The Cardstock Stranger and the Big Stupid Box

Natalie sat panting with her head against her knees between all the many pens and pencils, like thin fallen trees in an eerie forest, illuminated only by the slim slivers of light peeking through the cracks of Trev’s desk drawer. Her ears were still throbbing and ringing violently, so she could not hear if he was still storming around somewhere in the apartment, but then she felt a light, wobbling boom rattling the pencils, that she supposed was the back door slamming shut. 

She let out a determined huff and swatted the tears and the blood from her face, but without anything to wipe it off on, she more just smeared it across her face with her fingertips. Like war paint. 

The ceiling of the drawer was about twice her height. She could not see anything beyond the compartment of pens and pencils, her view obstructed by the walls of the drawer’s dividers. She glared up at the big rectangle of light in the distance, thinking of the scene in Peter Pan, when Peter inadvertently slammed Tinkerbell into a drawer and she used a pair of scissors to pry it back open. But she didn’t think she’d be able to lift a pair of scissors, let alone with enough force to jam them into the drawer’s ceiling. She’d have to figure out some other way to get out.

She stormed up to the divider wall, kicking pens and shit out her way. She couldn’t quite reach the top of the divider, so she rolled over a pen to boost herself up and over it, hopping down into the smaller compartment on the other side, which held only a USB plug and a couple of memory cards. She climbed through the next compartment, containing a set of paintbrushes, and then the next, holding a variety of cords and chargers; taking an inventory of the drawers’ supplies for anything that might help her get it open. 

As she explored, she wondered vaguely how the tooth gash on her torso had healed so quickly. Now that she thought about it, it had stopped bleeding rather quickly, given the cut’s initial deepness. Also, for all the battering she’d received that morning, she didn’t have a single mark or bruise. She supposed she must have developed some sort of super healing. She wasn’t as shocked as she might have been on any other day—after spontaneously imploding to the size of a plastic fucking army man toy, it was hard to be shocked by her anatomy, anymore. She wondered dully if she’d gained any other superpowers with her shrunken stature. Super strength would have been nice.

Over the next hour, the pain in her ears gradually decreased, her hearing returning, as she became quite familiar with the interior of Trev’s desk drawer. It contained mostly art supplies, but there were also a couple of little hardware items that might have been very handy if she had actually been able to lift any of them. Her best find was an X-Acto knife that, after much strenuous effort, she’d been able to twist open enough to pop out it’s blade, which she then slung over her back with a piece of string, sheathed like a sword in it’s plastic cap that she would pop off the moment she heard the back door open again. 

One compartment held a pile of little papers and the photographs that had been removed from the hanging string, and as Natalie climbed over all the pictures of Trev and herself, she froze in her tracks, her heart skittering, spotting a piece of cardstock the size of a baseball card. In the center of the card was a black and white picture of a pretty sixteen year old girl with long, wavy hair, wearing a pretty designer dress and smiling in a pretty way that did not quite reach her eyes. Surrounding the photo were the words:

IN LOVING MEMORY  

Rebecca Jane Fletcher 

February 09 1990 - August 12 2016

You’re our angel up in the sky, make sure you watch over us all

She stared down at it, her brows drawing together. She had no idea Trev had held onto that card for the past six—coming up on seven—years, that he kept it in his desk drawer.

They’d each been given one by the man greeting them at the door to the church, shaking their hands and thanking them for coming in soft, solemn tones. Natalie had scowled down at the card thrust into her hand before scowling up at the man. “Who the hell is Rebecca?”

Frank whacked her over the head. “Your mom.”

She scowled up at him, holding up the card. “This ain’t Mom. Mom’s name was Beck.”

“Beck is short for Rebecca and that’s what she looked like before you graced us with your presence. Now move.” He shoved her forward. “You're holding up the line. Yeah thanks,” he added to the rather befuddled greeter man, swiping the card from him before shepherding the others in after Natalie, yanking little Tommy along by the hand. 

And Natalie had scowled down at the stranger on the funeral card in her hand, in much the way she was now, in the dim desk drawer in Trev’s bedroom. Then she huffed and stalked away from it, leaving it atop the other disregarded photographs of her past. 

She tried many ways to get the drawer open. She made her way around the drawer’s border, three times, searching for any holes or weak spots. She climbed up the screws in the wooden wall to reach the top rim, the crack just tall enough for her to lay her arms across, pulling herself up to peer out into his bedroom without being able to crawl through or pry open the gap. She jammed the flat end of her X-Acto knife blade into one of the flat end screws, ramming her shoulder up against it with bared teeth, pushing against it with all her might, but could not get it to budge. 

All the while her mind kept slipping back to that abominable funeral she hadn’t wanted to attend in the first place.

*                                                *                                                *

Her grandparents had insisted on paying for it, as well as making every single arrangement. They’d chosen a huge, lavish church on the North side of town, and the reception was crowded with sniffling, mourning people that Natalie had never met in all her ten years of life. The reception hall had a food area full of tables and chairs, with a long table covered with coffee pots and danishes and mini quiches and bacon-wrapped figs and other fancy little snacks and treats. There was also a sitting area full of couches and armchairs, bordered by tables holding bouquets of flowers and many boards pinned with photographs of this ‘Rebecca’ character. And on the side wall was a set of open doors, leading to the chapel that faced a raised stage, and the big rectangular box holding her mother’s lifeless corpse.

Frank had forced Natalie into a lacy black dress that Trev and Nick had made fun of her for relentlessly, while they both got to wear cool suits and ties that had them both talking like old-school gangsters. At least her hair looked cool. It had been curled down her back and half piled behind her head in an intricate bun of twists and braids by her Auntie Rita, Frank's younger sister of two years and the coolest person on the planet—with her tattoos and facial piercings and long chestnut hair shaved on one side. 

Auntie Rita was also in attendance, the only member of Frank’s family he’d asked to come—a decision he regretted somewhat when she showed up that morning wearing heeled Doc Martens and a long, tight, backless black dress with slits up the sides. Upon their entry to the crowded reception hall, she stopped in her tracks and said, “Oh God,” scowling around at everyone. “What the hell is this? It’s like a high school reunion of everyone I never liked.”

“Leave whenever you want,” Frank grunted.

“How about now,” Natalie grumbled at his elbow.

“I was talking to your aunt. The rest of us will be staying for the service.”

Auntie Rita veered off with Trev to look at the photographs while Frank dragged Natalie and her brothers into the chapel to wait in a long line towards the casket, to greet their grandparents and Uncle William and some random lady and a couple of little kids around Tommy’s age that Natalie had never met. Her grandfather went rigid when he saw Frank, and stalked away without a word, followed by her uncle and the rando, laying a hand across his arm. Her grandmother, however, eyed him warily, sniffling into a tissue. “Frank,” she murmured, rather stiffly. “You made it.”

“Yeah, thanks for the invite,” Frank grunted with a tight smile. “Kids, you remember your grandmother?”

“Vaguely,” said Natalie coldly while Nick shook his head timidly.

“Hello Natalie, Nicholas,” she murmured with a weak smile and a sniff. “My how you’ve grown.”

“Mmm,” Frank grunted. “And this one’s–” he turned to Tommy, only to find him off in the distance, chatting amiably to a couple of little kids he’d found, not even aware they were his cousins. Frank huffed and whistled, bellowing, “Oy! Thomas!”

Tommy gaped over with hunched shoulders and a guilty grimace.

“Get over here and say hello to your grandmother!”

Tommy’s eyes narrowed in confusion, looking around, and yelled back, “Mimi’s not here?” 

“Not that grandmother!” Frank shouted. “Your other grandmother!” 

Their other grandmother’s face crumpled into tears. “Thank you for coming,” she gasped, and swept past them to greet the next couple in line, dabbing her face with a tissue.

“Pleasure talking to you,” Frank grumbled. He looked down at Nick and Natalie, both of whom were glowering back at him incredulously. “Lovely lady,” he said with a tight smile and Natalie snickered while Nick went right on glowering.

The photographs of their mom ranged from birth through childhood, with many of her in high school. She had been very pretty, with honey brown, highlighted hair and dark blue eyes. She’d been on the varsity volleyball team. She’d been in the drama club. She’d been on the student council. She’d been an esteemed writer for the school newspaper, and some of her best pieces were cut out and pinned up across the boards, as well as some poems she’d written. There were no photographs of Natalie, or Nick, or Tommy, or Frank. You’d think the funeral was for a brilliantly gifted high school student, rather than a twenty-six year old stoner and mother of three.

“Oh!” Trev suddenly burst out excitedly, farther down the displays of photos. “I found one of Natty!” As if he and her aunt had been playing a messed up game of Where’s Waldo.

“Lemme see,” Natalie snapped, stomping up beside him to glare around at the photos. “Where?”

“Right there!” he said brightly, pointing to a photo of Rebecca at her high school graduation, surrounded by her parents and older brother.

“I’m not in this.” 

“Yeah you are! Right there!” He pointed to the black garbed sea of graduates and their families in the background, to where a tall, laughing teenage boy in a graduation hat and gown was tossing and tickling a laughing little girl in a yellow polka-dot dress and a big yellow bow.

“Awe,” said Frank with a smile, who’d come up behind them to see. He pinched her ear. “You were so freaking cute. And look, there’s your aunt and Mimi.” He pointed to a scowling emo girl in a black crop top and fishnet stockings beside a scowling woman smoking a cigarette. “And Nicky, you’re in this one, too,” he added, tapping their mom’s belly, where a bump was just visible beneath the flowing black graduation gown. 

“Dang, Franky!” said Trev, grinning up at him. “Two teen pregnancies? Who knew you were such a stud!”

Frank bonked the top of his head. “Don’t talk like that.”

Natalie stared at the photograph with furrowed brows—the one missing link between Rebecca; the brilliant student, athlete, and prospective journalist, and Beck; the smirking, tattooed pothead who’d slump on the couch, playing 90’s punk on full blast while Natalie and her brothers danced around like maniacs atop the furniture, screaming to the music at the top of their lungs. She could see the beginning of the transformation in this photo, compared to the others, all of which stopped abruptly in the middle of her sophomore year, when she’d dropped from the face of the planet to be homeschooled, only to return at the start of her junior year, as if nothing had happened. 

At eighteen, Rebecca’s light brown hair was chopped at the shoulders, waving crazily out from beneath her graduation cap around big, funky earrings. Her aesthetic was nowhere near as rebellious as teen Rita’s, but compared to the rest of her clean-cut, cookiecutter family, she might as well have had her hair shaved into a green mohawk, with safety pins pierced through her nostrils. Every one of her family members stood stiffly with their arms around each other, wearing tight smiles, and Natalie wondered if this was the last photo they’d ever taken together before Beck ran away from home, to move in with Frank and her in the sunny little three bedroom apartment they found downtown—the place where she would die, eight years later on the living room floor.

Everyone seemed to know Frank. He was approached by many clean-cut adults around his age, with Natalie sulking against one hip and Nick pressed shyly up against the other, close enough in height that they were often mistaken for twins, although Natalie was still several inches taller, as she often pointed out. She gathered from their jovial greetings of things like, “Oh shit! Frank the Tank, how’s it going, man!” that teenage Frank had been quite the popular peasant amongst the elitists. They greeted Natalie, too, bellowing, “Oh, no way! This can’t be Natty Light? What a legend!” for Frank and his friends had apparently given her toddler self the same annoying nickname that her own dick ass friends would later bestow upon her in her adolescence. 

Frank’s old buddies joyously beguiled her with tales of how her dad had hauled her along with him everywhere he went his junior and senior years of high school, proudly showing her off and making teen fatherhood look so effortlessly cool and fun that other parents went into a frenzy of paranoia that it would become a trend. He’d show up to school functions with his backpack loaded with diapers and snacks and juice boxes and stuffed animals, sporting her around in a carrier like other teenage boys might sport a letterman's jacket—which he also sported. 

He’d been a star player on the football team, and the basketball team, and the baseball team, and she’d be on the bench every game—much to the chagrin of his coaches, who’d been presented with an absurd ultimatum of allowing a baby on the bench or losing their star player. But she’d been an easygoing baby that was used to getting dragged around everywhere and manhandled by teenagers, and never caused a fuss. She’d been like their little mascot, dressed in their school colors with JORDAN written on the back of her shirt in permanent marker above Frank’s number 22, getting passed around by his teammates as they rubbed the top of her head for good luck. And as she grew older she’d stand on the bench between them and wave after him as he ran by, calling, “Hi Daddy! Hi Daddy!” And whenever he’d score a touchdown or a basket or a homerun he’d sprint over and scoop her up, jumping up and down with a wide, toothy grin and bellowing, “Hi Natty! Hi Natty!” as she screeched with joy and the crowd went into absolute hysterics. 

She gathered, however, that not many seemed to make the connection between her, Frank, and Rebecca. She’d known that she’d spent the first two years of her life living with her dad at his family’s house, only seeing her mom for pre-organized visits every other weekend, but she’d never really thought much about it. Now she wondered if perhaps the identity of her mother had been kept a shameful secret from their peers; which would also explain her absence from every single photograph. 

There were a few that knew their relationship, however, and treated Frank less like an old high school buddy and more like a grieving husband, asking Natalie and her brother in hushed, somber tones, “How are you doing?” Which may just be the stupidest freaking question on the planet to ask a couple of kids with a dead mom in the next room. She far preferred the jovial young men who called her Natty Light and playfully rubbed the top of her head for luck.

 They were approached by a statuesque, blonde, very pregnant woman in her early thirties, who murmured, “Oh, Frank,” wrapping her arms around him. “Oh my God, Frank… I don’t know what to say.”

He nodded with a tight smile. “Yeah.”

She pulled back and looked down at Natalie with a gasp. “Is this… her?”

“That’s her.”

“Isn’t she just a doll,” she said, placing a hand to her chest. “She looks just like her.”

“You think?” Frank scrutinized her scowling face—the mirror image of his own. 

“And these two?” she looked around at Nick on his other hip and Trev, standing quietly to the side with his hands in pockets.

“Just Nick, here. And our third’s the one screaming his head off over there with my sister. This one’s Trev.” He reached over to smack a hand atop his head. “We apparently adopted him at some point.”

Trev smirked, shoving his hand off.

“Hi, kids,” said the woman slowly, as if conversing with children of special needs. “How are you doing?”

“Fine,” Natalie and Nick both answered in unison, like creepy siblings in a horror movie.

“I’m Anna. I used to babysit your mom when she was a little girl; we were next door neighbors growing up. She was like a little sister to me…”

“So how come we’ve never heard of you?” Natalie asked dryly and Frank whacked her upside the head.

Anna sniffed, nodding. “Well, we sort of fell out of touch when she moved across town… It’s such a shame, my little ones are the same age as you, Natalie. We used to have play dates all the time when you were little, you and the twins were the best of friends. Would you like to see them?”

“She’d be delighted,” Frank grunted, before she could answer.

“They’re around here, somewhere,” she said, looking around. “Oh, here we go.” The four of them followed Anna up to a group of boys, hanging around a table in the food area. “Bradley,” she said softly to the biggest of them; a pretty blonde boy with big blue eyes. “This is Natalie. Natalie Jordan, do you remember her?”

“No,” he said dismissively, with barely a glance in her direction.

“And this,” she continued, motioning towards the boys. “Is Nick, and Trev. Can they join you boys?”

None of the boys looked particularly thrilled with this arrangement. Bradley eyed Trev up and down, as if trying to calculate who was the taller of the two of them.

“And, Natalie,” said Anna. “It looks like the girls are just over here, if you want to come with me, I can introduce you.” She strode towards the opposite side of the reception hall, where a group of girls were sitting around in some couches and armchairs.

Trev snickered, shooting Natalie a look as she scowled up at Frank, who rolled his eyes. “Go on,” he said, shoving her after Anna. “Wouldn’t kill you to talk to some other girls for once.”

The girls all wore designer dresses, their hair done up in curls and pretty barrettes. “Sweetie,” said Anna to a pretty blonde girl sitting on the couch, the nucleus of the others. “This is Natalie Jordan. Natalie, this is my daughter, Brittany.”