The Princess of Las Pulgas

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About the
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Other
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"A beautifully written,
meaningful, young adult novel. Carlie Edmund will jump off the page
and pull you into a poignant and timely story of loss and ultimate
gain."

-Francisco X. Stork, author
of Marcelo in the Real World, a New York Times Notable Children's
Book of 2009, a Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2009, and a 2010
YALSA Top 10 Best Books for Young Adults.

The Princess of Las
Pulgas

C. Lee McKenzie

Published by C. Lee
McKenzie at Smashwords

Copyright 2013

Smashwords Edition, License
Notes

This ebook is licensed for
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the hard work of this author.

Chapter 1

Last night I pleaded with
Death, but he turned a bony back to me, pushed Hope into the
corridor and shut the door.

Now we’re waiting, all of
us. Mom in the chair next to Dad’s bed, holding his hand as if she
can keep him with us as long as she doesn’t let go. Keith asleep on
the rollaway a nurse wheeled in earlier. He’s on his side, his long
runners’ legs drawn to his chest and his head resting on his arm.
Me, scrunched down into a chair at the foot of Dad’s bed. I no
longer feel like I have a body. I’m not even tired, just numb. Then
Death. He’s backed into the darkest corner.

I twist my Sweet Sixteen
bracelet around and around, counting the tiny links. Mom and Dad
gave it to me in June before I learned how hospitals smelled at two
a.m. or how I preferred nightmares to being awake.

I hate being here.

I hate what's happening.

I want it over.

I close my eyes and let my
head fall back against the vinyl chair.

No. I don’t mean that.

Two a.m.: The hands of the
wall clock go around and around. Slow. Steady. Doling out the hours
one-second at a time.

Three: I must have slept,
but I don’t remember dozing and I still feel tired.

Three-ten: Something’s
different and the shift is as sudden as it is subtle—a missed tick
of a clock, an unexplained space in the air, a suspended drip over
a sink.

A steady and high-pitched
sound tentacles its way through the room. A flat line of green
streaks across the monitor and the darkest corner is suddenly
empty.

Keith sits up on the edge
of the rollaway, staring at the floor. Mom rests her head against
Dad’s still chest. Around me the room curls up at the edges like a
late autumn leaf and I’m sure everything will soon crumble into
tiny bits.

My dad was an important man
in Channing. His investment counseling business had survived
despite the economy, and all of his clients had names on doors with
President or Chairman of the Board stenciled beneath. Dad had held
just about every office on the city council and been financial
advisor to the mayor, so the memorial service is long with
speeches, and the church is crowded with VIPs.

Mom hired the caterer that
her best friend, Maureen Fogger, always uses, so white-jacketed
strangers armed with trays of perfect small food thread their way
among the black or gray clothed guests. Our home fills with a hum
of voices.

The mayor proposes a toast;
the arts commissioner proposes a toast; three board members of
Dad’s company propose toasts. By four, people who were silent and
sad-faced earlier are now talking a bit too loudly, smiling,
telling jokes. Maureen Fogger has one of Dad’s young partners
cornered. She’s leaning in a little too close. The guy’s face is
flushed and his eyes dart around the room. Nobody notices his
silent cry for help except me.

An hour ago Keith retreated
upstairs. Mom stationed herself in the chair by the fireplace like
a lonely planet, and the guests orbit her, taking her hand,
touching her shoulder. I haven’t seen her cry since that night at
the hospital, but I’ve heard her through her bedroom door. Now I
think her whole body must be filling with tears while she waits for
the reception to end and for everyone to leave.

Dad was always inviting
people home. “Come for dinner, for the weekend, for Labor Day,”
he’d say. He insisted on balloons and confetti for special
celebrations. Confetti still turns up in the carpet from last New
Year’s Eve. He had the barbeque ready hours before my end-of-year
beach parties started, hours before Mom had a chance to tell him
whether he was cooking hot dogs or hamburgers that year. We called
him our party animal. If Dad were here, he would be moving from
group to group, telling a joke, gently guiding Maureen away and
letting his young partner escape. Dad would have loved this
“party.”

I’m not in the mood to love
anything about what's happening, so as soon as possible I slip away
to hide in my room where Quicken is curled up on my pillow in a
tight purring ball. Even with the door closed, I'm not far enough
away to mask the chatter of people downstairs. I slide open the
window facing the beach, inviting the drum of ocean waves to enter.
Their steady rhythm has always rocked me when I was uneasy. Today,
the crashing waves are angry, not soothing.

Closing the window, I fall
across the bed with my arms spread wide. Quicken arches her back,
stretches, and then brushes back and forth along my side before
curling up against me. In seconds her purr rumbles deep in her
throat.

Disappearing inside my
head, imagining a happy ending saw me through those months of Dad’s
cancer, so I need for it to get me through tonight and tomorrow and
the next day.

“Carlie, love. This is tough, but you’ll be
just fine. I know it.”

Dad used to say that
whenever I’d bring him a crisis. Then he’d brush my cheek with his
fingers and kiss the tears.

I’m not so sure this time, Dad.

Chapter 2

This is first year since I
learned about Jack-O’-Lanterns that we don’t have one for
Halloween. Snaggle-toothed grins were Dad’s specialty. Mom turns
out the walkway lights at dusk. We don’t answer the door for the
goblins and witches.

Only one ghost is allowed
to enter here now.

Chapter 3

Mom’s friend, Maureen
Fogger, invites us for Thanksgiving dinner.

We go.

We eat.

We leave early.

I fall asleep to Mom’s
crying. It’s become as much a part of home as the sound of the
ocean outside our windows.

Chapter 4

I drive Keith to the
Christmas tree farm like Dad used to do. We saw down a six foot fir
and tie it onto the top of the car. At home we carry it as far as
the front door, look at each other and set it down in front of the
bay window.

That’s where it
stays.

Chapter 5

Mom goes to Maureen
Fogger’s New Year’s Eve fundraiser. I think Keith’s at Mitch’s
house. I cancel babysitting for the Franklins and stay home. It’s
just the TV and me with Quicken curled on my lap,
purring.

Chapter 6

“Ten. Nine. Eight.” The
drum of Time Square voices beat out the final seconds of the year.
As the ball plunges to the count of one, paper bits flurry across
the TV screen—a sudden end and a sudden beginning. I choke back
tears at that thought—the one I’ve had since I watched my Dad
die—the moment when the world grew one breath smaller.

When I switch off the
television the house goes silent. Tonight’s the first time since
the memorial service that I’ve been here after dark without Mom or
Keith someplace close by, and now loneliness crowds the
room.

I twist my Sweet Sixteen
bracelet around and around, fingering the tiny links.

Setting Quicken down I
stretch up from the couch. “Come on fur person.”

Leaving on a few downstairs
lights for Mom and Keith, I pad up the steps behind my cat. She
leaps to her cushion at the foot of my bed and curls into a tight
circle.

I wish I could fall into a
steady purring sleep like she does. I wish Mom would come home. I
even wish Keith would shuffle down the hall to his mole hole of a
room.

On my desk my journal lies
open to the almost blank sheet of paper with a date across the top.
I trace my finger over “October 22.” The rest of the page is
blotched with old tears.

Perhaps because I can’t
stand to read about the darkness inside me, I’ve avoided writing
anything since that day. I feel like I’m wrapped in a
cocoon.

“Carlie love, you’ve been shut away long
enough. It’s time to rejoin your world.”

My dad’s talking to me like
he used to, only now his words come like whispers inside my
heart.

The journal was his idea.
After I won Channing’s Scribe contest my freshman year, he handed
me a small package. Inside was this blank book embossed with C. E.
On the inside cover he’d written. “For Carlie Edmund, one girl who
has the imagination to write wonderful stories. Put some of those
ideas down and use them later when you need them.”

Since October 22nd, there's
nothing this One Girl has to write that anyone would want to read,
especially me.

“You have all kinds of good ideas, Carlie
love.”

“I only have one idea and it’s so not a good
one.”

“Good or bad you have to start
sometime.”

I turn to a blank page and
take up my pen. “Sometimes bad things happen . . . even in
Channing.”

The first bad thing that
springs into my head is spelled c-a-n-c-e-r, then comes the vision
of that hospital room, the hours plodding forward. More memories
creep forward like tiny monsters and sit hunched, waiting for me to
notice them.

I drop my pen onto the
journal page, tasting rather than hearing the low sound just behind
my lips, not quite a cry, not quite a moan, just something
sharp-edged, something I’d like to keep hidden.

When I read what I just
wrote, some letters aren’t clear. Even though I’ve turned to a new
page, the tears have made the surface rough, so October 22nd has
bled through to a new day.

What can I write that won’t
tear at me every time I read it? What can I write that won’t crush
my heart and send me back to that day life changed?

The
answer—
nothing
.

“I’m sorry, Dad,” I say
softly, then I listen to the silence. I don’t know what’s worse,
when he talks to me or when he doesn’t.

From outside comes the
sound of a car pulling into the driveway, then the garage door
slides open. Mom’s home.

I change into my pajamas
and robe, brush my hair and pull it into a long dark tail that
hangs to my shoulders. I got the thick black mane from my mom’s
side of the family. Keith inherited Dad’s sandy color and the
spatter of freckles across his cheeks. We don’t look like we’re
related, except for our eyes and those are all Dad, sand pebble
gray.

Mom will make cocoa before
she goes to bed just like she did when Dad was here. Cocoa is still
a bedtime ritual, but it’s not the happy one it used to be. Now she
sits alone at the table, studying real estate books, or, as she
says, “sorting out the finances.” After being by myself most of the
night I need company, so cocoa and Mom to talk to sound
good.

“Hi Mom. How did the
fundraiser go?” She’s already pouring milk into a saucepan when I
slipper my way into the kitchen.

“Let’s see.” She sets the
saucepan on the cooktop, and stirs in cocoa. “I made a hundred plus
a fifty dollar bonus from the caterer at Maureen Fogger’s annual
charity event—proceeds going to Bangladesh or Milwaukee, depending
on which place needs it more this year.”