How to Ruin Series Part 6

"But my family fell on some tough times and we didn't have a home for a few years."

"Where did you live?"

"On the beach. It was a long time ago.

Life changes when you least expect it."

As this information sinks into my brain, Safta tells me to go relax and unpack. And she smiles at me as if she's been my grandmother forever.

I can't keep blaming her for not being there for me the past sixteen years. The poor woman didn't even know I existed.

"Where's my suitcase?" I ask Ron after my enlightening talk with Safta.

"It's in O'snot's room," he says.

I didn't just hear right. I couldn't have.

"You're kiddin' me, right?"

"There's only a few rooms here," SD explains. "You'll be sleeping in O'snot's room. I'm getting the sofa."

"What about the little guy?"

"Matan? He sleeps on a bed in his parents' room."

I'm about to suggest I sleep on the floor, but I see three ants crawling across the tile.

Gross. And when I look over at Doda Yucky, she has this pathetic look on her face as if she'll win the lottery if my happy meter reaches a certain level.

I give her a little smile and it apparently worked because she heads back to the kitchen humming a cheerful tune.

But seriously, if there's one thing an American teenage girl needs, it's privacy.

Can I tell O'snot to leave the room? It is, in fact, HER room so I think not. Thank goodness I'm not a twin. There are these twins at my school, Marlene and Darlene, and they have to not only share a room with each other, but their older sister, Charlene too. Don't ask.

SD leads me to a bedroom in the back of the house. I walk in the room and Snotty is putting on makeup while sitting on her bed.

She knows I'm there, but she hasn't acknowledged me.

The Sperm Donor stands beside me.

"Do you need help?"

"No, I'm fine," I say back to him.

He takes this as his cue to leave. I would have liked him to stay. Only to pose as a buffer between me and Snotty.

"Listen, I'm sorry about your boyfriend," I say.

She looks up and I see she's overdone the makeup on her eyes. It's as if she's outlined her eyes in black charcoal and now my cousin looks like she's in her twenties instead of a teenager. How old is she, anyway? She could use a few tips on makeup application.

One of my mom's clients is a cosmetic company. They actually used me in one of the shoots for their teen line. I learned a lot about how makeup should enhance your best features and not look all gloppy and dark (like Snotty). After my picture appeared in most of the teen magazines, my group of friends kind of dubbed me the guru of makeup.

I go over to my suitcase on the bed I suppose is mine for the next three months and pick out some clothes to change into that aren't caked with mud and straw.

"Avi isn't my boyfriend."

I'm not sure if it's Snotty talking, or my imagination playing with me.

I face my cousin. "What?"

She points her charcoal eye-circle bull's-eyes in my direction. "I don't have a boyfriend."

I take a pair of red shorts out of my suitcase. The word b.i.t.c.h is printed across the b.u.t.t in big white letters. Jessica got me the shorts for my birthday as a joke along with an anklet that wasn't a joke. I never thought I'd ever wear the shorts but then again, I never thought I'd find myself on a farm on top of a mountain in the middle of a war zone.

But, to be perfectly honest with myself, Israel doesn't actually feel or look like a war zone. Well, except for the heavily armed guards at the airport and the minefield I stepped on.

I look down at my shorts. I didn't think anyone here would be able to speak English so I packed them. I'm tempted to offer them to Snotty but instead ask, "Does Avi have a girlfriend?"

Okay, now if I wouldn't gag from the grossness of it, I'd insert my foot into my mouth. I don't care whether the guy has a girlfriend or not, but here I am asking Snotty about him.

Sometimes my mouth gets me going in a direction I have no intention of heading.

What's worse is my cousin ignores my question. So even if I didn't mean to ask the question, I'm more curious than ever to know the answer. But I'd never give her the satisfaction of asking her about Avi twice. She's already been spreading false rumors I've been mas.h.i.+ng with the guy. It would suck if she really thought I cared what his girlfriend status was.

I set my clothes out on the bed, and head for the ONE bathroom in the whole house.

I'm trying not to think about living for the next three months in a house with seven people and one bathroom. Scary, isn't it?

At home we have three bathrooms . . . and it's only me and mom living there (along with Marc with a "c" when he stays over).

I have this friend, Emily. She's obsessed with smelling EVERYTHING. Like, when she eats she smells each bite before she puts the food into her mouth. I hate having meals with her because every time I hear her sniff-eat-sniff-eat-sniff-eat I.

get extremely irritated. n.o.body really likes me when I'm irritated, except maybe Jessica.

As I enter the bathroom, my gag meter indicates low readings of any smells other than the ones emanating from my own body. Man, Emily would have a field day with me.

I am SO looking forward to getting clean. Thinking about how long it's been since I took a shower is making me dizzy.

I close the door to the bathroom and look on the handle for a lock. But the problem is there isn't one. Just a hole, as if there was a lock at one point in time.

This isn't funny. There are seven people living in this house and no lock on the bathroom door. And the d.a.m.n door has a peephole where a lock should be.

I need to get into bed fast so this day can be over. I don't want to undress in front of a peephole so I step into the tub, close the curtain, and take my clothes off. I figure out how to turn on the water.

Thankfully a spray of hot water comes hard and fast. I can't stop the moan from escaping my mouth. Hot showers rock. I'm so tired I can hardly stand so I quickly wash myself.

After the shower I head back to Snotty's room, wondering why I didn't bring a change of clothes with me to the bathroom- that-doesn't-lock. I sure as h.e.l.l don't want to change in front of Snotty. As I'm thinking about where to change into pjs, I wrap the towel tightly around myself.

I don't want to make eye contact with her, 'cause I want to avoid having to make any positive facial gestures, like smiling. I don't have any positive facial gestures left, at least not any today. In fact, all my positive gestures are probably used up for tomorrow, too.

So I look down at the floor as I enter the room, close the door, and head straight for my suitcase. I know Snotty is still in the room, I can hear her breathing. I pull a tank top and underwear out of my suitcase. I can go back to the bathroom and feel like a big dork that I'm embarra.s.sed to change in front of her or I can just suck it up and change right here with my back turned.

I drop the towel and put my underwear on. Then I put on the b.i.t.c.h shorts. When I reach for my white tank top, the door opens. I quickly cover my large b.r.e.a.s.t.s with my tank and get ready to yell at the intruder. The intruder, I a.s.sume, is none other than SD. "Do you mind?" I say.

But the person who walks into the room is not SD. It's Snotty. Which means there's someone else on her bed. I whip my head around and find Avi sitting there.

"Aaaahhhhhh!" I scream at the top of my lungs.

Avi just had a very big peep show starring yours truly.

Unfortunately my scream only alerts SD and Uncle Chime, who come barging into the room. SD's eyes dart back and forth between Avi and the half-dressed me with the b.i.t.c.h shorts on.

"What's going on in here?" SD barks, accusing me with his eyes.

Avi actually saw me undressed . . . my b.u.t.t, my b.o.o.bs, my cellulite thighs. My tongue is in shock, just like the rest of me.

Even if I could talk, I wouldn't even know what to say.

Except I smell a rat.

I look at Snotty, who has this very subtle self-satisfied smirk on her face. She's the rat, no question about it.

Uncle Chime is eyeing Ron accusingly. I know I didn't do anything, but I feel like a ho nonetheless.

Out of the corner of my eye I notice Avi standing up. He says something in Hebrew to SD I can't understand.

Ron says something angrily back to him.

Snotty starts arguing with Ron.

Uncle Chime stands as straight as a soldier, blocking the door, his hands on his hips.

And I'm just standing here, half naked. I push past Uncle Chime and run to the bathroom. After I put on my tank, I still hear loud arguing coming from Snotty's room.

I sit on the edge of the bathtub until the arguing stops.

If this is my initiation to Israel, I'm scared to find out what the next three months here are going to be like.

8.

You can attract bees with honey, but why would you want to?

The jet lag excuse works like a dream on the Sperm Donor my second day in Israel, with the added benefit that I've been able to sleep most of the day.

But now it's the late afternoon and I'm fully rested. After grabbing a bite to eat, I put on my jogging outfit, grab my iPod, and head outside. As I venture down the street, I spot Safta sitting outside on a lounge chair on the edge of the mountain.

When she notices me, she waves me over.

I jog down the dirt road and stand next to her. Peering down the mountain, at the lake far below, and at the other mountains in the distance takes my breath away.

"Chicago is as flat as . . ." I'm about to say "Snotty," but I don't. Instead, I say, "We don't have any mountains where I live. I guess that's why they make skysc.r.a.pers, they're like Chicago's mountains."

"I've never been to Chicago," Safta says.

"Well, you'll have to come visit me. I can take you to the Sears Tower. You can see, like, four states from the top floor. It's totally cool. And we have Lake Michigan.

It's so wide you can't even see across it."

I get excited thinking about taking her around Chicago when she comes to visit me. She will love Millennium Park, where she can watch people and have lunch on the gra.s.s smack dab in the middle of the city.

And I bet she'll love the Art Inst.i.tute of Chicago and Museum of Science and Industry. The museum has awesome exhibits. My favorite is the dead baby exhibit.

It's really called the Neonatal exhibit, but I say just tell it like it is. It's a bunch of real, dead babies of every stage, all encased in formaldehyde or some other liquid. They have about thirty embryos and fetuses that are one week old on up to a full term baby. They even show identical twin embryos. It's the coolest thing I've ever seen.

Yeah, it would be neat to have Safta come visit.

I sigh, getting caught up in the moment.

"I feel like I could scan the whole country from up here." Then I think about the malls, miles and miles from here. "But it's so far from everything."

"You're a city girl, eh?"

"Through and through. Give me a Kate Spade purse and a pair of Lucky jeans and I'm a happy girl."

She laughs, the soft, warm sound filling the air.

"I love it here. Away from the noise, away from crowds. It's the perfect place on earth for an old woman like me.

Besides, at my age I don't need a Kate Spade purse or Lucky jeans."

"I'm sure you were one hot mama when you were a teenager," I say, then want to take those words right back. Talking to her like she's one of my friends is a stupid thing to do.

"I married your grandfather when I was eighteen years old."

"Was it love at first sight?"

"No. I couldn't stand the sight of him.

Until one day he bought me flowers."

Flowers? That's the oldest trick in the book. "So he brought you some roses and you fell in love?" It's a cute story, if a little boring.