“Shit,” Trent whispered and looked up from his phone at the unsure faces of Kelly and Jodi. Kelly was already busy typing out a reply to Tracey to get Antony on the phone and be ready to be their getaway. Jodi gripped the magazine in her hands and stared up at the ceiling as if she could see through it and visualize the footsteps of Debra Miller as they moved now through the door from the garage into the kitchen, paused in the hallway, and then moved back into the kitchen. All three of them stood still, worried, hearts beating loudly and filling the small basement office with a steady and pounding thrill.
Kelly hit send and looked up at Trent, eyes wide, gesturing with her phone to the desk and computer with impatience. Trent nodded and ducked through the two girls and took a seat at the desk, gripping the mouse tightly to stop his hand from shaking. The screen whirred on, an old version of the Microsoft Windows lock screen, circa 2007, glowed blue and he set to work trying to log in. Jodi watched Trent, her hands rolling the magazine and then unrolling it, before setting it back down on the edge of the desk gently as she tried putting it back just as it had been, as if perhaps it was time bomb.
Talk to me. Antony's message buzzed on all three of their phones but Kelly took the lead to answer.
Found Dick's troll den. Trent's working to find something. Nothing yet. Deb's back, doesn't know we're here, yet, but … Kelly paused, her thumbs floating above the keyboard. Debra had walked to the living room and turned on the TV. Sounds of an afternoon talk show began to filter down to the trio, voices muffled, the faint audience laugh track hollow and unnerving. Trent broke the kitchen window.
Kelly switched to message just Tracey. The fuck? You didn't see her coming!?
Tracey held her iPhone in her hand and stared at the screen. Antony's voice came through to her over speakerphone.
“Trent's working on the computer now, we need to give them a little more time,” Antony's voice was soft, but commanding. For a moment Tracey started to get lost in it all over again, before she realized that she'd need to be a part of this situation now for real and real damn quick.
“Uh huh,” was her response. Kelly's message came up and she clicked to open it. She wanted to toss the phone out of the window and drive away. How far could she get before the embarrassment caught up with her? Tracey had seen the white SUV start up the street as far as six houses out. The car had slowed as it neared the house and yet Tracey had continued to stare out of the windshield of the Buick at the dead trees in everyone's front yard.
“You. You need to give them a little more time.”
“What am I supposed to do?”
Kelly and Jodi had already snapped back into action and searched quietly through drawers and bookcases, keeping to the interior of the small den and thinking they could shut the door and hold their breath if Debra decided to descend, knowing, also, that their best chance at finding information was going to be here if it even existed at all. Trent had gotten into the computer and had pulled up browser history; he was already pages deep into Dick's online existence. Tracey, outside in the getaway car, sat paralyzed, the weight of realization heavy on her chest and shoulders, her whole being locked into position: iPhone in her right hand, her left gripping the steering wheel, breathing slow and deliberate, right where Antony always wanted her to be. Frightened. Yielding.
“Ring the doorbell.”
Tracey nodded and mumbled a half goodbye to Antony, clicking out of the phone call and shakily grasping for the door handle. She found it and opened the door. She stepped out of the Buick and stared wildly out across the neighborhood before settling her gaze on the all-too normal suburban home of the Millers. Jesus, Trace, it's not hard. She thought to herself as she walked up the sidewalk towards the front door. She gave herself one last long moment to breathe and shake out her bleached blonde hair before she pushed a polished finger into the button for the doorbell.
The bell rang clearly through the house. Kelly and Jodi and Trent each paused what they were doing and looked up, Debra's footfalls once again heavy and loud even through the TV and the anxiety in their hearts. As her eyes fell from the ceiling back down reality, Jodi saw a small window across the basement from the office they were currently in. She tapped Kelly on the arm and gestured towards it. Kelly's eyes lit up. She glanced back at Trent and mouthed the words keep working, and then both girls snuck over to the window. It was small, but they were fairly certain, at least from this angle, that it could fit them each through. They could see mostly dried grass half covered with snow and the pale brightness of mid-day. Kelly motioned for Jodi to hoist her up. Jodi bent down and held out her hands while Kelly climbed onto them and then onto her shoulders so she could peer out of the window up at the front lawn, across the way the sand-colored Buick, and Tracey standing at the doorway.
Debra opened the front door and stood behind the threshold looking Tracey up and down.
“Yes?”
“Good afternoon, uh, how are you?”
“Good...did you need..”
“My name is Tracey and I, umm, have you heard of Mary Kay cosmetics?”
“I already have a consultant, sorry,” Debra started to take a step back inside and close the door but Tracey lunged forward and held her arm out to hold the door open, anxious worry flooding her face.
“Wait!”
Jodi gave a huff as she continued to hold Kelly up. Kelly let go of the sill realizing the time she was wasting and jumped off of Jodi without ceremony. She gripped the girl's hand by the wrist and pulled her across the basement back to Trent.
“Kels!” Jodi whispered and looked up at Kelly incredulously.
“We're not going through the window. She'll see us. We're going the way we came in.”
Jodi stood back and nodded.
“Come on,” Kelly pulled Trent by his sweatshirt, they didn't have much time at all. Trent quickly shut down the computer, closing all of the various windows and web pages, wiping his sleeve across the keyboard and the mouse, thinking it couldn't hurt to at least try and destroy evidence of them being here.
“I'm not selling,” Tracey spat out and then tried on a smile.
Debra looked like she was ready to call for Tracey's supervisor. Tracey knew that look. She got it at Osaka-ya all the time, and before that from when she worked at Jewel-Osco and before that from when she worked at the Tennis Club—definitely at the Tennis Club. Tracey thought fast.
“Did you know that that awful company actually tests its products on fluffy bunnies and poor little puppies? Yeah, and cats, and mice, and, uh, ponies, and humans!”
“Humans?”
“Yeah.”
Debra blinked and smiled politely and reached for the door, trying to push it closed on Tracey.
“Fetuses.”
Debra let go of the door and her hand went straight up to her heart where it twitched in some sort of shock, Tracey wasn't exactly sure she'd seen before in all her suburban service industry experience. Debra's perfectly pink glossed lips fell open, the sure sign of a Stepford Wife short circuiting.
Trent went first up the stairs, as quietly as he could. Kelly and Jodi followed. The trio inched their way up, step by step, until they were at the door that led into the hallway which they had left open a crack when they first went down. The TV was still on, an afternoon talk-show, possibly Dr. Phil seeped through the living room, but even over that he could hear Tracey at the door rambling on about animals.
“Yes, oh god, it's truly awful,” Tracey followed Debra's reaction and held a hand up to her own mouth, looking towards the ground and tearing up—well, trying to.
“I...I don't understand...”
The trio slipped into the kitchen one right after the other. They reached the back kitchen door, the broken glass still scattered over the counter top and the tile floors. Trent turned the handle as slowly as he possibly dared, hearing it click open, and then pulled it open. It scraped across the broken glass but they had no more time to be cautious and they all three dashed out onto the back steps and down them, Trent closing the door softly after them, and following their sprint past the bushes and around the side of the house.
“They, well, ma'am, it's hard to talk about the details. You see their scientists go to free clinics, and they,” Tracey whimpered.
Kelly looked around the edge of the house at Tracey standing at the front door. The Buick was just a few feet away from them, but she didn't know how to get Tracey's attention. She pulled back and pulled out her phone, quickly typing out a text.
Get out of there!
Kelly leaned back around the corner of the house and watched Tracey and Debra. Tracey's phone buzzed from inside the Buick, but she saw Kelly out of the corner of her eye and she straightened up, sniffling away fake tears.
“So, anyway, it you could tell all your friends not to buy from Mary Kay ever again...”
“Do you have some kind of brochure?” Debra asked, her hand still clutched at her heart, her eyes downcast and full of pity.
“Uh, no.”
Debra stiffened up and clicked her tongue in annoyance.
“Well how do you plan to do anything about it?”
“Well...”
“It's just like you millennials, isn't it? Whine and whine and whine and you never do anything about it. Real change takes hard work, do you understand? Go and print off some information. Get a petition. Call your congressman, do you even know who your congressman is?”
Tracey's eyes widened. She watched this woman go from compassionate Christian to hardened conservative in less than a second.
“Yes,” was all she could think to say.
Debra grimaced and shaking her head, she closed the door. From behind the shut mahogany she could hear her saying “Go on get,” or perhaps it was her imagination. Tracey turned from the door and walked back to the Buick in a daze. The other three dashed out of the bushes along the side of the house and ran to the car. Trent and Jodi clamored into the back seat and Kelly slid into the passenger seat.
“Oh my god, drive.”
Tracey started the engine and pulled away. The house and the dead trees in the front yard, falling away. The last thing Tracey glimpsed in her rear-view mirror was the mailbox, freshly painted white metal, with The Millers, Est. 1987 painted along the side in periwinkle blue.
To be continued...here.
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