by Robin Palmer
“Then I’ll just sleep there,” I said.
“Well, it’s positioned well from a prosperity point of view, which is why it’s now my studio,” Dad said. “So you can’t.”
“But The Crea—I mean the baby—hasn’t even been born yet and therefore doesn’t actually need the room right now,” I said.
“Lucy, we’ve been over this—his name is Ziggy,” Dad said firmly. “I keep telling you, it’s very important for his emotional growth that you call him by his name instead of referring to him as ‘the baby.’ The books say it will help with his self-esteem.”
What about my self-esteem? Having a brother named Ziggy was just plain embarrassing. And he wasn’t even born yet.
As Sarah plopped down on the couch—aka my bed—I got a look at her legs. Which you kind of couldn’t miss on account of the fact that they were so swollen they looked like tree trunks. She didn’t even have ankles anymore. “If you had come last week, you absolutely could have stayed in there,” she said, “but now that it’s been saged, we really want to keep the space as undisturbed as possible so that when he arrives, Ziggy’s aura and karma don’t get contaminated.”
Saging was when you walked around with a bundle of lit sage to clear a space of negative energy. Sarah liked to do it, a lot. I looked over at Dad. I didn’t know what bothered me more—that he had fallen in love with someone so weird, or that he didn’t say, “Listen, Sarah, you’re more than welcome to be weird when my daughter isn’t here, but we’re not making her sleep on the couch.” But he was busy reading the directions to the new baby swing and didn’t even notice I was trying to get his attention.
“In fact,” Sarah said, hoisting herself off the couch, “we should probably smudge you, too.” She ambled into the kitchen and returned a moment later with a smudge stick.
As she lit it and waved it around me, I began to sneeze. “I don’t have negative energy!” I cried between sneezes. That was almost as bad as having B.O.
“Of course you don’t,” she agreed. “But walking around the streets of New York, you never know what you’re picking up. And Ziggy’s immune system isn’t strong enough to ward off all that.”
“Are you also going to tell me that I’m not going to be able to use the bathroom so that I don’t screw up his karma when you give birth to him in the bathtub?” I asked. That was another thing that was big in the yoga world—making poor babies be born in the water. Which, if you asked me, was totally unfair. What if they didn’t like the water because in a past life they had had a bad experience in the ocean when the waves were so strong that the top of their bathing suit fell down in front of a crowd of people or something?
Dad looked up from the swing. “Of course you can use the bathroom!” He looked over at Sarah. “Right?”
She smiled. “Of course! But if you could run the essential oil diffuser with some citrus oil in it afterward to purify the air, I’d appreciate it.”
This was just great. My brother wasn’t even born yet and already everything was revolving around him. It’s not like I was expecting a parade with a huge banner that said WELCOME HOME, LUCY B. PARKER, but it would’ve been nice to feel welcome in own father’s house.
The entire conversation at dinner was about Ziggy. What kind of preschool he should go to. At what age should they sign him up for swimming lessons. Should they have him circumcised at the hospital, or at some Jewish ceremony at home called a bris even though neither Dad nor Sarah was Jewish? At that, I got so grossed out I couldn’t finish my third slice of Hawaiian pizza, even though it was my favorite kind. After that I drew the line and told them that I had suddenly gotten very tired and could we please go home so I could go to sleep, even though it was only eight o’clock.
“Lucy, it’s great to have you here,” Sarah said as she helped me make up the sofa bed in between bites of an ice cream sandwich. “We’ve missed bonding with you.”
“Me, too,” I said as I reached for the clicker. Too bad the only bonding that was going on was with an unborn baby, though. At least Pet Rescue 911 would make it so that the night wasn’t a total waste. But just as the animal rescue team walked into an abandoned building to rescue a litter of pit bulls, the TV clicked off.
I turned to Sarah, who was holding the clicker in one hand and covering her belly with the other. “What are you doing?” I cried. “This is the best part!”
“Did your dad not tell you?” she asked. “Since the pregnancy, we have a no-violence rule in effect in the house.”
“But Pet Rescue 911 isn’t violent,” I corrected. “That would be America’s Worst Pet Owners. This one is about stopping violence. Against animals.”
Sarah patted her belly. “I don’t like the idea of Ziggy being exposed to so much anxiety.” She hoisted herself up and waddled over to the iPod dock and speakers. A moment later, the room was flooded with a sloshing noise. “Plus, we have a no-TV-after-nine rule. Instead, we listen to this.”
Since when were there rules at Dad’s? Yet another normal thing. That was one of the great things about having a father who was a creative type—he didn’t like rules. The sloshing continued. “What’s that noise?” I asked suspiciously.
“It’s the sound of a giant bathtub. So that Ziggy feels comfortable and prepared when I give birth to him in the water. Don’t you find it so relaxing?”
I crossed my legs. Actually, it made me feel like I needed to pee. Badly. “And how long do you listen to it?” I asked.
“Oh, we keep it on all night,” she replied. “It’s very soothing. You’ll be amazed at how deeply you sleep.”
Not if I’d be waking up all night so that I didn’t wet the sofa bed. I reached for my tote bag. Okay, so I wouldn’t watch TV. No big deal. I’d just read instead. And slather some M&M’s Lip Smacker on my mouth since there were no decent desserts in the house because Sarah had eaten them all.
Sarah came over and plopped down beside me, lifting up her pajama top. “And now it’s time for your quality time with Ziggy.”
I put my book down. “Huh?”
Grabbing my hand, she put it on her stomach. “Ziggy, Lucy is here,” she whispered. “It’s time for the two of you to bond.”
Nothing happened, other than the sloshing water making my bladder feel more full by the second.
She looked at me. “Why don’t you start the conversation, Lucy?”
“Go ahead, Lucy,” said Dad, who was now standing over us with a camera. “Talk to him.”
I would have done anything to be back in New York right then. Even if it meant doing math homework, which anyone who knew me knew was my least favorite thing in the world to do. “Uh ... hi,” I said loudly. “This is Lucy B. Parker. Your ... sister.”
Sarah covered her belly. “Let’s use an inside voice, please,” she whispered. “I’m afraid of—”
“The anxiety thing,” I finished. “Got it.” I looked down at the giant belly again. Just then there was some movement. “Did he just kick?”
Sarah nodded.
Huh. That was kind of cool. But making me talk to a belly? Not so cool.
“So ... how are you doing?” I asked. Could he even (a) hear me or (b) understand English? What if babies spoke some entirely different language before they were born? It’s not like they’d remember and be able to tell you about it. “I guess it’s probably pretty warm in there, huh? Good thing you don’t have to worry about clothes.”
“Oh, this is beautiful. Just beautiful!” Dad exclaimed as he wiped away a tear while snapping away.
Okay, that was it. I was not going to sit here with my hand on his girlfriend’s belly, watching Dad cry. I gave the longest, fakest yawn I could muster. “I’m reeeally tired,” I announced. “Must be the long drive. And the bonding. I think I need to go to sleep now.”
“Of course,” Dad said, giving me a hug.
I waited for Sarah to get up, but she just sat there. “Well ... good night,” I said.
“Aren’t you forgetting someone?” she asked. S
he pointed to her belly. “A kiss for Ziggy?”
I looked at Dad. “It’s one of our nightly rituals,” he explained.
Knowing they wouldn’t leave me alone until I did it, I leaned down and quickly planted a kiss on her stomach. But not so quickly that Dad didn’t get a picture of it. “We’re so framing that,” Sarah said.
And I was so over this baby business.
“OMIGOD?! LUCY, IS IT YOU? IS IT REALLY, REALLY YOU?!” Marissa yelled as she ran into the Cupcake Café the next day. (My favorite bakery in town, Sweet Lady Jane, had closed soon after I left. Probably because without me there, they lost a lot of business.) As Marissa smothered me in a hug, trailing behind her was a very tall, very skinny girl with long dark hair and the black Chuck Taylors with the white stars that I had been begging Mom for.
“Hey, Marissa,” I said once I untangled myself from her. So at least some things never changed. Like Marissa’s being totally annoying. And her hair being so red it was orange. And the way her breath smelled like chicken noodle soup.
Her eyes got huge. “OMIGOD, I CAN’T BELIEVE HOW BIG YOUR BOOBS GOT!” she shrieked.
“Marissa!” I cried as I turned as red as my Adopt-a-Sloth T-shirt. It wasn’t like there were any boys around, but still.
She stuck her chest out. “See how much mine have grown?”
I squinted. They were still the size of mosquito bites.
“And that picture your dad put on your Facebook page of you kissing Sarah’s belly? Omigod, that is SOOOOOO cute!”
I still couldn’t believe he had done that without even bothering to ask me. Talk about embarrassing.
She turned to the tall girl. “Cass, this is Lucy—the girl I told you about. The Keeper of the Periods.”
I turned even redder. Yes, it was true—she was referring to the period log I kept—but it’s not like that needed to be the first thing a person found out about me.
“You can put me in as February 6,” the girl said. “Eight twelve a.m.”
“You know, I totally think I’m going to get mine this week,” Marissa announced. She grabbed her stomach and doubled over. “I have horrible cramps,” she moaned. When she stood up, she turned toward the girl. “Lucy still hasn’t gotten hers, either.”
I was so red I was probably purple. “Yeah, you told me,” the girl said. Of course she had. Because that was a completely Marissa thing to do. “So are you going to put me in the log?” she asked. “Oh, and I was thinking—you should do a kissing log, too. Like when everyone’s first kiss is and with who. Marissa told me about the crush log you’re keeping, and that’s okay and all, but I think the kissing one is a lot more interesting.”
Who was this girl? And who had asked her for her opinion on what kind of logs I should keep anyway? “Um, don’t take this the wrong way,” I said, “but who are you?”
Marissa threw her arm around the girl’s shoulder. “This is Cassandra Paraskevis. She just moved here. We met at the pool last week. And because our last names both start with P-A-R, she’ll be sitting in front of me whenever we have to sit alphabetically.”
“But I was the P-A-R in front of you,” I said, a little hurt. Why was I upset? Back when Marissa used to sit behind me, she drove me nuts with the way she’d tap me on the shoulder every five seconds.
“Yeah, but you don’t live here anymore,” she replied. “So Cass is the new P-A-R, right, Cass?” Marissa turned to me. “Because we’re BFFs, I get to call her Cass.”
“You guys just met last week, and now you’re BFFs?”
They nodded. If it were just Marissa nodding proudly, I’d think that maybe it was just her being her usual Marissa-self. But this Cassandra girl—Cass, to her BFFs, of which I was not one—looked equally psyched about the whole thing.
“You can’t become BFFs with someone in a week,” I said.
“Sure you can,” Cassandra said. “It’s like that whole love-at-first-sight thing that happens in movies.”
“Ohhhh, I just love when that happens!” Marissa sighed.
“Me, too!” Cassandra squealed. “How did we not know we had that in common?!”
“It’s like in that movie Laurel did—The Walk Toward Tomorrow—when she saw the boy across the bleachers in the gym and totally fell for him—”
“Only to discover he was dating the head cheerleader!” Cassandra squealed. “That’s my all-time favorite.”
“Mine, too,” Marissa sighed.
I had to say, they were perfect for each other.
“Speaking of Laurel Moses,” Cassandra said, “is it really weird living with her?”
I shrugged. “Not so much.”
“Really? I mean, because she’s so pretty and famous and probably has a billion friends, and you’re just—you know—so ... regular.”
Way to make a person feel bad. Especially a person who did, in fact, spend a lot of time worrying that her super-famous frister was going to dump her for being so regular-girl-like.
Marissa grabbed my iTouch. “I can’t believe Alan got you one of those,” she said. “After Ziggy’s born and I’m babysitting him, I’m going to save up my money so I can get one, too.” She threw her arm around Cassandra’s shoulder. “That way I can e-mail Cass from wherever I am, which is very important for BFFs to be able to do.” She patted my arm. “But don’t worry—I’ll e-mail you, too, sometimes.”
“How are you going to babysit Ziggy?” I asked. “You barely know how to change a diaper.” Marissa had told me that the only time she had changed a diaper was on her baby cousin Marshall, and she had pulled it so tight she had cut off his circulation and he had started screaming.
“I’ve been practicing on my old Baby Alive,” she said. “By the way, did you know that the reason you have to burp babies is because if you don’t, they can get a giant gas bubble in their stomach which can make it explode?”
My own stomach started getting all jumpy. I hadn’t even ever held a real baby before, let alone changed a diaper. And if anyone had gotten a look at my old dolls before we gave them to Goodwill and saw how most of them were missing an arm or a leg or a head, they’d never let me hold one.
“And there’s this spot on their head called the ‘soft spot’ where their skull hasn’t gotten completely hard yet,” she went on, “and it’s right over their brain, so you have to make sure you don’t push too hard on it or else it’ll open up and everything in it will just spill right out.”
Grossed out, I pushed my red velvet cupcake away. In less than twenty-four hours, I had had two meals ruined. It’s not like the cupcake was that good anyway (definitely not as good as Billy’s Bakery in New York City) but still, it wasn’t fair.
How come no one had told me this stuff before? Because of my coordination problems, I had already been worried about dropping Ziggy, but after what Marissa just said ... What if I was so nervous my hands got all sweaty like Alan’s and they slipped and I pushed on that soft spot and he got brain damage because of me? Sarah and Dad were pretty mellow because of all the yoga and Buddhism, but I’m pretty sure they’d freak out if I broke their baby. Hopefully, I could find some YouTube videos about how to hold a baby. Otherwise, I was in big trouble.
As if the trip couldn’t get any worse, the minute we got to the town pool, who do I see sitting on the edge of the pool with sunglasses on dangling their feet in the water and trying to seem all Don’t-we-look-like-we-should-beon-a-TV-show? but Rachel and Missy.
“Oh great,” I muttered under my breath as my heart started to speed up.
“Lucy—LOOK!” gasped Marissa. “IT’S RACHEL AND MISSY!”
As my obviously bad luck would have it, she was so loud that everyone turned around to look at us. Including, of course, Rachel and Missy.
Marissa turned to Cassandra. “Remember I told you about how Rachel and Missy and Lucy used to be BFFs? But then three days before sixth grade they called her from the mall and dumped her over the phone?”
Cassandra nodded. Of course Marissa had told her.
What was going on here? Sure, Marissa was annoying, but I had never known her to be mean. Which, the way she was about to put me face-to-face with the two people who had hurt me the most in my life, was what she was doing. But then, to my total surprise, not only did they wave back, they got up and started walking toward us. In bikinis. When did they start wearing bikinis? Last summer when we hung out here together, the three of us wore one-pieces. Which, underneath my clothes, was what I was still wearing. The only time I had had a bikini on my body was when Laurel and I went to a barbecue at Austin and Connor’s house in L.A. and I had forgotten my swimsuit. And then I refused to take off my jeans and shirt, even though it was super-hot out.
Okay, just keep calm, I said to myself as I stood there. And remember your be-nice-to-mean-people resolution. Even if you have no idea how you’re going to be able to get a sentence out without bursting into tears.
“Hey, Lucy,” Rachel said, giving me a big braces-less smile. Yet another thing that had changed since I left. Actually, if you counted the way her boobs had finally grown, that was three things that had changed.
“How are you!?” Missy asked, giving me a hug. A hug? From the girl who dumped me over the phone from a mall?
“I’m fine?” I said, warily. I didn’t trust her niceness for a second. Hold on—was she wearing eye shadow and mascara? At a pool? That just seemed like a waste of money. And when did they start looking like they belonged on an MTV show? And why were they being nice to me?
Missy stood back and looked at me. “Look at your T-shirt. It’s so cute!”
I glanced down at my Adopt-a-Sloth T-shirt. “Thanks,” I said. But now I knew something was up. She hated mammals like sloths and otters. She thought they looked slimy.
“How long are you in town for?” Rachel asked.