but in my position you’d be scrambling for consolation too.
“You off to college?” I asked.
“Not tonight.” The look of sadness returned to her face. “Night off. But that doesn’t mean I’m not busy. Those kitchen cupboards don’t fill themselves, you know.”
This was excellent news. It meant we had a good hour of peace before she returned to shoo Sinus out the door.
“Straight to your homework,” she said as she walked away, finger pointing at us both. “No PlayStation!”
“Of course,” I replied.
“No way,” agreed Sinus.
She walked out of the door and we turned to each other.
“PlayStation?” I asked him.
“It would be rude not to,” he agreed, and followed me up to my room.
What followed was a very happy but all-too-short fifteen minutes of
Call of Duty.
Mom didn’t know I had that game, of course. There was no way she’d let me have something so violent. She was reluctant to let me play
FIFA 2013
for fear of me pulling a muscle. I’d picked up
COD
secondhand on eBay, then threw the packaging away the second it arrived, hiding the disk inside a case from an old Muppets game. Mom didn’t think Miss Piggy could do me any harm, you see.
Every time we got stuck into our mission, though, the phone would ring. Not the one in the takeout, weirdly, but our home phone. People never called us on that number. Mom was always on her cell, taking calls about her latest school course, but the home phone? Well, it needed dusting.
Nobody answered the first time it rang. Dad wouldn’t have heard it above the woks and there was no way I was interrupting my game for someone trying to sell us double-pane windows.
I ignored it the second time too, but by the third attempt I was starting to feel paranoid.
“Do you think it’s Mom checking up on us?” I asked Sinus.
Sinus didn’t take his eyes from the screen, but launched into this full-on impression of her, his voice all shrill and panicky. It sounded nothing like her, but it was funny.
“Have you finished your homework yet?” he squealed. “Don’t sharpen your pencil too much. Lead poisoning’s a killer!”
I didn’t mind
him
making fun of her, unlike the idiots at the ramp. From him it was funny. Plus he’d shut up if I told him to. Eventually. So I joined in (not that it was much of a stretch to pretend I had a high-pitched voice) and we were off, dreaming up ridiculous ways of hurting ourselves. We must have sounded crazy, aping her voice like that, but we didn’t care—it was great to laugh. It’d been a while.
The phone started ringing a fourth time and rang for ages, then a fifth time. I couldn’t ignore it any longer and, still chuckling, I walked into the hall and picked it up, forgetting to stop talking in Mom’s voice as I spoke.
“Hello,” I shrilled.
A voice came back at me immediately, a breathless panicky voice that didn’t belong to Mom but to another woman.
“Oh, thank goodness you’re there, Shelly. I couldn’t get through on your cell. It’s Pauline from Oakview. There’s been a setback with your Dora. I’m afraid she’s had another one. Another seizure.”
I had no idea who this woman was or what she was talking about. But in the two minutes that followed, everything I thought I knew was turned upside down.
F or the first time in my teenage life, I was pleased my ridiculous squeaky curse of a voice had never broken. After two minutes of impersonating Mom, though, my throat was starting to hurt like I’d swallowed a rosebush with thorns. But there was no way I could give up, there was still stuff I had to learn.
The conversation so far had gone something like this.
M E: A seizure? Dora?
I fought to think who on earth she was talking about.
P AULINE: (
long pause
)…Um…yes. She’s been much brighter all day after the episode yesterday, and we’d hoped the new medication might settle her down. But she started convulsing about an hour ago.
M E: (
brain wanting to explode in confusion,
“You off to college?” I asked.
“Not tonight.” The look of sadness returned to her face. “Night off. But that doesn’t mean I’m not busy. Those kitchen cupboards don’t fill themselves, you know.”
This was excellent news. It meant we had a good hour of peace before she returned to shoo Sinus out the door.
“Straight to your homework,” she said as she walked away, finger pointing at us both. “No PlayStation!”
“Of course,” I replied.
“No way,” agreed Sinus.
She walked out of the door and we turned to each other.
“PlayStation?” I asked him.
“It would be rude not to,” he agreed, and followed me up to my room.
What followed was a very happy but all-too-short fifteen minutes of
Call of Duty.
Mom didn’t know I had that game, of course. There was no way she’d let me have something so violent. She was reluctant to let me play
FIFA 2013
for fear of me pulling a muscle. I’d picked up
COD
secondhand on eBay, then threw the packaging away the second it arrived, hiding the disk inside a case from an old Muppets game. Mom didn’t think Miss Piggy could do me any harm, you see.
Every time we got stuck into our mission, though, the phone would ring. Not the one in the takeout, weirdly, but our home phone. People never called us on that number. Mom was always on her cell, taking calls about her latest school course, but the home phone? Well, it needed dusting.
Nobody answered the first time it rang. Dad wouldn’t have heard it above the woks and there was no way I was interrupting my game for someone trying to sell us double-pane windows.
I ignored it the second time too, but by the third attempt I was starting to feel paranoid.
“Do you think it’s Mom checking up on us?” I asked Sinus.
Sinus didn’t take his eyes from the screen, but launched into this full-on impression of her, his voice all shrill and panicky. It sounded nothing like her, but it was funny.
“Have you finished your homework yet?” he squealed. “Don’t sharpen your pencil too much. Lead poisoning’s a killer!”
I didn’t mind
him
making fun of her, unlike the idiots at the ramp. From him it was funny. Plus he’d shut up if I told him to. Eventually. So I joined in (not that it was much of a stretch to pretend I had a high-pitched voice) and we were off, dreaming up ridiculous ways of hurting ourselves. We must have sounded crazy, aping her voice like that, but we didn’t care—it was great to laugh. It’d been a while.
The phone started ringing a fourth time and rang for ages, then a fifth time. I couldn’t ignore it any longer and, still chuckling, I walked into the hall and picked it up, forgetting to stop talking in Mom’s voice as I spoke.
“Hello,” I shrilled.
A voice came back at me immediately, a breathless panicky voice that didn’t belong to Mom but to another woman.
“Oh, thank goodness you’re there, Shelly. I couldn’t get through on your cell. It’s Pauline from Oakview. There’s been a setback with your Dora. I’m afraid she’s had another one. Another seizure.”
I had no idea who this woman was or what she was talking about. But in the two minutes that followed, everything I thought I knew was turned upside down.
F or the first time in my teenage life, I was pleased my ridiculous squeaky curse of a voice had never broken. After two minutes of impersonating Mom, though, my throat was starting to hurt like I’d swallowed a rosebush with thorns. But there was no way I could give up, there was still stuff I had to learn.
The conversation so far had gone something like this.
M E: A seizure? Dora?
I fought to think who on earth she was talking about.
P AULINE: (
long pause
)…Um…yes. She’s been much brighter all day after the episode yesterday, and we’d hoped the new medication might settle her down. But she started convulsing about an hour ago.
M E: (
brain wanting to explode in confusion,
Similar Books
