Cleaning

"When you've spent a night with your books in your bed even though it's still summer, then we can talk."

Recently, I'd become a philosophy minor. I wasn't sure how it had happened (the whole thing was sort of like a bad dream, with fuzzy details), but I had a feeling it had something to do with my parents and student adviser.

Christ, but I hated them all.

I was lying on the bed. Sean was sitting in the corner polishing his trumpet. Only nine in the morning, and this was the third instrument of the day he'd cleaned.



Starting our senior year had sent Sean into something of a panic, not unlike the nasty fit of nostalgia he'd gotten when we'd graduated high school. Only this time around, he'd taken to cleaning anything he could get his hands on. It was beginning to annoy the crap out of me--and it was only August third. April and May were going to be torture.

And he'd had the absolute nerve to complain about being busy. While I was reading four philosophy textbooks. Cover to cover.

He opened the valves of his trumpet over the garbage can, the plastic bag crinkling as the spit dripped in. It was that kind of passive-aggression that drove me crazy. I couldn't very well complain about his dripping into the garbage, even though he was going to clean the floor anyway, so he might as well have dripped there instead. The boy was definitely trying to drive me batty. Well, at least he would have something to clean when I committed hara-kiri. I'm sure that would be a great consolation next to his dead girlfriend. Great, indeed.

"Sean," I snapped. When he looked up, I threw a pen at his head. It bounced off between his eyes. I have nothing if not good aim.

He gave me a you're-so-stupid look. It annoyed me how patient he was. Couldn't he, for once in his life, be irritable and grouchy? His unfailing cheer was hard to stomach sometimes.

"What the hell, Cassandra?" he asked. Still cheerful. Maybe he as being so cheerful and cocky because I'd put on my CD of the music he'd written for me. Big deal. So what if the music department thought he pooped gold? That didn't mean he could be so goshdamned annoying.

"Stop cleaning things," I demanded. "It's annoying." Yesterday, he'd done all my laundry, even remembering that some of my sweaters couldn't go in the dryer. I was seriously considering throwing him out of the house on that fact alone.

He tsked at me. "Someone's feeling a little bitter," he teased me, "just because they have a lot of homework to do."

That stupid smirk on his face made me furious. "I hate you," I told him.

"You love me," he corrected. "That's why you let me live in your apartment and eat your food and sleep in your bed."

"Wrong," I returned, slamming my book. "I do that because I've finally trained you on how to do the laundry."