Hello There, We've Been Waiting for You!. Laurie B. Arnold
couldn’t sleep. My head was filled with thoughts I couldn’t switch off. The weirdo lady next door. My best friend, Violet, in perfect Paris. My strange grandmother. My mom dying. Outside a dog howled and a man yelled bad words to make it stop. But loudest of all was the steady blare of the TV as Florida flipped through the channels, searching for something to buy.
My second biggest wish was that the bottomless pit in my heart would go away. My first biggest? That I’d wake up and all of this was really just a super-strange dream.
But the next morning I was still in a cotton-candy-pink bedroom on Grape Street. Living in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, with Florida Brown was my strange new reality.
My mom used to say, “Today is the first day of the rest of your life.” I was pretty sure that this was the first day of what would be the worst life in all of recorded history.
When I wandered into the living room the next morning it couldn’t have been later than seven-thirty. Florida was already on the phone, buying something called a Belly Buster from the Shop ’Til You Drop Channel. Strap it around your middle and it was guaranteed to melt away your fat.
She cupped her hand over the telephone. “I’ve been on a little shopping spree this morning. Early bird catches the bargains! Now watch this, honey. You’ll be impressed.”
The man on the TV picked up his ringing phone. He looked like he was made out of plastic.
“We have Florida from Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, on the line,” he said. “We’ve missed you, Florida, my friend!”
The TV host actually knew my grandmother and was having a conversation with her right on TV!
Florida giggled in her movie star voice. “Alan Stone, how are you?”
She was flirting with him. Gross.
“Alan dear,” she went on. “I really don’t have much of a belly to bust, but it will be fantastic to have this during the holidays when the gals bring over their sweet, high-calorie treats. Oh, and Alan—I have a teeny favor to ask. Could you give a little shout-out to my darling eleven-year-old niece, Madison?”
Niece?!
The TV host looked right into the camera. “Hello there, Madison. This is for you and your Aunt Florida.” Then he blew us a kiss. Right on television. It was freaky. Thank goodness none of my friends back in Washington watched the shopping shows.
“We both send big lovey-dovey kisses back, Alan! Mwah!” Florida said. Then she hung up the phone.
I stared at her as if she was a space alien. “I’m not your niece.”
“Of course you’re not. But we don’t want Alan Stone thinking I’m old enough to be a grandmother, for goodness sake. Don’t worry. It was only an itsy-bitsy teeny-weenie little white lie.”
I didn’t care what color the lie was. A lie was still a lie. Unless you’re trying to spare someone’s feelings. That’s what my mom always said. Saying you’re too young to be a grandmother when you really were one didn’t exactly qualify. That’s what I thought, but I stopped myself from saying so.
I thought I’d spend the rest of the day in my room, so I stood up from the sofa. My grandmother pulled me back down by the hem of my T-shirt.
“Don’t leave yet, honey. Next is a special on designer scarves.”
In five minutes flat she bought seven of them—one in every color of the rainbow. Then she flicked back and forth between a whole bunch of shopping channels.
“So much to buy, so little time …”
As she picked up the phone to order a half-dozen jeweled watches, the doorbell rang. Florida got up to answer the door. “Who could that be?”
Uh-oh. Was it the crazy lady?
A redheaded guy with a scruffy beard stood on the other side of the doorway, holding a clipboard. Behind him was a pimply-faced teenager.
“May I help you boys?” Florida’s voice was all dramatic, like she was the queen of her castle.
“Special delivery, Mrs. Brown,” said the guy with the clipboard. “It’s your brand-new flat-screen TV.”
“I don’t recall ordering a new TV,” Florida said.
“Your name and address are on our delivery slip, Mrs. Brown.” He held up his clipboard as evidence.
“Well, bring it in,” Florida shrugged.
I peered outside to watch them struggle to unload a giant box from the back of a dented old delivery truck. Painted on the side were faded gold curlicue letters that said MIRACLE MOVERS.
As they rolled it up the walkway on a dolly, Florida bounced like a kid on Christmas morning. “Who knows? Maybe I did order it. Well, guess it’s meant to be.”
How could anyone forget ordering a new television set? She must have bought a lot of stuff to have something that massive slip her mind.
“The name’s Mike,” the redheaded guy said to me once he and his partner ripped open the box in the living room. “How about giving us a hand, Squirt?”
He seemed pretty nice, so I didn’t mind him calling me that.
“Why don’t you pull all the cords out of the plastic bags while we haul the old TV out to our truck, Squirt?”
“Mind holding the pliers for a minute, Squirt?” he asked when they fiddled with the wires to hook up the giant new flat-screen.
“Hey Squirt, how about handing me one of those remotes so I can show you both how to use this thing?”
There were two remote controls. They were thin and black with five big colored buttons, plus a whole bunch of little silver buttons. Possibly the most confusing things I’d ever seen.
“I highly recommend stashing one of these babies in a safe place. Just in case.”
Just in case what?
“Here’s the deal,” Mike explained. “This is no ordinary TV. It’s a MegaPix 6000 picture-in-a-picture flat-screen that lets you keep an eye on six shows at a time.”
“Perfect! Now I can watch all six of my favorite shopping shows at once. This is the happiest day of my life,” said Florida. “How much did I pay for this treasure?”
“As far as I know, not a cent.”
“It was free? Well, maybe I didn’t order it after all. Maybe one of my shopping shows sent it since I’m such a devoted customer. Like a bonus prize.”
Really? Somehow I doubted it.
Mike explained how the MegaPix 6000 worked. He showed Florida how to push the colored buttons so she could choose the six programs she wanted to watch. Then he demonstrated how to move a TV program that was playing in one of the five little frames at the top, down to the main part of the screen.
“There are a few other important features I need to go over with you,” he said.
“Mike, darling, I know it’s probably hard to believe since I’m sure I don’t look a day over 29, but I started using remote controls long before you were born. I can take it from here. Is there something I should sign?”
He shrugged and handed her the clipboard. “You might want to read the fine print on the contract first.”
Florida laughed. “Oh my, whoever reads these things?” Without looking at one word of it, she signed her name.
He tore off a copy and set it on the table beside the remotes.
“You do know that the MegaPix puts you in the