Read Checked for Free Online Page B

One. Two. Three.
     
     
     
3.) Flowers
Yellow roses
Confession is at 4:00 p.m.
-Calista
     
     
     
    Count. Send.
    8:00 a.m. Time to get my morning routine moving. Melanie has already gone home to spend the morning with Abby. Mandy will be asleep in her room until around noon. That will give me plenty of time.
    Thermostat: 70 degrees. Stove: off. Door: locked. ( Thank you, Melanie . She hasn’t forgotten once since I gave her a spare key.) Blinds: opened. Alarm: off. (It was set for 8:30 this morning—just in case.) Teeth: brushed. Pictures: straightened. Living Room: cleaned. Floor: swept. Refrigerator: sorted. Dishes: washed. Kitchen Floor: scrubbed. Doorknobs: wiped. Laundry: started. Prayers: said. Bathroom: sanitized. Bathroom Floor: steam-mopped. Shower: taken. Body: cleaned, shaved, lotioned, and weighed. Hair: dried and styled. Clothes: on.
    11:05 a.m. Mandy’s up early. She knocks on my bedroom door.
    “Hey, Callie. I’m heading out. I have to work on a group science project thing.”
    “All right, Mandy. Careful.”
    “See you later.”
    Minutes later, I hear the front door close. I run out to check the lock and then return to my room.
    Maybe I should just quickly check my email before I continue to work on my paper. If I keep up this pace, I will soon have checked my email more times in one week than I did in my entire career as an undergraduate student.
    Laptop: open. Inbox: empty.
    After scraping off the last bit of clear nail polish from my left pinkie finger, I press the “check email” icon.
    Still nothing. {The refrain of Whitney Houston’s “I Have Nothing” plays broken record-style.}
    Focus, Callie. Paper time.
     
     
     
     
    THREE HOURS LATER. THREE PAGES, hand-written. Many more to go.
    3:03 p.m. Email inbox is still empty.
    3:05 p.m. Almost time for confession. Leaving-the-house routine.
    3:45 p.m. On my way. I drive and consider the mean things I’ve thought since last Saturday. I remember the grocery store parking lot. Those loud kids and lover boy with his girl. Unnecessarily mean thoughts just because I had to sit in a parking space for a few extra minutes. Irritation toward Dr. Gabriel. Just like every week.
    Perhaps you ought to tell Father Patrick about your incessant desire to check to see if a potentially married man wrote you an email. And about the fact that you are disappointed he hasn’t written more today even though he is probably off spending quality time with his wife and son. I’m pretty sure the big J.C. really doesn’t like it when you think about messing with family units.
    I tell my conscience to shut it as I pull into St. Anne’s parking lot. I want him to email me because I want him to help me so that maybe in the future I won’t be pulling into this parking lot for confession every Saturday until I die.
    4:02 p.m. Confession.
    4:04 p.m. Out with a penance. Father Patrick wants me to say the Hail Mary three times. I say three sets of three. Just to be sure.
    4:35 p.m. Home. Mandy’s already out for the night. Dinner and a movie with some sorority sisters. I see her standard note sitting on the table as I’m drying my hands. I know what it will say before I even make my way across the kitchen.
    Title of the movie she’ll be seeing. Time it starts. Theatre number. General area in the theatre where she’ll be sitting. The fact that she’ll save a seat for me “just in case.”
    Just in case I miraculously forget the story I heard somewhere about people with AIDS sticking themselves with needles and then placing the needles in movie theatre seats so you can get a side of disease with your movie experience.
    Still haven’t forgotten, Mandy. Check back next week.
    As I walk back to my room, I have to admit to myself that it’s nice that she still asks.
    More Pablo Neruda tonight. I force myself not to open my laptop until I’m scheduled to during night preparations.
     
     
     
     
    11:30 P.M. THREE MORE PAGES WRITTEN tonight. Night preparations