Relentless: Three Novels

by Lindsey Stiles

  “Holly Anne,” her mother yelled from downstairs, “You and Wendy come down for dinner.”

  “Okay, Mom!” Holly Anne grabbed the baby and headed down the stairs.

  She handed Wendy to her mother and then her mother put Wendy in her highchair.

  Holly Anne glanced at the food on the table and was happy that her mom made her favorite dinner, meatloaf and mashed potatoes.

  “Dad is working late tonight, Holly Anne, so I’m going to need you to help me with Wendy.”

  Holly Anne was dumbfounded. In all her life she couldn’t remember having to watch Bobby. So why would she have to watch Wendy?”

  “Mom, why do I have to watch her? She already ruined my homework and I have to do it all over.”

  “How, long will it take you to do it over?” Her mother asked.

  “About twenty minutes.”

  “Okay, after dinner you do your homework and then I need you to watch her so I can do mine.”

  “Your what?” she asked her mother.

  “My homework. Holly Anne I told you yesterday that I needed you to watch your sister so I can study for my college test.”

  “Mom, you’re in college?”

  “Holly Anne stop being smart with me, now finish your dinner.”

  Holly Anne took a bite of her mashed potatoes and looked over at Wendy who was sitting next to her in her high chair. Wendy was chowing down on her mashed potatoes with her hands, then noticed Holly Anne looking at her.

  The baby smiled, picked up a handful of potatoes and heaved it at her sister’s face.

  Holly Anne screamed when she got plastered with mashed potatoes on her school clothes.

  “Oh, Holly Anne, don’t scream like that! She’s just a baby. She doesn’t know what she’s doing.”

  Holly Anne grabbed her napkin and washed her face. Then she came back to the table.

  Wendy leaned forward in her high chair and grabbed for Holly Anne’s glass of milk, spilling it all over Holly Anne’s new dress.

  Holly Anne began to scream even louder at the tiny baby. “Mom! She’s making a huge mess!”

  Her mother ordered her to finish her dinner in her room. And finish her homework, too.

  Holly Anne stomped up the stairs with her plate. She couldn’t think of a time when her mother had ever been mad at her. The two of them were always so close. A tear began to fall down her cheek as she made her way up the stairs to her bedroom.

  “Mom! It’s not fair!” she called down the stairs.

  “Who said life was supposed to be fair?” Mom called up the stairs.

  Holly Anne wanted this day to end so she put on her pajamas, finished her dinner, and then re-did her homework. After she finished her homework, she began to feel tired. She brushed her teeth and prepared to go to bed.

  Right when she got in to her bed her mother came into the room, holding Wendy.

  “Holly Anne, I told you that you had to watch her for an hour while I study for my test. It’s for my finals. I’m desperate.”

  “Mom, I’m so tired. I was really going to go to sleep.”

  Her mother looked at her watch and said, “It’s not even 7 o’clock, you can watch her for an hour, honey.”

  Holly Anne scowled.

  Wendy had a pacifier in her mouth and raised her arms out to Holly Anne.

  “You are so cute. Can you be good, too?” Holly Anne picked the baby up and sat Wendy next to her.

  “Do you want to watch television, Wendy?”

  Wendy gooed and gahhed. Holly Anne got off the bed to turn the TV on.

  She surfed through the channels until she found her favorite show. She walked back over to the bed, and before she could make it back, she saw Wendy on the edge of the bed about to fall off. Holly Anne dove to catch her sister, but it was too late. Wendy had fallen.

  “Wahhhhh,” cried Wendy, her feelings hurt, and there was a bump on her head, too.

  Their mother must have heard the commotion because she was up in her room in moments.

  “Holly Anne, what happened to Wendy?”

  “I was going to turn the television on and I left Wendy on the bed and she fell.”

  “You know that Wendy rolls off the bed, why would you leave her?” Holly Anne could see the anger building up in her mother’s face.

  She loved her mother so much and hated making her upset.

  “I’m sorry, Mom. I didn’t do it on purpose. I didn’t know she was going to fall in ten seconds and bonk her head on the floor.”

  “Holly Anne, just stay in your room and I’ll study with Wendy in my room.”

  She noticed the annoyance in her mother’s voice as she shut her door.

  “Oh no, I really didn’t mean for her to fall,” she said to herself.

  For a split second, Holly Anne began to miss Bobby. But shook it off quickly.

  “I am better off without Bobby,” she said out loud. “He’s a jerk.”

  She climbed into bed, pulled the blankets over her body, and went to sleep.

  A couple hours later, she was awakened by a loud cry coming from the crib in the corner of her room.

  Holly Anne sat up to see what was going on.

  Wendy was in her crib crying. She picked the baby up and headed to her parents’ room.

  She saw both of her parents fast asleep. She felt bad about what happened with Wendy earlier and decided to see if she could get her stop crying.

  She headed back to their room and gently sat the baby in her crib. She began to cry again. The first thought in her mind was to make Wendy laugh.

  “Oh, my sweet little sister needs to laugh.”

  Holly Anne began to perform a silly dance. Wendy still cried.

  Holly Anne searched her mind to figure out why a baby would cry.

  She had little cousins and had watched her aunt take care of them.

  A bottle, that’s what she needed! Leaving Wendy in the crib, crying her eyes out, crying so hard that she was amazed that her parents didn’t wake up, Holly Anne went down the stairs and into the kitchen. She searched the cupboards for a baby bottle.

  She finally found one in the dishwasher. “What do babies drink?” she asked herself.

  “Milk,” she answered herself.

  She prepared the bottle with some cold milk out of the carton, put the carton away and climbed the stairs back to Wendy.

  Holly Anne handed the baby the bottle and she gulped down the milk in it.

  Holly Anne headed back to her room to go back to sleep.

  A little while later, she heard another cry. It was a different one. It was a mad cry!

  She got up to check on Wendy. Sure enough, Wendy was up again, and her parents were still asleep.

  Holly Anne hesitated whether or not she would wake up her parents.

  She decided not to and to see if she could see what was wrong.

  “Now, what’s wrong, Wendy?”

  Holly Anne removed Wendy from her crib and got a big whiff of her diaper.

  “Eww, Wendy! What have you done in your pants?” Holly Anne sat the baby back in her crib and woke up her mother.

  Her mother thanked Holly Anne for getting up with Wendy.

  Her mom came in and saw the diaper needed changing. She got to it right away. “Wow, I haven’t seen this big of a mess since the doctor took you off of cow’s milk and put you on soy formula.”

  Holly Anne’s mouth dropped open. “Oh, Mom, I’m sorry. I gave her milk.”

  “Regular milk? Cold cow’s milk?”

  “I didn’t know. Is she going to be okay?”

  “Sure. She’s not allergic. Regular milk just gives her a lot of gas and makes a huge mess in her diapers. So next time, wake me and I’ll show you how to mix the soy milk powder formula for her.”

  “Okay, Mom. I messed up. I’m sorry.”

  “That’s okay, I guess I forgot to tell you that I switched her to soy. You were a good big sister to try to help me.”

  “Well, you said you had a big test tomorro
w, so I let you sleep.”

  Her mom hugged her and Holly Anne felt better about herself; she loved to please her mother.

  “Why does she keep waking up?”

  “She’s teething, honey. Any day now, the first one is going to pop through.”

  “Oh! So that’s why!”

  Her mom got a baby chew toy out of the fridge and gave it to Wendy, who stuck it right in her mouth like she knew what it was for.

  So after her mom got Wendy cleaned up and went back to her own room, Holly Anne rolled her sister’s crib over next to her twin bed and held Wendy’s little hand until she fell asleep. Which was hard, because they both started giggling. Holly Anne finally fell asleep in her bed, her hand in the crib with Wendy and her sister holding her pinky finger very tightly. Even while she slept.

  She was awakened once more by Wendy, but this time, she let her mother attend to her sister.

  The next morning, Holly Anne was exhausted. Wendy had awakened a total of five times during the night and she hardly got any sleep. She told her teacher that she wanted to take her spelling test over because her baby sister was teething and shared her room and she had hardly gotten any sleep, let alone had time to study. Her teacher let her have a retake and she got 100 percent.

  Later, Holly Anne sat at the dinner table with her family, and she stared at the empty chair that was Bobby’s, next to Wendy’s highchair. She realized that she missed Bobby. Sure, Bobby was a handful and broke her bike and got into her stuff but he wasn’t a baby and she didn’t have to watch him. Bobby was horribly annoying, but a baby sharing her room was completely exhausting.

  Holly Anne excused herself from the table. She knew what she had to do next. Holly Anne headed to the back yard of her home, looked to the sky, and repeated three times, “Mrs. Honey Pickle.”

  Before Holly Anne’s eyes, Mrs. Honey Pickle and Buzzy arrived in their spaceship.

  “Mrs. Honey Pickle, Mrs. Honey Pickle! I want to take back my wish. But not all of it. Before you do anything, I would like to explain.”

  Mrs. Honey Pickle laughed at the little girl. “I knew you would change your mind, my dear.”

  “If you knew, then why did you grant my wish?” Holly Anne asked.

  “Because you need to figure it out on your own, so that you will know just how fortunate you are.”

  “Oh, believe me, I know it.”

  “So you want Bobby back and you want Wendy gone?”

  “Well, I want Bobby back, but can you put Wendy’s crib in my parents’ room? And her in it? I don’t want her to leave.”

  “This is highly unusual, to only half-reverse a wish.”

  “Well, she’s so cute. And she won’t be in diapers forever. When she stops eating my homework, she can share my room.” Holly Anne said, “I liked how she held onto my finger. And my mom likes her, so can I have my annoying little brother back, and also keep my stinky baby sister? And while you’re at it, if my mom can get an A on her final at college, it would make everyone’s life easier at home. She’s a nervous wreck!”

  Mrs. Honey Pickle smiled. And then she laughed so hard that Buzzy even barked over and over.

  Holly Anne smiled very big as she saw Bobby come through the backyard gate with her broken bike. He started to explain what happened, but she interrupted him with a hug.

  “I know you had a terrible bike wreck. Are you okay, Bobby?”

  “Yeah. It’s just a bad skinned knee. It was a dumb thing for me to do, to go on that skateboard ramp with your bike. Let’s go in the garage and we can fix your bike with Dad’s tools before he comes home from work.”

  “Where are Dad’s tools?”

  “I think he keeps a red toolbox behind Mom’s exercise equipment.”

  “Okay, Bobby. Let’s go get Wendy and put her in the stroller and bring her out to the garage with us. To keep us company.”

  “Cool,” Bobby said. “I want to see if her first tooth is in yet.”

  “It almost is. It looks so gross, too! It’s a sharp white thing barely sticking right out of her bottom gums. And there is drool everywhere. Wait until you see!”

  Mrs. Honey Pickle smiled and gave Buzzy a long stroke on his black fur. “Our work here is done.”

  Holly Anne and Bobby giggled all the way into the house to go get baby Wendy.

  The End

  Wish Two:

  “I wish I didn’t have to go to school.”

  “Benny!” Mrs. Lloyd, his fourth-grade teacher, said. “Are you done interrupting my class?”

  Benny turned around from his friend Tommy’s desk and faced the right way.

  “Yes, Mrs. Lloyd,” he said, laughing.

  “And what do you find so funny?”

  Benny laughed again, sat up straight and replied, “Nothing, Mrs. Lloyd.”

  Mrs. Lloyd began teaching the class again.

  “Tommy,” Benny whispered as he turned around again, “are you going to the tree house after school?”

  Tommy didn’t answer him. Benny turned back around and Mrs. Lloyd was in front of his desk.

  “Benny, I’ve been asking you to stop talking all day now.”

  Mrs. Lloyd made her way to the front of the room and pulled out a referral form from her desk.

  She wrote on it, and called Benny to come to her desk. Benny walked with his head down. He knew all too well what this meant. His father told him that if he got one more referral from his teacher that he would not be able to go to the annual carnival that his school put on every year.

  “Mrs. Lloyd, can you give me another chance? I promise I won’t say anything for the rest of the school day.”

  “I warned you too many times, as it is.”

  “I’m done talking in class. I promise.”

  She handed the referral to him anyway and he stomped his way back to his desk.

  That afternoon, Benny wasn’t looking forward to going home and explaining to his parents why he got in trouble again.

  Benny walked home with Tommy and his other friend, Steven. It was a tradition that the three of them had done since kindergarten. Then after they got home and did their homework, they would meet up at the tree house.

  The tree house was where they spent all their time when they weren’t playing sports or wrestling one another. They had a secret club there that only the three of them knew about.

  “What are you going to tell your parents?” Steven asked.

  Benny hesitated and then answered, “The truth, I guess. What else can I do?”

  “But, your dad said if you get one more referral, then no carnival for you.”

  “I know, Steven, I know what he said.” Benny was clearly annoyed with his friend.

  “I’m just saying it would be a real bummer if you couldn’t go with us. The Ring of Fire ride is back this year.”

  “I will figure something out, guys,” Benny said. “I can’t miss that ride.”

  The three boys said goodbye and made their separate ways to their homes.

  Benny went over the ways in his head that he could approach his parents about the referral from the teacher.

  “I don’t like school. I wish that I didn’t have to go to school ever again!”

  He was so wrapped up in his thoughts that he nearly tripped over a little black dog.

  “What are you doing out here by yourself, buddy?” Benny bent down to pet the small dog. He’s really cute, he thought. The dog licked him and began to run circles around him. Benny laughed. “You sure are a silly little doggy.”

  “Buzzy! Buzzy!” Mrs. Honey Pickle called.

  “Where are you, my sweet little boy?”

  Mrs. Honey Pickle found Buzzy and said hello to Benny. “Benny, here you are, I have been looking for you.”

  “Me?” he asked.

  “Yes, you. Why I am your fairy godmother, Mrs. Honey Pickle.”

  “Honey what?”

  “Pickle.”

  “You are my fairy godmother?”

  “Yes.”

  “
I could really use one of those right now.”

  “That’s why I am here, my darling. I can grant you one wish.”

  “Oh, man, I know what I want my wish to be.”

  “Okay, remember, just one wish. So make it a good one.”

  “I wish I didn’t have to go to school ever again.”

  “That’s a good one,” Mrs. Honey Pickle said. “Okay, here we go.” She removed her magic wand and said a few words. “There you go, Benny, no more school.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Just like that,” Mrs. Honey Pickle said.

  “Now, Benny if you need me, just look to the sky and say my name three times.”

  Benny nodded said goodbye to Mrs. Honey Pickle and Buzzy and finished walking home.

  “No more school for me,” he sang as he walked into his house.

  “Benny, where have you been?” his mother asked.

  “School,” he said.

  “School? You don’t go to school.”

  Benny smiled, and thought, I could get real used to this.

  The next morning, Benny woke up to his alarm clock. He turned it off and sat up in his bed. He started to get ready for school, and then remembered school didn’t exist for him anymore.

  He jumped up and down on his bed. “Yay, I can play all day.”

  Benny made his way into the kitchen and saw his parents at the table.

  “Good morning, Benny,” his father said.

  “Good morning, Mom and Dad.”

  Benny sat at the kitchen table, grabbed a box of his favorite cereal, and poured it into a bowl followed by the milk.

  Benny was deciding in his head whether or not to start the day off with video games or maybe skateboarding.

  “Benny,” his mother said. “Don’t forget to do all your chores today.”

  “Chores?”

  “Yes, you know the stuff you do all day to occupy your time.”

  “And what chores are those, Mom?”

  “Well, you have to do the dishes, clean the living room, vacuum the whole house, clean all the bedrooms, and wash your father’s car.”

  Benny scowled at his mom.

  “Son, you know these are your chores since you never have gone to school.”

  Okay, how bad could chores be? If he hurried up, he could get all them done in a couple of hours and have the rest of the day to play.