Home Fries

Chapter 1

Chapter 1“Should we get a pizza?”

Rebecca Fry made a face from the soft white couch. She put down the DVD she was holding in order to gawk at Josie West, her best friend. “No, pizza is boring. We should get something fun.”

“I think pizza is fun.”

“But it’s just the same thing over and over.”

“Yeah,” Josie said, her mouth aghast. She shut the cupboard door in her kitchen where she was once looking for suitable snacks and now folded her arms across her chest. Her baby blue shirt brought out the blues in her eyes and highlighted the amber-coloured curls that bounced against her shoulders. “I can’t believe we are having this discussion. After years—years—of knowing you, and you betray me in this way.”

Rebecca matched Josie’s stance, crossing her arms across her chest and opening her mouth in anger. Mock-anger, really, because this was Josie, who stood all of five feet one inches, and herself at almost five feet ten. Their gazes met. They stared one another down. And after only three seconds, max, they both burst out laughing.

“Okay, for real, though,” Josie said. She gestured to her cupboards and then sighed. “I have nothing here to eat. And I really want something more than a snack. It’s imperative for movie night.”

Rebecca felt her stomach rumble, too. She was going to have to take a painkiller later, and she needed something more than chips in her stomach. She picked up a DVD for the Clive Barker film Hellraiser and held it up for Josie to see. “You sure we’re going to want to eat watching this?”

“Yeah. Obviously. But we won’t start with Clive Barker’s masterpiece. We gotta start with the classic films, like Psycho and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.”

Josie forgot about their food dilemma for a moment as she stepped out of her kitchen and back into the living room. She gestured to the DVDs on the coffee table, along with the remaining ones on her shelf, and listed off with exact precision the ways in which their horror-filled Halloween weekend was supposed to go. Rebecca allowed Josie this level of precision—since it was her show she was guest starring on, anyway, and since she was the resident expert. Rebecca liked horror, but Josie was a damn scholar here.

The schedule for her podcast with her other friend, Dominique, was in front of Rebecca, and she surveyed their tentative script for the upcoming theme month of October. It was only the beginning of the month, barely in double-digits, but they had to be prepared well in advance. That meant a cram session for all the movies Rebecca may not have seen but were necessary to understand the nuances of horror cinema. Their tentative plans had been to watch a few movies tonight, then a few more tomorrow, before Rebecca was going to guest-star on Josie and Dom’s horror podcast, Final Girls, come Monday. It was supposed to be good promo for Rebecca’s own YouTube channel and diversify her audience before her book came out.

It all seemed like a good plan. An easy plan. One that Rebecca had been looking forward to since she began the last section of her book. It was getting harder and harder to write and give it a good ending. How were you even supposed to end an autobiography when you were still alive? She hadn’t known. And so, she’d procrastinated right up until the deadline and eschewed all television—or cafe visits with Josie—until three days ago.

But now they were arguing over food.

“Okay, okay,” Rebecca said, putting her hands in the air to signal for Josie to stop. “I won’t fight with you about the fact that I don’t exactly think The Shining counts as a horror film because of what both King and Kubrick has said about it, and I won’t fight about pizza, even though I think it’s like the loneliest meal you can eat—”

“What?”

“I said no fighting,” Rebecca said. She smiled so Josie knew she was still kidding. “But we do need some food. Or I do. I feel the hanger coming on.”

“Okay. Fine. What about…” Josie’s eyes fell onto the secondary shelf in her coffee table where a bunch of flyers for takeout places around the Waterloo area were stored. She put the menus next to the DVDs and fanned them out so they could both look.

When Rebecca’s gaze fell on the neon colours for a place called Mel’s Diner, complete with an Elvis cut-out next to a pink Cadillac and James Dean in a leather jacket, they both paused. Shakes and Burgers, breakfast-for-dinner, and all things diner were the name of the game. Rebecca’s stomach rumbled. So did Josie’s.

“You good now?” Rebecca asked. “Because I’m dying for some fries.”

“I’m very picky with my fries,” Josie said, for the sake of being contrarian, it seemed, but she soon nodded. “But they have chicken and waffles, so I’m sold.”

Josie dialled in their orders, and, fifteen minutes later, there was a buzz from her apartment building. Rebecca was caught off-guard by the sound since it was exactly like her own buzzer. The two of them were across-the-hall neighbours in their apartment complex located just outside the downtown core of the sleepy town of Waterloo. They had met years ago in Toronto at physiotherapy, and when their primary care doctor had packed up her things and moved to this city, the two of them knew there was no other option for their medical care. So they’d made the move together and parked across from one another.

In spite of that being over two years ago, Rebecca’s place still looked as if she’d just moved in, while Josie’s was lush and filled with a dozen trinkets from her horror memorabilia collection, matching furniture, and every photo on the wall hung on a frame. It was easier to hang out at Josie’s than her own place, but that didn’t mean Rebecca was thrown off-guard by how familiar the sounds, shapes, and overall feel of the apartment was.

Josie was in the middle of dishing out their food onto matching plates from her cupboard when her cell phone rang. She gasped as she saw the name.

“Is that not the diner?” Rebecca asked. “Because I feel as if I was stiffed on fries, and I take that slight personally.”

Josie didn’t answer. She didn’t even play along.

Rebecca leaned across the kitchen counter so she could see what Josie’s phone said. MOM AND DAD was in bold. “You okay?” Rebecca asked. “You do something to get you disowned?”

“No…” Josie sighed. She turned to examine the calendar for her podcast and then the calendar on her fridge. Meanwhile, her phone still rang and rattled against the counter.

Rebecca fought the urge to pick it up.

“Shoot. Shoot. I’m dead.”

“What?” Rebecca asked. “What’s going on? Surely, your parents aren’t that mad at you, whatever it is?”

Josie met Rebecca’s gaze and, with a belated sigh, finally picked up her phone. “Hi, Mom.”

Rebecca could only hear a handful of familiar words—Josie, what are you doing tonight, what’s your address—but they were enough, combined with Josie’s defeated body language, to clear the room of fun. This movie night—this movie weekend—had gone sideways. Josie hadn’t planned for something, and now her parents, who were in their mid-fifties, were sketching out the difficulties of finding the right apartment building so late at night.

Rebecca’s head throbbed. She knew she still needed a painkiller to keep the edge off her stiff joints, so in spite of being rude, she grabbed her pills from her purse. She swallowed one back and, without waiting for Josie, started to eat her fries so the medication didn’t make her want to vomit. As she got herself a glass of water, she also noted the calendar on the fridge.

This weekend was the Canadian Thanksgiving weekend. Josie’s birthday was supposed to be on Tuesday, and she’d marked it with several exclamation points since she’d finally be turning twenty-two. Her youth sometimes made Rebecca baulk—she herself was almost thirty—but whatever immaturity Josie had was eased out of her when she’d shown up at the same physio’s office in utter pain. Pain was always the great equalizer, and great ager, especially in Rebecca’s books.

“f**k,” Josie said as she disconnected the call. “f**k, f**k, fuck.”

“What’s going on?” Rebecca asked. She ate a few fries between her questions. “Is everything okay? Sorry I’m already eating, it’s just—”

“Don’t worry, I know. Same for me.” Josie steadied her shaking hand and ate some of her fried chicken as she took her own medication. Though the tension oozed out of her and made Rebecca feel as if indigestion was a contagion, she waited. Something was wrong, but the two of them both still had physical needs to attend to before anything could ever be solved.

“Okay. So,” Josie said after about ten minutes. Rebecca was halfway through her burger. “My birthday is on Tuesday, yeah? And my grandfather’s is in early November. My mom wanted to give us a joint present this year since I’m named after his wife. Josephine. And, well, I think I must have been wrong because I thought it would be after Halloween, after my podcast, when there was a holiday for Remembrance Day and—”

“And,” Rebecca said, guiding Josie. “And what’s the real situation?”

Josie bit her lip. “They’re coming tonight.”

“Tonight-tonight? It’s almost seven now. They won’t even get here until nine.”

“More like 9:30 with the way my father drives.”

“That’s barely any time to do anything.”

“I know. We could maybe watch a movie, but it’s likely—”

“No, that’s barely time for them to do anything here. Are they trying to celebrate your birthday tonight? Josie, help. I’m missing pieces.”

Josie sighed. She started to put away her food and remaining dishes while she spoke. “My family wanted to do a reunion in North Carolina. It’s on the calendar. But I thought it was after Halloween, like I said, in November. So that is where I wrote it. But, apparently, my mother wanted to do it sooner—like now sooner.”

“Like tonight? Are you seriously leaving for North Carolina tonight?” Rebecca’s voice rose. That was at least a thirteen-hour drive. Waterloo was close to the US border, but if her parents were coming from their town outside Toronto…

“Tomorrow morning. They wanted to stay over at my place, then drive in the morning. Then meet my sister and her husband in DC where they said they were going to get me a present, and then by Monday, we would all make it to the house for Canadian Thanksgiving.” Josie balled her fists. She seemed utterly disappointed, yet a smile crossed her face. “We’d leave after a week and be home in time for Halloween, and my mom said we’ll just celebrate my grandfather’s birthday early. It’s a good idea, too, since he had that close-call in spring. But…”

“But that means our podcast plans are kind of on hiatus?”

Josie nodded. “I’m so sorry. I thought this was a different week. I thought—”

“It’s okay,” Rebecca said. She put a hand over her chest. Oh, considering all the bad news she’d received in the past, a cancelled movie night was nothing. Sure, she was looking forward to knowing exactly how Hellraiser turned out, but that could wait. “Do you still want me to speak on the podcast? Is that delayed, too?”

“We could Skype in or something. This means Dom is also screwed. Shit.” Josie touched her forehead. “I didn’t plan for any of this. My apartment is a mess. Where are my parents going to sleep? On the floor? s**t, shit.”

“I have an air mattress,” Rebecca said, immediately going into fixing mode. “I could bring that over?”

“And I would hear about my father’s rickety back all day tomorrow. That might work for my mother—”

“Or you,” Rebecca said. “Just give your parents your bed. Sleep on your couch. Because, man, that’s a nice couch. I could sleep there. I was going to while we watched Cagliari.”

“But that’s a classic!”

“It’s a silent movie. My God, I’d fall right asleep.”

“I’m so mad right now.” Josie was smiling in spite of her words. “I’m really going to miss you and this.”

“We can still watch a movie tonight,” Rebecca said. A plan bloomed in her brain, one that made her truly believed she’d actually lost nothing since her accident. “I mean, what if instead of just giving your parents your bed, you gave them the entire apartment? They could stay here like it’s a hotel room, and you could stay at my place? That way, we can keep watching some movies and prepare ourselves in some way so that we can still do the podcast. Even if it’s remotely.”

Josie’s blue eyes beamed. A quixotic feeling swarmed in Rebecca’s stomach. She chalked it up to her pills. “That’s brilliant. I can loan you the rest of the movies, and, hell, we can even watch them over Skype together. It’ll be like we’re never apart.”

Again, another quixotic feeling. Rebecca laughed it off.

“Great,” she said sarcastically.

Josie acted aghast. Their gazed locked. And soon, they were laughing again. A tense night had become one of the better ones in recent memory, and they hadn’t even watched a movie yet.

“We don’t have too much time,” Rebecca said, gesturing to Josie’s clock. “You should pack. I will try to get my place horror-ready.”

“Eeep! You’re right. Packing. Fuck.” Josie darted from her kitchen into her bedroom.

Rebecca watched her small stature open her closet and start to pull out outfits for a handful of moments. When Josie got to her swimsuit, a blue bikini, Rebecca couldn’t help but imagine how that would look against her skin tone and her eyes.

She then turned away. She grabbed the DVD with Hellraiser on it and went to her apartment across the hall.