"The spot on television. Just now."
"Oh. You mean it's on television, too?" Shelley asked in rising horror. "Oh, no!"
"If you didn't see it on television, what are you talking about?"
"That thing on the Internet! Stefanie got it from there." The Internet? Her headache exploded into full bloom. One of the geeks at work had probably posted the newsletter article, in its entirety. Fourteen-year-old Stefanie had indeed had an education.
"I didn't put it on the Internet," she said tiredly. "Someone at work must have."
"Regardless of who did it, you're behind that… that list even existing!"
Suddenly Jaine was fed up past the gills; she felt as if she had been walking a tightrope for several days now, she was stressed to the max, and the people who should be most concerned and supportive were giving her hell. She couldn't take any more, and she couldn't even think of anything scathing to say. "You know," she said quietly, interrupting Shelley's harangue, "I'm tired of the way you and David automatically assume I'm to blame without even asking me how this whole thing happened. He's mad at me about the car and you're mad at me about the cat, so you attack without asking if I'm okay with all this attention about the list, which if you thought for one second, you'd know I'm not okay with it at all. I just told David to kiss my ass, and you know what, Shelley? You can kiss my ass, too." With that, she hung up on yet another sibling. Thank God, there weren't any more. "That was me at my peacemaking, mediating best," she said to BooBoo, then had to blink away an uncharacteristic dampness in the eyes.
The phone rang again. She turned it off. The numbers in the message window on the answering machine said she had way too many messages. She deleted them without listening to any of them and went to the bedroom to get out of her work clothes. BooBoo padded in her wake. The prospect of getting any comfort from BooBoo was dubious, but she picked him up anyway and rubbed her chin against the top of his head. He tolerated the caress for a minute – after all, she wasn't doing the good stuff, scratching behind his ears – then wiggled free and jumped lightly to the floor.
She was too tense and depressed to sit down and relax, or even eat. Washing the car would burn off some energy, she thought, and quickly changed into shorts and a T-shirt. The Viper wasn't very dirty – they hadn't had any rain in over two weeks – but she liked it to gleam. All that washing and polishing, besides burning off stress, was satisfying to her soul. She definitely needed some soul- satisfying right now.
She fumed as she collected the things she would need to make the Viper beautiful. It would serve Shelley right if Jaine took BooBoo over there and left him to destroy her cushions; since Shelley had new furniture – it seemed she always had new furniture – she likely wouldn't be as sanguine as Jaine about losing cushion stuffing. The only thing that kept her from transferring BooBoo was the fact that their mom had entrusted her beloved cat to her custody, not Shelley's.
As for David – well, it was pretty much the same situation. She would have transferred Dad's car to David's garage except for the fact her dad had asked her to take care of it, and if anything happened to it while it was in David's custody, she would feel doubly responsible. Any way she looked at it, she was stuck. After gathering her chamois cloths, pail, special car-washing soap that wouldn't make the paint job lose its luster, wax, and window cleaner, she let BooBoo out onto the kitchen porch so he could watch the proceedings. Since cats didn't like water, she didn't think he'd be very interested, but she wanted the company. He settled in a tiny patch of late afternoon sunshine and promptly took a kitty nap.
The driveway next door was bereft of dented brown Pontiac, so she didn't have to worry about accidentally spraying the thing and arousing Sam's ire, though in her opinion, a good wash job wouldn't hurt it. Probably wouldn't help much, either – it was too far gone for such surface beautifying to make much difference – but a dirty car offended her. Sam's car offended her a lot. She settled down to industriously washing and rinsing, one section at a time, so the soap didn't have time to dry and cause spots. This particular soap wasn't supposed to spot, but she didn't trust it. Her dad had taught her to wash a car this way, and she had never found a better method. "Hey."
"Shit!" she shrieked, jumping a foot in the air and dropping her soapy cloth. Her heart nearly exploded out of her chest. She whirled, water hose in hand.
Sam jumped back as water sprayed across his legs. "Watch what the hell you're doing," he snapped. Jaine was instantly incensed. "Okay," she said agreeably, and let him have it full in the face.
He yelped and dodged to the side. She stood braced, water hose in hand, watching as he rubbed a hand across his dripping face. The first water attack, accidental as it had been, had wet his jeans from the knees down. The second one had pretty much taken care of his T-shirt. The front of it was soaking wet, sticking to his skin like plaster. She tried not to notice the hard planes of his chest. They faced each other like gunfighters, separated by no more than ten feet. "Are you fucking crazy?" he half- shouted.
She let him have it again. She sprayed with a vengeance, chasing him with the stream of water as he tried to dodge and dance out of its way.
"Don't tell me I'm crazy!" she shouted, putting her finger over the nozzle to narrow the opening and thus get more force, and distance. "I've had it with people blaming me for everything!" She got him in the face again. "I'm so damn sick of you, and Shelley, and David, and everyone at work, and all the stupid reporters, and BooBoo shredding my cushions! I'm fed up, do you hear?"