Don’t Blame Me I’m A Martian-7

Chapter 7

I wake up feeling stiff and sore body wise but inside there’s this lighter than air feeling going on. Honestly I’m feeling better inside than I’m used to noticing. I guess it’s kind of…It’s kind of like humidity and weather, I had so much going on emotionally inside from me and Hill’s stuff and the release from last night was like the thunderstorm that clears the air.

It’s early pre-dawn and I’m not usually up this early but I dunno, just feeling it I guess. I hit the showers and I kind of get all feel hormonal carried away with getting soaped up and the feeling coming from doing things with my starter boobs are really making up for the fact that I have them. It’s weird the better it feel the more awake and needy Mr. happy is getting. I take care of things while it’s early and I’ve got the place to myself and I really wish that I have or had like three arms at this point…I actually take care of things three times in a row…in a row! Okay yes I know, I shouldn’t be doing these things but I’m a fifteen year old boy. I look at boobs in a bra in a catalog and I’m going to get turned on. The fact that I still have all my guy hormones and a set of my own start boobs…c’mon.

Nuff said there.

I feel so odd and light and all fuzzy yay kind of floaty and giddy in a way oddly with just a girlish whim I borrow one of Hill’s disposable razors and lather up and shave. Underarms and legs I’m rather impressed I didn’t cut myself but it feels weird, slinky? Lighter? I shrug and I use some body lotion called St. Ives or something and kind of do that seal the moisture in thing they’re always talking about on TV.

No I’m not girling out. I just kind of think if I’m going to start having the whole boob thing then I really don’t want pit hair and if I’m doing those then I might as well do my legs too right?

I get dried off and I’ve learned to pat myself dry instead of rub. I’m so getting girls and the soft materials they’re into. I get dressed for now with most people in zombie land and I slip on my basket ball shorts and my AC/DC t-shirt for now and I hit the kitchen. Yeah Dad’s sort of a stay at home dad but all that means is the fact he’s made damn sure none of us are helpless.

I crack up two dozen eggs and separate one dozen and get the white’s beating. And I fire up the big BBQ and set the grill cover Dad made for it out of a sheet of stainless steel. I toss some bacon on that and some sausage rounds and ham slices. I put on the coffee and I take some raisin bread out and cut it up in thick slices. I take the egg yolks and add a bit of sugar and a bit of baking powder and some milk and whip it together and dip the bread into it. The other eggs I add salsa to and chopped green onion and dice celery and then some milk to make omelet stuff to it I put in two table spoons of flour and some baking powder, yes I know it seems weird but one teaspoon of baking powder in two different batches of a dozen eggs you don’t taste it and it fluffs up the eggs something wicked. The two tablespoons of flour give the omelet body but the real kicker for those is once the stuff for the omelet is beaten up I fold in the stiff egg whites it all melds together to make these fluffy mini omelets as I spoon them onto the hot grill.

The last things I do is to steam the English muffins, when you steam them they get all soft inside and good but once you steam them that’s when you put them on the grill sheet and fry/toast them in the fats off the bacon and ham and stuff.

By the time I mix up the frozen orange juice and set out the boxes of cold cereal people are smelling the food and I swear I can sort of tell? Who’s waking up. I get myself a coffee and start to slap out the food for at least Mom who’s the first one up and she’s feeling…Oh that’s so…Just looking at her this morning I can tell she and Dad got uhm…wow, I wish I didn’t know that.

Although the feeling is replaced by just this…Mom smiling at me and I can swear I feel this almost light sort of feeling this good heart filled thing as I pass her a plate with two mini-omelets and a slice of melting provolone cheese and a slice of tomato and a slab of the Jimmy Dean sausage rounds, my version of the egg McMuffins some scrambled eggs on the side and some bacon.

She kisses me on the cheek. “Thank you so much for this honey, you’re up pretty early.”

“Yeah, I know but I slept really good though. I figured since I was up and everything I might as well since I’m making my own plus packing a lunch for work too.”

“Mmmm, (Insert mom food mumbling incoherently.) That still was really good of you and I’m proud of you for last night with the stuff you got and the stuff helping out your sister.”

She gives me the one armed hug where you’ve got a plate in the other hand. I hug her back and smile. “Hey it’s…It’s just something I had to do.” I shrug kind of embarrassed and head back to the BBQ and grill to finish things up.

I’m noticing g something I’m not sure that I really wanted to notice. And that’s the women and girls around this morning that have that special glow to them. Do guys really have any clue to how much of that bouncy happy giggly good morning girliness is actually self induced a lot of the time. Actually I’m getting the pick up on that from pretty much from the guys too…I’m almost kind of squicked out by handing some people their breakfasts…I’m so glad they all did it in the showers…mostly…hopefully. The married couples don’t seem to be as bad as knowing some of my older and younger cousins were doing that.

Actually the vibe that I’m getting off of the older couples is this entirely different feeling. It’s like I’m getting that this is vacation for them and that getting someone else making breakfast is a treat for them especially when you don’t have to pay for it.

Okay being able to tell when it’s your grandparents is kinda squicky too.

I look over to Grandpa. “You’re friend Mr. Seager’s a piece of work Grandpa.”

“Yeah, Eli hasn’t been the same since his Lisa died, she kept that old arse on an even keel.”

“Is he dangerous, I’m not going to have to expect him running around with knives or guns or stuff?”

That got mom’s attention. She’s staring at him but he waves it off.

“No, no Eli’s a retired fisherman he’s just dangerous from himself and he’s gotta shape his place and himself up. The county isn’t being really happy with him going to hell all these years and they’ll do something stupid like fine and charge him until he loses his place.”

I sigh with relief; rub my starter bra for my starter boobs. These things itch y’know that? I didn’t know that breasts got itchy; I mean more than normal skin itchy. I’ve never seen the girls scratching or rubbing.

“I was wondering if I could borrow a few things to help me out over there?” I ask him.

“It’d depend on what and why?”

“One of the dolley’s, and the metal detector. I have a whole bunch of junk appliances over there to move and he doesn’t have a dolley and I have to mow and I got what I hope is all the glass out of the grass over there but I don’t want to run the mower over some hidden chunk of metal.”

“Good idea, I’ll drive you in and me and you Nan can stay and talk to Eli a bit.”

“You sure you want to take Nan into a place like that?”

He chuckles at me and looks and Nan who smiles at him. “Oh we’ve seen a lot worse than that more than likely Dylan, so will you by the time you get to our ages.”

Breakfast went pretty good the rest of the way through and I’m packing my lunch when Hill comes over with a tube of Gold bond stuff. “I noticed, you’re itching…it comes with them growing. This stuff helps with that.”

“Great, fantastic they’re getting bigger.” I try to do that stare down my body at them frowning. I not mad just…y’know…bigger. I’m not sure that I want bigger even if I’m getting better about the whole thing.

Hill hugs me around the shoulders and kisses my cheek which would have bugged me awhile ago and now it’s just a thing. I pack some Dylan McMuffins and a bunch of water and a couple cans of Country time lemonade and go get changed.

I’m getting a bit better dressed this time with heavy jeans and steel toe boots, I cream up with before getting the sports bra on and I put on a light tee shirt and then a heavy one of Jax’s hand me downs a big black faded Marvel Venom tee shirt from back in his comic days. Then a plaid flannel shirt on over that. Ball cap after I pony tail my hair and feet it through the hole in the back. I check myself out in the mirror…not bad like a sort of tweeny butch-girl or femmy looking boy, actually kind of like one of those anime characters where you can’t tell the gender.

I pack the Gold bond and some suntan lotion, bug dope and some gloves and go to Grandpa’s truck and start loading my lunch and the dolley and the metal detector and we’re soon heading out to the Seeger place with me in the back of the truck.

It’s not a bad drive but we’re there in a short amount of time. I unload my stuff and head off to go back to the clean up and grandpa and Nan bang on his door until I sort of hear some banging and crashing and swearing from his place.

I leave them to it.

***

“Ow!!! Ow, ow… (Insert multiple swears here.) “I stagger back from the ancient refrigerator that had decided to not have those magnetic strips holding it shut anymore. I had trotted it out with the dolley to where the stuff would get picked up and set it down and saw Grandpa and Nan leaving so I waved.

I turned around and wham…the corner of the freezer section door right in my starter boob. The right one. Oh it hurts like no pain a guy would get, no it’s not like getting kicked or hit in the balls. Well the scale’s the same but oh…ow. I’ll say thins much that’ll make the boy’s shrink up if you’re like me and have both.

The sheer level of junk is just amazing and this is still after yesterday. Some things are completely useless but there’s some stuff that I know how to fit washing machines that needed belts or tightened here or loosened there or taken apart and just cleaned.

It’s the end product of him being the messed up old drunk guy that he is for god knows how many years. I just can’t help myself after I rescue and clean some tools that were left to the care of the elements I fix the ones that I can fix and go and bang on his door.

I really shouldn’t have done that. He staggers to the screen door in a filthy old muscle shirt and old fruit of the loom once white briefs and let’s just say there was a very low hanging plum. (Insert shudder here.)

I take a step back before the combined smells of booze, B.O. and smoke chokes me. He sways a bit looking at me. “Yeah!!!?? Wadda ya want girl?” it’s that kind of Nick Nolte drunk shout thing.

“Some of that stuff’s fixable what do you want me to do with it?”

“”T’Hell wit it I done car jus get rid of it.”

“So I can have it?”

“Yeah waddever jus get back ta work ya lazy good fer nuthin…” he‘s already started to turn around and hobble stagger scratch and fart his way back into he little hole.

I walk back to the stuff that’s fixed and put it in a different pile. Dad’s a bit of a fix it guy and he’s always building or re-purposing something. So I’m doing the same we can use some of this stuff back at the family compound.

Now when I say compound it’s more like Grandpa and Na’s place. It used to be a farm a long time ago and yeah they used to run it and there’s still some farmy stuff there like the garden. But basically there was an old long tin boatshed there that grandpa had rebuilt for a sweet sixteen dance for mom back in the day and over time and with all the extended family that’s show up it became the place for us kids to have a in from the rain away from the parents lounge and there’s showers and bathrooms and a laundry room all kind of set up there. It’s still kind of sparse and we can always use another washer or dryer or two.

I’ve got enough stuff that we might be able to put together a little kitchenette with hotplate and two toasters and a toaster over I’ve rescued and tried out. I also manage to rescue a couple of badly over painted cupboards that we can use in there. I take the old TV antennae and a TV set that looks like something melted the top of it but works and a lot of stuff.

But for everything I’m keeping there’s three or four loads of other stuff for the curb. I find a working shop phone in one of the garage sheds and call the guy who runs the local scrap and recycle place and he says that he’ll send someone out for the junk. I wait and eat lunch on the side of the road until the truck shows with the flatbed and the guys get out and the take away the huge piles of old newspapers that I baled up with twine and the bags and bags of plastic containers, and assorted glass and even the junk scrap metal that I could haul and didn’t have or see a use for like rusting car parts and stuff like that. There’s three rusting out old car hulks there with stuff actually growing out of them; that they say they’ll be back for. I help them load and load and load even without the cars it must have taken the three of us two hours to get done.

I share out my lemonade to the guys and the youngest takes it and smiles at me and says. “Thanks Miss.”

“Uhm…actually I’m a guy.” I had to say it even if might lead to an ass kicking. He’s looking at me way to interested like.
Other than the fact I’m not gay uhm hello Mr. Perv-much? I’m fifteen…

“Really but you’ve got…” he gestures at my chest and my starter boobs.

“Medical condition.” I fight the urge to cover my chest with my arms and be all defensive.

“Weird.” He says.

“Yeah, you got that right, try living with it.”

“No thank you I like everything I’ve got right where it is.”

“Oh, I’ve got all the regular stuff too, just got added onto according to the Doctors.”

“Still, weird.”

“Thanks, thanks so much.” I reply just this side of being sarcastic. I’m pretty sure he’s not going to say anything bad or try something now. He doesn’t seem the type. But in the end he shrugs and leaves with the older guy who did pretty much nothing but stare at me and parts of me like a dog trying to figure something out.

Sigh…unfortunately I think that I’m going to have to get used to this. I just …damned boobs.

I take the time to zone out and walk around with the metal detector and one of those blue garbage barrels. And spend the afternoon pretty much cleaning the yard of potential shrapnel. I end up taking off my shirts down to the thin one and actually go where no one can get and eyeful and reapply some of the itch stopping stuff and some sunscreen before slipping back into my thin white girl’s tee shirt.

It’s hot but oddly I don’t mind the heat that much and it actually feels kind of nice. It’s still weird though, moving the heave barrel sometimes I’m pressing on my chest in the wrong owie way and I’m so not used to having them plus they’re just tender anyway and stuff and when the wing get’s a bit chilly and they harden the feeling is just so bloody strange. I fill three of the barrels with just junk by the time they come back and they take the cars. I help push and the younger guy almost say no that I shouldn’t do it and I give him this look. He gives up before he even starts.

The older guy comes over and huff. “Boss uh, said to see if a hundred bucks wuz good.”

I look at him. Shit that’s right this stuffs work cash. Now shit, it’s the old guys stuff. I mean he said I could have it or the working stuff….ah crap…crap, crap, crap. I hate being a cop’s kid y’know sometimes.

“I dunno, you guys took two loads and stuff and it’s not my stuff it’s old man Seager’s stuff. One sixty.”

“One sixty now you look here you little…” oh he was going there? I step up right into his face and really bad salami breath.

“You little what?” I step right up to him like he’s not got a foot on me in height and is twice my weight. I can feel it; I can almost smell it on him. He hates me, he thinks I’m a freak and he’s lying about the money.

You ever been so sure of something that you’re willing to bleed over it? I can just feel it. “Why don’t we call your boss and I’ll dicker with him?”

“Nuh, uhm, aaaah…okay one sixty, but I’m gonna get in trouble with the boss as it is.”

He’s still lying, he’s still trying to cheat me but it just feels less? He’s not happy about the one sixty but…do I call him out on it? I get the strangest image in my head of the old Impala sitting up on the flatbed and money being counted out to this guy? Two hundred and fifty bucks I count myself.

The thing is I have no idea how I know that and I’m so certain I’m right. But I’ve got to live here too for the rest of the summer and summers after that so…should I let him have the victory? Let him get away with cheating…no he’s cheating the old guy. I can’t let him do that. I just can’t he’s one of Grandpa’s friends.

“Nope, not with the Impala up there. One sixty for all the other crud but I know how much Mr. Wheeler was supposed to give you. With the Impala it’s two fifty.”

“How the hell did you figure that? Look kid you don’t know shit I’ll call Wheeler right now and settle this shit!”

He starts to dial his phone and I wait and fast snatch it out of his hand and pass it to the younger guy. He blinks looking surprised as he’s just coming up from securing the load. He stares at me a minute and then puts it to his ear. Looks confused then takes it down and turns off the phone. He looks at me. “Okay…why were you calling pizza hut?”

“I wasn’t.” I look right at the older guy and do the girl crossing her arms under he boobs angry pose. He doesn’t say anything but I can feel the swears building up. He’s got this rotten look on his face like someone gave him an enema with a turkey baster full of battery acid.

“Fine…” He’s staring at me and I feel him wanting to hurt me, wanting to really hurt me and there’s this rage in there now. He counts out the money into my hand. Shove’s it in actually. He glares at the other guy. “C’mon let’s get the hell out of here and back to town I’m creeped out by the little freak.”

I watch them leave and it hurt. It hurt getting called a creepy little freak and part of me wonders if that’s what I’m going to get the rest of my life? I walk to the old man’s house and go inside…it’s pretty nasty but I was expecting worse. I think Nan spruced things up a bit while she was here.

Goddamn going through that argument and that whole surge of women’s intuition gave me a headache. (Sorry, I didn’t mean to swear.) But if that’s what women get out of it no wonder they’re so touchy sometimes. I didn’t like what I was feeling from him.

He’s passed out on a dirty sofa and a bottle of Texas 5 star whiskey in his hand and a picture of his wife I guess cradled on his chest. That’s got to suck beyond sucking to out live you life partner. I guess some people just need different ways to get over it, or they don’t. I write a note.

{Mr. Seager. The guys from the salvage yard came and took a bunch of the junk and stuff you were…unavailable at the time so I took two hundred and fifty for the bunch of it and let them cart it off. Oh it was wheeler’s salvage just in case you wanted to know.}

I go to leave and I honestly don’t know if I’m picking up like girl nesting genes or something but I look around until I find some garbage bags and start just shoving trash in them.

I put on my yard gloves for some of the stuff and I put on the laundry and then the dishwasher, then haul out the nine bags of crap and trash from the first floor alone and start on the second floor. The bathrooms make me gag; I’d have thrown up but not anywhere in the house. I…I…I go on this almost psychotic cleaning jag and I think I moved faster doing that and harder than the yard work.

But I swear it’s like I know where stuff should be and what it looks like. Before long Nan’s there? Oh it must be time to go but she’s helping me.

“You’re doing a great job Dylan; this reminds me of the way that Lisa used to have things here. You’re a fair hand at housework.”

“Thanks Nan, I guess it’s my freaky genes kicking in making me go all on instinct and stuff. I’m really just wining it.”

I look up and Eli’s gone. “Where’d Mr.Seager go to?”

“He’s out with your Grandpa going to the dump. I’m also thinking for a long talk and a lot of coffee.”

We work together and Nan and I make a pretty good team. I look at her. “Nan? Have I ever been here before? I mean when his wife was alive?”

“I don’t think so honey why?”

“It’s just I look around the place and I just sort of know, or remember that this is the way that she had this, or that she liked the cushions on the sofa like that and stuff it’s really kind of déjá  vu feeling.”

“Well you might have, I mean we kind of carted you kids around a lot of places when you were younger in the summers and stuff. Maybe you came out here with your dad even we used to get lobsters and other stuff from Eli before he retired.”

“Oh, okay.” I rub at my head.

“Are you feeling okay honey?” she looks and seems concerned it’s kind of nice feeling that more than I normally would. Maybe there’s an upswing to this whole female intuition thing. It’s a little freaky though.

We finish cleaning the bulk of things and she hugs me around the shoulders. I’m getting where Mom and Hill get this from. “We did a good job with this you’re better at this than your mom.”

“Thanks Nan, just what every guy wants to hear, that he’s better at house-work than his mother.” I’m smiling though because we did do a pretty decent job and it’s actually kind of funny in a weird sort of way. “You know I’m not gay right?”

“Dylan, I know you’re not gat, not that there’s anything wrong with that but there’s nothing wrong with being able to do all of this stuff either. God knows that half of, no ninety percent of the girls your age don’t have a clue to do half the stuff that you did today and they don’t want to know either. Your mother never did, I thank god for the day she started seeing your father.”

“Yeah it’s really weird Mom can actually bake like nobodies business but afterwards it’s like she used every dish in the kitchen.” I grin because dad’s banned her from a lot of the domestic duties around the house. Dad get’s a lot of flak I think from not being the man of the house as most people would see it but he’s not like that. Dad’s solid, he’s home and there’s always kids around our blocks showing up and asking him stuff and he’s always helping the neighbors out too. It’s usually some butthead who has no clue that Dad’s such a cool guy.

Grandpa shows up as Nan and I are sitting outside and holy crap he’s clean, wearing pants and clean clothes and shaved and a hair cut. He’s wearing sunglasses which just looks weird on old people to me and he looks hung over.

He stops and looks at me and the house and stuff. “Here you did above and beyond today girl…I saw you havin it out with that Barry Gould thieving dirty fuck…sorry…look you put in fourteen hours so you kin take tomorrow off if ya like.”

He put and envelope in my hand and he stomps inside and Nan and I both yell. “Wipe Your Feet!” And we look at each other and grin. He turns and glares at us then me and points a finger at me as he’s taking off his sneakers. “You are too much like yer grandma there young lady…Loretta I guess it was a pleasure.”

Nan smiles back and says. “We’ll be back tomorrow you old coot, there’s still a lot of stuff to be done.”

Old people wearing sneakers is just as weird or it is to me.

I get into the back of the truck and head back home. I’m aching and hot and tired and my heads pounding. I actually curled on in the bumpy flatbed and dozed until I felt the truck stop. Grandpa shakes my food. “We’re home kiddo.” I crawl out and hug them both before dragging my butt to my trailer. There’s a plastic bag on my door with a can of hot chocolate and stuff for making smores. I smile and go inside and make myself a hot chocolate while checking out my pay envelope. There’s two hundred bucks in there and a note.

“14hrs at $9.00/per is $126.00 the rest is a bonus.” I whistle. “Seventy bucks that’s some bonus.” But Y’know thinking about it I did really, really work for it. I stow it in my safe that’s in my trunk. I don’t got to worry about it at home but I’ve got some light fingered cousins and stuff so a lot of us lock our good stuff up. I’ve got a pretty good stash so far. I dress in a bikini top and a pair swim trunks and I take my hot chocolate and some towels and I head down to the water.

The hot chocolate helps, but of man does the salt water ever feel good. It’s cool but not too bad after it being a nice sunny day but the salt water sort of does that bathing salts magic on me and I find I nice spot relaxing in the water and let the water massage me as the tide comes in and I start getting a bit chilly.

I head in and grab my laundry and my head feels a little better, kinda fuzzy and light though. I think low blood sugar or something. I get a hot shower and talk with some of my cousins and we decide that Me and Summer and Deidre and Chantal and Chris and Nick are going to walk into town and go get something to eat and go see Thor at the movies.

I get dressed in nothing major just a regular bra after lotioning up again and I toss on my Lady Death t-shirt and my black basketball shorts making sure I’m tied pretty good just in case of those guys who want to pants someone. I leave my hair loose and grab some cash and my wallet.

Supper is Dairy Queen where I’m a sucker for flame grilled and I seriously eat my head off with two burgers and a large fries and onion rings. Honestly I really notice the increasing girl stuff going on with me. I’m not sure how much is psychosomatic but I really enjoy my fries and walking to the theater I’m just as into my Brown Blizzard as the girls are I’m right in the middle conversation wise too actually getting into a conversation most guy’d never get into about tan lines and itch cream and stuff but I talk with them about the really cherry few cars we’re seeing in town as we walk, retired guys have some pretty sweet rides.

I’m also still sort of being kept at arms length with the girls because I’m still guy equipped and I stuffed my face and don’t have to worry about my figure. The guys because I’ve got breasts or starter boobs and to them a little girly is acting girly.

It kind of gets a little lonely here in the crowd.