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The Golden Handle

AuthorHouse

Chapter One

"Wendy," he said, "You're six years old now, and you've grown into a very beautiful girl."

* * *

Wendy awoke with a sudden shock and terror. A cold sweat drenched her body, forming a thin mucus between her and her age old bed. Why did she keep having this dream? Eleven years was an age ago. A lifetime ago. What happened then shouldn't matter. It never happened again. She had made sure of that. But why could she not just force this damn memory from her head? She checked the clock and Wendy Portsmouth's heart dropped close to the level of her stomach. 9:03 AM.

This specific time may have seemed trivial to the average eye, but to Wendy it meant several things, none of them good. First, it meant that it was Saturday. She hated Saturdays. Not because she particularly enjoyed school. She was perfectly miserable at school, just as any normal teenager should be. But at least school gave her an excuse to be away from her family. Her mother had always insisted on "bonding" with the girl, although, as any person with the observation abilities of an average termite could see, the whole quest was a rather futile one. Wendy's mother may well have been a blind, two inch insect that spends its entire life underground for the amount she actually knew about her daughter after so long. Just a year ago, she bought Wendy a three hundred dollar chocolate truffle as a gift, forgetting-or perhaps completely oblivious to the fact-that Wendy had been allergic to chocolate at birth. The truffle ended up in the mouth of a very grateful homeless man outside her apartment. Wendy pitied him, wondering if he had any idea how much money he had eaten in one bite. Probably not, she figured. Most people are so incredibly ignorant to what's happening around them, she thought, that if one day they stopped to look at what they were doing, their heads would probably explode. Such was her justification for not bothering to remind her mother how incredibly incompetent she was-why ruin her world, too?

9:03 AM also meant that Wendy had not succeeded in sleeping through breakfast. It was a pitiful concept, true; she could not even imagine a worldly occurrence that could actually distract her mother enough to forget to wake her up. No, Wendy had never succeeded in her life in missing a family meal except when she was completely absent, which, unfortunately, hardly happened enough. The girl realized she would probably never achieve such a feat, and yet, each time, her failure would leave a definitively sour mark on her mornings. But no matter-Wendy could not fall back into sleep once she had awoke, and so she pulled herself out of bed, tossing her sheets to the side, carelessly adding to the toxic waste dump that was her room.

Wendy was probably the only human in the world who could manage not only to walk in her room without consistently stepping on something, but also to locate any item on demand. Not that such a demand came often, but Wendy took pride in knowing that if anyone ever asked her for a copy of Baron's Guide To Passing The AP English Language/Composition Exam, that it was in the left corner of her room, buried beneath the Ugg boots she never wore, and that broken fan from five years ago.

Wendy had a specialized path through all the carefully placed cacophony, which she used on a regular basis. She never quite understood why no one else could seem to see it. It seemed fairly obvious to her; left foot on the bean bag chair, right foot in that open space next to her bookshelf, left foot 90 degree swing over her old trumpet case, right foot on her pile of "Apply to NYU and discover why we're the right university for you!" letters, hop over her pile of dirty clothes, and open the door to the hallway. Simple.

Wendy had over the years developed a habit of taking unreasonably long showers, which often caused her family quite a bit of trouble. Their apartment building's old water heater functioned for about twenty or so good minutes at a time until running out, at which point, it would be nonfunctional for about three hours while it recharged. While this never directly bothered Wendy-she was almost always, without fail, the first person in the family to shower each morning-it did irritate her parents, specifically her working Dad, rather profusely. Several times, most without prior notice, the man was forced to shower himself in what felt like subzero temperatures in order to make it to work by 9 AM.

This routine stopped rather abruptly two years ago, however. On a particularly cold December morning, Steve Portsmouth stepped into his shower unprepared. As soon as the first drops of icy waterfall grazed his shoulder, he yelped in pain and leapt out of the shower onto the cold tile. Unfortunately for him, he had not noticed upon entering the bathroom that Wendy had left a rather large puddle of water near the shower door. As he landed, Steve slipped and tumbled backwards, landing hunched over the toilet. His right foot had stuck itself in between the cabinet and the sink, seething in unbearable pain. A doctor's visit would reveal that he had dislocated his ankle, and thus he would be unable to work as a tax agent for three months-after all, performing audits on one leg would certainly be difficult.

To remedy the problem, her father had paid for the costly installation of their apartment's own water heater separate from the building's. This way, her parents could keep her in check by simply shutting off the water before she had overstayed her welcome. Wendy protested this at first, but eventually, as usual, deemed she had more important things to worry about and learned to cope.

But this morning, Wendy felt that she not only needed, but truly deserved a prolonged, steamy interaction with hot water. Her father...