Page 16 of The Mating Frenzy
“How much?” she saidflatly.
“They’re the best. All the celebrities use them and Stan suggested that they would make me lookwonderful.”
“Howmuch?”
“Only $300 for the starter kit,” Nellie blurted out. “And maybe you could become a distributor and sell themyourself!”
Three hundred dollars. It might as well have been threethousand.
“Doesn’t matter.” Feeling defeated and utterly weary, she headed for her room. “I’m going tochange.”
“I’ll make you dinner and then I have a wonderful surprise for you.” Nellie headed into thekitchen.
Please, no more surprises. I can’t bear to see them on the credit card statement. We’re almost maxed out,Mom.
Leaving her mother to cook, Ella retreated to her room. Darcyfollowed.
On her bed, her narrow twin bed where no man had ever slept, Darcy jumped up and sat. The cat meowed as she glanced up, her big green eyeswide.
It was odd. Almost as if the cat knew how Ella felt. The cat picked up on the ugly scene that justtranspired.
Ella wondered. She loved animals, and she had felt close to Darcy since rescuing her outside the restaurant two yearsago.
Imagination.
Ella flung herself on the bed next to Darcy and curled her fingers into the pillow. The cat walked over and snuggled up against her and gently licked her cheek as if to lick the salt straying down. Ella never cried in front of anyone. But it was toomuch.
"Oh, Darcy, I don't know what I'm going to do. I can’t leave Mom, but I’ll never free us from debt by stayinghere."
Darcy meowed again and licked her cheek again. Odd, it was almost as if the cat were trying to comfort her, as if the cat could understand every single syllable Ellauttered.
She rolled over to stroke Darcy’sfur.
“I don't see how were going to get out of this. We owe so much money. I can't believe my mother spent $300 on beauty products bought from an online shopping network. It's not fair. She knows how hard I work. She knows we have nomoney."
Here they were, deep in debt, but slowly working out of it, a light shining at the end of the very dark and long financial tunnel, and her mother turned out to be the oncoming train that was going to barrel herover.
She didn't see how they could get free of this, not without working even harder and putting in more hours thanever.
“I’m so exhausted. I can’t work 24 hours a day. I don't have a spare minute to myself. Even if I wanted to date someone like that cute guy, although he was kind of strange, I have no time for a social life. Look at me. I'm nearly 30 years old, I've never had sex before, and my last date was some old guy my mother set me up with, who basically forgot his teeth at the dinnertable."
Darcy meowed and her little button nose wrinkled, as if to say in cat speak “Gross.”
It was so funny that Ella's natural good humor took over and she began to chuckle. Never one to let her problems get her down for long, because what was the point? She stroked Darcy’s silkyfur.
“At least I have you. You seem to understand me. I guess I'm just going to have to work more hours at the restaurant and find the energy. But damn, Darcy, there has to be more to life than just this. When ismylife ever going tostart?"
She rolled out of bed and went to her desktop where her aging laptop computerrested.
Ella opened it up and powered it on. She accessed the files she had downloaded at the academiclibrary.
The ancient books were kept in a dusty, forgotten corner of the library. Forgotten to all but Ella. Joy filled her as she scrutinized the first file. It contained ancient Celtic, which kept her brainhoned.
The manuscripts had been carefully penned on parchment crackling with age, and she had taken it upon herself in her spare time to put them through a scanner so they would be preserved as digitalfiles.
But more than that, Ella wanted to analyze these files because they beckoned to her. These books, bound and sitting on a shelf for who knows how long, almost seemed to sing to her with the music of ancient languages secrets andmysteries.
Ella glanced at her cheap wristwatch. Forty-five minutes to get to the restaurant. But if she pedaled her bike fast, she could make it to downtown in fifteenminutes.
