2: Turtles and Fuzzy Handcuffs

In which Pop-Tarts are devoured and dashboards are altars.

Dad was staring at me when I returned, and making no effort to hide it. He pointed to the table with a smirk where a new glass, this time plastic with a lid so I had a smaller area to spill from, was sitting at my place. “Juice is expensive and we can’t afford to have you wasting it what with the present state of the economy,” he explained matter-of-factly.

 

“Gee, thanks,” I muttered sarcastically, sipping at my juice. I couldn’t help but feel like a three year old with a sippy cup. Then I remembered that the three year old across the road had been dancing around a few days before proclaiming that she no longer needed a sippy cup and could drink from a glass. Even toddlers out show me. Stupid small children, they should all be handcuffed to their cribs until they learn to talk properly.

 

There was a bang and it sounded as though a bowling ball was being dropped down the stairs. Even Sheba looked up to see what was happening and she rarely took interest in anything. Which was why the vet had received several frantic midnight calls when my parents had thought she had died. A large shape loomed in the doorway and my brother slouched into the kitchen.

 

“Oh, look, the small herd of elephants,” I said cheerfully. He glared at me. Or at least I think he did, his hair was covering his eyes. I was beginning to wonder if he had eyes.

 

Somehow, he managed to find his way to the box of Pop-Tarts and grabbed a few foil wrapped packets. Displaying just how peculiar he was, he opened them all and neatly arranged them on a plate before walking over to the table, collapsing into a chair and shovelling them into his mouth. Whole. One by one, of course, but he was trying to stuff them all in without breaking them up, or chewing for that matter. Like a snake.

 

“Now that’s attractive,” I said, lifting up my glass so he didn’t fling crumbs out of his mouth into it giving me AIDS or herpes or some other sort of disease.

 

He just grunted. I swear, he turned seventeen and lost the ability to speak. I should cuff him to his bed like the little children. Mind, as long as he had food near by I doubt he’d complain. And who knows what he did in his spare time. Maybe that’s what his creepy girlfriend was into. Now there’s a mental image I did not want. Get out! Out, out, out! Ew.

 

Some tiny voice in the back of my mind that was not cringing and seeking out a therapist informed me that my dad was talking. “Stop being so dramatic, Ava. I used to eat like that. It’s good to see that Aaron’s inherited my metabolism. Yep, a pound of bacon couldn’t ruin me then, still can’t now.” I snorted. Dad was of a similar physique around tummy region as that of the little plastic Buddha a client had given him. “Lucky little monster’s got my hair, too.” Aaron joined me in snorting this time. Not only was Dad not blonde, he was looking more like Friar Tuck than ever. “Laugh it up, just remember who pays your allowance.”

 

“So we should be making sure Mom’s laughing, too, then, seeing as that would be her,” I pointed out.

 

Dad glared at me. “Don’t get cheeky.”

 

We stared at each other for a few moments, both of us trying to figure out how to best get in the last word. Then out of nowhere Mom laughed. It wasn’t a normal sort of chuckle, but shriek-y and sudden like a bird. “That’s funny,” she giggled. Dad slowly turned his head to look at her, tilted his head and turned back to look at me.

 

“Alright then, I’ll be in my room,” I said suddenly. In times like this it was best to get out.

 

Aaron jumped up after me. He was right on my heels so I decided to stop and see what would happen. Apparently years of hockey practices had managed to make him agile enough to stop, but he still wound up leaning over me, one hand bracing him against the wall.

 

I turned my face and his oversized head was right beside mine. It was an awkward position, but one of my feet was looped around his ankle so I couldn’t rush the process of moving it or I’d take us both down. And if Aaron were to fall on me I’d die of crush syndrome or whatever it was called. He’s no featherweight. More like a leadweight. “So,” I began, saying the first thing that came to mind, “are you and Vanessa into bondage?”

 

He gawked at me. Or at least his mouth did. I still couldn’t find his eyes. That should be my end of the summer project " Operation Baby Blues. I’ll need a butterfly net and a stun gun. And perhaps a pair of scissors. Maybe a pair of fuzzy handcuffs to keep him happy…

 

While I was busy plotting my devious, well, plot he grabbed me by the waist and gently set me against the wall. Aaron then walked around me before turning around and lifted me back to where I originally was. After stepping back to look at me, he nodded in a self-satisfied sort of way before clomping back to his room. I certainly hope he was happy with my placement and not saying he was into bondage. Ew…double ew.

 

Muttering every word I could think of that didn’t involve leather and ball gags, I made it back up to my room and jumped onto my bed. Burying my face into my pillow, I was glad that I had decided to move it closer to the door. I couldn’t count the number of times I’d dove for my bed and found the hardwood floor. Then I got a shag rug, so I’d find a rug and the hardwood floor. It turns out that a hundred and thirty pounds of airborne me hardens carpet quickly. Dad threw it out so I had to get a new one.

 

Whatever I had landed on was jabbing painfully into my stomach, so, making noises that probably sounded creepy to anyone who didn’t know what I was doing, I reached under me and tried to drag out the stuffed animal by its leg. At least I think it was its leg. It had better be its leg. Muffling a disgusted cry I whipped the animal at the wall. It collided with a sharp clack from one of its plastic eyes. I finally managed to look up from my pillow and saw the tiny, lifeless green form was that of my turtle, Berta.

 

“Oh, s**t,” I exclaimed, immediately wincing when I remembered that I was in the presence of a child. A little reptilian child with stuffing instead of ligaments, but it was a child nonetheless. Leaping to my feet, I hit the floor, leapt up again and scrambled forward to grab my stuffy. “I’m sorry,” I murmured, patting his head, “I didn’t mean to, little guy.” I set him on a decorative pillow, resisted the urge to grab a Band-Aid and put it over his nose like I would have when I was five, so instead I grabbed a sticker from the drawer of my bedside table and stuck it to his fuzzy shell. “There, all better.”
 

Berta stared at a point beside my head. Not only was he mad at me for giving him a girl’s name he probably hated me for whipping him into the wall. Oh, well, I could have dumped him in the blender. Maybe he would have caught fire like Sir Fuzzikins III had.

 

While I was recounting exactly how I had mutilated my toys over the years (maybe that’s why my parents stopped buying me Barbies), someone knocked at the door.

 

“Come in!” I yelled a little louder than necessary, but Aaron had his music on in the room across the hall and it was getting progressively louder.

 

Mom stood in the doorway. I’d quite forgotten she was a quick-change artist. Well, at least she was wearing clothes, even if they did look as though she had stolen them from my closet. She probably had. I’d have to check as soon as she completed whatever task concerned interacting with me, which likely involved bleach and looking for any Valium she’d hidden around the house. I’d found it in the ugly vase in the dining room once, before I broke it trying to have a pillow fight with myself. “I’m going to the mall to pick up some things for back to school. Would you like to come with me?” She had the slow, somewhat dazed voice of someone who was stoned out of her mind. But, even so, her tone made it clear that the inflection was just a formality and I didn’t have a choice.

 

“Sounds like fun except I have to…brush the lawn! It’s the latest thing in lawn care; it keeps the grass looking all green and shiny. Similar to hair, apparently.”

 

Mom glanced out my window where you could see out onto the front lawn, which hadn’t been cut in weeks and what wasn’t brown was overgrown like some sort of jungle for the disgusting little insects down there. They probably have some sort of city set up there. Our yard would make an excellent suburb " we’re too lazy to mow it, weed it or spray it with pesticides to kill them all. All in all, an excellent place to raise little slimy babies. She turned back to me and quirked an eyebrow, well both of them, but her head is on a permanent tilt so it only looked like one moved.

 

“Let me get my purse.”

 

“I’ll be downstairs,” she said in the breathless, whimsical way that she gets when she’s doped herself completely with anxiety drugs. She should probably talk to someone about that.

 

I waited for her to leave thee room before going to my secret hiding place for my bag. Across the hall, Aaron’s music was as loud as ever and a Spice Girls song that I remembered from when I was nine came on, so I danced while I worked. But when you’re practically bent in half under your bed that pretty much just means doing a lot of butt shaking.

 

“What are you doing?”

 

Oh, s**t, the father figure. “Nothing,” I replied innocently, my voice muffled by my bed. I attempted to extract myself from under it, but hit my head and had to try again.

 

“Whatever you say, Ava,” he said before I could get out and correct his interpretation. I heard his footsteps fade down the hall and then back down the stairs.

 

With a final, overdramatic tug I was free. “There,” I said to no one in particular. My head was spinning and I brought the hand that wasn’t holding my purse to my forehead. Even without looking in a mirror I could tell that my hair was a mess. “Fan-bloody-tastic.”

 

Slipping into the bathroom, I locked the door so no one could see me with my hair sticking up like it would if I were to touch one of those funny silver balls in the grade nine science classes. Somehow I managed to get the elastic out and then back in without ripping out more than a pound of hair. A new record, I should get a medal. That way I could put it in with my other…well…anyways.

 

“Now that took an unnecessarily long time,” said Mom while I slipped on my sandals.

 

“Not my fault.”

 

 I trailed after her out to the car. She made a fantastic series of scratches while she tried to unlock the thing and then whipped her bag, which was about three times the size of my brother’s head (he has a very large head) and weighed about as much as I do, into the backseat. Cringing, I got into the passenger seat.

 

I’m not normally one to pray " I’d never been to church in my life " but I’ve been in the car too many times with my mother driving not to use the dashboard as an impromptu altar.

 

“Oh look, a tree.”