Loose Lips Sink Ships

by Katrina LaCroix

  *

  A group of walrus-like expectant mothers waddled out of a downtown community center late that afternoon. Her head against the steering wheel, Avery watched for her sister, sulked, and drooled on her jeans. When Lori finally emerged, weaving through the protruding bellies, Avery thought of how it wasn’t too long ago when she was in the car with her mother picking Lori up from elementary school. Groping through her memory, it seemed like just a couple of years ago, when in fact it had been just a couple of years ago.

  “Hit the gas before I kill somebody,” Lori said when she climbed into the front seat.

  “No problem,” Avery sighed, lethargically shifting the car into drive. Her glum expression couldn’t be clearer, but Lori seemed too preoccupied to notice.

  “Those moms think it’s so cute I went to Lamaze class,” Lori ranted, venom in her voice. “They say, oh, it’ll be a long time till you’re a mother, and, don’t you have a little growing up to do? Little do they know! In just a few years time, my kid’s gonna be kicking their kids’ asses all over the playground. I’ve already got the perfect name for him figured out, Hannibal.”

  Just when Avery thought the hole in her stomach couldn’t get any bigger, it did.

  “You can’t name your child Hannibal. You just can’t do it! I thought you wanted him to be a politician anyway. Nobody’s going to elect anybody named Hannibal,” she reasoned, stepping on the gas.

  “No,” Lori corrected her. “The politician will come later. The first one is going to be a serial-killing sniper…with an afro! Yeah, that would be cool. That’s how I’ll wipe out my enemies and start building my family empire.”

  Every word felt like a drill to Avery’s head. None of it made sense.

  “What enemies could you possibly have? You’re a twelve-year-old girl!”

  “Well, first of all there’s the boy in my class who never lends me a pencil even though he has like a hundred. He’s got to go. Then there’s the homeless guy outside of the liquor store. He’ll buy for anybody else but when I ask he’s suddenly got the morals of a preacher. Them…and a bunch of others. Hannibal will be a busy boy doing mommy’s dirty work.”

  Avery didn’t even bother to respond. Everything was just ridiculous beyond belief, and the more talking her sister did, the crazier it all became. The only solution was to shut it all out and give herself one moment to sort through her fragmented thoughts.

  A honking horn snapped her back and she jerked the wheel to right the car on the proper side of the road. What just happened? Clutching the wheel, she stared at the road ahead of her.

  “Are you ok?” Lori asked, one hand on the door and the other on her stomach.

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” Avery brushed her off, flicking the blinker and making a turn.

  “No, really, tell me what the problem is.”

  Lori’s demands were hard to object to when Avery really did feel like she needed to talk to someone. She couldn’t tell her friends because it would make her seem weak. It was too embarrassing. But she didn’t want to confide in her sister either because she might be too young to understand, and it might burden her with sticky relationship details she wasn’t ready to know about. Squeezing her fingers around the steering wheel, she clenched her face, finally giving in.

  “I guess it’s not that big a deal,” Avery downplayed it. “I was so happy when I got back together with Carter, but now things are different. I can’t put my finger on it exactly, but he’s always so shy and reserved around me now. He used to be, you know, really intense. Just all the time. Now, it’s like he doesn’t want to look at me. I can’t believe I’m telling you this, but it’s been almost a week and we still haven’t…made love.”

  “You mean fucked?”

  “No!” Avery cried, pained at hearing her precious sister cursing. “I mean been intimate.”

  “You mean bent over in front of the sink and pounded from behind while your hair gets in the dish water?”

  “Oh my God. No! Don’t say things like that. I guess I just don’t know why he’d get back together with me if he didn’t find me attractive anymore. I feel like I’d almost be better off if we hadn’t because then I could just be mad at him instead of horribly disappointed in myself.”

  Lori reached out and set her hand on Avery’s shoulder. They shared a quick sympathetic glance. The only explanation Avery could think of was that he didn’t find her attractive anymore.

  “You know what you have to do, right?” she asked.

  “No, what’s that?” Avery inquired, oblivious.

  “If there’s one thing I’ve learned about boys, it’s that they really aren’t too different from dogs. When they don’t behave the way you want, you have to punish them! Dig into his lunch box and slip some laxatives into his food. Puncture his bicycle tire. Or you could sneak into his house in the middle of the night and put a rubber band around his balls. Your choice.”

  Avery sighed. She knew none of those things would work. They’d just drive him further away from her.

  “I would do something like that, I would. If I was going to punish him, I’d withhold sex until he’d do whatever I wanted, but that’s what he’s doing to me! And it’s not like there’s anything he actually needs me for. He’s got the money, the car, the nice house, a basketball team full of friends.”

  “So you think he’s cutting you off from sex until you do what he wants?”

  Avery hadn’t thought that, but now she did. Somehow her sister had put it together for her. He was manipulating her just like she’d manipulated him. First he came quick to get back at her for being mean, and now he was abstaining from sex for…for what? What did he want her to do? Then the answer dropped on her like a ton of bricks. She swallowed hard and realized she would have to do the hardest thing she would ever have to do.

  “I have to be a good girl,” she gasped. “That’s what he wants. No more insults, rumors, or smack talk. I’ll stop backstabbing, cheating, and scheming. Instead, I will…help people. Be nice. Listen to others. Mind my manners. I will be so sweet he won’t be able to keep himself off me.”

  The words sounded strange coming out of her mouth. She wondered if she could really do it, and it didn’t help her confidence when Lori started laughing hysterically beside her.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me! You…be nice? You won’t last a day. Who do you think I learned all that stuff about punishing boys from? Might as well just resign yourself to celibacy or find another dick. You can’t be the opposite of who you are.”

  “Yes, I can!” Avery insisted. “Just you wait and see. On Monday, Carter will meet the nicest girl who ever lived, his girlfriend. Now that I’ve figured out his intentions, everything’s going to be just perfect.”