Nicole

17

The sun rose and everything fell. Well, not everything, per se. Just her mother’s wedding ring, which Alex figured was worth more than her entire life, so it was really the same thing.
She watched, dumbstruck, as the gold circle majestically arced through the air, did a couple of flips for good measure, and shot into the drain like a well-executed free throw. Probably the same free throw her middle school gym teacher had promised her she’d been bound to make, as it was actually a statistical improbability that, after all her attempts, she hadn’t even accidentally made the shot, not even once.
But her improved “aim” had come three years too late, and at the worst possible time. Alex was trying to SAVE her parents’ marriage, not totally destroy it.
It all started when her dad had inexplicably stopped wearing his wedding ring. When asked, he’d cited her mother’s failed chicken casserole—which, to be fair, did resemble an alien life form—and his subsequent food poisoning as the reason. Even after profuse apologies, he hadn’t relented, only changed his answer to: “I decline to answer on the grounds that doing so violates my religious beliefs.”
Yesterday, he’d pled the fifth, and Alex’s mother had finally reached the end of her patience. “Is this all just a joke to you, David?” She’d screeched in the kitchen, casting her own ring across the room, the motion dramatic enough to write its own soap opera.
Alex, after her parents had finally gone to sleep in separate bedrooms, had snuck downstairs and spent a good hour trying to fish the ring out from underneath the fridge. It had been covered in a thick layer of dust and who knew what else, so she’d rinsed it in the bathroom sink.
And now here she was. Her attempt to salvage their relationship had only managed to kick it in the proverbial butt, as any hope of her parents reconciling had quite literally gone done the drain. Well, a little voice in her head piped up, what do you do in situations like this?
Alex blinked. “Oh! Of course,” she exclaimed, slipping out her phone. “Yahoo Answers.”
She grinned triumphantly, having immediately found someone who’d asked the exact same oddly specific question—“how do I retrieve my mother’s wedding ring from the sink?”— in 2009. The top answer, conveniently from an expert who’d received his M.D. in “Everything,” was titled “How to Quickly Reclaim Items from your Sink in 64 Simple steps,” complete with multiple illustrations.
She’d placed a bucket under the J-pipe and was in the process of wrenching the top nut when a knock sounded at the door. “Alex? Are you almost done?” Her mom’s muffled voice sounded from outside.
“No!” Alex jumped, her voice cracking.
“You okay in there?”
“Yeah, mom. Just taking a massive,” Alex closed her eyes, “massive dump.”
There was a pause. “But it doesn’t stink.”
“I, uh, ate a lot of mints.” The first sink nut disconnected. She moved onto the second.
“I don’t hear anything either. Alex—“
“Do you make it a habit of listening to me poop?” Alex shrieked, lifting her elbow to her mouth to fake a quick farting noise before returning to her work. The second nut disconnected soon after, and Alex immediately dropped all equipment to cover her nose. The wrench clattered to the floor.
“What was—oh my, I certainly smell it now.”
“Go use the other restroom. Save yourself,” Alex managed weakly, holding her breath as she shook the pipe over the bucket. Her mom’s footsteps faded away, and she peered at the contents.
Ugh, was this any better than cleaning the toilet? Disgusting, disgusting, and… wait, what?
There were TWO wedding rings in the bucket.
“Holy crap!” Alex whispered, the pun flying over her head but hopefully not BJ Novak’s. She jumped to her feet so quickly she banged her head against the counter.
“Alex, you all right?” Her dad. “It sounds like you’re breaking down the walls in there.”
“Just the fourth one,” Alex said, unlocking the door. Her father, nose pinched so hard it was white, immediately zeroed in on the mess.
She shoved the bucket in his sleepy face before he could say anything.
The look of sleepy confusion evaporated from her dad’s expression upon recognition. “How did you—“
“Took apart the sink,” she said, waving a hand flippantly. “Why didn’t you do it yourself? Or just, you know, tell us you lost it instead of pretending you didn’t want to wear it anymore?”
“I didn’t know where it went!” He hissed. “And your mom would have killed me!”
Alex conceded this point. “Okay. Fine. We can fix this. You take this,” she pointed to his lost ring, “and I’ll take this.”
Her dad frowned. “I love you, Alex, but—“
“No,” Alex sighed. “I’ll keep it for a couple of days. So when you start wearing yours, just ask Mom where hers is and when she can’t find it, she’ll feel guilty for losing it and won’t bring up the topic again. You’re welcome.”
“You’re not my child,” her dad said finally. “There’s no way any child of mine would think of something so... so…”
Alex waited.
“… Brilliant,” he finished, snatching the band from her fingers. “Thanks, Alex. I’ll clean this up. You go to sleep.”
She nodded, quickly wiped her mom’s ring on some toilet paper, and made to leave. Congratulating herself on a job well done, Alex stared at the door handle and slowly turned the knob.