Who I Kissed by Janet Gurtler

self-defense. The truth is she’s far from a natural chef, but when she visits she likes to take over for us in the kitchen, and we both let her. Familiar roles. Anyhow it’s not like we’d complain about anyone cooking for us.
    “Did my mom like to cook?” I ask as I take a spot at the kitchen table across from Dad. The table’s loaded with flavored syrups and jams Aunt Allie picked up on shopping trips in town.
    They look at each other and then back at me.
    “She was okay,” Dad says, lifting a shoulder, grabbing an empty glass on the table, and filling it with orange juice.
    Aunt Allie snorts as she flips a pancake over in the pan. “She was a terrible cook.”
    Dad looks shocked for a second and then pushes the full glass at me and laughs. “You’re right, she was. She would have said the same thing.” Dad chuckles. “She had a good sense of humor.”
    “She had to, being married to you,” Aunt Allie says as she flips a pancake.
    They laugh, and Aunt Allie gets into a story about my mom making dinner for her and almost burning down the kitchen. She’d turned on the wrong burner and started the grease for gravy on fire. The microwave melted, the curtains burned, and two fire trucks arrived at the house before Dad even got home from work.
    I smile as Dad adds to the story, and before long he has tears rolling down his cheeks, he’s laughing so hard. It’s music I haven’t heard in a long time. Aunt Allie puts a plate in front of me. I choose plain syrup and dig in.
    “I’m glad you’re here,” I tell her. She rumples my hair and smiles.
    Dad sips at his coffee and glances up. “I am too, Allie.”
    ***
    That night after school I have a session with Bob. I’m feeling a little more peaceful by the time I get home. I’m at the kitchen table doing math homework when the doorbell rings. The droning sound of the vacuum cleaner doesn’t stop from downstairs. For the past few days, Aunt Allie has been cleaning everything in our house, scrubbing down walls with lemon juice, vacuuming, leaving every single window wide open despite the crisp fall air. She’s working on a full-house cleanse to rid us of negative energy. Dad’s been holding his tongue about it, mainly because I think he appreciates the free cleaning. We haven’t lived in the house long enough for it to be really dirty, but he and I aren’t exactly clean freaks, so her efforts can’t hurt.
    The other thing Aunt Allie seems intent on doing is buying up most of the fresh flowers left in town. She’s got them sticking out of vases in every room, and she even put them in juice jugs and old milk cartons when the vases were all used up. She tells me the flowers negate bad energy.
    Dad bugs her about the money she’s wasting on things that die in a week, but she explains that they have a purpose that lingers long after they’re gone. Besides, she adds, material things never last. Anyhow she’s got more than enough money from her settlement when she was let go from her corporate job, and she does well on the psychic circuit.
    The scent in the house is fresh and soothing. The bell rings again, and it’s polite and less threatening than a thunk , but I flinch anyway. When the bell rings a third time, I glance around for someone to save me from answering it. Even Fredrick is downstairs, deafened by the vacuum and not curious enough to come up and check out the visitor for me.
    Sighing, I walk to the door and slowly open it.
    Coach Clair is on the porch.
    “Samantha,” she says and steps forward and hugs me. I lose my ability to speak for a second, I’m so surprised to see her. “I’ve missed you,” she says.
    Even though we’ve only been training together for a couple of months, I realize how much I’ve missed her too. My relationship with my coach in Orlie was so different, more formal. I can’t even imagine her ever coming to my home. She hasn’t been in touch since this whole mess blew up. I know from emails from Gillian that my