Just Another Day in My Insanely Real Life

by Barbara Dee

  Hggaah! Hhhgggaaaaah!

  The retching noise was unmistakable. Yuck. Nothing like the sound of barfing cat to start your day.

  “BUSTER! FUZZY! CUT IT OUT!” I yelled. Precisely thirty seconds later my clock radio went off: “And in national news the president announced—” I slammed the snooze button and bolted upright, dizzy. Just another glorious day.

  The floor was cold, so I kicked my slippers out from under my bed, inspecting them first. Phew. No barf. The cats had only barfed there once, but once was enough to make you check forever. Probably I’ll be ninety-five years old and still checking my orthopedic slippers for cat barf.

  I shuffled down the hall, past the wet blob of cat spit outside Miranda’s room. Then I heard another disgusting sound, right up there with cat barf: the sound of Miranda snoring.

  You have to understand how hungry I still was after having nothing to eat the night before but Cheerios. I mean, my stomach was growling almost as loudly as Miranda was snoring, which was like a cross between a snorting warthog and a leaf blower. I’ve always thought that snoring was a stupid sound; I can’t imagine Einstein snoring, and Miranda snoring just seemed to totally prove how stupid she was. But this morning the sound of snoring was worse than just stupid. It meant that Miranda hadn’t gotten up at five like she’d promised, hadn’t gone to the A & P, hadn’t shopped for food. It meant a Cheerios & Mustard Breakfast, which this morning I absolutely could not deal with.

  So I shuffled back into my bedroom. After barfing up his daily constitutional hairball, Buster had taken off, but Fuzzy was still curled up on my bed like a tortoise-shell Frisbee. I scooped him up. He immediately started purring, so I gave him a kiss.

  Then I walked into Miranda’s bedroom, and dumped Fuzzy on her head.

  “Hey! Blah! What was that!” she screeched, wiping her tongue as Fuzzy scampered away. Apparently she’d gotten fur in her mouth. Way to go, Fuzzy.

  “It’s six forty,” I announced.

  “So?”

  “So, weren’t you supposed to get up at five? Didn’t you swear to me last night that you’d go buy us breakfast this morning?”

  She sat up in bed and stared. “Omigod. Cassie, omigod. I am so, so sorry!”

  “Yeah? Well, I am so, so hungry.”

  “Me too,” she said. “I don’t know what happened! My alarm must be broken or something.” She actually did look miserable at that moment. Miserable and confused. And hungry.

  “At least you had a Chipwich,” I reminded her. Then all my anger just dissolved. I don’t know why, but all of a sudden it just seemed pointless to be having this discussion. Miranda was hopeless.

  I turned to leave her room. “Where are you going?” she demanded.

  “To get dressed for school. They sell bagels in the cafeteria if you get there early enough.”

  “But you said you have no money.”

  “I don’t. I’ll put it on my lunch account. Tell Mom when she gets out of the shower.”

  “What’ll I say?”

  I didn’t even bother to answer that. Let Miranda figure out something for a change, I thought. Then I slipped on my old red sweater and my least grungy jeans, scrunchied my unshampooed hair into a ponytail, went into the kitchen to feed the cats (Feed us! Feed us! Feed us!), grabbed my backpack, and went out to unlock my bike.

  But I didn’t get past the first step. There on the bottom step of our ratty little “unit” was a huge wicker basket crammed with pink cellophane. Stapled onto the pink cellophane was a little yellow envelope.

  I ripped it open. On a little yellow note card was a message written in a big puffy script:

  good morning, Baldwin family! I thought these goodies looked so scrumptious in the bakery that I couldn’t resist!! I hope you have a lonely breakfast!! See you Soon!!!

  fondly

  goanna hongley

  At first I didn’t get it. Then I did: This was a care package from Mrs. Langley. She was lavishing pity on us because Dad was “out of the picture” and we were living in a ratty little “unit” and were too “short of cash” to buy a stupid gallon of milk at CVS. Oh, cat barf. I picked up the basket, which was surprisingly heavy, and hauled it into our kitchen as fast as I could so that nosy Mrs. Patella next door wouldn’t see it.

  I plunked it on the table. It must have weighed twenty pounds.

  “What’s that?” challenged Miranda, who was already in the kitchen, probably to fix herself a bowl of delicious Cheerios.

  I narrowed my eyes at her. “Nothing.”

  “Don’t tell me it’s nothing! It looks like a gift basket! Who’s it from?” She grabbed the little yellow card. “Joanna Langley? Our old neighbor? With the Yorkies?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t get it. Why should she send us a gift basket? We haven’t seen her since we moved.”

  “It’s not a present, Miranda. It’s a care package!”

  “What are you talking about?” she demanded as she removed the pink cellophane. Inside the basket were four big gorgeous blueberry muffins, three huge crusty bagels, some French pastries that looked like miniature floats in a Thanksgiving Day parade, a pint-size container of cream cheese, three Golden Delicious apples, three oranges, and a bunch of bananas. Oh, yeah: and a gallon of Dairyland’s Delight.

  “Oh. My. God,” Miranda gasped.

  “Listen, we can’t accept this,” I hissed. “It’s charity! Mom will kill us!”

  “Cassie, you’re delusional. Why in the world would Mrs. Langley send us charity?”

  Just then, Jackson walked into the kitchen. His eyes were enormous, as if he thought he might be dreaming. “What’s this? Breakfast?”

  Miranda stared at me with raised eyebrows and a little smirk, as if to ask, Do YOU want to tell this poor starving child that he can’t accept this so-called charity? Huh?

  I sank into a chair. “What’ll we tell Mom?” I asked lamely.

  Miranda shrugged. “I went shopping?” she suggested, selecting a blueberry muffin and taking a huge bite.

  “I want one of those cake things,” Jackson said, pointing. “The one with the cream.”

  Miranda smiled at me graciously, like she’d baked this stuff herself. “Cassie? What about you?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Oh, come on, have something! If she wants to be nice, let her. She can afford it.”

  “Who? If who wants to be nice?” Jackson asked, licking the cream.

  “Nobody, Jackie,” Miranda said. “Besides, it’s the least she can do after all those years of letting her dogs pee on our grass.”

  “Who?” Jackson demanded. “What grass?”

  “Nobody’s,” I grumbled. “And what about Mom?”

  “What about Mom?” Mom asked, walking into the kitchen in her office costume. She had obviously just put on her office perfume, and now the kitchen stank like Chanel.

  She eyed the basket. “What’s all this?”

  I sighed. If I explained to Mom why Mrs. Langley had sent the basket, then I’d have to explain about the gallon of milk at the checkout line, thereby exposing Miranda’s negligence, thereby losing me any tactical advantage I might have in future confrontations. Besides, last night was the time to tell Mom about the shopping, not now. I’d already told her we’d had pizza for supper because I was too busy to cook; if I told her the real reason I couldn’t cook, she’d just blame me for lying to her last night. I definitely didn’t have the stomach to go through all that. And anyway, it was getting late, and I’d probably already missed all the decent bagels at school.

  “It’s nothing, Mom,” I said. “I ran into Mrs. Langley last night when I went to get cat food. She probably sent this over because she feels guilty she never visited us.”

  Mom half-smiled. “Pretty late for a housewarming gift,” she commented. “Anyway, that was nice of her. How’s that muffin, Miranda?”

  Miranda smiled angelically. “Amazing. Have one.” She chose a big muffin bursting with wet blueberries and put it on
a cake plate. “For you, madame.”

  Suck-up.

  “Yum,” said Mom. “Thank you, honey. Cassie, aren’t you having any?”

  “No,” I said. “I’m not.” But then I decided: Mrs. Langley owed me the milk. The muffins and the pastries and the fruit I absolutely couldn’t eat, but for some strange reason I was convinced that she owed me that milk. So I got out the big box of Cheerios, poured myself a bowlful, and then drenched it in Dairyland’s Delight.

  “Cassie, are you crazy?” Miranda cried. “How can you eat that?”

  “Don’t you want to try this? It’s great,” Jackson said, holding out his Thanksgiving Day float.

  I munched my cereal grimly. “I’m fine.”

  “We’ll have to send Mrs. Langley a thank-you card,” Mom said.

  “I’ll take care of it,” I snapped. “Why not? I take care of everything else!” Then, before I even knew what I was doing, I got up from the table, grabbed my backpack, and slammed the kitchen door behind me.

  “Catrain, I cannot conceal my displeasure,” said Queen Alynna. “You had Valdyk in your control, and you let him go? How could you blunder so badly?”

  Catrain’s big sister, Princess Gloriana, was smiling as she fingered her elegant lute. She loved it when Cat got in trouble. It happened rarely, but when it did, Gloriana always Celebrated.

  “I did it for you,” Cat stammered.

  “For me?”

  “Yes, Your Majesty. I thought that if I shot Valdyk, I might waste one of the three dragon—fire arrows that the King gave me. Then what would I use if Valdyk’s army was invading? Or if the Mystyck Beast was attacking? I couldn’t take that chance!”

  The Queen shook her noble head. “Nothing is more important than vanquishing Valdyk. Nothing. Your bad judgment may have cost us the throne. Look at this.”

  The Queen’s sorcerer, Zed, waved his hand over a magical hand-mirror. Instantly there appeared an image of the Mystyck Beast heading toward the castle, followed by Valdyk and his army On horseback.

  “Look at that horse Valdyk is riding!” Gloriana gasped. “It’s one of the two missing warhorses! How did he get them?”

  “It little matters. They’re heading this way, daughters,” said Queen Alynna grimly. “And now we must ready ourselves for their attack.

  “So, Cassie, how about number two?”

  I blinked. Unless Mr. Mullaney was referring to a number two pencil, which at that moment I was using to scribble in my journal, I had nothing to offer him.

  “I’m sorry?” I said.

  “Sorry for what? For not attending, or for being impolite?”

  Was he giving me a choice? I wish. Mr. Mullaney was always doing that Socratic thing, where the teacher pretends he’s teaching by just asking a lot of questions. Usually he had a “right” answer already picked out in his head anyway, and he just kept asking until someone guessed what he was thinking. Or he’d give you two bogus “choices,” and zap you if you guessed the “wrong” one. I never bothered guessing, because what was the point? Mr. Mullaney just plain hated me, and he hated everything I ever said.

  And why? Because I daydreamed while he plodded through our boring grammar book, which the other seventh-grade teachers didn’t even bother to use? Because I refused to study for our weekly spelling tests, which were like baby, elementary-school, mindless exercises in memorization? Because I once complained that he never even assigned us a real book to read, just gave us excerpts from some “fiction textbook” that wasn’t even published, that was just a bunch of stupid loose sheets of paper that kept falling out of my notebook and getting lost?

  The bell rang. I was almost saved. But no. “Cassie, don’t you think you should stay in at lunch today and finish your grammar exercise?” Mr. Mullaney sneered. “Everyone else, be sure to study for tomorrow’s quiz. Remember: Whom’ is a direct object! ’Who’ is a subject! Class dismissed!”

  Hayley Garrison flashed me a sympathetic look. “Poor you,” she said softly. Then she whispered something to Brianna Schuster. I pretended not to notice; I re-scrunchied my ponytail, then just kept writing in my journal.

  “But what can we do to stop them?” Gloriana gasped.

  “Maybe nothing,” the Queen frowned.” But for now, I’m dispatching Sir Wyfryd (Gryfyd? Clyfyd?) and his men to meet them at the gate.”

  Gloriana glowed. She hoped one day to marry handsome Sir Wyfryd (whoever). If he could succeed here, it would ensure that he would be promoted to Lord Wyfryd (whatever), and be granted a castle of his Own. Gloriana hoped to move into that castle, as his lovely bride.

  Cat nearly exploded, “But, Your Majesty! How can you put Sir Wyfryd (?) in charge of such an important assignment?”

  “Why not, Catrain? Do you know of any reason why he should not be entrusted with this job?”

  Yes, she did, of course. Sir Wyfryd (?) didn’t care one iota about the Queen’s plight. Also, his swordsmanship stank, (RE-WORD!). But after letting Valdyk go so stupidly, what could she say? That the Queen should have given her the job? She was lucky that the Queen wasn’t taking away her dragonfire arrows and making her play the lute.

  “As for you, Catrain,” said the Queen. “I think you should remain in the castle for a while. Maybe you could teach Daeman, (whom? who?) I have recently neglected, how to shoot arrows at feather pillows.

  “Yes, Your Majesty,” Cat replied. So she was being punished, after all! And for what! For trying to protect the Queen! It definitely wasn’t fair!

  Since our food-free refrigerator kind of got in the way of my bringing lunch from home, first I had to go to the cafeteria to get something to eat. Normally the thought of having to eat lunch with Mr. Mullaney would make me lose my appetite, but today, for obvious Miranda-related reasons, I was starving. So I got in the Cheeseburger/Taco Burger/Fries line, which ran parallel to the Healthy Foods line, currently populated exclusively by Bess Waterbury, the fattest girl in the seventh grade.

  “Hi, Cassie,” she said shyly.

  “Hi.”

  “Mr. Mullaney sure is a jerk,” she said.

  “Yup.”

  “I’m sorry he was so mean to you.”

  “Thanks.”

  It was her turn to get lunch. She took a container of strawberry yogurt and an apple, and carefully put them on her tray. This I didn’t understand. Every day she would take something tiny and virtuous and low fat, and still she must have weighed, like, two hundred pounds. How was this possible? Did she stuff her face in private? I didn’t like to think about it; to be honest, I didn’t like to think about her at all, even though she was always trying to talk to me.

  Now it was my turn. Today I was feeling sorry for myself, so I felt entitled to treat myself to whatever looked good. Besides, it was entirely possible that Miranda would screw up again and there’d be nothing to eat when I got home, so I knew I should pig out while I could. Taco burger, chicken nuggets, fries, a yogurt sundae: That should hold me until breakfast tomorrow.

  I took my tray to the scanner. “Nine seventy-three,” the cafeteria aide announced. “You’ve overdrawn your account by two dollars and ten cents.”

  “I’ll tell my mom,” I muttered, scanning the cafeteria to see where Hayley and Brianna were sitting. They were at the table right near Danny Abbott, a boy I sort of liked, so my first thought was to sit anywhere else. But then Hayley saw me and waved me over.

  “My God,” she cried, staring at my tray. “Cassie, have you developed some kind of eating disorder or something?”

  “You sure that’s not O-Bess Waterbury’s lunch?” Brianna giggled. Hayley laughed too. Danny’s back was to us, so I couldn’t tell if he was listening or not.

  “Hey, come on, Brianna, don’t call her that,” I said. “I really hate it.”

  “Yes, we know, we know. Next time we’ll ask your permission, we promise!”

  “No, I’m serious. You should give her a break. She didn’t do anything to you.”

  She smirked. “Cassie Baldwin, Defender
of the Weak!”

  I salted my chicken nuggets. Then I popped one in my mouth. “Shut up, Brianna,” I said.

  Hayley and Brianna exchanged a look.

  “So, anyway, aren’t you supposed to be having lunch with Mr. Mullaney?” Hayley asked.

  “Yup. I need to fortify myself first.” I gobbled a big bite of taco burger, four greasy french fries, and three huge gloppy spoonfuls of yogurt sundae. Then I stood up, balancing my tray. “Okay. Now I’m ready.”

  “Good luck,” Hayley said, making sympathetic eyes.

  Now I had to squeeze past Danny. “Bye,” he grunted. I felt my cheeks burn. Brianna grinned, then waggled her fingers at me in a kind of Hollywood way. What was THAT about? I thought.

  Fortunately, Mr. Mullaney’s room was just down the hall from the lunchroom, so I didn’t have far to carry my Mega-Lunch of Self-Pity. I bumped my tray into his door, causing Mr. Mullaney to look up from whatever unpublished “textbook” he was drooling over.

  “Cassie,” he remarked sarcastically.

  I put my tray on my desk.

  “We’ve already lost nine minutes,” he complained. “Let’s get to work. Start with number one on page one eighteen. Identify all relative clauses.”

  “Can I finish my lunch first, please?”

  He made his lips into a straight line. If I’d had a protractor, I bet I would have measured a perfect one hundred eighty degrees. “Actually, Cassie, I’m doing you a favor by devoting this lunch period to review for tomorrow’s quiz. Would you care to be prepared for it, or would you rather just continue daydreaming in class?”

  “I wasn’t daydreaming, I was writing! In my journal!”

  Really, Cassie? Are you working on a story? Wonderful! How exciting! Tell me all about it! I’m so glad you’re immersed in the creation of literature: WHAT A DECENT ENGLISH TEACHER WOULD SAY.

  INSTEAD, WHAT MR. MULLANEY SAID: “Page one hundred eighteen. Number one. Let’s get cracking.”

  “All right, then, Daeman, now aim for the red dot I painted in the center of the pillows,” instructed Cat. She sighed. Why couldn’t someone else, like Drael (Plaeth? Fraen? Kethael?), the Castle Archer, teach Daeman instead? She should be out there defending the throne from the Mystyck Beast and Valdyk’s army, not sitting around the castle for hours on end, mindlessly teaching little Daeman how to aim at his stupid target.