Wicked Sweet

by Merrell, Mar'ce

  “Take away their video games if they do anything bad. They love shooting bad guys on the screen. That’s what they’re doing now, isn’t it? And we’re sitting out here, relaxing in the sun.” She closed her eyes.

  “This is about Ollie. He needs to be with someone who can help him grow intellectually.”

  She laughed. “Jillian, you’ll be perfect for that.”

  “But … a professional will have a plan for talking to him about cause and effect relationships, sharing picture books and crafts and …” That was point five; I’d just skipped three and four.

  “Get Chantal over here. That girl loves a freaking plan.”

  I swallowed. I’d practiced this in my head. I was just going to say it. Say it. “You need to get someone else.”

  “You act, Jillian, like there is an option here. There’s not. And all this high and mighty stuff …” She read from the top of the paper. “‘Developmental Stages and Intellectual and Emotional Needs of a One-Year-Old.’ Shit, girl. You’re ready to go. If I could pay you, I’d give you a raise.”

  My stomach twisted at how foolish my words sounded when she read them back. “I don’t want to do this.” My voice shrank to a small dismal sound. I knew my stand against babysitting Ollie didn’t have to do with not being confident or capable, at least not very much. I couldn’t take care of all the boys and be Parker’s girlfriend. And more than anything else, I wanted to be able to have him look into my eyes and not see the panicked me—worrying about breaking up fights, or how I’d handle the next temper tantrum.

  “Don’t be a victim, Jillian. It’s embarrassing.” She let the paper fall from her hands, into the kiddie pool. The black ink became more visible as the paper soaked up water. Words don’t mean anything to my mother.

  She lit a second cigarette, her lips pinching together, the wrinkles defying her attempts to look young and hot with her carefree hair, her bralessness. She was only fooling herself. “You’re embarrassing.” I wished I hadn’t said it the second that it came out of my mouth.

  Her reaction was shock, but that didn’t last long. Not long enough to give me real satisfaction. She laughed. Snorted. “I am doing you a favor and you’re not even grateful. Those boys are the only way you’re going to keep that boyfriend of yours. Men want to rescue girls. They want to be the prince on the white horse.” She pulled her feet out of the water and pushed herself up from her lawn chair, the skin ripping against the plastic. As she bent down to retrieve her cigarettes and lighter, the cellulite on the back of her red-streaked thighs jiggled.

  “Just be careful,” she said as she turned toward me, waving her cigarette in the air. “Once you graduate you can get yourself pregnant and hold on to any man you want, but you’re going to graduate first. You need to have an education to fall back on.”

  She took one last long drag, the cigarette paper curling into ash as she sucked on the filter, then she dropped it in the grass. I wanted to warn her about the fire danger. Instead I watched the smoke trail up.

  Just as I’m almost ready to take the boys to the library for a couple of hours (it’s self-contained and they expect children), Chantal calls, excited about another summer project. We haven’t talked in nearly a week and she’s still on about the summer project?

  I cut her off before she can get too far. “I’ve got all the boys this summer. Even if I wanted to, I can’t do a summer project.”

  “But you have to.” Chantal has that only-child whine in her voice.

  Being her best friend doesn’t mean agreeing to everything she wants. “I think we already went through this. My brothers come first right now.”

  “But …”

  “No.” Before I can press pause, I say everything. “You do not need me this summer. Because I can’t be needed by you. Do you understand?” I don’t even stop to hear her feeble protest. “You know what you need? You need to loosen up. You need to have more fun. You need to stop thinking everything through and deciding the most efficient, less painful, less potentially embarrassing path. You need to let yourself be unorganized. You need to let yourself be wrong.”

  “Jillian, what’s going on?”

  “You need to know.”

  “Know what?”

  “Know what you’re missing. Where you ought to draw the line, instead of where you’re drawing the line because you’re afraid.” I hold the phone away from my mouth so she can’t hear my rapid breathing. I don’t know how to stop.

  “Ouch. I didn’t know you felt so strongly,” she says. “I’m working on it. I took care of your brothers, all by myself, even in a flood. And I’m … biking … I’ve been doing a lot of biking. And I love it. I mean, it’s so … creative …”

  Creative biking? Tell me this isn’t the summer project she wants me to do. Now I’m beginning to feel sorry for her.

  “And I feel like I’m growing into someone who is … better.” After a week? I wait for the crying to start. I wonder why she hasn’t insisted on coming over here to talk this out face-to-face. I wonder why she isn’t at least sighing heavily into the phone. I wonder if she’s still on the line.

  “Chantal? Are you there?”

  “I thought we’d do the summer project with Parker … and Will.”

  Huh? “You don’t want to do a summer project with Parker, and definitely not with Will. Please.”

  “Remember last summer? Remember you called me and you said that three times that morning you nearly got in the car to drive away? You said you just wanted a break from the drudgery.”

  “I think I said prison duty.” But, I get it. She’s desperate. And if she’s willing to accept Parker, well, things could be very different. “What about my being too vulnerable to be around Parker? What about throwing my life away?”

  “I went too far.” In the silence that follows, I hear a whirring noise in the background; it must be the dishwasher. “Can I have a second chance?”

  We’re even. We both said things we shouldn’t have, and now we can break up. I can tell her that we’re not a good match and we’ve grown apart. I can say I’m sorry for what happened. I can tell her it’s not her fault. I can tell her we need time apart. I can cut this complication out of my life. Instead I say, “We need to have some rules.”

  “I love rules.”

  “We’re not creative biking.”

  “What?”

  “Everyone gets to decide and I’m saying right now I veto creative biking.”

  “Strike creative biking from the list.”

  “You can’t roll your eyes.”

  “What?”

  “You’re not allowed to roll your eyes when Parker or Will talks—it’s not polite.”

  “Jillian. I don’t roll my eyes,” Chantal starts. “Okay, I just did. And I won’t.”

  “And you can’t make that big sighing noise if they say something that you think is stupid.”

  “I don’t—okay, I won’t. Any more conditions of engagement?”

  “Yes. We need to say we’re sorry …” Though my words stop, the communication doesn’t end. Sometimes silence says more.

  “You know I’m sorry.” Chantal has that choked-up sound in her voice. “You’re my best friend …”

  “And I’m sorry for not listening to you before I started my verbal—”

  “—Assault.”

  “I was going to say punishment.”

  I hear her stifle a sigh. “And I’m sorry for …” Chantal breathes into the phone. “For the night of the party. I’m going to respect your right to run your own life. I won’t say another disparaging thing about Parker. And I love your brothers, almost as much as you do.”

  “Okay.” It comes out choked, as if gratitude were the wishbone of a chicken stuck in my throat. If only my mother could listen and understand me like Chantal does. I have given my mother a thousand chances. “Apology accepted. But we do have an issue. I have to take care of all the boys this summer.”

  “Even Ollie? Why?”

  It’s like I
didn’t say this at the beginning of the call. “It doesn’t matter why. And don’t bother telling me it’s not fair.”

  “I wasn’t going to say that …”

  I don’t fill in her pause.

  “Okay, I was. But, we can work it out. We need to have a summer project. It’s our last project before we graduate.”

  “You need to have a summer project,” I correct her. “And I would like to have a summer project that’s fun, if everyone is included.”

  “Don’t worry about the boys. We’ll all pitch in.”

  “I don’t know. If Will gets ahold of them, they’ll be little slang masters. Yo, so snap, dude.” We laugh. “And what’s up with Will? You don’t even like him, do you?”

  “Not like, like.” Chantal stutters. “Um … well, we’ve come to a truce. An understanding.”

  “Okay … but are you sure you want to try to do a summer project with him?”

  “Oh, it’ll be fine. I’m the master planner you know …”

  “And that’s your favorite part, second only to the performance,” I add.

  “Performance? Oh … maybe we don’t need a performance this year. Or … maybe there could be something. Maybe a little less nerdy than last year. But fun. Still fun.”

  I stand in front of my mirror as I talk. I look pretty good today. Pretty good. My hair has just enough body. My T-shirt curves in all the right places. My legs are just enough tan. I think I can see why Parker is attracted to me. Maybe my mom is trying to keep me away from him. Maybe she’s jealous that she’s not young anymore or that she can’t have a summer. Sad.

  “So you’ll meet me at the lake tomorrow morning?”

  “Definitely,” I say. “We shouldn’t let anything stop us.”

  Chantal

  Crushing.

  I click the phone off, clutch it against my chest, and collapse against the wall. That was close. Crud. I was ready to tell her everything about the revenge plan and my secret cake baking, but what she wanted was an apology.

  Jillian’s always been the one who talked me down from the ledge of this-is-going-to-be-a-disaster. But, this summer, I’m going to prove that I can do things differently. Not only will I participate in the world’s most unlikely summer project, but I can handle Will and the problems that he’s dishing out—all on my own. Jillian will be shocked. First her best friend babysits her six brothers, deals with a flood and a blackout, and then she successfully avenges the guy who threatened her reputation. And they all lived happily ever after.

  The cake is gorgeous. Cherry pink swirls flirt over the top and down the sides of my vanilla-scented Crush On You creation. Named and baked by me, it will be the star of a show-stopping performance. The note made with cut-out letters from my stack of old magazines spells out the instructions.

  I set the cake in my bike basket, pull on my all-black shirt, shorts, and biking gloves, snap the strap on my helmet. I don’t want to get caught during my first delivery.

  Jillian

  A Charming Morning.

  This morning, despite my saying three times, “This is really insane, Parker. Five little boys and a one-year-old at the lake will be our last date,” we load my brothers into the van with towels, sand toys, and a picnic lunch. I drive while he reads Sesame Street stories from the front seat. Ollie giggles at the Oscar the Grouch growls. As we pull into the parking lot Parker retrieves his phone from the van console and starts texting. Within minutes a crew of four girls arrives at the van; one is our physics teacher’s daughter, Chloe. She introduces her friends and makes a rush for Ollie.

  “Oh, I’ll take him,” Chloe coos. (I’m not kidding, she coos.) She scoops him out of my arms. “I love babies.”

  “Um …” I’m used to people wanting to hold Ollie, he is that cute, but Chloe is sort of taking him. Before I can object, Parker steps in.

  “Okay, boys.” He gathers the Hat Trick and Double Minor into a sports huddle. “We’ve got a camp all planned out for you this summer.”

  “We? Who are we?” My stomach cramps. He’s taking over? I don’t need this. Do I? He leans out of the huddle.

  “Well, I guess it’s me. Me and the babysitters.” He outlines the schedule: the girls will supervise the six boys for two hours in the morning at the playground. Parker and I take over for swimming time and lunch. After lunch it’s either naptime if you’re little or you’re hanging out with Chloe and her friends for two hours. We end the day with more swim time and we all go home together. He is enthusiastic and precise, a male version of Chantal minus the anxiety.

  “Parker?” I wave him over. He grins and moves close to me. Very close. I smile through clenched teeth. “How are they getting paid?”

  “The girls?”

  I nod.

  He avoids direct eye contact with me. “I’m paying them.”

  “No.”

  “It’s a gift. Chantal called last night. She explained that we’re going to do some sort of project—the four of us. I thought you’d want to have fun without the kids sometimes.” He doesn’t hide the mix of confusion and annoyance in his voice.

  “The boys are my responsibility.” I’m not going to waver.

  He takes a deep breath. Stands up straight. Stares out at the lake and back to the boys. Finally, he speaks. “You are a sister. Not a mother. We will be here if they need us.”

  Even though I want to say something back right away, something like you hardly even know me, I’m smart enough to squash that impulse. Instead I consider what he’s said. I am a sister. Most sisters would take help.

  Rocks ping off of trees. Boy-generated entertainment. I watch. Chloe dives in to rescue Ollie from the firing range. Now Travis is trying to convince Stevie to run through the woods so they have a target. “We’ll aim for your legs,” Travis says. One of the other girls grabs Stevie’s hand to stop him. If I’m in charge alone, we’ll probably come to the lake once a week if we’re lucky. That means we’re stuck with the backyard and the kiddie pool. “If I agree, I’ll give you an IOU. And I’ll pay you back.”

  “If you want to.” Parker shrugs.

  “Of course I want to. You act like money doesn’t matter. It’s going to be expensive. Four girls every day for the summer. And … that’s a lot of money.” I bet he’s never had to cut the mold off the bread. They probably throw their old bread out at his house.

  “Think of it like this. You’re my girlfriend. Instead of taking you to the movies and going out for dinner and I don’t know, bowling, our dates are at the lake.”

  I’m his girlfriend. I weaken. “But what if someone gets hurt? Someone always gets hurt.”

  “The girls have first aid training. I taught the class. I was a day-camp counselor four summers in a row. And Chloe is the perfect age, fourteen. In another year she’ll probably be into boys but we’ve got her for this summer anyway.” Implying there could be another one.

  “And if it rains?”

  “We all go home. Together.”

  I can’t agree. I can’t say yes. I can’t commit to this just because I want some time off.

  Parker’s hand is at my elbow and then the other one. And we’re in that let’s dance position. I look up at him. God, he’s so gorgeous. “We’re good then?”

  “Parker.” I stare at him. I want him to see that taking charity isn’t easy. That I don’t expect it. That I am not my mother. He leans forward, kisses me and, finally, I feel like I don’t want him to stop. Maybe the curse against him is only at our house.

  “Gross!” Trevor yells. “Can we go now? This is boring.”

  Everyone deserves to have fun. Especially us.

  Chantal

  Circle Perfection.

  I understand the problem with perfection. I am, after all, the daughter of a mother who believes that if I eat healthy enough, sleep eight hours a night, exercise no less than thirty minutes each day, study a minimum of thirty minutes for each subject every school night, limit my exposure to TV and the Internet, stay away from drugs and alco
hol, and floss my teeth after every meal, I will be the model of a perfect daughter. But would a perfect daughter be baking cakes when her mother told her not to? Would she wish her mother would stay away for a little longer?

  My mother wasn’t here, but I was still arguing with her in my mind. So … I talked to Nigella. Virtually. (That sounds better than I was hearing her voice in my head. Right?)

  You are two things, a baker and a daughter. Like a yolk from the white, you’ve got to separate the two. Both are useful. Both are good. Yes, that’s well put. Both are good.

  I’m not saying virtual Nigella told me what to do, but she reassured me. And my mom? I don’t have to do anything about her for another two nights. Today, I’m at the lake amid the circles of umbrellas and the towel rectangles to plan a summer project and watch my cake’s debut.

  I hike up the hill to our tree, hoping I’m not the first person to arrive. It’s okay if I’m only meeting Jillian, she doesn’t think prompt arrival is dork2, but Will probably does. He wouldn’t say it now, would he? Now that we’re sort of on a team. I wish I didn’t care what he thinks. I trip over a sippy cup that’s rolled away from a little kid. I grab it before it rolls too much farther and return it to the girl. The mom thanks me.

  See? I’m a kind dork. A mess of panic under pale skin. I ignore the trembling in my legs. I see our tree, and people under it. This is a sign, clearly, that the day is going to go my way. The next sign is that Jillian and Parker are there, and Will isn’t.

  So little space separates Parker and Jillian that I wonder how close they’ve gotten, off the hill. Still, I smile wide and drop my backpack across from them.

  “Hey.”

  Parker shifts away from Jillian, his hand trailing along her back and Jillian looks down, awkward that I see this closeness. Before it can get any weirder than that, we hear Will’s voice.

  “Amigos!”

  He fist punches Parker, says hi to Jillian, and then it’s my turn. His voice is softer than usual, and he looks me over before he meets my eyes. “How’s it goin’?” His head nods almost imperceptibly and he smiles with half his mouth. I wait to feel something other than anxiety fuelling my pounding heart and my sweaty palms, but it just gets worse. Crud. I want to hit him. I need to sit down. But he’s still staring, waiting for a response.