“I’m vegan and there are a lot of things I don’t eat. Like sugar. And refined carbs. Or anything with soy or hydrogenated oils or high-fructose corn syrup. Which is everything processed. Once I’m outside my house it’s really hard to get something to eat. The things other people think of as food are not things I would eat at all.”
“We do have vegetarian dinners twice a week. Usually macaroni and cheese.”
Allie peered into The Elf’s face in the mostly dark to see if she was kidding or not.
“Macaroni and cheese is not vegan. It’s a bunch of refined white flour with butter and milk and cheese on it.”
“Oh. Well. We’ll figure something out. I can always separate out some macaroni before I put the cheese sauce on. And we usually have salad and bread and butter. Oh. Butter. Right. Well, there’ll be bread. And I can do the same thing with potatoes. Separate some out before I put on the butter and cheese. And we always have oatmeal with breakfast.”
Allie didn’t answer. Couldn’t answer.
Say goodbye to protein. That was all she could think. And speaking of thinking, do lots of that while you can. Because when food is nothing but pasta and potatoes and bread and oatmeal, you won’t be doing much clear thinking.
Too many carbs and not enough protein always made her brain foggy and thick, as though she’d slept too long and couldn’t quite wake up.
“Maybe you’ll decide to relax the meat thing a little while you’re here.”
Again, Allie looked into The Elf’s face as best she could in the dim light. As if she could physically see whether this was the little woman’s clearest thinking.
“I can’t just ‘relax’ it.”
“Why can’t you?”
“I’ve been a vegan since I was nine years old. My digestion wouldn’t be able to handle meat anymore. It would make me incredibly sick. And that’s if I would consider eating it. But I won’t. Because I won’t be any part of that cruelty. I just couldn’t.”
Allie waited, in case the woman wanted to answer. But she wasn’t honestly expecting a response.
“I’ll show you to your room,” The Elf said. “But we’ll have to be quiet so we don’t wake up your roommate. I’ll get your things.”
The Elf rose and made her way down the dark hallway to the front door. Allie did not follow. That feeling of dread had locked up her chest again. She wouldn’t have even the tiniest space that was private. Nothing that was hers alone. Somehow she had not seen that indignity coming.
“Oh,” she heard The Elf say from the hall. “Suitcases.”
Allie rose and met her halfway.
“Here, I can carry those,” she said.
“We don’t usually get girls with suitcases.”
“So I hear.”
Allie reached out and took her bags from The Elf’s hands.
“Sometimes we get girls with those backpacks people make up and contribute to social services. But we don’t see a lot of soft-side suitcases come through the house. This might be a first.”
“I don’t know why everyone is so down on suitcases,” Allie said, hauling them up the stairs in the dark.
“You might when you see how little space each girl gets to store her things.”
“Oh.”
They tiptoed along an upstairs hall together. The house was huge, with lots of bedrooms. An old-fashioned house from L.A.’s earlier days. Probably classy in its time. Maybe even a multifamily home way back when. Allie guessed that when the sun came up she would find it was the only one in the neighborhood that hadn’t been converted to apartments.
“Couldn’t I just store them under the bed?”
“Oh. I suppose so.”
They passed three closed doors, then The Elf opened a door on the right side of the hall.
“Your roommate’s name is Lisa Brickell,” The Elf whispered, her lips close to Allie’s ear. “The bathroom is that way down the hall. And breakfast is at seven.”
Then she disappeared into the darkness.
Allie climbed into bed without bathing or brushing her teeth. She lay in the dark imagining her mother’s face. Imagining herself wrapped in her mother’s arms. Likely she wouldn’t be, anyway, even if her mother were there. She wasn’t much the cuddly sort, Allie’s mom. But it was a nice thing to imagine all the same.
Allie woke, blinking too much. The room felt bizarrely light. Offensively so, and she couldn’t understand why. She sat up and looked around.
Then, just like that, the glorious split second in which she assumed she had awakened in her own room, her own life, ended. The vanishing illusion abandoned her at New Beginnings for girls.
In the middle of the scuffed hardwood floor sat a girl Allie could only assume to be her new roommate, Lisa Brickell. For some odd reason that one name had stuck in Allie’s head. Lisa was skinny and insubstantial, with sun-bleached blonde hair in dreadlocks. Her skin was tanned to the point of damage, which made Allie feel weirdly pale. Which she was. The girl had Allie’s leather suitcases out in the middle of the floor and was carefully combing through Allie’s belongings. Or what was left of them.
“Excuse me,” Allie said.
No response. Not even a tilt of the head. No sign that this strange girl had heard.
“Excuse me,” Allie said again. Louder this time.
Lisa Brickell lifted her eyes to Allie. They were a light blue, so light as to be nearly gray. In fact, they seemed to border on no color at all. And in them, Allie saw . . . nothing. No caring. No personality. Just the coldness of an empty space.
“You’re excused,” Lisa Brickell said. Her voice sounded raspy and deep, like an aging smoker. “Just don’t ever let it happen again.”
She returned to sifting through Allie’s clothing, where she zeroed in on the socks.
Allie’s socks meant a lot to her. They cost more than thirty dollars a pair, and were guaranteed for life and made with serious backpackers in mind. But Allie wore them every day, because they made her feet feel pampered.
Lisa Brickell pulled off her own socks, thin and white and floppily non-elastic, with holes worn through at the heels. She tossed them onto the pile of Allie’s clothes and began to pull on the backpacker socks.
“Hey!” Allie said, and jumped to her feet.
Lisa Brickell was already fully dressed for the morning, in jeans with purposeful-looking holes in the knees and a patched denim shirt. It felt strange to face off in only pajamas. It seemed to put Allie at an embarrassing disadvantage.
“Hey!” she said again, because her first “hey” had gotten no response. “You can’t do that.”
Lisa Brickell pulled the second heavenly sock into place.
When I get them back from her I’ll have to wash them, Allie thought.
“You might be wrong about that. I mean . . . I just did. So it’s a little weird to tell me I can’t do something. You know. When I’ve already done it. Kind of makes you seem like you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Give them back.”
“Or . . . ?”
“They’re mine.”
“They were. But I don’t think they are now.”
“Give them back.”
“Or you’ll do what?”