Nothing Grows at the Sunflower Motel

by L Mari Harris

Matthew Smith

We test every door knob, give them a little twist. When we find an unlocked door, we slide in, palm the loose change by the TV, slip a couple of smokes from the open pack, and slide back out. Every room’s the same yard sale furniture, same habits, same stale smell of oil and sweat and occupancy of one.

Nessa-Don’t-Call-Me-Vanessa and I have been thick as thieves ever since she and her dad moved into the room next to ours. My dad calls us the Trident Twins. I guess it’s an old commercial or something. Nessa-Don’t-Call-Me-Vanessa and I are both fourteen, and that’s like the worst age ever. We know all the good stuff’s waiting for us right around the corner.

My mom died when my little brother tried to come into the world. He’s dead, too. I named him Chase anyway, because I’m always running toward him but never getting any closer. I talk to him a lot. He’s better than any old diary with a lock on it.

My dad lost his job, then a man knocked on our door one day and told us we had to leave, and now we’re here. There’s a pool smack dab in the middle that no one ever swims in. Trucks missing a headlight or a fender line up in front of the doors every night, empty beer cases tossed by the dumpster. Nessa-Don’t-Call-Me-Vanessa and I check them anyway. Days, everyone’s off scrambling for work, and the whole place looks like a concrete ghost town where the breeze never hits.

I told Nessa-Don’t-Call-Me-Vanessa about Chase, how he listens as I get things off my chest, how I learned at school last year that even kids experience high levels of stress, sometimes worse than adults, because we have nothing we have control over. Nessa-Don’t-Call-Me-Vanessa said, “That’s why I hate my mom. She up and left anyway. Dragged me down the drive ’til my dad pulled me off her leg.”

I don’t hate my mom. I know she would’ve stayed if she could.

We hide in the laundry room and count our change. It smells like a garden in here, probably the new woman in room 12’s detergent. I tell Nessa-Don’t-Call-Me-Vanessa we need to try the woman’s door later. I bet her room smells good all the time.

Nessa-Don’t-Call-Me-Vanessa says sure thing. Says dollar store—soda—now, says I wish I had a brother to talk to. Jerks her ponytail out. Screams.

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L Mari Harris’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Atticus Review, Bending Genres, Lost Balloon, Milk Candy Review, Pithead Chapel, Tiny Molecules, among others. She lives deep in the woods of central Missouri. Follow her on Twitter @LMariHarris and read more of her work at www.lmariharris.wordpress.com.