(MLC Transcribed Story)

Aderin is thinking about what’s real or not. Was she that much of a basic bitch to say she wanted to wear a dress from goodwill with her doc Martens for her wedding or was it something she copied from a movie or book she can’t remember. Or not even a movie, but a fucking starter pack meme. “So like, hey” he says. Adrienne is a bitch with no patience, “what!” She’s high, cocaine and aderall and diet Mountain Dew. Maybe a bad combination but whatever, she doesn’t care, she has shit to do and like no time to do it in so this makes sense and why are strangers talking to her in the middle of the grocery store, if she doesn’t get the shopping done before her mother gets home, the bitch is going to be pissed and she’s going to, whatever, scream, and it’ll be a whole ordeal. Adrienne would rather avoid all that if she can. Maybe she’d rather not avoid, Pop-tarts, should she get brown sugar cinnamon or strawberry milkshake? Decisions, decisions. And she barely hears him as he stutters out, “so, like, do you uh, doya have a boyfriend?” “I don’t fuck boys who have speech impediments, sorry.” She says. And she’s pretty sure she doesn’t sound sorry at all but thats okay because she isn’t, sorry. At all. Coke has that effect on her. Words are hard, is also probably going to be the last thing she ever says anyways, she can’t talk sometimes, she dissociates and just can’t talk. Thats a cancer mars thing. She doesn’t want to know what has that effect on her because ignorance is bliss. That is a Pisces thing… Currently, one of her sisters is waiting on the front steps when she gets home. She’s younger than Adrienne, from her moms third marriage to a pathetic waste of a man, but like, whatever, if thats the kinda man her mother likes she’s not going to judge, well she is, but she’ll do it quietly. No one wants to be dying alone. Charli is texting fucking rapid fire, even as she stands up and adjusts her school bag and waits for Adrienne to unlock the door. “Is there a fire somewhere or what?” “Oh God, did Betsy Johnson burn down, worse, Fred Segal?” “Fuck you fuck you fuck you” Charli says, practically singing. Strange for her, Charli only ever talks to Adrienne in a monotone. Maybe she’s getting sick. “Don’t cough on me.” “What?” Charlie says scrunching up her face like she doesn’t get it. She doesn’t get anything she’s 14. “You’re 14.” Charli blinks at her a few times before flipping her scarf dramatically over her shoulder and prancing up the staircase. “I just talked to your sister,” her mother informs her as soon as she walks in the front door. “She says she’s worried about you.” “Fuck her, she goes to art school.” She knows that that comes out a lot like art school isn’t real school but it comes out like that solely because art school isn’t real school and so her sister can just shut the fuck up with her finger paints and her fucking like watercolors. “No, I mean Charlotte.” “Oh” Adrienne mumbles sucking a bit of red sauce off of her finger. “Fuck her she’s 14.” “Don’t say fuck in my house. what is that?” “It’s classy its like pasta and shit.” “Addie,” “Erin” she corrects. It’s so stupid when her mother gets her name wrong. And vaguely insulting, like if the woman wanted to call her Addie she should have fucking thought of that when they were making her birth certificate. “There’s a party tomorrow and I have to go,” Charli says halfway through her fucking meal that I can’t pronounce. “Maybe” their mom says, which is weird because she would usually be like mmmm how about no, what are you, like ,delusional? You are not going anywhere ever because I want you to be miserable, or whatever. That’s the way Aderin always ends up hearing it. “But, Arthurs having a party and I have to go.” “The fuck is Arthur? “Erin! Who” she mouths at Charli because she is nothing if not persistent. “He is like the hottest guy. His dad only owns like, everything in the world ever they’re like royalty abby. God we’ve been talking about this for 20 minutes” That’s a lie. That’s the biggest lie Aderin has ever heard. That lie is bigger than, ‘I’ll totally pull out before I come. “No, you haven’t.” “Yes we have.” Their mother agrees and now they’re both staring at Aderin like she’s some sort of delusional freak but she isn’t, Jesus fuck, she’s just high. She goes to the party to chaperone like her life is somehow like that Heath Ledger movie based on that hamlet Shakespeare play or whatever the fuck it was. Hamlet or something. She goes to the party and there’s a lot of cheap alcohol and a lot of boring people from her old high school and she goes into the pantry and steals a box of cookie crips and takes it to the roof to sit and eat and occasionally throw little cookies at kids heads when they get too rambunctious. (At this point in the story, it sounds as if Eris has accidentally hawked out a big pile of phlegm). All of their parents had better send her serious thank you cards for this shit. So many babies could be conceived right now if it weren’t for her efforts. So many. She see’s the guy from the store, boy with the stutter in his mouth and he’s got a whole gaggle of girls around him and she scowls and is about to throw cereal at him, but she doesn’t think it’ll have too much of an effect. Aderin scowls thoughtfully before slipping off one of her doc Martens and throwing it hard at his head. (At this point in the story, Rudy takes over reading.) It would actually be really cool and punky and hardcore but she kinda runs the fuck away super quick so… Whatever its fine, its not like anyone knows about it. “Someone totally threw a shoe at Arthur Eldritch’s head,” Charli says when Aderin drives her to school the next day. “Like a heavy one, too. They had to take him to the E.R.” “What even, I didn’t throw it that hard,” Aderin says immediately, and by the time she’s realized her tragic mistake, Charli’s already out of the car and talking to all her friends. Fuck, shit, Jesus. Her mom screams at her and tells her to apologize. She tells her that she found out about it on Facebook. Aderin asks in her most serious voice why her mother has a Facebook even though she knows its for meeting men, because its funny to watch her mother get angry. She’s at her dealer’s place waiting for him to find her fucking coke because apparently he hid it all away when the mice in his apartment started talking to him. For fucks sake she needs a new dealer. She especially needs a dealer when Arthur fucking Eldritch walks in and starts talking about Vicodin lots of Vicodin, like the kind that will knock out a 30 year old narcotic addicted prostitute from Vegas, so she sneers “What, they didn’t prescribe you anything at the hospital?” “Oh,” her dealer says, shaking his head, lifting one of the cushions on a sofa, “no no no, he’s selling to me.” Aderin just stares. “It’s true, I am.” Arthur who doesn’t have a stutter says. “You’re not stuttering.” “Well, I’m not going through withdrawal, am I?” He says, kinda like he’s a total bastard but at least he knows it. He’s actually quite good looking now that she thinks about it. “You’re kinda attractive.” He grins at her kind of sideways but charming. His front teeth are crooked. “You want your shoe back? It’s at my house, in my bedroom.” Performed by Eris and Rudy on August 14th, 2020 on Misery Loves Company.