Chapter 3: White Oleander

Summary:
At the beginning Ingrid wouldn't leave her apartment at all unless she was going down to the pool to go swimming. After a few days passed of her just sitting in her dark room all day, something changed and she called her head boss (Marlene) and asked for her job back. It was shipping week and she knew they would need her desperately so he agreed to let her come back to work. She dropped Astrid off at school that morning to start grade 8 but Astrid didn't want to go. She was afraid that when she came home from school her mom wouldn't be there and she would be all alone.)
Astrid thought everything was over and everything was going to go back to normal but it didn't as her mom (Ingrid) began to follow Barry. Ingrid would shop at Barry's favourite market, browse at his favourite music store or go to book signings that were for his friends. Astrid thought it was all getting out of control but she didn't want to say anything to her mom. One night Ingrid finally found Barry at a party for Gracie Kelleher(one of his friends) and Barry grabbed her arm and asked if she was following him. He was furious at this point and told her to leave him alone.
That saturday Astrid and Ingrid sat in their car a block from Barry's house waiting for him to leave. He finally decided to go out and as he drove away she got out of the car and walked up to his house. She didn't want to break in but on the other hand she didn't want to stay in the car by herself either so she followed her mom up to his house. She knew where he kept his spare key so she found it and unlocked the door. Astrid went straight to his computer, turned it on and erased everything he had on the computer. She then took out a magnet and took it to all his back-up discs so they would be ruined too. Before Astrid left she went to his closet and took out his favourite brown shirt and ripped it to pieces with the pocket knife she had. In the buttonhole she put a white oleander.
That night Barry came to her house and Astrid seemed happy. With every angry thing he said to her she seemed to get happier and Astrid did not know why. Barry threatened to kill her and when she wouldn't open the door he went around to the window and broke it. After alittle bit of hesitation he stuck his hand in and began to unlatch the latch. That is when Ingrid ran at him and stabbed him in the hand with her pocket knife. Barry said that she will never get away with this and she opened the door and told her that he didn't know what she was capable of. After that night. Ingrid couldn't find him anywhere and he changed the locks on his doors.
She went to his house again that weekend and broke in again and this time through the window using a metal ruler. This time Astrid put a sprig of olenader in his milk, another in his oyster sauce, in his cottage cheese, in his toothbrush and she made an arrangement of white oleanders in a handblown vase on his coffee table and splattered them on his bed. (Note: Oleanders are poisonous flowers which means is she trying to kill him?) Astrid knew he had to be punished but she now knew her mom had crossed the line. All she saw in her mom now was darkness.
That night a police officer came to the door and my mom lied to him and pretended that she didn't do anything earlier that morning. She said that Barry was crazy as he was madly in love with her and she broke up with him a week ago and he had been stalking her ever since. She also said that her neighbours called the cops the other day when Barry broke her window(which they did) and that he was lying. The police officer believed her and after that he left. It was more like the other way around. It was the exact opposite as her story as SHE was Barry. The next time she saw Barry was at the market. He saw her and started to walk the other way but something must have changed his mind and he turned back and walked up to Ingrid. Barry asked if they could move on to the next step and just be friends. Ingrid agreed, they said there goodbyes and walked away.
The next day they drove down to Tijuana. She didn''t buy any food like they usually did and finally she came to what she had been looking for, a pharmacy. She said something in Spanish and the man behind the counter asked if she had arthritis. She said yes and asked if he had any DMSO. She got the biggest bottle they had (size of a vinegar bottle) and it cost her $80.00. Astrid tried to talk her out of it as that was 2 weeks worth of food, or 2 months worth of gas she was wasting. She couldn't talk her mom out of it though and she bought it. That night she began cooking strange food and the smell was horrible. I didn't say much to her as she looked like she was in her own world.
Astrid went down to Michael's that night to hang out with him and she asked him what DMSO was. He said that it was that people used it who had arthritis and that it was completely harmless. It is used to help absorb drugs through your skin(thats how the nicotine patch works.)
That night Astrid looked all over the apartment for the bottle of DMSO. Their apartment wasn't that big so she should have been able to find it but she didn't She asked her mom where it was when she got home and she just kept smiling, but her eyes told me everything. She wanted to kill Barry.
All night Astrid thought about what would happen and when she woke up the next morning she dialed Barry's number. A girl answered the phone and that is when Astrid realized that he had it coming and he deserved it. Also she didn' t know what she would tell him and she didn't want to hurt her mother. She didn't say a thing and he hung up the phone.
That night they sat on the roof together and watched the moon and that was the last time they would be together.
NOTES:
-Astrid vowed she would never fall in love as she didn't want to get hurt like her mom did.
-Ingrid is going insane, and may be mentally unstable.--needs help.