Kids on Fire: A Free Excerpt From Spider Brains: A Love Story by Susan Wingate

And here, for your reading pleasure, is our free excerpt:

SPIDER BRAINS

A Love Story

by Susan Wingate

“theitsybitsyspiderwentupthewaterspout

downcametherainandwashedthespiderout

outcamethesunanddriedupalltherain

andtheitsybitsyspiderclimbedupthespoutagain“

ONE – SPEIDER: The E is Silent

Me?

Super human kid by night, regular high school teenager by day. I’m a junior. Well, next year.

My name is Susie Speider. The E is silent. My name is NOT pronounced speeder. For crying out loud. We are not a family of racers. Sheesh.

My problem? There are two major-stager problems in my life. My meds, for starters. They say I’m ADD. Yeah. Like, so, I concentrate on the moment du jour. What’s wrong with that?

Then, there’s the issue with my grades. They suck. And, my teacher, Ms. Morlson. She hates my guts! She holds my going or not going to the U in the palm of her cold calloused clammy hands.

(This  is a pic of me. The QUEEN of dorks). But, with the new glasses my mom got me and my new meds, maybe I can improve over the next two years enough to bring my grades up to pass with something decent.

The problem? With these new glasses now I look like a short amorphous geeky version of the svelte coolamundo Morticia from the Addam’s Family but not in a good way and certainly not with her way cool clingy clothes. Plus, with my braces, Lord, I look like the empress of geeks on planet Nerd-O-1.

As mom says my glasses might allow me grades, “good enough to get you into at least one of the state’s colleges.” She said colleges but I knew she meant universities.

Mom didn’t go to college so she thinks any grade higher than high school senior is college. I suppose she’s right to some extent but there are those, you know, who might argue.

Sooo.

I’m trying out new words right now, new catch-phrases, like “fierce” and “sick,” and like “rad.” Rad is just a shortened word for radical. I’m thinking of shortening the word amazing to “am” or “azin’” but worry that people might mistake me for a Cockney gal talking about small wrinkly fruit. That would be lame.

See, though, and this is pretty astonishing, the editor of the school newspaper, she’s a senior, her name is Tanya (not pronounced Tŏnya but Tănya), well, I sort of think she understands me. I think. I mean, ’cause, whenever I see her, I give her an installment of a very unique and unusual, weird word. I find them on this way cool website called,BrownieLocks. Anywho. She treats me okay. She takes my words, anyway, and sometimes they show up in the paper.

Of course, no one will want to use any of the words I make up.

I’m not cool. Only cool kids make up catch-phrases like sick.

I’m a nerd and not even the good kind. My grades suck. So, I guess, that makes me more of a dork.

Pathetic.

I have a pussy, a pussy-cat. And, yes, I say pussy so Get Over It!

Most of my girlfriends have pussies, well, two of them. Anyway, the only two girlfriends I have in the whole entire world who go Ronkonkoma High, Ricki and Jamie. The only bad thing about Ronkonkoma High School, well other than the mascot (the Roc), the pep clubbers ( the Roc-kers), all the popular kids, the loadies, the boys who somehow believe they magically lived in Tombstone during their gestation period and came out looking like cowboys, the principle, and Ms. Morlson–yuk. Well, the only bad thing other than those bad things is that Ronkonkoma High sits only a block or so past the cemetery and the cemetery sits a block or so past my house.

I hate the cemetery. I used to walk by it. No prob.

Anymore? Not so much. Now, I go the long way.

Mine is named Delilah. My pussy cat!? ‘Member? Please track.

Ricki’s is Joe.

Dweeb. Plus, Joe is a girl. Dweeb squared.

Jamie’s is Sasha. A more pussy-like name. If. Ever.

Ricki’s name is really Ricki but Jamie’s is not. Jamie’s real name is Jane because of some freakish love affair Jane’s mother and father have for Tarzan. They have every kind of Tarzan story, poster, old movie playbill, Tarzan dolls (still in their packaging for better return on their dollars! OMG), and Tarzan sidekicks too, like Boy and Cheetah. It’s totally dorky. Although, I must admit, Cheetah is pretty cool.

So, Jane, who I’ve known since Ronkonkoma Elementary and then Ronkonkoma Middle School and now Ronkonkoma High, changed her name to Jamie when she entered high school as a freshman. People still call her Jane, though, and make monkey noises at her. Not nice. People bite sometimes. But, Jane just ignores them like, “Huh? What did you just say? I can’t HEAR YOU!” And, tugs a long strand of her pink streaky hair out from behind her ear and lets it hang into her face. She’s all about Goth. I thought she’d get over it in the fifth grade but it stuck.

God.

Still, she’s my friend, probably my BFF, kind of more than Ricki ‘cause Ricki is super smart and prettier than me and Jane/Jamie by like eons away. But, Ricki doesn’t think about boys too much, just Billy, so she doesn’t wear make-up and she loves science and she spends all of her time with her father who is kind of nerdy because he is an actuary so he’s always counting on something. If you know what I’m saying.

He will, just, all of the sudden burst into Ricki’s bedroom when we’re all studying at her house and say “Did you know the average age of people who die from, blah, blah, blah…” and then my eyes glaze over like an old dog’s and I fall back onto her bed and start twirling my pencil like it’s a baton and I zone myself into marching bands and football games and before you know it, he leaves. Good Gandalf, he’s weird. Plus, he’s so ugly it explains why Ricki’s mother left him and that’s where Ricki gets her ‘pretty’ gene from. You know.

My name? Just plain old Susie. Though, I thought about dropping the E from each of my names,

Susie Speider = Susi Spidr

but it looked too graphic novel, so I just keep my stupid name the way it has been since I was just a sperm cell swimming up inside mom’s hoo.

And, don’t act like my mom never had sex. It seems kind of gross but everybody should do it at least once in their life.

Get over it.

Maybe even I will someday but not with the way these new stupid glasses make me look.

I’m trying to talk mom into getting me contacts.

“We’ll see.”

Sooo. What else…

Oh. Mother hated my grades and my “inability to focus” as she put it and got me into psych ther and got me these specs and onto meds and now my dyslexia isn’t so dyslexic, my ADD isn’t so disordered and my grades this semester actually have improved. Drastically, really. Like, they totally went 4.0 across the board. ‘Azin!

Mom’s happy and that’s good ‘cause mom’s a good old gal. And, I hate it when I make mom cry. She cries enough without my antics.

Mom graduated in 1990 from Ronkonkoma High.

Don’t say it. Don’t even think it. I know how gross it is to graduate from the same high school as your own mom.

After she graduated mom went to work for Costco as a boxer. Not the kind with gloves, the kind with cardboard boxes. Doi.

She performed so well there that they promoted her to cashier and when she excelled as a cashier, they suggested she enter the management program which she did and now she’s a regional manager covering Ronkonkoma, NY, Sanguay, NY and Poughkeepsie, NY. That’s pretty cool, I think. ‘Cause even though mom’s totally out of touch with what’s cool today, she’s still pretty cool. Plus, she works at the Nesconset store which is only an easy breezy four miles or so from our house–a one, no. 9 Sloan Drive, Ronkonkoma, New York 11779, (631) 222-7454.

So, like, we get everything, from toilet paper to dried mushrooms in bulk quantities! Mom likes working there and she likes that she can come home for lunch if she wants.

One thing about Ronkonkoma is that everything is real close by–the high school, the Costco, the cemetery. Bleh.

My mom (btw, her name is Willa Speider and used to be Camden before she married dad), can even read financial statements and all that business rigmarole, as she puts it.

Mom likes to use big words like rigmarole because she thinks the more syllables a word contains the more important you sound, like, supercallafrajalisticexpialladoscious. But, seriously, rigmarole doesn’t even come close to supercallafrajalisticexpialladoscious in syllable count. What it does come close to is ridiculous count.

Face it fool! Rigmarole ain’t antidisestablishmentarianism, now, is it?

THAT’s a big word, one with loads of meaning too. But, I prefer big words with few syllables, like, fractal. Now, that’s a huge word… in terms of meaning, no? My take on words, like this for instance, is another reason why Tanya likes me.

Any who.

I’m trying on new abridged words. I’m hoping “am” gets picked up on soon.

I told you that I’m super human, right?

It happened a few days after they’d finally figured out how to assuage (another am word) my dyslexia and my lack of focus, by putting me on these anti-ADD pills.

I hadn’t been sleeping much because of the meds—a snotty side effect. I have to take them at night. Plus, the doctor said “they will have a tendency to dehydrate you so take them with plenty of water.” I slug ‘em back in two gulps and hit the hay!

Anywho… that night I noticed this eight-legged little freaky creature skittering about on my ceiling, close to the wall and even closer to the ceiling fan.

It moved so stealthily that if you kept watching it you couldn’t see its movement but if you looked away for a few seconds at a time, you could see it had gone from point A to point B, you know?

Sooo, just to check my theory, I kept closing my eyes every minute or two and, sure enough, I was right. No duh. The crawly had moved! Not exactly a project for the science fair but I was riveted.

And, yep, you guessed it, the crawler was a spider. A black little thing, real compacto, as spiders go. Not those long-legged spooky cretins that make you scream out loud. This critter was one of the cute ones.

There exist two tests for spider cuteness.

Cute test # 1: small tight black easy to carry in your purse, kind of creature—pass.

Cute test # 2: long, sprawling-legged, zippy elusive with daggers out its mouth—fail!

Dag. That’s another word I’m trying out. I have three main ones: Am, ‘Azin, and Dag. Although I believe I’m just resurrecting an old word with dag from dagnabbit! A vile oath, if ever.

Ohh. There’s another one, rect. But, people will think I mean wrecked and I don’t. I mean rectal, like, the total opposite of sick or rad.

There’s lots to consider when creating words. I should write a thesis.

K. I’m way off base now. ‘Member, I’m super human? It all started ‘cause of this spider (and it’s sort of ironic, too, you know, ‘cause my name is Speider). I couldn’t sleep and noticed the crawly… all of this ring a bell? So, when I couldn’t sleep I got out of bed and walked up to where this spider was hanging out, I mean, literally, hanging. So, it’s not like I could walk right up and look at this spider hanging on the ceiling. Lord. I’m only five-foot-three and a QUARTER.

And, obviously, given to moments of sudden outbursts.

No. I used a chair, the chair at my desk. It’s shabby chic mom says.

Whatever.

I pulled it over under where the spider had begun building a web, climbed up onto the chair and just stared at her for like a bazillion hours–like maybe two minutes. And, by then, I kind of figured we’d sort of, I don’t know, bonded and I put my finger up close to her.

At first she backed away but I didn’t move. They have eyes too, four of them (like me with my specs on), and, she watched me watching her, but doubly so, and considered my finger there, near her web and must’ve thought it was food or something because like a bolt out of freakin’ lightning she pounced on the end of it!

I screamed like I’d been hit on hole two by a sliced golf ball coming from hole one. Dad used to golf. Said he had a “crappy handicap!”

Anyway, I pulled back and when I did one of the blades from the ceiling fan cracked me in the back of the head and I fell off my chair. Thank goodness it was on low or who knows what kind of cranial damage might have ensued.

Ouch.

I landed on the floor and hit my head AGAIN, hard, and must’ve passed out ‘cause all I remember was having this crazy dream  about being a spider—that spider.

Luckily, I’m a kid with fairly soft bones, mom went on to tell me the next morning, seeing the Charlie horse on my arm and the knot on the back of my head, “lest, you might’ve broken something.” Lest. She actually said lest. She reads the Bible a lot too since dad died. She even sometimes yells Selah! When I say funny things. I just pray that she doesn’t do it in front of Ricki and Jamie.

Our lives went a bit “topsy-turvy” (as my psychologist put it) and I was to “just accept inevitable changes that would occur” in mom.

So, mom made me stay home from school that day and I got to do all sorts of fun things with her like make special potions with Jergen’s lotion and vinegar and sugar. I’m trying to find a new acid-based wrinkle reducing cream for mom, who, by the way, is only thirty-seven. Mom gave birth to me August 12th, 1994 at 4:49 p.m. at St. Charles Hospital, in Port Jefferson, a mere 14.1 miles away from our house.

Mom doesn’t like her crow’s feet of late but I think they make her look happy. She says they make her look like, “Methuselah but older!” I think it’s one of her Bible references but I’m not really sure. It’ll be a year to the day, December 5th, the anniversary of dad’s death that we took up reading the Bible.

Lord! I’m not even all the way through Genesis, it’s like the forever chapter or something.

Anyway.

Delilah noticed first. Did I tell you about her? Oh, yeah, I think so. Let me check…

Did. And, no, I will not stop saying pussy because pussy wasn’t always a bad word and I reject that meaning therein. I’m also thinking about going into law. Pussy, initially, was used in-tandem with cat, pussy cat, to mean a sweet fuzzy four-legged lithe mammal with stellar qualities.

Remember, I’m also a word FREAK!

But, it was Delilah first who noticed the change. In me. My super human change. And, after the spider, basically, knocked me down onto the floor and I finally woke up again, I looked at my finger. I realized it might’ve also bitten me. And, upon further inspection of my finger, there appeared a small red dot on its tip and a little white pustule had grown up on a pinpoint of whitish pink bump.

“Did you bite me?” I shrieked, and, when I looked up at the ceiling, the spider was still hanging from its web. (Good thing, too, because if I had screamed “Did you bite me!” to no one there, I might’ve also become a candidate for the loony bin.)

The spider did not answer, as one might guess. Instead, she just recoiled slightly within her happy haven website.

Website. I love that.

And, she continued to gather silk threads, knit one perl two, and to move to the next obtuse angle for the next knitting session.

She ignored my question entirely. The snot.

So, of course, I stuck my finger—pustule and all—into my mouth and scraped it off with my teeth, swallowing it completely and there, I believe, my problem began to take form. Or, should I say, transform.

Because…

It was like…

…I…

…became…                                                                                                                                                                    …the spider!

TWO – Transformation & Invasion

The air felt crisp and rustled my spiky leg hairs as Delilah galloped along the streets, me hanging onto her like a cowboy holding onto the reigns of his trusty steed. Finally, we reached Morlson’s home.

Delilah jumped up high to the dumpster there behind Morlson’s bedroom window. Then she launched herself, I nearly fell off but a spear of silk shot out, like, automatically, and attached itself to her ear. Delilah caught the edge of the fire escape ladder, me hanging off as if I were the next great Flying Wallenda!

But. Are you hearing what Delilah did? I mean, she got up to the ladder! That’s amazing. Azin’ amazin’!

Cats astonish me. They can get anywhere they want.

And…

Without silk rope to do it!

Still, I had turned into this black hairy-headed, lanky, spiky black body-suit-wearing, wall-climbing dynamo! I could hear and see and feel and taste and smell and sense every miniscule thing around me.

But, even though it was me, it wasn’t, ‘cause I had shrunk to the size of a nickel! It was as if I had become some ultra-athletic gravity-defiant whiz of a teenager who could leap and scurry and had the strength of fifty teenagers all bundled up into one, me, the magnificent, you guessed it…

Susi Spidr!

The soft distinct cadence of a saxophone hung loose in the night, like someone dancing under the stars the way mom and dad used to, on top of their roof, listening, perhaps to John Coltrane… possibly the greatest, most incredible sax player out there! I nearly forgot the task at hand when pussy hiked her way to the top of the ladder, like a lion scaling the side of a mountain.

Then there we were. On the landing. Outside Morlson’s.

Holy Fish Lips!

And, there she was, fish lips, lugging around inside her apartment, vacuuming, hair in curlers, SMOKING a longer than normal brown cigarette, like something a Frenchman might smoke.

Every so often she stopped, took a puff, drawing the cloudy air into her lungs and holding it. When she couldn’t hold it any longer, she’d open her lips into a big round circle and poke out a series of wobbly smoke rings, like, thirteen of them! Ghastly. The rank odor wafted its way through the window where me and pussy watched. I coughed a tiny little spider cough and pussy sneezed. Morlson turned to the window although the vacuum cleaner still sputtered away.

We ducked lower than the sill to avoid being found out.

When we resumed our position, Morlson’s cigarette hung off her lower lip, all slack, like.

Her level of toadiness just ratcheted up about four trillion notches on the scale of toadiness.

“Wait here, pussy.”

Delilah sat and began washing her face with her hands. I knew I’d best be moving to avoid being washed off her ear and into her kitty mouth. Horrors of horrors.

I crawled up the front of her brownstone and in through the window where we’d been staring at the QUEEN OF TOADS.

Everything felt so incredible as if my entire body could sense every tiny fissure of the hard red clay of the brick wall. Every microscopic sensory nerve ending seemed to be on high alert, like how ex-President George W. Bush was with the Iraqis and the Afghans.

Like… when in trouble, when in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout! A bit high-strung. That was me that first time out as Susi Arachnid.

After slipping through the crack in Morlson’s window, I ventured down the wall onto her baseboard and waited for her to stop vacuuming. She was heading through her bedroom door and into the larger expanse of the apartment.

Looking around the room, the colors of her furniture, her shag carpeting, her linens, and the wall paint exhibited tones in varying shades of cigarette ashy-ness. As I was focusing on the boring qualities in her home, she lumbered back into the room withOUT the vacuum cleaner. And, this time, instead, with a glass of whiskey, it looked like to me. The cigarette had been puffed down to a mere inch from its butt and looked as if she were going to get all of its worth out as she pinched it nearly flat between her thumb and index finger, the way I’d seen some of the stonies at school do with their cigarettes.

I wondered, right then and there, if they made teeny spider-sized cameras that I might snap a pic or two of our lovely teacher so that I might plaster them all over Facebook, MySpace and Twitter! Te he! Wouldn’t that be funny?

Definitely the stuff of losing votes for Teacher of the Year Award! W00T. And, just as I had begun to fantasize about all the possibilities of inventing a camera for spiders, she plopped into bed, adjusting the pillows behind her like the back of a chair, picked up the remote, turned on Biggest Loser, tapped out another ciggie and began to down her cocktail of choice.

It was a sight to behold. Stunning.

As she watched TV, every minute or so she’d utter, “Mmm. Mmm. Mmm,” in diminishing chords, and wipe a tear from her reddened eyes. After about three times of her doing this I simply got fed up with her, and, if a spider can roll all four eyes together? I did.

I’d had enough.

She deserved a great big smack down.

THREE – A Good Nap Ruined

When I got up from my afternoon nap that day, mom was baking a pie. The smell of it all buttery and flaky brown, dragged me from under my cozy-dozy blanket like two fingers up my nose pulling me out and down the hall, drooling all the way, and led me like a sleepwalker into the kitchen.

There mom stood, in her smart not-so-tight khaki denims, a blue and white picnic table plaid long sleeve shirt, and a stained up white cotton apron tied around her waist. She wore a pair of regular old tennis shoes, the ones she liked to take walks in, their color, if you must know, is a creamy dingy shade and desperately needing a go in the old washing machine–as did her APRON!

Innocently, I said, “Hey, mom,” hugging her from behind, “what’s up?”

First off, let me explain something. I LOVE Justin Beiber. It’s actually more than love, deeper than any love ever felt and wider than any cosmos out in any of the billions upon billions of universes out there. My love for him is galactical. I mean, I cried when he broke his foot.

Ouch. Poor Justin.

See, and don’t get grossed out here but this is the total truth. I want to kiss those pouty Justin Beiber lips of his and have about fifteen thousand little Justin Beibers all who we’d name “Baby Beibers.”

So, last week, when this freaky kid moved into the house, number 11, across the street, bringing with him his single dad, I barely noticed. God. And, when my mother decided she wanted to take the dad a pie, “or something nice to let him know we welcomed him to the neighborhood.” Lord. I nearly choked on a tuning fork when she asked me to go too, “since he has a son about the same age as you.”

“No!”

“Why not. They look like nice people.”

“What about Justin?”

“Who?”

“Mo-therrrr.” I extended the second half of ‘mother’ really long and crossed my arms trying to block the pain that was growing inside my chest. “He looks like a freakazoid.”

She turned fast and glared at me. “He looks fine.” She turned away, back to the counter when she said it, like, she knew it was a lie and she didn’t want me to peer into her eyes, into her soul where the lie grew from and, instead, to put the final touches into the care package she’d begun building for them.

I began to explain, “His hair’s all spik-”    She stepped all over my words, “Look, he doesn’t have a mother.”

“’Cause he’s a freak.”

“Stop it.”

I humphawed and leaned against our grainy-looking fake “Spanish Moss” granite Corian countertop sink where she was working, folded my arms and had to listen to a long load of prurient excrement flow from her mouth.

But, let me stop here because if you didn’t catch it, the word prurient is a perfect word to shorten into a way cool word, like pru. “Pru, man, that’s so pru!” Hmm. Has potential. I just might try it out on Tanya, see what she thinks.

So, she’s going on, mom that is, and I’m having to stand there and listen while she makes her case about why I must go with her on a ride with the welcome wagon to see the freak and his dad and to say, “So, nice to know you “ and “ Welcome to our neighborhood.” ‘Cause, for me, it would be a lie and, like, the Bible says, it’s bad to lie. In fact, it’s Hell time if you lie so that’s kind of what I said to mom and so she says,

“The Riders,” How does she know their name? “Probably feel a little lonely since the mother passed away.” What the? Where was she getting her intell?

She stopped. Then turning to me, again, she puts one hand to her heart and says, “Remember how we felt when daddy died?”

Of course. God. I had to nod my head because my eyes began to burn all of the sudden.

“Well, I’m sure that’s how they feel now.” She turned back as she loaded her favorite red and white Macy’s bag with the pie, two plastic forks, two plastic knives and two paper towels that she’d detached into singles and folded into quarters. “There.” Like it was Michelangelo’s David or something.

I rolled my eyes and humphawed again. I’ m really super-good at humphawing.

“Come on.”

“Now!?” I screamed.

“Well, of course, now. The pie is hot and if you,” this is where all of the emotion she could muster came rolling off her tongue, “do, not, lose that attitude, young lady, I will think about a punishment worth the crime.” She lifted the ropy straps of the Macy’s bag and grabbed my arm moving me away from our fake Corian counter, twisting my body toward the door and pushing me. “Go. Come on.”

“Quit pushing me.”

“You know.” She made a noise that sounded a lot like losing air. “When was the last time you read something from your Bible?” We were out the door by then and she walked nearly on my heels with that stupid bag poking me in the middle of my back like I was going to be the first lamb to the slaughter and all the while it’s her demented idea to act as the neighborhood welcoming committee. God.

“Gah. Mother.” Rolling my eyes again!

“Quit whining, or else.”

What does that mean, exactly. Or else. Or else, what? Or else the world will finally implode from all of the pent up toxic gasses brewing at its core and I will never, not ever have to meet freak-boy next door? Or else. Or else, Jesus Christ himself will appear which would stop us, forever—I mean forever ‘cause that’s the effect Jesus has on folks—having to visit any new neighbors at all or especially to go over to freak-boy’s house across the street. Or else… I mean. Really. We could play this game for an eternity, this ‘or else’ thing. God.

QUATRO – Don’t Give Neighbors Sugar!

His father answered the door. And, if I had, at that moment, a paintbrush, and if I could’ve painted anything across his face? It would be a big yellow question mark.

He looked like he’d been asleep or something ‘cause his blue button-up short sleeve shirt looked like a map of some land far, far away in the kingdom of Wrinkle, and he was wearing, somehow, someway, a pair of overly relaxed jeans. The pocket hung just on the top of his thigh and one hand was so deep in it I thought he might be looking for a lost gummy bear or something.

Plus, one of his white tube socks had a hole at the end of it and his third, or maybe, fourth toe was sticking through inspecting the situation at the door. The toenail on the thing looked like a mouse had bitten a chunk out of it. It was yellowish, like gouda cheese.

He wore a pair of black Ray Ban-looking clear glasses that sat cockeyed and about one-third down on his nose. He stood there for a second before pushing the glasses tighter to his face with his thumb then he dove both hands now deeper into his pockets and stood evenly, balancing his oh-so-tired body somehow on both legs, as he looked at us.

He looked dumbfounded.

I rolled my eyes and looked away from him, away from mom for anything, for something to save me. A great big pumpkin perhaps with four white mice that turned into four white horses. For my prince. Where’s Justin when I need him.

But mom spoke. “Mr. Rider.” Mom shoved her free hand out from behind me for him to shake. “Hello. I’m Willa. Willa Speider from across the street. In 9. There.” She let out a single nervous laugh, turned and pointed with her nose behind her. It was like she was all giggly and I wanted to sit on the ground right then and fall onto my back, lie down on my side and then run my legs around in a circles, throw this humongo fit and suck my thumb.

But, I couldn’t. Mom was too fast. “This is Susie.”

“Hello Susie.” He didn’t even offer his hand. Plus, his breath smelled yeasty like he’d fallen into the vat of beer and was still swimming around looking for a ladder to climb out of.

I know beer. Dad used to drink it when he and his guy friends went deer hunting. Don’t ask. It’s a real horror story. We still have a mounted deer head, a beautiful buck, now some morbid art form, hanging above the dining room table that mom refuses to exorcise from our house. I refuse to eat in that room. (Mom doesn’t even know but when I talk to it, you know, sort of, like, apologizing for dad and all, I call it “Moose.” Moose listens real well. And, sometimes, to me, he even seems to nod his poor guiottined deer head or move it real slow, side to side. One thing about Moose is mom could learn from his listening abilities.)

My hand flew up to my nose to protect me from his breath. Mom stepped in.

She nearly bumped me off the porch with her achy swaying hips as she held out the Macy’s bag for him to take. “I, we,” Uh, yeah, I’m still here mom, “made you a welcome package.” Her recovery was swift and complete.

“How sweet of you.” He grabbed the bag, looked in, looked up, smiled and then there was like this forever moment but then a thought formed in his mushy trap of a brain, it sounded like a slow wheel grinding up to start, and he turned and screamed, “Matt!”

He looked back to us and smiled again. “Matt. My son. He’s upstairs.” He turned again.

I rolled my eyes.

“Matt! Now! We have guests.” He screamed again.

“It’s not a problem, Mr. Rider.” Mom pulled me back by my tee-shirt right at the shoulder, “We came unannounced and certainly wouldn’t want to inconvenience you. Come on, Susie.”

“No. Hold on.” He turned and walked a couple steps inside his house out of sight from us. “Matt! Down here. On the double!” I noticed how the floor in the entryway had black smudges on it, probably from moving in last week.

All of the sudden, you could hear lame-o speaking. “What, dad, I’m streaming…” but Mr. Rider cut him off.

“Now. I won’t say it again, Matt.”

“Jeez.” You could hear dorkowitz at the top of the stairs slogging down each thick carpeted step.

Then before I could turn and run, he showed up and all his long-limbed, bizarre-o glory.

“Matt?” Mr. Rider said, “This is Mrs. Speider and Susie” I prayed he wouldn’t say it, “Speider.” God.

Matt kind of giggled but his dad nudged him with an elbow to the ribs. He pushed, with his thumb, at his dad-look-alike-glasses. No lie. “Nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you, Matt.” Mom’s voice sounded like syrup over mushy mealy pancakes. “Susie? Isn’t it nice to meet the Riders.”

I turned face-front to her and looked deep into her eyes, squinting, like aliens were lifting her so far out of my sight I could barely make out it was mom anymore. Then, she pressed her eyes back at me and darted them like a spy toward the door where the Riders stood, like I’m supposed to respond or something.

“Nice doesn’t describe it,” was my comeback, which exhibited the least amount of sincerity I could portray.

“Susie!”

“Mom. I have homework.” I did this thing with my body that I do when I m so totally disgusted by a situation. It’s like my whole body goes limp but I’m still standing on my feet, and then I let out a gigant-mo, “Gaahhhh!”

Mom’s discomfort level soared into her rosy cheeks. “Kids.” She looked at me and glared. “Go.” She ticked her head toward home, faced Mr. Rider again and began to apologize for my behavior and I started to leave but. God. It was like my body developed some sort of conscience, or something. Plus. Mom was trying so hard.

I turned around.

That got Mr. Rider’s attention and he looked at me over mom’s shoulder and when he did, mom looked too.

I actually said, “Really great to have you in our neighborhood Mr. Rider.” Then I looked at batboy and said, “Matt.”

He didn’t even speak. Instead, he scratched a blemish that shone like a beacon next to his nose and just retreated from the door then vanished.

Mom was smiling at me so I didn’t care.

“Hold on, Susie.” She turned back to Mr. Rider. “Well, Mr. Rider,”

“Paul.”

“Paul. Hope you and Matt enjoy the pie.”

“It’s very kind of you.”

Mom backed up one step and smiled then wiped at her hair and looked over to me again, then her heel caught at the edge of the crack in the sidewalk and she kind of stumbled, then she giggled, again, “Oh! I’m such a clod!” She actually said clod, she waved and then she walked up next to me. “Come on.” It was like we couldn’t get out of there fast enough, you know.

As we crossed the street, she placed her arm over my shoulder. “You’re a very nice girl.” She pulled me in closer to her as we walked. “I love you.”

“Now, don’t get all overcooked on it, mom.”

She giggled again but this time the way she used to when dad made a joke, slower and deeper, not her voice, I mean with love, deeper. “Oh, Miss Susan,”

“Ms. Mom.”

“Ms.” She corrected herself. “Sometimes you amaze me.”

I almost told her about using am or azin’ right then but decided not to.

She put the flat of her hand onto my back and gave me a slight push toward our house. “Go. Do your homework.”

And, I took off running the rest of the way home, all of about twenty feet. When I reached the door I looked back. Her blonde hair lifted under a late warm autumn wind that floated in and around our neighborhood. It swirled past her then rushed up the porch where I stood. It rustled my hair too and somehow connected us.

My hair looked nothing like mom’s. I’d gotten dad’s genes. NO! Not his Calvin Klein’s! LOL. His dark-haired genes.

I just stood there looking at her. She was beautiful, mom was. “I love you too mom.” I couldn’t help but say it.

Click here to buy the book: Spider Brains: A Love Story (Book One) by Susan Wingate>>>