I'm Doing Them As I Get Them: BOOK ONE

PLEASE READ THE POST BELOW THIS ONE
And then you tell me. Guess the author's color--gender, too, if you want. And what about those characters? I'd say gender will always be easy but what about color? species? sexual preference? favorite flavor of ice cream? (Last one doesn't count--it's one of those author in-jokes, sort of)

I'll tell you title, author, etc tomorrow. NO FAIR GOOGLING!!

From the start of the book:

So there I was, sitting under a colorful, multi-striped beach umbrella on my grandmother’s casket in the middle of a deserted backwoods highway in northern Minnesota. Oh, and I was smoking pot.

I knew that it was my responsibility to get Gran back into the borrowed hearse, but I weighed maybe a hundred-twenty soaking wet…and I was indeed soaked. Couldn’t dance, didn’t feel like singing, and already had the pot on me, so seemed like a good idea at the time to just sit and watch the family drama unfold.

My older sister, Shari, who was walking toward me against sheets of rain, wasn’t much bigger than I was, and she was dragging her left foot and trying to hold her left arm to keep it from swinging wildly. Signs that she’d had a series of strokes were more visible during bad weather, and I knew by the look on her face that she was in pain and that I must’ve looked like some homeless drug addict she felt forced to visit.

All the while our mother was having a nervous breakdown of Biblical proportions in the middle of the road about fifty feet in front of me.

It wasn’t my fault the casket fell out the back of the friggin’ hearse. But as the old ditty went: I’m not the engineer; I’m not the one who rings the bell; but let the damn thing jump the track, and guess who catches…?

Hello! Aw, man—Mom’s gone bye-bye.

I stared at her as she wailed, willing her to get off the rain-slick highway. Subliminally begging her to stop ranting and just climb back into the damn vehicle until I could formulate a plan to get the dead back into the hearse with the living’s cooperation.

Mom was on her knees, squalling like a banshee, alternately raising her fists to heaven and beating her breasts while cursing God for putting her in this predicament. The bright, blue pantsuit she’d so carefully chosen the night before was plastered to her skin, and her wet hair made her look like she was wearing a metallic, silver-gray ball cap.

“She’s losing it, Jilly,” Shari said, blinking against the rain. “Do you really think you should be sitting there? I mean, I know Gran is dead, but…still.”

I made room for Shari under the umbrella, which I’d grabbed right before we left when Dad, the inveterate Weather Channel watcher, said Minnesota was going to get rain during our trip. Then I took another hit off my joint and passed it to her, automatically from force of habit pushing down her good, right arm and forcing her to take the joint with her left hand, telling her as she sat uneasily beside me not to let my doobie get soaked.

“Not like Grandma Violet is gonna care.” I felt a good buzz creep over me like a chenille blanket, enveloping first my legs and butt, then my back and shoulders, eventually collaring my neck and warming my ears.

“Wonder why Gran chose to be buried in Minnesota rather than next to Granddad?” Shari asked for the umpteenth time since we’d left Oklahoma the day before.

My voice was gravely, making me sound like I’d been stoned much longer than ten minutes. “Probably just to deliver a last fuck-you to her children for putting her in a nursing home during her last six months. Who knows?”