Dear George Clooney: Please Marry My Mom by Susin Nielsen

dropped her fork. It clattered onto her plate. “Did she?” Mom asked, in an eerily calm voice.
    “She says we’re still invited to their house for March Break. But she wanted Violet to say sorry for the poop first. Please please, I wanna go; they got a pool.”
    Mom looked at me. “Did you apologize?”
    “Not exactly.”
    “Not exactly?”
    “I kind of hung up.”
    “Oh, Violet.” She picked up her fork again.
    I shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t want to go, anyway.”
    “That’s beside the point.”
    “How so?”
    “You have to maintain a relationship with your father.”
    “Why?”
    “Because he’s your
father.
”
    “So? You were his wife, and you don’t have to ‘maintain a relationship.’”
    “That’s different and you know it. Besides, those girls are your sisters.”
    “Half sisters –”
    “
Please,
Violet!” Rosie begged.
    “No!” I shouted. “I hate going down there! I hate having to act like everything’s okay. It’s not okay! Jennica ruined our lives. Everything was perfect before she came along.”
    Mom put her fork down again. “Everything wasn’t perfect, Violet. Your dad and I had been drifting apart for a while –”
    I clamped my hands to my ears.
“La-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la!”
I chanted, standing up so fast, I tipped over my chair. I couldn’t pick it up without taking my hands away from my ears, so I left it there and took the stairs two at a time to my room. Okay, it was not the most mature reaction in the world, but, really, I wasn’t going to listen to my mom as she tried to reinvent history.
    I picked up Rosie’s doll Roxanna from her bed, popped her head off, left her decapitated body lying onRosie’s pillow, and hid the head in a shoe box at the back of the closet. Then I rearranged all of our clothes in order of the color spectrum, thoughts racing through my head.
    They did not have problems. They had been perfectly, utterly happy.
    Hadn’t they?

— 14 —
    M y bad mood flowed right into Friday. Jean-Paul still wasn’t at school. I got a
C
on my math test. It was raining cats and dogs on the way home, and I ruined my brown suede Converse shoes when I accidentally stepped into a giant puddle.
    Once we were inside, I picked the mail up from the floor and had a quick look. There were two bills and one brown eight-by-ten envelope.
    From Los Angeles. With a sticker in the top left corner that read
From the Office of George Clooney.
My heart started to race.
    “I’m hungry,” said Rosie. “Can you make me a snack?”
    “Get your own snack,” I snapped. “I’m not your servant.”
    “You’re a poop-head,” Rosie said matter-of-factly before she tore off into the kitchen.
    I could hardly breathe. Carefully I tore open the envelope and pulled out the letter inside.
    Dear Violet,
    Thank you for your fan letter to George Clooney. Unfortunately, due to the volume of fan mail he receives, we must respond with a form letter.
    However, please be assured that George appreciates the time you took to write to him, and as an expression of his gratitude, we have enclosed a signed eight-by-ten glossy of him for your collection.
    Sincerely,
    The Office of George Clooney
    “A form letter?” Phoebe said when I called her. “Violet, I’m so sorry.”
    “Rmph,”
I muttered. I was sprawled out on the red couch, beyond depressed.
    “You know what I think? I think George never even saw your letter. I think his manager just handed it off to an assistant or something.”
    “You’re probably right.” I heard the key in the lock. “Mom’s home. I’d better go.”
    “Right. The official Gustafson Girls’ Night. Maybe that’ll cheer you up,” said Phoebe. “We’ll strategize tomorrow.”
    I put down the phone, dragged myself off the couch, and shuffled into the foyer. “I hope you got a comedy,” I said to my mom. “I could use some laughs –”
    I stopped midsentence. Mom wasn’t alone.
    “Violet, I told Dudley he could join us for movie