Family Game Night and Other Catastrophes Read online

  Praise for Family Game Night and Other Catastrophes

  “Annabelle’s smart, perceptive voice is fresh and realistic. Well-drawn and sympathetic characters (even, eventually, Annabelle’s parents) drive this immersive tale. This debut story is a standout.”

  — Kirkus Reviews

  “This poignant tale with an authentic and memorable narrator will resonate with many young readers–whether they have personal experiences with hoarding or not.”

  — School Library Journal

  “Gutsy and affecting.”

  — Publishers Weekly

  “Family Game Night and Other Catastrophes is a heartfelt exploration of family and friendship, adolescence and sisterhood; it is a touching and real portrait of the beautiful mess that love and life can sometimes be.”

  — Dan Gemeinhart, author of The Honest Truth

  “Brave, honest and heartfelt. With grace and humor, the author tackles the overlooked subject of hoarding and gives us a loving portrait of a family in the process of healing.”

  — Phoebe Stone, author of The Boy on Cinnamon Street

  This book is dedicated to my sister, Emily,

  and to her border terrier, Ned.

  To Ned,

  because my sister believes the world would be better if everyone had a dog like hers.

  And to Emily,

  because I know it would be better if everyone had a sister like mine.

  CONTENTS

  Praise

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  The newspapers fell on my sister at breakfast this morning.

  And I didn’t do anything to stop it.

  Sometimes I have this feeling that I’m completely disconnected from my body, like I’m watching my life on TV or in a dream, and it doesn’t occur to me until ten minutes or two weeks later that, hey, I could’ve done something. I don’t have to sit in the audience and watch things fall apart.

  But that’s exactly what I did at breakfast. I just sat there, waiting to see if today would be the day the newspapers finally fell. It was the “highs in the mid to upper 70s” pile that came crashing down. The newspapers are organized by weather report, and since it’s almost June, Mom has been adding to the “highs in the mid to upper 70s” pile every day. Lately she’s had to stand on her tiptoes in order to reach the top, and this morning—before she could even add to it—it was already swaying from side to side, back and forth. It looked like a Jenga tower right before someone loses, and today Leslie was the loser.

  I’ve known for weeks now that they were bound to come crashing down. It’s why I haven’t sat at the head of the table since spring break. The head of the table is the best seat in the house—it’s closest to the fridge and, therefore, the fewest steps to the milk. Yes, I am that lazy. And, apparently, so is my sister, because as soon as I switched seats, she nabbed my old one. I should have warned her not to sit there, told her why I’d changed seats. But, honestly, it never occurred to me.

  I thought about how the newspapers would probably fall on her head, and in cold, fatalistic silence, I consumed my cereal, morning after morning, waiting and watching.

  I was on my last spoonful of Cocoa Krispies when it happened. The milk had just turned that perfect shade of brownish purple. Leslie was polishing off her Cheerios. Dad was eating his whole-wheat toast. And Mom was in bed or in the shower or on the sofa, doing whatever it is she does after making Dad’s toast. Mom does leave the house every now and then, usually for trips to the grocery store when there’s no one else to do it. But most of the time, she prefers to stay right where she is, thank you very much. And my brother, who never eats breakfast—at least not at home with us—had just raced out the door.

  “Take me with you,” I shouted at Chad as he breezed past, keys in hand.

  “Denied,” he said with a smile. Chad is never mean when he says no. He’s never mean, period. He just isn’t nice. I bet Chad doesn’t even know my favorite color.

  His is red.

  “But it’s the last day,” I said. “I can be ready in two seconds. Please, please, let me come with you. I don’t want to take the—”

  Chad slammed the door before I could say “bus.”

  I don’t know if he was upset about something or running late to pick up a friend or, maybe, he just couldn’t wait to get out of the house. I can relate. Whatever his reason, when I say Chad slammed the door, I mean he slammed it. A real window-rattling, earthquake-imitating, neighbor-waking slam.

  “That’s okay, Annabelle,” Leslie said to me, her back to the wobbling Jenga tower. “I like riding with you on the—”

  The newspapers fell before Leslie could say “bus.”

  Crash.

  Thud.

  A hundred dusty, mildewy newspapers landed in Leslie’s bowl of Cheerios and sent her spoon flying.

  Fhwump.

  More newspapers clobbered her on the back of the neck.

  “Mwaaahhh.” Leslie made a sound like a startled goat.

  “What the—what’s going on?” Dad looked up from his toast and, ironically enough, from the newspaper he was reading. He was just in time to see his youngest nearly decapitated. Death by periodical. What a way to go.

  Thunk. The last newspaper fell.

  I put down my spoon and glared at Dad, who had gotten up to pat Leslie’s back and ask if she was okay. The beautiful brownish-purple milk in my cereal bowl would go to waste now. I wasn’t about to drink it, even if it was chocolate flavored. Not with all the dust and newspaper bits floating around the room.

  “What do you think is going on?” I said. “Chad knocked over Mom’s newspapers when he slammed the door.”

  Dad didn’t answer. He just sat back down and took a bite of toast. Dust and all. “This is awful,” he said, and I couldn’t tell if he meant the dirty toast or the newspapers falling on Leslie. Dad chewed, swallowed, and shook his head before setting his toast back on his plate. “That boy. I do hope he’s careful on the road. He can be so reckless.”

  You’re the reckless one, I wanted to shout. You’re the one who let Mom turn our kitchen into a death trap. And the kitchen isn’t even the worst room in the house. It makes me want to scream.

  Instead, I sneezed.

  I sneezed three more times as I carried my bowl from the table to the kitchen sink and rinsed it out. We’ll probably all die from inhaling newspaper dust full of some horrible airborne disease. Like hantavirus. If the piles of junk don’t crush us to death first.

  I guess I should have asked Leslie if she was all right, but I was too annoyed with Dad to say anything in front of him. He almost never puts his foot down with Mom.

  I was still sneezing when Mom, summoned no doubt by the crash-thud-thunk of her collapsing newspapers, waddled into the room. She wore one of her colorful muumuus. Lime green with big orange flowers. You can always gauge Mom’s mood by which muumuu she has on. Beware the pastels.

  “What happene
d?” Her voice cut through the sound of the running water. I turned to watch Mom fly into the kitchen. It may not look like it, but Mom can really move when she wants to. “No! No, no, no,” she said, rushing to Leslie’s side. But instead of wrapping Leslie in her arms, she started gathering her newspapers.

  “Which pile fell?” she demanded.

  Thirteen hours, fifty-six minutes, and one last day of school later, Leslie asks to sleep in my room. Not that I blame her. It’s the only clean room in the entire house.

  A couple of years ago, on my tenth birthday, I went berserk. The first half of the day was normal enough. We had cake and ice cream at the picnic tables under the big cottonwood tree—Mom was too embarrassed to let guests in the house, but staying outside didn’t really bother me. We live a little ways outside of town, and our yard is five acres. You can’t even see a neighbor’s house from our place. So I was happy to open presents and play Blind Man’s Bluff and charades out on the lawn. Then everyone went home, and I carried my presents upstairs.

  At the time, Mom’s “collections” had slowly been taking over the house for a couple of years. It was gradual at first, so gradual that I didn’t realize what was happening. The house had always been a little messy. But one day, Mom ran out of space in the hall cupboards and then, before I knew it, my bedroom was floor-to-ceiling color-coded piles of old and new towels, sheets, tablecloths, rags, and skirts and shirts and pants purchased at bargain prices with promises they would be hemmed or mended or taken in. They never were. And the piles kept growing.

  It got so bad that I could barely walk through my bedroom. There were only small pathways through the fabric to my bed and my dresser. The desk and desk chair were completely buried. Between piles were the remnants of a life: my backpack, my schoolbooks, my scattered toys. I had to dig through sheets and towels whenever I wanted to find anything.

  I didn’t always hate it. Sometimes it felt like a treasure hunt. And sometimes it felt all cozy and safe and warm. Leslie and I would build nests in the fabric, burrow down and play there. Or read, swaddled deep in the sheets.

  But on my tenth birthday, I snapped.

  It was bright and sunny outside, but my room was dark and dim and much too soft. I’ve heard they lock crazy people in rooms like that, where everything is padded so they can’t hurt themselves. And I knew that if I slept in that cotton-and-down-feather room one more night, I would need a padded cell of my own someday. I’d end up just like Mom.

  I dropped all my new presents and crossed the room to open my window. I just wanted to let in a little light. Fresh air. Some of that outside, blue-sky freedom. But the moment I pried open my window, I knew it: Either Mom’s fabric collection was going out the window or I was.

  Without thinking, without planning, without permission, I started tossing everything out the window. At first it was kind of fun. The fabric would come unfurled midair and billow out, parachuting down in drifts. Some fabric got stuck in the cottonwood tree. But most of it reached the lawn, transforming the yard into a giant patchwork quilt.

  Pink sheets. Blue towels. Green pillowcases. Orange and yellow shirts. Red pants. Purple skirts. Teal and butterfly fabric from a sewing project that never was. A pair of plaid boxers got stuck on an especially high branch of the cottonwood tree. No one could reach them, so the boxers camped out there for weeks until a big storm finally blew them away.

  And it wasn’t just Mom’s fabric collection that went out the window. I threw my own stuff outside, too. Even my brand-new presents. Anything nonessential had to go. Had to, had to, had to.

  At some point, Mom noticed her fabric collection raining down on the side yard, and she started banging on my locked door, issuing cease and desist orders. I can still hear her fist hammering on the door, punctuated with screams: “Annabelle!” Bang, bang. “Annabelle Marie!” Bang, bang, bang. “Annabelle Marie Balog! Open this door!!!” Bang, bang. “Do you hear me?” Of course I heard, but I completely ignored her, and the harder she banged, the harder I threw. Then, just when I was certain Mom would hammer my door right off its hinges and ground me for seven eternities, Dad took my side. To my utter and complete astonishment, he actually put his foot down.

  “The kids,” I heard him say through the door, “have a right to control what’s kept in their rooms.”

  But I didn’t have the right to control anything else, and Mom’s fabric collection didn’t stay out on the lawn for long. As soon as I banished it from my room, Mom brought her precious linens back inside, where they took up residence on the couch and blocked off the living room window seat.

  Ever since then I only allow things in my room that I use on a regular basis. Once a week, I clean out everything and throw away anything that I haven’t used in the last seven days. Some people might think my bedroom is a little depressing. White walls. No decorations. The only exception is a little watercolor painting that’s been hanging on my wall for as long as I can remember. But compared with the rest of our house, my room is wide-open spaces and fresh air. And I want to keep it that way. Which is why whenever Leslie asks to sleep in my room (and she asks a lot), I say no. I have to keep my space special, neat, and clean.

  But tonight is different. I feel bad that I didn’t warn Leslie about the newspapers, so when she asks, I give her permission to sleep in my room. Just this once. And I warn her: “If you leave anything in here, I’ll throw it away.”

  She nods with this real solemn expression. “Thank you,” she says.

  Leslie’s room is like a graveyard where dolls and stuffed animals and chunks of Fisher-Price plastic go to die. All the toys Mom drags home from yard sales and curbsides and Walmart bargain bins end up in Leslie’s room. (Except for the Beanie Babies. Those are wedged between the banister rails all the way up the stairs.)

  Last year my history teacher showed us pictures of the catacombs in Paris. Mr. Zimmer said that when the French people ran out of places to stick dead bodies, they started dumping the corpses in these big underground tunnels. And I swear, when Mr. Zimmer showed me those pictures of dark tunnels all piled up with skulls and thighbones, I thought of my sister’s bedroom.

  It’s so awful that I’m always telling her: “You’ve got a window. Use it.”

  She never takes me up on my advice, even when I offer to help her. “Dad will back us up if we clean out your room,” I say. “He has to, even if Mom won’t like it.” But Leslie won’t let me do anything. She just shakes her head and mutters a halfhearted something about how “Mom was so mad” after I threw the sheets out my window.

  At bedtime, when Leslie comes to my room with her arms full of stuff from the Toy Catacombs, I make her show me every single thing she wants to bring through that door. Every single thing. She has a pillow and a comforter. Those are approved. She has Bunbun, the stuffed rabbit she still sleeps with—a long time ago, I used to have one just like it. As far as I’m concerned, Bunbun is iffier, but I’m still willing to approve it. Last of all, she has a manila folder.

  “What’s that?” I ask. It’s nonessential—the folder cannot stay.

  She clutches the file to her chest. “I want to show you something.”

  I don’t want to talk about her folder. I want to talk about Drew Benson and My Very Last Day of Seventh Grade. I can’t bring school people home anymore. For obvious reasons, I keep them at least five miles away from my house at all times. I call this my Five-Mile-Radius Rule. So gossiping with Leslie is the next-best thing. But Leslie hugs the folder even more tightly and her eyes go all Bambi. The only difference between Leslie and Bambi is that Leslie’s eyes are this really pretty shade of light green instead of brown. I know a lost cause when I see one. I sigh and plop down on the edge of my bed.

  “All right,” I say.

  Leslie joins me. She doesn’t notice any lack of enthusiasm on my part.

  “Will you answer a question?” she asks.

  “Maybe.”

  Leslie is quiet for a minute. Then she says, “What are you afraid of?”<
br />
  Easy. It’s so easy to answer that I don’t even hesitate.

  “Turning into Mom,” I say.

  “No.” Leslie shakes her head. “I mean, what do you worry about?”

  “Turning into Mom,” I repeat.

  “No,” she says. Clearly, I’m not giving her the answer she wants. “I mean, what scares you?”

  News flash, Leslie: The answer is still “turning into Mom.” But instead of prolonging this fun little cycle, I turn the question around on her. “Why? What are you so scared of?”

  Leslie pushes the manila folder into my hands.

  I open it to find a stack of articles. Most are internet printouts, but one or two have obviously been clipped from magazines or newspapers.

  HOARDER KILLED BY HIS OWN CLUTTER.

  WOMAN FOUND DEAD AMID HUNDREDS OF TONS OF JUNK.

  MAN BURIED ALIVE UNDER RUBBLE IN HIS OWN HOME.

  “Gross!” I say, and slam the folder shut. There are at least a dozen stories in there. “Why do you even have this?”

  Without meeting my eyes, Leslie shrugs.

  I reopen the folder and start skimming the first article. “… an eighty-six-year-old woman was found crushed to death in her home last week. In addition to the mounds of garbage in the front rooms, the rear of the house was completely inaccessible. Family members said the rooms hadn’t been usable in years … ”

  This is way too close to home. After all, Mom already shut down one of our rooms, the former dining room. In my head, I call it the Forbidden Room, because Mom locked it up one day and threw away the key. She won’t say why she locked it or what’s inside. But the not knowing drives me nuts. Nuts, nuts, nuts. I really do wonder what she’s keeping in there. Today I’m leaning toward cornstarch. Mountains of it.

  Whenever Mom and Dad have one of their bad fights (which isn’t too often), Dad threatens to chop down the ex–dining room door or call the fire department to do it for him. Personally, I’d just call a locksmith, but Dad can be a total drama king when he’s fighting with Mom. The rest of the time, he’s pretty laid-back. Or maybe oblivious is a better word for it.