d been thinking about killing some time with the Hooligans after they got out of school, but taking out the trash took longer than it should have. She’s got somewhere to be, anyways.
The sound of her mom’s rusty old car sputters its way towards home, but Aubrey’s already long gone, riding over to the church. She’s got her bat with her, too- probably won’t need it, but better safe than sorry.
(As always, she takes a brief second to imagine a scenario where she does need it. Where it’s just her and her bat and her rage and all she has to do is to make her problems go away is swing and kel and basil and her corpse of a mom and her deadbeat fucking dad would all be like smashed watermelons in her wake. She doesn’t feel any better afterwards.)
Aubrey parks her bike outside the church and walks inside. On the second Friday of every month, they have a potluck dinner, one of those stupid “get-to-know-you” things they love doing. Aubrey doesn’t really want to be “getting to know” any of these people, but, free food is free food.
She grabs a plate, fills it with whatever looks good, sits in a corner, and glares at anyone who looks like they’re thinking about getting close. No one does, and it just pisses her off more.
Why is she even here? There’s no sermon tonight. She doesn’t want to talk to anyone. No one wants her here. The chicken and pasta and watermelon on her plate are the best things she’s eaten all week. It’s a cliche, but they taste like they were made with love, or at least something close to it. It’s almost worse than her shitty microwave lunch- at least that one was cooked for her. Nobody is looking at her, and they’re all shooting her glances.
Aubrey can’t do this anymore. She needs air. Silently, grabs her bat, tosses out the rest of her food (except for the bits she was saving for dessert), and heads outside. Nobody cares when she leaves.
(As she heads out the door, she sees the preacher looking like he wants to talk to her, pull her aside and at least make an attempt at making her feel welcomed. She coolly looks back at him, meeting his eyes and holding it there until he turns back away again. How spineless of him. Where does he get off on pretending to care and then not even doing anything about it?)
(Aubrey can imagine Basil growing up to become that sort of adult. The kind that promises they care, that they’re on your side, that they want to help- and then when the time actually comes, hiding away and leaving her on her own, blacking out everything they pretended they wanted to keep.)
Aubrey goes outside, takes a deep breath in the fresh dusky air, and doesn’t feel better. She’s taken the back doors, so she’s out in the graveyard again. Mechanically, she walks over to Mari’s grave and sits down next to it.
She’s heard somewhere that talking to her grave is supposed to help. That it’s like closure. She’s never really believed that- it’s just a rock. It’s not a person. It’s not Mari. It’s not going to respond when she talks, or hug her and tell her that everything’s going to be okay, or bake Aubrey’s favorite cookies just for her with more care and love in them than the entire stupid potluck put together- it’s a corpse in the ground. Not Mari.
And she talks to it anyways, even though it’s all wrong. Everything’s been wrong for the past four years- might as well.
“Hey, Mari,” she starts, and pauses like she’s going to get some sort of response. It’s a fucking rock.
“I tried to take out the trash today.” Aubrey tries again, and doesn’t stop this time. It’s not really supposed to be like a real conversation anyways, she thinks. “It- it never gets any better, does it.“
Why is she doing this? Is it really supposed to help? It’s so much worse speaking to empty air. It’s like a mockery- Mari isn’t here. This rock with her name on it isn’t her, and neither is the dead thing in the ground beneath it. Mari was alive .
If this was a shitty movie or something, Mari’s ghost would show up right about now, reveal itself and talk back to her. It’s not, though, and she doesn’t, and Aubrey feels stupid for thinking about it. She’s so pathetic that she has to make up ghosts to make herself feel better for half a second. It didn’t even help, either, just made it worse.
Still, because she’s nothing if she’s not stubborn, Aubrey tries one more time. She’s still got her dessert, so she takes a bite of it before continuing. The watermelon is normal, not sour or anything (who’d bring sour watermelon to a potluck?), but it turns her stomach anyways. She’d grabbed a cookie, too, but- it wouldn’t be as good as Mari’s, anyways. She puts it down on the grave. Look at that! Sharing cookies with Mari- it’s like a shitty knockoff of their old picnics! She laughs humorlessly.
(She doesn’t even try to imagine what one of those would look like nowadays. It doesn’t fit without Mari- nothing does.)
Aubrey slaps at the mosquito perched on her arm. It’s getting late- time to go back to her house. With Mari’s old bat in hand, she hops the church fence and rides home.
When she gets there, her mother is back on the couch, passed out in front of the blaring television, the stench of shitty beer filling the house. Aubrey’ll have to remember to leave her window open tonight.
Rebelliously, she turns off the TV (nothing happens at all, by the way, because her mom is dead to the world), and heads back up to her room, where Bun-Bun is waiting for her. She gets ready for bed and brushes her teeth and pretends her mom’s not passed out drunk in the living room and puts on her pajamas and plays with her bunny and goes to bed, where she cries herself to sleep and dreams about nothing at all. She doubts she’ll feel better in the morning, either, but she’ll probably do it all again anyways.