Find Layla

by Meg Elison

They load me up with the fakest eggs in existence,

Breakfast is not even half as loud as lunch, and people are too zombie-eyed to make fun of me. Mornings are just better.

The girls across the table are loudly advertising their ignorance, and it’s hard work to tune them out.

Lol

Lipstick kisses smear all along the chipped bottom of the mirror, but not one from me. I’d love to grow a culture from the edge of that mirror and show them what they’re really kissing.

Yes, repeating it helps a lot. Great. Kids are so stupid that I don’t know why anyone has them.

He’s got that look of polite concern. I’d know it anywhere; it means a grown-up is worried but can’t actually do anything to help.

“Is everything okay?” His voice is too kind, too soft. This response is ready, has always been ready without question or any time to think. “Yeah, everything’s fine.”

School lunch today is spaghetti with the cheese on top that looks like dandruff. Canned peaches on the side and a carton of milk. Every day, I try to figure out how to eat it slowly while looking disinterested.

I’m staring at Emerson now, his black leather and black skin and black hair and black eyeliner.

Blk skin? Is he Black?

Kristi’s temper is like a lion (Panthera leo leo, king of the loud but lazy). It needs to roar a lot and get noticed, but it’s not really gonna do anything. It’ll wait for someone else to do the work.

Okay, well, I was going to go shopping, and I wanted to know if you’d come with me. It’s really boring to go alone, and I’ll take you out to lunch. What do you say?” She’s too cheerful. Something is up.

“Okay, well, you have to have a controller to get through the gate. I’ll stand outside and wait for you.” Exactly what my mom tells the pizza guy. The UPS guy. Everyone. To keep them away from our front door.

I’m looking straight ahead, but I can feel her looking at me, like glancing over when she feels safe enough to do it.

was younger. I really loved it, and we’d pick out a first-day-of-school outfit together. We used to get along really well. But now she just uses my card to shop for herself online, which is fine with me, but I really miss the trip. I was wondering if you would let me take you shopping today and get a new outfit, just like Kristi and I used to do. It can be our secret, but I think that’d be really fun. I need to get a few things for me, and then we’ll go get some lunch. How’s that sound?” She says all this like she doesn’t think I’ll see right through it.

I don’t know if I’m supposed to be grateful that she made up a lie to make me feel better, or if she knows how insulting it is to my intelligence that she doesn’t think I get it. I get it. I want it. What she’s offering here. What Kris won’t give her, I can give her. It’s like an affair, in a weird way. I can’t even breathe. I look out the window and count lampposts and try to act normal. “I guess.” I could tell her that I get it. I could be way nicer to her, if that’s what she really misses from Kris. I could be a more grateful charity case. But if I say any more words now I’m gonna cry.

“Ugh. I can see why my mom feels sorry for you. Here.” She pulls two dollars out of her pocket and gives them to Andy. “So you can get a donut. Since I know you’re . . . whatever.”

Oof, icyyy

Phones beep and buzz all over the room, and there’s a lot of low laughter and people make eye contact across the rows. I quit looking at anybody. I know this is about me. It’s always about me.

“I’m sorry, Kristi.” I’m a little sorry. I’m a little sure that she got about what she deserved. And I’m so glad that this time it wasn’t me.

“I didn’t know if today was going to be a bad day for you.” I turn off the fire. She’s quiet for a minute. “It’s a bad day for me now.”

I’m in it with a book when I notice the spider behind the toilet. It’s graceful and strange, working on its web. I can’t identify it from here; it’s a little too small. I start to wonder whether anyone else’s house has ever had this kind of biodiversity inside of it.

My house is really like its own planet, with different biospheres. Swamps of wet newspaper growing exotic fungi. An enclosed jungle of teeming green life in the dead fridge. Fruit flies and tiny worms and the occasional mouse and this spider, just a few inches away from my face. Do any other humans live like this?

I’m considering the advantage of living in my own personal petri dish when the lights go out.

Andy is trying to light a candle. I light it for him and take him to bed. It’s not even dark outside yet, but I am done with the day. I lie there trying to hold it together until the day is done with me.

She smiled then, showing her broken and rotted-out teeth on top and bottom. And I knew I chose wrong.

It didn’t happen all at once. It didn’t go from sitcom mom and pancakes to the way it is now. Little by little, things fell apart.

Still, I love knowing the Latin or Greek names of a thing. It makes me feel like an actual scientist.

That was nice of her.” What’s more worthless than nice?

How can I get out of here without screaming? The door is crowded with people lined up to get coffee. She’s holding my hand.

But I had never used deodorant before. I had seen it on TV, but I’d never had one. I didn’t know when I was supposed to start using it; I thought it was maybe just for adults. I made the mistake of saying that to Kris out loud. The look on her face was something I never want to see again.

“I’ll take you to my mother.” This is the worst idea I have ever had.

how is this gonna end

I dump my mostly full coffee in the trash. My mouth tastes like caramel bile. How hard is it to jump out of a moving car?

Why is he so hungry that they catch him eating out of the garbage cans once a week?” Oh shit. I never told him not to do that. It never even occurred to me. Kids have no pride.

And then what? I can’t stay forever. And I’m too big to fit in a basket and leave myself on someone’s doorstep. Even someone as nice as Bette can’t adopt me like a kitten she found in a box. And even if she said she could, there wouldn’t be room for two.

She looks like she might cry. “Show me where you live.” Still hot, still cold. I don’t care anymore. At least I can prove I’m not homeless. “Fine.”

I’ve heard this promise before. Social workers are always nice ladies with good clothes who look very concerned and are really convinced they can do

something to change the disaster in progress that is my life. And then we move away in the middle of the night, and it all resets.

Okay.” I’m pushing her hand out of the slot. I’d chop it off right now if it meant I could close the window and bring this to an end.

She keeps fiddling while she talks to me. “My mom said you might be weird about it. She says to tell you to come anyway. She’s making your favorite dinner.”

“Hi, girls. How was your day?” “Fine.” We say it at the exact same time. “Did anything good happen today?” She’s pretending to talk to both of us, but she’s only looking at me.

Because only on the keyboard Are U and I together.”

cute and true!

Oh, no way. Mackenzie and that bitch Jane will never shut up about it. Just when I think I have them blocked, they pop up out of nowhere.”

@ryguyshyguy: oh shit @macktheknife: u r gonna end up getting in trouble for bullying @angelface787: ill put a password on the Instagram @angelface787: they’ll never fucking catch me @ryguyshyguy: ur cold @angelface787 #bitchesbecold

I’m not in my body right now. I’m floating five feet above it, and where my body used to be there’s just fire.

I stand up and turn around slow, like in a nightmare. It’s Mom. She’s wearing the leggings that are see-through over her ass, and her shirt could not possibly be more wrinkled. Her eyes are wide and wild and she’s coming right at me. What can I kill myself with? Even the forks are plastic. “Layla, are you wearing my jeans?”

oh my God. ooh, it's over

There is not a single sound in the lunchroom.

:(

She walks away without saying anything else, just walks out of the room as if she didn’t just destroy my one small moment of peace, my one good day.

I never know when it’s going to be my last day. I never really have to say goodbye, but I never really get to, either.

I heard Mom yelling about it on the phone, over and over. When the phone stopped working, I was glad. Then the lights went out and I was less glad.

I didn’t have the words for it then, but that was the moment I realized we were enemies. Not just that she didn’t like us; that was always obvious. But that she probably flat-out hated us and maybe thought we could die quietly one of these cold nights.

He gives them the tour. I hear them asking where the sheets are for his bed, or for my bed. I hear them asking who makes him dinner and where he keeps his clothes. Andy is completely honest with them, and patient, and sounds like he’s trying to get a good grade on a test.