Sunny Days Inside

by Caroline Adderson

  Copyright © 2021 by Caroline Adderson

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  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a

  retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior

  written consent of the publisher or a license from The Canadian Copyright

  Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright license,

  visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.

  * * *

  Published in 2021 by Groundwood Books / House of Anansi Press

  groundwoodbooks.com

  * * *

  Groundwood Books respectfully acknowledges that the land on which we operate is the Traditional Territory of many Nations, including the Anishinabeg, the Wendat and the Haudenosaunee. It is also the Treaty Lands of the Mississaugas of the Credit.

  We gratefully acknowledge for their financial support of our publishing

  program the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council and

  the Government of Canada.

  * * *

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Title: Sunny days inside and other stories / Caroline Adderson.

  Names: Adderson, Caroline, author.

  Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20200393642 | Canadiana (ebook) 20200393677

  | ISBN 9781773065724 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781773065731 (EPUB) |

  ISBN 9781773065748 (Kindle)

  Subjects: LCGFT: Short stories.

  Classification: LCC PS8551.D3267 S86 2021 | DDC jC813/.54—dc23

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  Jacket illustration and design by Claudia Dávila

  Text design and typesetting by Marijke Friesen

  * * *

  Groundwood Books is a Global Certified Accessible™ (GCA by Benetech) publisher.

  An ebook version of this book that meets stringent accessibility standards is available

  to students and readers with print disabilities.

  For Danika and Ryker

  and all the children of the pandemic

  1

  Sunny Days Inside

  We were supposed to go on holiday, but we didn’t. We stayed home.

  By holiday I mean an airplane holiday, not a car holiday with me stuck in the back with Mimi in her booster seat with the cup holders full of guck. (Guck = crumbs and dirt and tissue lint glued on with dried apple juice, which gives me car sickness x 10.)

  We were all disappointed, but Mom was disappointed x 100 because first: she hadn’t had an airplane holiday since Before Me (eleven years) because she and Dad are saving money so we can buy a town house and not have to squash together in an apartment.

  And second: Auntie Susie, Mom’s older sister who lives in an apartment bigger than ours though she’s just one person (except it’s called a condo because she owns it) takes airplane holidays all the time.

  After Mom, I was the second-most disappointed. Then Dad, who just “goes with it.” Then Mimi, who was excited about the trip, but worried about Gingersnap.

  Gingersnap was the only one who wasn’t disappointed at all because he’s a cat.

  This is how we almost had a real airplane holiday to a real holiday place (= a resort). Grandma gave us the money.

  This is Top Secret x 1,000. We’re not allowed to tell anybody, especially not Auntie Susie.

  Grandma is the one who said not to tell Auntie Susie because she (A.S.) might think it was favoritism. (Favoritism = doing something nice for somebody, but not somebody else because you like them better, which is just normal in my opinion. Why would you do nice things for somebody you don’t like?)

  Mom says Grandma loves her and Susie exactly the same amount. She says if you took two measuring cups and filled one with how much Grandma loved Susie and another with how much she loved my mom, the amount would be exactly the same.

  “The same way that if I had a Danila (me) measuring cup and a Mimi measuring cup, they would contain exactly the same amount of love,” Mom explained.

  It was just that if the cups showed how much money Auntie Susie had and how much money we have, the measurement wouldn’t be the same. Way different! So Grandma topped up our cup.

  (Shhhhhh …)

  “Can we use it for our down payment?” Dad asked when he found out about the money. (Down payment = the money you need to save up before they’ll sell you a town house.)

  “No,” Mom said, and she crossed her arms over her chest and looked at him with the Laser Zapper Eyes that we’re all scared of though mostly it’s Dad who gets zapped.

  “I’ll go with it.”

  He uncrossed Mom’s arms and hugged her until Mimi saw them and shouted, “Mimi sandwich!” and ran over and wriggled between them.

  Mimi is seven and can never get enough love. She even smears yogurt on her lips and lets Gingersnap lick it off, which is disgusting. Coffee yogurt (disgusting x 10). What kid eats that? What cat?

  Planning the airplane holiday was probably almost as fun as the airplane holiday would have been.

  First we ordered the brochures online. Now there was something to look forward to when we collected the mail! In fact, Mimi and I had never even used that cute little key that opens the box.

  When Mom picked us up from school, she brought the key. The first thing we did when we got to our apartment building was race each other to the mailbox. Whoever reached it first opened the box, which was 99.9 percent of the time me because my legs are twice as long. Even though I let Mimi use the key to lock the empty box afterward (which I thought was more than fair), she started baby-bawling so we had to take turns.

  If there was a brochure in the mail, we ran up all three flights of stairs to our apartment so we could start living the dream. The pages looked good and felt good — shiny and smooth. Cool, even though the pictures were of hot places. They even smelled good, all inky and papery. If we left the brochures on the sofa, Gingersnap would stretch out on them like the bikini women inside sunning themselves on the beach.

  We ordered brochures for airplane holidays all over the world even though we knew we’d never pick Bermuda (too expensive), or Costa Brava, Spain (too far and too expensive), or the Galapagos Islands (too far and too expensive and too prickly with cacti and creepy spiky lizards). We just wanted to look at the pictures and smell the paper.

  •

  One weekend Auntie Susie dropped by. We weren’t even dressed yet, but she looked ironed. She’d already been to the gym and the mall. She brought presents — a sparkly pen and notebook for me and another Polly Pocket for Mimi. (Sometimes Mom gets annoyed by all the presents Auntie Susie buys us.)

  Auntie Susie saw Gingersnap sunning himself on his brochure beach and pulled one out from under him.

  “Going somewhere?”

  “We’re going on an airplane holiday!” Mimi shouted. Then she started doing a hula dance like in the Hawaii brochures, singing, “Airplane holiday, airplane holiday …”

  Mom brought Auntie Susie a cup of coffee.

  Auntie Susie said, “I thought you didn’t have any disposable income.”

  “Disposable income?” I said. “Is that like throwing money away?”

  “Is it like diapers?” Mimi asked, cracking up.

  Mom told Auntie Susie, “You have to have a little fun sometimes, right? Who knows what the future might bring?”

  Auntie Susie’s face squinched, her eyes, nose and mouth bunching all together. “Where are you thinking of going?”

  “Not sure yet.” Mom seemed nervous, or afraid Auntie Susie might tickle-torture it out of her that th
e money wasn’t disposable. It was Grandma’s.

  (Auntie Susie used to tickle-torture Mom when they were the same age as me and Mimi. She was merciless x 100.)

  But Auntie Susie wasn’t interested in the money. She said, “Maybe we could go somewhere together. All of us.”

  Mom said, “Maybe,” in a voice that sounded like somebody was squeezing her throat. Hard. Then she asked, “How’s your coffee?”

  The embarrassing moment would have passed, except Mimi stopped hula-ing.

  “Can Auntie Susie come with us?” she asked.

  “We’ll see.” Mom went to get the coffee pot even though Auntie Susie’s mug was still full.

  Auntie Susie sat for a minute without saying anything. Then she sniffed.

  “It always smells so weird in here,” she said. “Like cat litter and peanut butter.”

  “Then smell this!” Mimi grabbed a brochure and fanned the pages in her face.

  In the end we chose the resort by price. Días de Sol Resorts — children under 10 half price! — in Baja, Mexico. (Días de Sol = Sunny Days.) We checked the reviews to make sure there weren’t cockroaches, sharks, or prickles.

  Not only was the resort right on the ocean, there was also a swimming pool. A swimming pool and the ocean! How great was that?

  We didn’t invite Auntie Susie.

  “It won’t be up to her standards,” Mom said at dinner that night.

  “She’ll think it smells weird,” I said.

  Everybody laughed, but I felt bad as soon as I said it. Because I remembered how Auntie Susie had looked down into her coffee mug when Mom wouldn’t answer her question about coming on the trip with us. She hadn’t taken a sip yet, but it was like she saw an empty cup.

  •

  About a month before we were supposed to leave, we went shopping for “resort wear.” (Resort wear = sundresses, sunglasses, sun hats, sun flip-flops …) Mom and Dad could just wear their summer clothes, but Mimi and I had grown out of ours.

  Since there weren’t any summer clothes in the stores, we went to the Thrift Store and tried on outfits and pretended to be fashion models strutting the aisles. We came home with a whole bag of crazy resort wear that cost practically nothing, leaving us more money to dispose of (= spend) when we were actually at the resort. Not only was this cheaper than new clothes, but when I wore the T-shirt that said I HEART Miami, or California Dreamin’, people at the resort would think I’d actually been there.

  A few weeks before we were supposed to leave, Mimi and I started to practice packing because we were only allowed carry-on bags. You had to pay for a bigger bag, so we had to figure out how to fit everything in.

  Mimi’s bag bulged. She was planning on bringing her blanket! Also her whole Polly Pocket collection!

  “No, no, no,” I told her, pulling stuff out.

  She started yelling for me to stop.

  “You want to leave room to bring things back, don’t you?” I told her. “Like souvenirs and a present for Grandma and Auntie Susie.”

  “I have to buy presents?”

  “Duh! Auntie Susie has bought you about a thousand presents, and Grandma gave you this trip.”

  “What about Gingersnap?” she asked.

  “Sure,” I told her. “Bring him a present, too.”

  “He’s coming, isn’t he? In his carrier?”

  I’m not sure if she really thought we were taking him or she was in denial. Once we did take him on a car trip after he scratched Grandma and she wouldn’t look after him anymore. That trip was a disaster x 1,000. Gingersnap howled in the car. Then he howled all night in the motel. We went home the next morning.

  I gave it to her straight. “Gingersnap’s not coming.”

  Mimi ran off crying to Mom and Dad, who confirmed the awful truth. Juliet from next door was going to feed him and change his litter box.

  All the baby-bawling about Gingersnap was interrupted then by the phone. It was Grandma calling to say that Auntie Susie was leaving on her cruise soon and maybe Mom could phone her and wish her bon voyage.

  “What cruise?” Mom said. She hadn’t spoken to Auntie Susie since that day she visited and said our apartment smelled weird.

  “What’s a cruise?” Mimi asked.

  “It’s like what we’re doing, but on a ship,” I told her.

  “And way fancier,” Dad said.

  He told us about all the things a cruise ship had. Swimming pools (more than one!), game arcades, movie theaters, restaurants and discos.

  It sounded fantastic x 10,000.

  Later, though not in front of us — after we all went to bed, but before I fell asleep — Mom complained to Dad about Auntie Susie’s cruise. This is one of the problems when you’re squashed together in an apartment. You can hear everything on the other side of the wall — even things you’d rather not hear — especially if your bed is the one next to the wall.

  “My whole life I’ve had to deal with this sibling-rivalry thing. She always has to be better than me.”

  “Maybe she just wants to be good enough for you,” Dad said.

  “Hardly! I hope Danila and Mimi don’t end up like this.”

  What did that mean? I am three years older than Mimi like Auntie Susie is three years older than Mom, but I’m not like her at all. I’ve never tickle-tortured Mimi. I’m pretty much a perfect older sister.

  The next day we called Auntie Susie and shouted, “Bon voyage!”

  Then Mimi grabbed the phone. “Is it true there’s two swimming pools on your ship?”

  And that’s the problem with sibling rivalry. Before we found out about the arcade and the movie theater and all the other amazing things on the cruise ship, we were thrilled about our resort.

  Now it didn’t seem that great.

  •

  Three days before we were supposed to leave on the airplane there was more Bedroom Talking. “Is it safe?” “It’s safe now, but when won’t it be safe?” “It’s not actually bad here.” “It’s not bad there either.” “What about the money?” “But what about the kids? They’ll be so disappointed.” “Should we go?” “If it’s safe, we should.”

  I pressed my ear so hard against the wall it hurt.

  “What are they talking about?” Mimi asked from her bed.

  “Nothing, nosy.”

  She jumped across the space and put her bedhead to the wall.

  “Get out of my territory,” I told her. When she didn’t leave, I said I’d snake-bite her arm. She squeaked and got out fast.

  Mom and Dad must have heard us because they stopped talking after that.

  In the morning Mom took us to school smiling so hard my teeth hurt. She didn’t say anything about the trip or what they were worried about.

  I found out the second part at school because some of the kids were talking about the virus. It couldn’t have been that bad, I thought, because it seemed as though we were going away after all, and so were a lot of other kids.

  That night, Mom and Dad came into our rooms to check that we had packed everything we needed. Mimi’s suitcase was bulging again even though she’d taken out everything I’d asked her to take out.

  Dad lifted my suitcase off the bed to test its weight. They make you pay extra if it’s too heavy.

  “Oof,” he said, pretending it weighed a ton. Then he lifted Mimi’s.

  “MEOW!” came from inside.

  •

  The last day of school, all the kids were bouncing off the walls. Spring break!

  We’re going on an airplane trip! We’re going on an airplane trip! I sang under my breath all day.

  And then we weren’t. As fast as that, everything changed.

  We were staying home instead.

  Dad had been worried about disappointing me and Mimi, and we were disappointed x 10. But, as I said, Mom was
disappointed x 100. She went to her room and closed the door. We could hear her crying the way she cried in a sad movie — big loud sobs and honks when she stopped to blow her nose.

  Mimi asked through the door, “Mommy? Can I come in and hug you?”

  Mom croaked, “No, sweetheart. Not yet.”

  So Mimi spread out her blanket and lay in front of the door. I lay beside her.

  “Is she crying because of the virus?” Mimi whispered. She must have heard about it at school, too.

  “Sort of,” I said.

  “What’s a virus?”

  I told her it was a sickness, but I didn’t completely understand yet. Because a cold is a virus. And all that barfing at Christmas was because of a virus.

  “Is that why Mom doesn’t want a hug?” Mimi asked.

  “No. She just wants to be alone for a little while.”

  “But they said no hugs at school.”

  “You can still hug people in your family.”

  “Oh, good,” Mimi said.

  I moved away from her on the blanket in case she decided to hug me. She’s like Velcro. You have to rip her off.

  Dad was over at the desk in the corner of the living room doing something on the computer. A big smile spread across his face.

  Careful not to step on us, he came over and said through the door, “Great news, Debbie! It’s refundable!”

  He grinned and gave us the thumbs-up.

  Something smashed hard against the door. Maybe a shoe? Mimi shrieked and we both sat up.

  “It’s not about the money!” Mom yelled. “Do you have any idea how tired I am? How much I needed that trip? Of course Susie gets hers, like she always does! A break! I just wanted a break! To lie in the sun and DO NOTHING for a change!”

  I expected two laser holes to burn through the door.

  Dad felt terrible then, I could tell. He pressed his forehead to the door. “I’m sorry, Deb. What can I do to help?”

  The yelling scared Gingersnap. He ran off to hide and some of the brochures slid off the couch and onto the floor. I looked over at them.