Well, it was . . .
She put both hands over her mouth and fought the urge to howl like a lunatic.
The toilet was painted in the Talavera style, same as the tiles behind the stove. It was deep blue, covered in swirls and sunflowers and daisies and abstract checks. The bowl had sky-blue peonies in it.
Oh dear, dear, dear ... Oh Aunt Amelia, really?
Walter would have refused to use it. He would have insisted it be removed from the room, the house, and possibly the planet. He might even have taken a hammer to it.
Giggles leaked out between her fingers and she had to lean against the doorframe. Was she going to use it?
Well, it’s that or the sink ... or outside with the peacock ...
The rest of the bathroom was rather more sedate. It was the smallest shower that Selena had ever seen, with sea-green tiles and no shower curtain. There was a slanted drain in the floor that appeared to lead directly through the wall into the backyard.
And that’s where the snakes come in, I suppose ...
She went back to the bedroom and sat down on the mattress. It was at least ten degrees cooler inside the house than it was outside.
Copper came into the bedroom, sniffed around, then heaved herself up on the mattress.
“I don’t think this is big enough for two of us,” said Selena. It wasn’t a terribly small bed—you could fit two people on it—but Copper was a master of the canine art of oozing to fill in all available space.
Copper dug her shoulder into the mattress and gazed at the wall. If she didn’t look at Selena, she did not have to acknowledge any get-down-now gestures that might be made.
Selena sighed. She pulled her backpack off. “We’re not staying,” she informed Copper. House or no house, this was still the story of How Selena Did Something Foolish.
Although if she could get home on her own, maybe this would be a different kind of story.
“Maybe I can wash dishes or something and make enough money for a train ticket home.”
Home, where you have no place to live, no family, and probably no job. And the shelters won’t take dogs. Home, where you’d have to go back to Walter.
Maybe you don’t have to go home at all,whispered a little voice in her head, but that was ridiculous and Selena knew it.
Copper yawned and encroached on more of the bed.
Selena dragged the sheets onto the bed. She didn’t have the energy to kick Copper off and certainly not to put a fitted sheet on, so she draped the top sheet over the dog’s back and dropped the pillow onto the end of the bed.I’ll make the bed later,she told herself.
And that was the last coherent thought she had until nightfall.
She woke up because somebody was yelling her name from the door.
“Selena? Hey, you in here? Snake didn’t bite you, did it?”
Selena sat up and scrubbed at her mouth. For a minute, she could not think where she was or why the light was that strange color. Had she been sleeping in her clothes?
“Selena?”
Copper slid off the bed and trotted into the next room, tail wagging. Selena could hear her nails clicking on the tile floor.
“Hey, Copper,” said whoever it was. “She dead? I don’t wanna bother her if she’s dead.”
“I’m not dead ...” croaked Selena. Her mouth was bone dry. She got up and blundered into the bathroom, where the sight of the toilet brought her crashing awake. “Oh, Jesus!”
“Ain’t that toilet a peach?” called Grandma Billy. “Amelia won it at the church raffle. It was supposed to be a planter and Father Aguirre opened up the box and turned purple, but Amelia said she needed a new one anyway.”
“It’s very ... dramatic,” said Selena, backing away from the bathroom. There was not a script in the world for coming awake in a strange place and having to comment on a Talavera toilet. Her head was pounding.
