Chapter 39: Monday

I woke slowly from a deep, warm, comfortable place. I was feeling so cozy and relaxed that it took me a little while to remember (or should that be, it took me a little while to realize) that I was in Dan’s bed. At some stage while I was sleeping, Dan had obviously slid me off the top of him and rolled onto his side. As a result I was now pressed up against his back. I say pressed because Tara was hugging me fairly tightly from behind and kind of leaning in. Squished between Dan’s broad back and Tara’s hugging, I was feeling a tiny bit like the cream filling in an Oreo cookie. If someone pulled Dan and Tara apart, I would probably stick quite firmly to one of them. It would be pure chance who I stuck to. Then if we were being eaten like a giant Oreo, the next step would be a giant set of teeth scraping me away, or a giant tongue licking me all the way from my toes to my nose. I giggled to myself as I tried to imagine what that would feel like – I was kind of split between “eeew” and “oooh!”

One of my arms was firmly wrapped around Dan’s naked chest. My hand was tangled up in some soft flannel. That was a bit puzzling. I felt around a bit and felt flesh way softer than Dan’s hard muscles should be. I squeezed a bit, trying to work out what I was holding. It was very soft, except for a hard little point pressing into my palm. It was at that instant – half way through the squeeze – that I remembered Liz and realized what I was holding.

I stopped squeezing as quickly as I could. I heard a startled little squeak from the other side of Dan and then a whispered “Stop that!”

“Sorry!” I whispered back to Liz. I shifted my hand slightly sideways to a flatter part of her chest and stroked it gently a couple of times before just resting my hand flat against her.

I felt the muscles in her chest shift slightly and then a hand clasped mine.

“How are you feeling this morning?” came the quiet whisper from the other side of Dan.

“To be honest, I’m a little bit squished. I’ve got Tara on one side and Dan on the other and it’s a bit like I’m the cream of an Oreo cookie in the middle. I feel as if at any second the two of them could just squeeze a bit more and I would come oozing out from between them.”

I felt her chest tremble under my hand as she giggled but she did it quietly so I didn’t hear anything.

“I meant inside of you. How are you feeling in your head this morning?”

“Oh!” I had to think about that for a moment. “I guess I’m feeling pretty good.”

“Good!”

“I think back to yesterday and I feel a bit silly about what I was thinking.”

“Don’t worry about it!”

“Okay!” I lay there and didn’t worry about anything for a little while. “How long have you been awake?”

“I don’t know. About twenty minutes maybe. I’m not totally comfortable, but I don’t want to move.”

“Why not?”

“Well for starters, I’m perched on the very edge of the bed and if I moved at all, I’ll probably fall. The only thing that’s keeping me on the bed is the fact that Dan’s arms are totally wrapped around me and he’s holding me in against him as if I’m some sort of teddy bear for him to cuddle.”

I smiled to myself. Dan hugging Liz like that had probably stopped her doing her usual thrashing around in bed which would have sent her over the edge – literally.

“Secondly, Dan’s cuddling me as if I was a teddy bear and I think I kinda like it. Did I mention that I think your brother is totally awesome? I think I’ve just had one of the best moments of my life so far. I got to wake up in the arms of the cutest guy in the world. I’ve spent the last twenty minutes lying here enjoying the moment.”

Oh, I knew that feeling.

“Thirdly, I think Dan’s having some sort of nice sex dream and I don’t want to spoil it for him.”

Huh? “What makes you think that?”

“Well he’s fast asleep, but he’s kind of poking me in the leg – he’s poking me quite hard, if you know what I mean.”

I giggled quietly to myself. “I don’t think he’s dreaming. I hate to burst your bubble but he probably needs to pee.”

“Why would that make his thing go hard?”

“I don’t know. That’s what it does. It goes like that most mornings. It’s something to do with an overfull bladder pushing up against something else inside of him.”

“How do you know all this stuff?”

“I asked! One day I asked Dan and he told me.”

I almost shrugged, but then I remembered that Liz couldn’t see me – and that my shrug would probably hit Tara in the chin with my bony shoulder – and that would probably wake her up in a foul mood – and that would be bad because I was trapped pretty much right where she could attack me. So I didn’t shrug.

It was quiet for a while. Then I felt Liz wriggle underneath my hand.

“The bad news is that all the talk about Dan needing to pee has reminded me that I need to pee.”

“Well you know where the bathroom is. I’ll stay here and keep the bed warm.” That was actually code for ... I don’t think I can move right now.

“Um ... there are two problems with that. First, Dan’s holding onto me pretty tight. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to get out without waking him up. Second, we’re still tied together. So, if I go to the bathroom, you’re coming with me.”

“Oh!” I’d completely forgotten that little detail. “I forgot, sorry.”

I lifted my head up and looked around, trying to figure out how to get out of the bed without waking Tara and Dan. That was when I noticed that the weight on my leg wasn’t one of Dan’s legs but was actually Sam – my cousin/brother. I suppose I may as well keep calling him my cousin. But maybe I should try and treat him more like a younger brother. I’d never had a younger brother before so that was something to look forward to. I promised myself that I would be nicer to him than I had been in the past.

I looked down the bed at Sam. He was still in the sleeping bag and kind of half curled up on the bottom of the bed, except that his head was resting right on my hip. That can’t have been very comfortable because I don’t have a lot of padding over my hip-bone, though the blankets would be helping a little bit. He looked really sweet, lying there like that.

I had to tell Liz how to open up Dan’s arm by pulling on his little finger. Then I had to hold one of his arms out of the way while she did the same to his other arm. Soon Liz was sliding out of the bed and standing next to it, still attached to me at the wrist.

Getting me out from the middle of the pile of bodies was trickier. Liz somehow managed to slide Sam down to the very bottom of the bed with one hand and a fair amount of grunting. Sam didn’t seem to wake up despite being shoved around. During all of that, Dan rolled flat onto his stomach and settled so I figured I could clamber straight across his back to get out. The only problem was that Tara still had me in a death grip from behind.

I knew that I didn’t need to be too gentle to escape from Tara. She could sleep through anything. My plan was pretty simple. I would jab Tara in the ribs, she would let me go and Liz would pull my hands so that I slid straight over Dan’s back and I would be out.

The plan started out fine. I made my fingers hard and pushed down steadily into Tara’s ribs, slowly increasing the pressure. Eventually Tara mumbled in her sleep and loosened her grip around me so that she could move away from the annoying thing jabbing into her. Liz started pulling and I started sliding across Dan. I love it when a plan works out so well.

That was the point when I discovered why Tara had been clinging to me so tightly, even in her sleep. As soon as her arms loosened, she started sliding backwards off the side of the bed. She squeaked awake as she found herself falling and clutched frantically to save herself. The things she grabbed onto, of course, were my rapidly disappearing legs. I was being pulled one way and Tara was falling the other way – something had to give. What gave were my pyjama pants. They didn’t tear. They just slid down my legs and off, leaving Tara to fall with a squeal and an armful of pyjama pants. I found myself being dragged out of bed on the other side and into Liz’s arms –feeling a whole lot more naked than I would like.

Fortunately I was wearing underpants but it was still embarrassing in a funny sort of way. Liz and I collapsed onto the floor giggling like maniacs. That stopped pretty quickly when we heard cursing from the other side of the bed. We both clambered to our feet and raced around to the other side of the bed. Tara was lying on the floor, clutching my pyjama pants and swearing like it was going out of fashion.

We quickly established that she wasn’t hurt. She was surprised and shocked and unhappy about having fallen like that and unhappy about having woken up like that but she wasn’t hurt. I politely asked if I could please have my pyjama pants back. Tara looked at the pants in her hands and then at me and burst out laughing. That sent me and Liz off into giggles as well. Tara threw the pants up at me. I caught them and untangled them and started putting them on. I had one foot up in the air and was putting it into the pants when I saw a pair of unblinking eyes staring at me. It was Sam. He was awake and staring at me – in my panties. I frantically tried to cover up but that didn’t work so well while standing on one leg and I collapsed in a squealing heap. That dragged Liz down on top of me. She was laughing so hard that I was worried her head would fall off.

I was torn between trying to hide underneath Liz’s shaking body and trying to drag my pants back on as fast as I could. Doing both at once didn’t work at all. There was some groaning and grunting from up above and then Dan was peering down at us from the side of the bed, blinking to get the sleep out of his eyes.

“What’s going on?” His voice was rough and croaky from sleep.

I gave up on my pants which were all tangled again and held Liz on top of me, peeping up at Dan from behind her shoulder. Liz and Tara were both still laughing which didn’t help at all. I wasn’t laughing anymore.

“Um ... Liz and I needed to go to the bathroom. It’s still too early for everyone to get up. We were trying to be quiet so we didn’t wake everyone.”

Dan shifted his gaze to Liz and Tara rolling on the floor giggling hysterically. Then he looked sideways at Sam who was still watching our antics with wide-eyed wonder. Then he looked back at me.

“Good job on that. If you’re still going to the bathroom then go. I want to go back to sleep.”

He rolled back onto the bed, out of sight from my position on the floor. Tara obviously decided that she liked that plan and started crawling back into bed so that she could go back to sleep too. Sam still watched without saying a word. Liz scrambled to her feet and dragged me up with her.

“Now I really, really need to go!” she gasped in between the giggles.

Then she was running for the bathroom and I was following her, using my free hand to hold the pyjama pants behind me in a useless attempt to hide my panties from Sam’s stunned eyes.

Using the bathroom involved more giggling than peeing. Naturally standing right next to Liz while she peed meant that I discovered a need to do that as well. Using the toilet while tied to someone else is a skill I don’t expect to use very often in my life. I can’t imagine any jobs you can apply for where putting a check mark next to “able to pee while tied to someone else” would be considered a plus.

After all that was done, we washed one hand each – by unspoken agreement the hands that were tied together didn’t get used for anything that would require washing afterwards. We decided we should probably have a quick shower. Since we were still attached to each other that meant we’d be having a shower together. It sounded like a fun thing to do. That was when we discovered the biggest down side of having our hands tied together. We found out that it’s physically impossible to take off a pyjama top when you can’t pull one hand through the sleeve.

After a short but intense discussion we agreed that a shower was more important than keeping our symbolic bond of friendship any longer. A quick visit to the kitchen and one snip of the scissors and our bond was broken. Our parting was bitter and heartfelt. We both managed to keep straight faces as we tearfully promised never to forget each other. We made solemn promises to think of each other constantly until we could meet again and then we turned and went our separate ways.

Liz went back to the bathroom to have her shower while I went to my bedroom to collect her jeans and find a top and some fresh underwear for her to borrow. I also picked out something for me to wear to school and then I headed back to the bathroom to rejoin Liz. We were separated for at least three minutes but it felt like a lifetime – well, that’s what we told each other. Sometimes you have to go with the drama of a situation – even if it is mostly play-acting.

There were eleven people sitting down for breakfast – not counting Lucy. That was too many of us to crowd around the kitchen table. The sensible way to deal with that would have been to have breakfast in shifts. I mean it’s not as if we were planning some huge cooked breakfast like we have on weekends. My family doesn’t do sensible. It’s like we have an allergy to sensibleness or something. Anytime we do anything it always seems to be the least sensible way of doing things. Sometimes I actually suggest a better way of doing something but it’s like I’m invisible or something. They all go ahead and do it their way and ignore my sensible suggestion.

So the picnic chairs came out of the garage and the study chairs came out of our bedrooms and they picked up the kitchen table and moved it into the living room and put eleven chairs around it – plus the little doll’s high chair for Lucy.

It could have been only ten of us because Mum had more important things to do. When Liz and I arrived in the kitchen after showering and dressing, we found Mum on her knees with her head in the oven. She had a bucket of water beside her and she was scrubbing out the inside of the oven.

“What are you doing, Mum?”

She emerged and dumped her cloth in the water, rinsing it and wringing it out. She gave me a look as if to say, “that should be obvious.”

“I’m cleaning the oven,” she said.

“Why are you cleaning the oven?” Now I think about it, that was a pretty stupid question.

“Because it’s dirty!” She gave me another of those looks and reached back into the oven. I guess I deserved that.

At least she was talking to us – I suppose that’s better than being ignored.

It did mean we couldn’t bake anything for breakfast. Not that we would’ve anyway on a school morning. Dad arrived in the kitchen and somehow managed to persuade Mum to finish cleaning the oven after breakfast. He took her to their bedroom to get dressed – Mum had been wearing an apron over her nightie. When he returned, he told us that Nana was going to stay for the day and look after Angie – and Mum.

Dad asked how I was feeling and said I could stay home from school if I really needed to. I told him I was fine. Nana came out of the bedroom and we had a nice hug. She asked how I was feeling and I said I was fine. I told her I was sorry for having worried her by having such a big meltdown and she told me not to be bothered about it. Aunt Ally arrived and we had a nice hug and she asked me how I was feeling and I told her I was fine. I hugged Aunt Penny too and told her I was fine before she could get around to asking. Dan hugged me and then lifted so that my feet dangled in the air. He asked me how I was and I couldn’t answer because I was having trouble breathing. Eventually he put me down and once I had my breath back I told him I was fine. I hugged Sam too but I didn’t tell him I was fine. He didn’t ask. I think he was too busy being embarrassed because I was hugging him so hard. When I let him go, he said, “I’m glad you’re fine.” I hugged him again. I don’t think that was the reaction he was expecting. He seemed to get more embarrassed. And here I was trying to be nice to him. I’ll have to think more carefully about how to be nice to a nine-year-old boy.

Nana asked me how my head was feeling. She meant the little scratch I had on my forehead from where I’d thumped my head into the wall. I’d replaced the bandaid over it when I had my shower. There was a little scratch and a bit of a bump but it was nothing special. Dan made a joke about my head being harder than the wall – apparently I made a head-shaped dent in the wallboard.

Dad pointed at the bump on my head. “If the Student Welfare idiot at your school sees that, he’ll probably accuse me of beating you. I don’t want you talking to him. The man’s an idiot and all he’ll do is upset you. If he wants to talk to you, tell him no – if he makes a fuss, tell him to call me and I’ll set him straight.”

After all that shifting and moving and crowding of people around the table, breakfast happened pretty quickly. Nobody was especially hungry because there’d been so much food yesterday – except Dan of course, but he’s always hungry so that doesn’t count.

Liz hugged Sabrina the Kitten all through breakfast. I realized that in all the time she’d been tied to me, Liz hadn’t picked up a stuffed animal once. I had a theory that I had been her substitute stuffed animal during that time. I wasn’t sure at first whether I should be cross or happy that I had achieved stuffed animal status with Liz. In the end, I decided that if Liz wanted to think of me as a walking, talking fluffy-Bec then I could live with that.

The first thing Liz asked me after we’d taken our seat on the school bus was “How are you feeling?”

“I’m fine.”

“No! I mean really. How are you really feeling?”

“Oh!”

Now I had to actually think about how I was feeling – fine is such a useful answer. You can give it without even thinking. I saw once that a lot of teens use FINE as a pseudonym for Freaked out, Insecure, Neurotic and Emotional (maybe pseudonym isn’t the right word, it’s some sort of ‘nym-word anyway) meaning that’s the normal state of mind of a teenager. I hadn’t meant that when I said I was fine to everybody this morning. I’d meant that I was okay. It had been a little bit annoying having everyone ask me the same thing over and over this morning. But now I was away from it all, I realized that I was so lucky to have that many people who cared so much about me. That made me feel warm inside. I felt a smile spread across my face.

“I really am fine.”

At the stop where Liz would normally catch the bus, she had to run down the aisle and poke her head out the door. Her dad was waiting there with her school bag. They exchanged a couple of comments and then Liz came back to our seat and the bus pulled back out into the traffic. I waved at Mr Davidson but he didn’t see me. He climbed back onto his bike and roared off.

“Dad wanted to know how you were feeling. I said you were fine.”

Her eyes were sparkling, like she was laughing on the inside.

I smiled at Liz.

We were hanging out near our lockers waiting for home room. Melissa DiMartino saw us and came over to say hello.

“I wanted to say thanks again for bringing Laura home on Friday night.”

“How is she?”

Melissa pulled a face which translated roughly as, “I don’t know how to answer that.”

“She spent half of Sunday at the clinic getting blood tests and pelvic exams and who knows what else. Our parents have been arguing with each other and with Laura about whether she should be sent to a boarding school or not. I think the only reason she isn’t heading off to one this morning is that our mother had a horrible experience at a boarding school when she was a girl.”

I shivered to myself. Being sent away to boarding school! I couldn’t imagine anything more horrible.

“Things have been a bit crazy at our house this weekend. Father blew a fuse about that party. He sacked Mavis, our old housekeeper. She had to have her bags packed and be out of the house by the time our father arrived home on Saturday afternoon. He’s interviewing new people for that job this afternoon.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. I felt bad for the housekeeper. I wasn’t sure why she should have been in trouble for what Laura had done. I suppose she was the adult in charge and she didn’t seem to be making much effort to keep track of what Laura was doing.

“I’ve never seen Father so furious. He was yelling at Laura before he’d even walked in through the front door.”

Melissa may have said more but at that moment, Laura came around the corner and saw us talking together. Laura gave us the dirtiest glare you could imagine. Melissa muttered, “I better go,” and then she turned and walked quickly away from us.

Laura stood there, looking around, and then started walking down the hallway. She seemed to be making an effort to not look at us. When she was more or less even with us, she veered so that she walked straight into a girl called Sharon. She shoved Sharon hard and snarled, “Get out of my way, you fat slug.”

Laura then stalked off down the hallway, the crowd quietly parting to let her through. As I watched Laura walk away, I was feeling nothing but sadness. It was noticeable that Laura didn’t have any of her sheep following in her wake.

I walked over to Sharon. I knew almost nothing about her. She’s in my year but we didn’t have any classes in common. About the only thing I did know about her was that she was fairly overweight and that she sometimes got teased about that.

“Hey, Sharon. Are you okay? I’m sorry about Laura having a go at you like that.”

Sharon looked at me through narrow, suspicious eyes.

“You shouldn’t take that business personally. Laura was pretty much performing for my benefit and you happened to be convenient.”

Sharon still watched me.

“I’m saying sorry, that’s all.”

I turned and walked away from her. It was the longest conversation I’d ever had with Sharon. I don’t think she even knew who I was.

Classes were fairly plain by comparison with the rest of my life. They weren’t boring, they were ordinary. Hannah Fargo was absent for some reason and as a result all the classes seemed to go more smoothly than usual. Nobody made rude comments about me all day. In fact, everyone pretty much ignored me and it was nice to slot into the routine of schoolwork. Mrs Nelson sprang a pop-quiz on us in history, but that didn’t worry me. Mr Palu, my math teacher, was back after his absence on Friday and I gave him a nice smile before opening my books and working steadily all period. At the end of the class I showed him what I was up to – which was ahead of the rest of the class – and he smiled at me and told me to keep it up.