No Dead Guinea Pig

I'd almost missed it. In fact, had I not suddenly become so incredibly disgusted with myself at that exact moment, I would have stepped right past it and continued on to the convenience store, irredeemably miserable.

But fate had other ideas.

I was treading across the litter-strewn vacant lot and I was mad. Mad at myself for staying with Curt. Mad that I still allowed him to hurt my feelings. Mad that I was crying because of it. I'd managed to keep my tears silent thus far, but as my foot came down on a glass soda bottle and I rolled my ankle, a sob escaped me of its own volition. Angrily swiping at my face with my sleeve, I made to turn back toward home when my swollen eyes landed on something lying amidst the condom wrappers and chewed gum.

Sniffling, I limped over to it and, against my better judgment, picked it up. It was a little black notebook, not spiral but with a spine, held shut with a thin elastic band. A satiny black ribbon hung from between the pages like a tongue. The cover was pristine, neither a dent nor a blemish, and it was apparent that whoever had owned it cared for it dearly or hadn't owned it for very long.

Without a second thought, I tucked the notebook into the waistband of my jeans and hobbled home.

The apartment was silent when I returned, as I expected it to be. Whenever we argued, Curt would usually storm out to soothe his wounded sensibilities, as if I was the one who hit below the belt, spitting out caustic criticisms like a verbal gumball machine. Nothing was off-limits with him: my intelligence, my appearance, my inability to find a job. He would even insult my upbringing like that was something over which I'd had any control. Our spats inevitably ended with me in tears and him going somewhere to "make himself feel better." That somewhere was usually a place where he could score a mood-altering substance.

"Why do you stay?" my sister had asked on countless occasions.

Because when things were good, they were really good. And I didn't really know anything else – Curt and I had been together since our freshman year of high school. But those were just excuses, and as I stood in our kitchen with my contraband still pressed against my back, I voiced the truth aloud for the first time: "I'm afraid to be alone."

Even bridging the gap between Curt and the hypothetical next guy seemed too daunting a task. That apprehension was one of many bad qualities I'd inherited from my mother.

I slipped into the bathroom and removed the notebook from my pants. This could be someone's journal, or maybe an address book, or perhaps a step-by-step guide on how to live one's life properly.

The possibilities were endless.

Holding my breath, I ran my hand over the skin-warmed cover and then slid the elastic band to the side.

The pages were all blank.

Disappointment welled up inside of me, as well as fresh tears. I don't know what, exactly, I'd been hoping for. This was simply a notebook, lost or discarded among the trash that peppered my rundown neighborhood. But for some reason, I felt as if I'd find answers within those pages, as if my purpose rested behind the faux leather cover.

Create your purpose, a voice said. Put that in the notebook.

Easier said than done. I had no idea where to begin.

Well, what do you want?

Looking into my own bloodshot eyes in the mirror over the sink, I thought that might be an easier question to answer.

I just wanted to be happy.

So how do you get there?

I plucked my favorite lavender felt pen from the junk drawer next to the kitchen sink, then flopped down across the foot of the full-sized bed I shared with Curt. It almost seemed profane to mar the flawless surface of the blank page, but I printed my wish as neatly as I could:

I WANT $20,000

It was more money than I'd ever seen at once. I was sensible enough to know that it was hardly "never work again" money, but that was just the number that represented salvation to me, ever since I'd been a child and overheard my mother lament, "If twenty thousand dollars could just fall out of the sky, everything would be okay." I never understood the significance of that amount, but shortly thereafter, she packed me and my sister and all of our possessions into her beat-up old hatchback and dropped us off with our grandparents.

Twenty thousand dollars. That would be awesome.

I'd almost missed it, but this time, my gaze unwittingly went to the spot where I'd found the notebook. A gray shoebox this time, discarded along with the usual offal that cluttered the vacant lot between my apartment and the strip mall where the convenience store was located. I instinctively took a step toward it, then pivoted away. A random box could mean trouble – a bomb, or drugs, or maybe just something gross like a dead bird. Had someone given their pet guinea pig the urban version of a Viking funeral? Maybe instead of setting it ablaze and sending it out to sea, they'd set it adrift in an ocean of trash.

I continued on to my destination and made my purchase (spicy corn chips a shade of red that does not occur in nature, a package of coconut-frosted snack cakes, ranch-flavored sunflower seeds) and then headed back home. Though I'd promised myself I wouldn’t look for it again, my head swiveled in the direction of the box.

It was still there.

This could literally blow up in your face, I thought even as I was tucking it under my arm. There was a heft to it that told me one thing if nothing else:

This was no dead guinea pig.

Heart pounding so forcefully that I could feel it in my ears, I made the seven-minute walk home without incident. Curt was at work, so I sat at the kitchen table and, before I could talk myself out of it, removed the lid from the box.

"What, Gloria?"

The next morning, I was making Curt's breakfast and had stopped several times just to watch him. I was studying his face, his mannerisms, trying to discern whether he knew anything about what I'd found.

"Nothing," I mumbled.

"Then why don't you stop staring at me and give me my eggs before they're burnt, for once? Some of us have to get to work."

After he left, I went back to the pink duffel bag where I kept my feminine products. I figured that Curt's overblown sense of masculinity wouldn't allow him to rummage through those particular items, and I was right. The twenty-dollar bills that had been inside that shoebox were still there.

All thousand of them.

I had been dangerously close to convincing myself that I'd been dreaming.

I retrieved the notebook from between the mattress and box spring and opened it to the first page. What I'd written in shimmery purple ink had been neatly struck through in red. I stared at this for an impossibly long time, unable to wrap my head around what appeared to have happened.

Suddenly coming to my senses, I dropped the notebook as if it was hot and kicked it under the bed. Was this some kind of magic? Something evil? I wiped my hands on my shirt. Whatever this was, the timing and amount were too much of a coincidence to be a coincidence. Was someone watching me? Had they been in our apartment?

What was happening to me?

The passage of forty-eight hours found me with my face pressed against the floor, in danger of pulling my shoulder out of whack as I tried to release the notebook from exile. Triumph shot through me as my fingers brushed the vinyl cover, and I was able to shove it far enough over to the other side of the bed so that I could grasp it.

It was time for an experiment.

On the next blank page, I wrote what I wanted.

"We're not keeping that thing, Gloria. The last thing I need is another mouth to feed."

"But she's small," I protested. "She won't eat that much."

"It won't stay small. And who knows what diseases that thing has – where did you say you found it?"

"Right outside." It wasn't a complete lie – the vacant lot was, technically, outside. "Look at how cute she is." I held the spotted white puppy up for him to get a closer look.

Curt's face softened slightly. "Fine. But the first time that thing makes a mess, I'm getting rid of it myself."

The moment that I was alone (well, sort of – I was accompanied by Zoe the puppy), I fished the notebook out from under the mattress, rather unsurprised by what I saw crossed out on the second page:

I WANT A PUPPY

"Where'd you get those?" Curt asked me three weeks later.

I was making chili and froze mid-stir. He was peering at me, eyes narrowed almost comically. I'd forgotten to remove my new diamond earrings before he got home. "Um, from Kate."

"You got those from your sister?"

"They're not real. The metal irritated her ears." The lies were coming more easily now, though I'd managed to keep my new designer shoes and handbag hidden from him. Those and the laptop computer and overpriced sunglasses.

And the emerald ring.

And the ankle-length leather coat.

Soon, it would be impossible to keep my treasures out of sight. But I had a plan, one that I'd been turning over and over in my head since I opened that notebook to discover that my first wish had been granted.

"Where's the toaster?" Curt suddenly asked, as if he had been reading my mind.

"It caught fire, so I threw it out." I walked over to the sink, biting back a smile. The toaster had been a necessary casualty in my test run before I executed my plan.

He snorted in disgust. "You can't even make toast right? Jesus, Gloria." He exited the kitchen then and I allowed the grin that I'd been stifling to finally blossom on my face. When I caught sight of my reflection in the window, I looked positively insane.

But I was too excited to care.

As hard as it was to wait, I did not write my next wish until Curt left for work on Monday. I absolutely did not want to risk the chance of him discovering my notebook and taking it from me.

Zoe watched silently as I fetched the little black book from its hiding place. I had considered relocating it to a more secure spot but was afraid of jinxing things. The feeling that came over me as my fingers grazed the vinyl under my mattress was unlike anything I had ever experienced before: anxiety, elation, a concentrated form of anticipation, all mixed together.

Hope.

Curt gets off work at six-thirty. It's now eight o'clock and he hasn't made it home yet. I'm at the kitchen table, where I have a view of the front door. Every little noise makes me think that he's home, that the door will open and my life will remain as it has been for the past nine years.

But I know that it won't.