amcati

Throughout elementary school, I had a really nice friend that I will call Mindy. Mindy had the best sleepovers ever. She invited many of the girls from my class over a few times each school year. Mindy’s house was a blast - her mom would take us all to the grocery store and let us put whatever we wanted in the cart. It was great - my mom never let me choose which groceries to buy - Needless to say we pigged out the entire time we were there. Whenever we weren’t stuffing our faces with snacks that were horrible for us, we were all in the hot tub in their garage. After the thrill of the jacuzzi wore off a bit, we would head inside to play the some random game or watch a movie. I remember one time we called random numbers in the phone book and told people we were calling from America’s Top 40 with Casey Kasem to find out what their favorite song was…of course that was before everyone had caller id or *69. Another time we watched Dirty Dancing - and sat around and discussed how one could become pregnant from dirty dancing. Boy, as a 4th grader I believed that - I wasn’t sure how all that stuff worked - but I knew I was not ever going to dirty dance. Another time we all memorized all the words to “She shook me all night long.” I had no idea what that song meant either. I was so naive. The best part of Mindy’s house is that her mom let us sleep outside on the trampoline. It was awesome. We laid out there in our sleeping bags reading Teen Magazine and Teen Beat - drooling over Corey Haim. It was the eighties and it rocked.

Then in 6th grade Mindy’s mom disappeared. Mindy and her sister were left there with their stepdad, George. George had explained to everyone that his wife had left him for another man. He told the girls that their mom was somewhere in New Hampshire. The girls were devastated. They had no idea were there mom was and why she didn’t call them. Everyone felt sorry for George and expressed what a good man he was for taking care of his stepdaughters even though his wife left without a trace.

Throughout 6th grade Mindy continued to have sleepovers for all the girls. Her step dad was always there, but he kept to himself a lot. Mindy just didn’t talk about her mom a lot and none of us really brought it up to much either.

Things changed for me in 7th grade because I went away to boarding school. In the fall of my first year away, I got a call from my mother. She told me that Mindy’s mom had been found. Wow - I knew that Mindy would be happy, but my excitement didn’t last long. My mom continued to tell me that Mindy’s mom was dead. The authorities found her buried below an concrete slab. It appears that she and George got into an arguement and he must have hit her and she died. He took her to another part of town and buried her below some concrete on a job he was working on.

Oh it was terrible.