Lucky Caller(30)

Tina: I hate you guys.





26.


I LISTENED TO MY DAD’S show that night while I was doing homework. A woman called in and admitted she had kept all of her grown children’s baby teeth. Another lady had saved the McDonald’s bags from her first date with her ex-husband.

Ex? Dad exclaimed. Ex-husband? Maybe it’s time to ditch the bags, then?

It’s bonfire time! Light ’em up, Kristy! Will bellowed.

Sidney was definitely a packrat like that—she kept all manner of old drawings and notebooks and assignments, like her sixth grade pre-algebra homework was really going to come in handy someday.

I was kind of the opposite most of the time. But I did have a shelf above my bed with a few random trinkets—a couple Polaroids of me and Alexis, making faces at the camera, a wooden duck, a plastic tiara Sidney had given me, a jar of tinfoil gum wrappers. I always took the foil and folded it back into its original shape, then folded it again into a thicker, smaller rectangle. I started when I was a kid, but it was mostly out of habit now. The gum that comes in little plastic compartments arguably tastes better, but I still got the strips sometimes, still stuck the wrappers in the jar.

Rose had a shelf over her bed too—it held an art print from a show she went to last year, a little enamel box she kept jewelry in, and some glass figurines. A teddy bear sat up there too, one of the honey-colored ones my dad had gotten for each of us, with its yellow-checkered dress and apron and bow. We used to refer to them as the Honey Bears, and had decided that they were sisters like us.

I had no idea where my bear was. And for some reason, sitting there that evening, I was seized with a sudden and powerful urge to locate it. A quick search under my bed and in my part of the closet revealed nothing.

Rose was sitting on her bed, working on something.

“Have you seen my Honey Bear?” I said.

Rose looked up from her sketchbook, pulled out her earbuds. “What?”

“Honey Bear.” I pointed to the shelf above her bed. “Mine. Have you seen it?”

“Uh, no. Ask Sid.”

I went to Sidney, who was in the living room holding her script, one sheet of paper covering the page, her face screwed up in thought.

“Can’t talk. Memorizing,” she said.

“Have you seen my Honey Bear?”

“No.”

“Where’s yours?”

“Under my bed, in the blue Tupperware.” With that, she went back to memorizing. Sidney was a packrat, sure, but an organized packrat.

I could’ve given up then, but maybe I wanted a reason to procrastinate on finishing my calculus homework. I went to my mom, who was sitting at the dining room table leafing through a catalog. Dan was the only person I had ever met who ordered clothes through catalogs and not online.

“Mom, have you—”

She had heard me ask Sidney, of course, because our living room and dining room were in fact the same room.

“Maybe in the storage closet?” she said.



* * *



Each floor of the Eastman had a storage area—a gray-walled room that was portioned off into “closets” with chain-link fencing.

Ours was packed with Christmas decorations and plastic bins full of old stuff.

I pulled out a couple of the most easily accessible bins and started digging through them. I hadn’t been at it very long when something caught my eye—not my Honey Bear, but a small container full of cassette tapes. I extricated it from the rest of the clutter and opened it up.

The tape on top had red writing on the label. CONRAD AND MICKEY: THE SUPERCUT, it read in handwritten letters.

I pocketed the tape and kept looking.





27.


This is Joydeep here on Sounds of the Nineties. It’s time for some more facts about our mystery guest. So. We have learned a few things about this mystery person. He—they?—she?—lived in Indiana. They are associated with the restaurant TGI Fridays in some secret capacity. They like the color yellow better than any other color. Those were our original facts. And owing to those facts being, just … so super interesting, we’ve got some new facts for you tonight. So let’s get started.

First of all, this mystery guy—person—has a connection to the band This Is Our Now. Can you believe that? We have it on good authority that this person’s favorite member is Josh. Next up, this mystery person …





28.


WE MADE A DECISION, THE evening of our 1995 episode, to officially depart from the “one year an episode” format. The demand for more Existential Dead songs was just too high, meaning at least seven people had tweeted at us about it, which was six more people than were tweeting at us before.

Existential Dead only had three albums, the last having come out in 1994. So if we wanted to keep them in rotation, we had to switch up the theme.

“We can still do songs from the featured year each week,” Jamie said, “but it definitely seems worth it to mix some more Existential Dead in.”

He even went through the playlist and added songs that were suggested via online algorithm, “For Fans of ’90s Cult Grunge.”

We were sitting around the studio that evening while a track from Existential Dead’s 1992 album Cryptic Undertow was playing when Sasha looked over at me.