A Typical Day, Megan's New Job, And a Rat
Job

I woke up, feeling like something that had been brutally murdered with a chair leg and then left to rot in the sun for a month. My muscles were sore, my mouth tasted like a mausoleum, and I couldn't open my eyes enough to tell whether I was even in my own bed.

I could tell when I rolled off and hit the ground before I could start counting that I'd switched beds with Lo Ming again. If I'd been in my bed, I wouldn't've even touched the carpet before I got to three; I had a bunk without a bottom bed, so it was fairly high up. I'd been falling asleep in Lo Ming's bed a lot over the past few weeks, mainly because he had a reading lamp attached to the headboard, and I had three upcoming midterms. Lo Ming, of course, would rather sleep in my basement, where it was dark 24/7, as opposed to his giant 4x4 screenless, curtainless window that was currently making me feel like a demon in the middle of an exorcism.

Once I made it to the bathroom, I couldn't find my toothbrush, which really didn't surprise me. It was just the kind of luck I'd been having. Of course, when you live in a house with four other people, it's easy to lose stuff, regardless of how your luck's going. You also learn that when you do, you use someone else's until they figure out it's you using it.

So, after I brushed my teeth, I grabbed my laptop and sat down at the dining room table. I yawned and I waited for the computer to boot up, then started typing while eating the third weirdest-tasting French roll I'd ever eaten--I'd eaten the first two the night before--and trying to get my thoughts in order while Hunter sang to the coffee machine. He'd been doing things like that for as long I could remember, before we'd even started rooming together, and it actually helped to clear my head a little.

Breakfast was fairly normal; Hunter drowned himself in coffee while Megan rummaged through the big box of snacks until she found an energy bar that I was sure would make her unbearable to whoever else was in her eight o'clock class. Thankfully, she was up and out the door a few moments after she'd unwrapped it. I loved the kid to death, but mornings and I didn't get on in the first place--I wasn't in the mood for happy people. We'd had baked potatoes the night before, which meant that Lo Ming was reheating one for breakfast, much to the disgust of Cordy, although she still managed to eat her perfectly toasted bagel and orange juice.

As usual, Lo Ming and I were the last ones out the door, but my right foot was still pretty messed up from a fall down the stairs a few days before, which meant Lo Ming had to drive--which in turn meant it took even longer than usual to get to school. Lo Ming was a fan of what he affectionately termed "the scenic route", which seemed to get longer every time he took it. When we passed the fire station, I practically had to grab the wheel to keep him from stopping to get some more sandbags; we already had way too many crowded in my basement, and only heaven knew what Lo Ming was planning to do with them.

When we pulled into the college parking lot, Lo Ming and I jumped out of the car and ran to our respective classes. Of course, no matter how fast I ran--hobbled, really--I was still going to be late and Ms. Cardigan, my math professor, was a total hardass about tardiness.

"How nice of you to join us, Mr. Fielding," she said. "Would it be too much to assume that you have done your homework?"

I rolled my eyes and lifted my backpack, letting it hit the desktop with as much force as I could without breaking anything. Then I shuffled through it as slowly as possible. I knew exactly where my homework was, but if she couldn't show me respect, then my goodness, I must've misplaced my civility.

Cardigan's class always dragged on for what seemed like hours, and I was tempted to cut out early, but I wasn't in the mood for another wisecrack from the Lesser Professor. I sighed, thinking morosely, Required classes. An eternity passed, and then I shot out of there like a bat out of hell. I had a full half hour until my next class, so I limped over to the B building to ambush Megan.

Of course, she turned it around on me, the way she always did. I pretended to catch her in a clothesline, and she wrapped her arms around my arm and then lifted both of her knees to her chest, pulling me down and dragging us both into the grass. "Hey, Jo-boy!" she chirped. She was the only person on the planet who could call me that and get away without losing a limb. "Guess what?"

"You're getting a sex change." With anyone else, it would have been a stupidly overexaggerated joke, but with Megan, it was a legitimate guess.

She pulled my nose and laughed. "No, but you have a point. I need to liven things up a little at Vanilla House."

I wondered what Cordy would think of that; she was the most conservative person in our little group, for all her free thinking and nonsense. "But what would you call yourself? Megan isn't a very masculine name."

"You're right. Hmm... I think I'd be Steve." Personally, I didn't think it was much more masculine than Megan, but if it made her happy, I wasn't going to question her taste in names.

The grass was cold and kind of damp from the moisture of the morning, so I pulled Megan to her feet and started steering her toward the cafeteria. I wasn't hungry, it was just that there was nowhere else to go on campus; we could snag an outside table and hang out. "So was there something you wanted to tell me, or did you just say 'guess what' on a random whim?"

"Oh yeah. I have a new job!" She snapped her fingers and bobbed her head from side to side as if she were dancing to music that only she could hear. "It's a part-time desk job, answering phones and stuff. Here." She handed me a little rectangle of hard paper.

It was a business card, made of expensive cardstock thick enough to make a papercut extremely painful but still possible; written on it in dark blue embossed letters were the words, 'The Family Bidderman, Professional Sicarians, Est. 1907', as well as phone and fax numbers and an address. "This isn't that far away from Vanilla House," I said, scratching my head as I tried to remember what a sicarian was.

Megan nodded. "And with the money I'll be pulling in, I'll finally be able to get my car fixed."

We reached the cafeteria, and I had to hurry to stand in front of the display of candy some moron had left out to catch the eye of unsuspecting hyperholics like Megan. She was acting about as sedate as she ever did, and I wasn't in a hurry to let that change. "How much are you gonna make?"

"Let's see... Fifteen dollars an hour, five days a week, four hours a day--except Wednesday, then I'll work eight hours, since I don't have any classes then. You do the math, I'm no good at numbers."

I calculated how much she'd make in just a month, and let out a low whistle. With that kind of capital, she'd be able to do much more than fix her car, she'd actually be able to make her full share of the rent this month, which would make my mother the landlady absolutely ecstatic. But something wasn't quite right, there was no way a secretary could get that high a salary. "Are you sure?"

"Of course I'm sure. I made the guy repeat himself."

I looked at the business card again, still puzzling over the word 'sicarian'; Megan wouldn't know what it was, but I knew that I should have--I was the English major, after all. It probably didn't matter what it was, Megan was just going to be a secretary, but still, it bothered me. "Do you think you'll be able to handle this? I mean, it's not like you've done anything like this before." The most experience Megan had with this kind of job was when she had considered getting work at a temp agency. Thanks to my talking her into taking some classes with me, she had the necessary skills, but I didn't think her temperament was suited to it.

Instead of answering right away, Megan reached into her backpack and pulled out a pamphlet. She shoved the pamphlet in my face and said, "It doesn't matter whether I can handle it or not. Anything is better than selling cosmetics."

It was one of the Mary Kay pamphlets that she had seemed to have coming out of her ears ever since she'd gotten that job. Car-less as she was, and had been for a few months at least, acting as a saleswoman caused enough stress to keep her quiet sometimes, which was frightening, to say the least. I gently pushed the pamphlet back at her. "That's true. Just be careful, okay?"

"You better say that to yourself. Doesn't your next class start in five minutes?"

I took one look at my watch, then said a rushed goodbye and bolted, barely keeping my hold on my backpack as I shuffled off. I didn't have to look back to know that Megan was laughing at me, but she laughed at everything and everyone, so I wasn't offended.

The rest of the day passed in as boring and routine a manner as possible, but when the school-filled portion of it was over, I met Lo Ming at the bike rack. He had probably been waiting for me for at least twenty minutes--sometimes his last class ended sooner than mine--but he never seemed to care, so I didn't waste my breath apologizing.

The drive back to Vanilla House was as circuitous as ever, but when we came in view of a pet store, Lo Ming pulled into the parking lot. After a day of hobbling all over campus, I wasn't really in the mood to follow him while he traipsed around every single isle looking for a chimaera or whatever he wanted, so I planned on staying in the car.

Lo Ming started to close the door, then stopped and stuck his head back in the car. "I'm just gonna pick up something I need for Biology, so I'll be right back," he said, and then he was gone.

Cocooned in the tangible silence of the empty car, I closed my eyes and made myself as comfortable as I could with my seatbelt still fastened. I had always been a big advocate of napping, and although car naps would never be at the top of my list, I still managed to fall fast asleep.

When I woke up, the car was in the driveway at Vanilla House and Cordy was shaking me. I yawned and did a quick check for drool, then followed her into the house, only half-listening while she regaled me with tales of how I'd get a bad back and other ailments if I wasn't more careful.

For as long as I could remember, bad things had happened to me when I ignored Cordy. At the end of her speech there must have been some kind of warning for what I stumbled upon when I walked into the living room, which I obviously missed.

There was a rat in the middle of the living room rug. A rat. Long ago, I rid myself of the pride and dignity that chided me for being scared of rodents, so I felt no shame in yelping and jumping onto the couch. The disgusting thing crawled toward me, then stopped and pointed its whiskered nose up in the air, sniffing; I responded by trying to climb the drapes. Cordy tried to get me to calm down, but I wouldn't have any of it. "Rat. In the house. Rat, Cordy, rat." Step three, reducing my speech and vocal patterns to those of a three year old, had been reached, and I prayed that Cordy would get rid of the rat before I started on step four--total shut down.

Lo Ming stuck his head in from the dining room and stared at me for a moment, then he burst out laughing and picked up the rat. "Sorry, dude, I can't believe I forgot." He put the rat in a cage next to the television. "Oh, stop being such a baby--it's not out anymore."

"Get that thing out of my house."

He put his hands on his hips and shook his head, as though he were exasperated with me. "Don't get like that, Job. Look, it's for homework--I'll ask Megan to keep it in her room, you'll never see it, I swear."

"I can see it now." It was a childish last attempt to win a battle I'd lost before beginning, but I couldn't help it. I hated rats, always had. They gave me the willies.

In answer to my whining, Lo Ming picked up the cage and left the room. It wasn't long before he returned, empty-handed and laughing at me.

But the fact still remained that there was a rat in my house.

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A/N:
The true history of Lo Ming's name: I have two teddy bears named Lo Ming and Bailong. I don't know why. Then I found out that Bailong is a character in Shaman King, so I gave him the other bear's name.