100 Days of Cake (9 page)

“It's fine,” I say. “I did totally want to go, and I
am
sorry.”

Alex smiles (which makes him look even more like Joseph Gordon-Levitt). “You'll come to the next one. If you really want to make it up to me, you can pick up the Wang's today.”

“You're on.”

I'm about to ask him if he wants the house special lo mein, when I notice a new tank by the stacks of extra fake coral. It's not filled with water but with rocks, and inside are two dozen hermit crabs. With their spiny pink legs and big black eyes on stalks, they are the cutest things that have ever happened in the history of FishTopia.

“Ohmygod, where did these come from?” I ask.

One little guy at the front of the cage has a bright green shell. He lifts up a mini claw at me, like he might be trying to wave.

Scooping him up in my hand, I pet his shell with the pad of my thumb.

“I'm totally keeping him,” I announce. “We can call him Pickles.”

“I wouldn't get too attached,” Alex says. “Turns out hermit crabs don't live in salt water, and they were sent here accidentally. Charlie threw a hissy fit when he saw them this afternoon. The distributor is picking them up tonight.”

“No! These are seriously the best things we've ever had in this place!”

Pickles crawls hopefully along my palm, and I pat his front claw. There is no way I'm letting anyone take him back to Crabland, or wherever our fish supplier got him from. He's just so little and helpless. I
love
him.

“It's okay; you're going to stay with me.” I hold him up for Alex to examine. “What do you think?”

“Pickles, huh?” Alex shrugs. “I guess no one is going to miss one crab.”

We spend the rest of the afternoon on our iPhones, Googling how to build a “crabitat,” and then setting up the rocks and extra shells in one of the little handheld plastic tanks that parents sometimes buy for their kids, even though
they're horrible for more than a couple of fish. When we're finished, we set Pickles on the counter so he can watch
Golden Girls
with us. If anyone walked in right now, we'd look completely crazy, but really what are the chances of
that
happening.

They play the episode where Dorothy decides to fulfill her lifelong dream of doing stand-up comedy, after one of her friends from high school dies. Pickles seems to really enjoy it—definitely a crab after my own heart.

He can totally join Alex and me in our private aquarium club.

W
hen we first moved into the model home, Mom said that we should probably convert the playroom into something else. But every time she goes in there, she gets all wistful and says how much she and Dad would have loved to have been able to give V and I stuff like that when we were little. Yeah, the playroom isn't going anywhere. It's just too precious, with the Beatrix Potter murals of Peter Rabbit and Tom Kitten on the wall, and the giant plush stuffed bears and tigers, the built-in bookcases with all the classic children's stories, and beautifully photographed National Geographic books.

And the dollhouse is perfect—not the super-intricate kind that they have in museums, but one that looks like a little kid would actually be allowed to use it. Brightly painted wood with mini furniture and lacy drapes. There
are even little metal plates for the dining room table.

Today it's finally getting some use. Elle, Jimmy, and I are letting Pickles explore the various doll-furnished rooms. The kitchen, with its tiny appliances, doesn't hold much interest for him. And he immediately crawls back into the house when we set him on the terrace. Guess he's not the outdoorsy type. Honestly, he's most comfortable on the velveteen couch in the living room, which kind of makes me wonder if depression is a thing in the hermit crab community.

“You should give him a Twitter account,” Elle says as she snaps cell phone photos of Pickles kicking back in his shell on the sofa. “You'd probably get a book deal—
The Everyday Hermit Crab
or something.”

“
A Hermit Crab's Journey: One Hundred Days of Shell
?” I laugh. “My mom would buy that.”

“I would buy that one!”

“You guys are weird.” Jimmy looks up from a three-quarter-size table, where he's pitting classic tin soldiers against plastic jungle animals. “When is Veronica coming back?” He may be an eight-year-old rabid possum, but he's not blind; naturally, he has a ginormous crush on my sister.

“I have no idea,” I say. It's true; I don't think I've even seen her since she slammed off my alarm clock and called me pathetic.

Jimmy looks momentarily bummed, then brightens. “Do you guys have scissors?”

I tell him they're in the sewing room across the hall, and he scampers off.

“You
cannot
try to stab Carly again,” Elle calls after him.

Elle and Jimmy have to spend a few days with their dad and stepmom in Jacksonville, and Mr. Lovell and Carly are picking them up here because it's just best if Elle's parents don't interact . . .
ever
. This way it's much less likely to result in property damage.

From downstairs Mom calls that she finished today's cake a little early, in case Elle and Jimmy want to take a few pieces on the road.

“We'll be right down,” Elle yells, and I raise my eyebrows. “What?” she says. “I'm starving.”

Since Pickles likes the couch so much, I put it in the crabitat so he can have his own lounging area, and Elle and I head downstairs.

Mom and the kitchen are back to their model states. The same cannot be said about the Everyday Wedding Cake. I'm not entirely sure what real fondant is supposed to look like, but the faux fondant icing is all spikes and unseemly lumps that remind me of the scene in
Alien
where the baby monster punches out of the guy's gut. It also tastes as though Mom might have forgotten some crucial ingredient, like salt.

Elle doesn't mind; that girl would eat a tennis shoe if you sprinkled enough sugar on top.

“Amazing, Mrs. Byrne,” she says. “Really great stuff.”

From upstairs there's an eardrum-busting shriek from V, who must have been home all along. “Elle! Get up here now!”

Elle and Mom and I look at each other, and then race up the spiral staircase (a somewhat impractical upgrade). The hallway hardwood floors are spattered with wisps of cotton and feathers. We follow the mess to V's room, where she's standing on her bed, hands raised in the universal sign for
Stay the hell away from me
. Stripped down to his Superman underpants, Jimmy has the hollowed-out exterior of the white tiger stuffed animal from the playroom draped over his shoulders like a hard-won pelt. The plush white face is perched on top of Jimmy's own head, as if he's a tribal hunter from one of the National Geographic books that came with the house.

“Jimmy!” Elle shrieks.

“I wanted to impress my love with my kill,” he says to V, as if this makes total sense.

It takes every ounce of self-control not to bust out laughing. I have never loved Jimmy more than at this moment.

“Sorry, kid. I'm not a plushie,” V mutters, but she actually seems less annoyed now, or at least less scared.

“I'm so sorry, Mrs. Byrne.” Elle reaches out for the slain tiger. “It's completely ruined.”

“Don't worry about it.” Mom shakes her head, and then smiles. “You know, it's actually extremely creative.”

Jimmy lights up, apparently excited that someone isn't simply fed up with him, for a change.

“It would make a pretty cool Halloween costume,” I say, and Mom and Elle agree.

“Honestly, we could probably sell something like this at Jaclyn's.” V climbs off the bed and sizes up Jimmy. “You know, market it as kind of a fun fake fur, for save-the-planet nuts like Elle.” She nods at Elle. “No offense.”

“None taken,” Elle says. “But if you really wanted to appeal to the eco-conscious consumer, you'd need to use certain materials.”

As the four of us circle around Jimmy, his face changes from pride to frustration or maybe terror.

“You guys are weird.” Throwing off his tiger pelt, he runs out of the bedroom.

Y
ou stood me up last week,” Dr. Brooks says when I come into his office for my rescheduled appointment. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah, I just wasn't feeling well,” I say, and feel bad all over again. “I'm so sorry.”

I try to give him the co-pay for the missed session, but he waves it away. I guess stuff like this probably happens in his line of work all the time.

“No worries. Next time just let me know as soon as you know you won't be able to make it,” he says.

“Sure.”

“Actually, do you have my cell number?” He takes out a business card and writes something on the front. “I know I gave it to your mom, but you should have it too, in case you ever have an emergency and need to talk.”

“Thanks.” The card feels valuable.

“Just try not to have any emergencies after midnight on the weekends. My fiancée's kind of a light sleeper,” he says, and chuckles.

“Oh, okay.”

“I'm kidding. Obviously call me whenever you need to.” Smiling, he points to the crabitat next to me on the couch. “So what's with your little friend?”

“This is Pickles.” I hold up the container for Dr. B. to get a better look. “We are totally on the same wavelength; he's my spirit animal.”

I kind of hoped Dr. B. would laugh, but instead he shakes his head and lets out this sigh from his nose. “Because he can duck into his shell and hide at a moment's notice?”

Heat floods my cheeks. “I guess that
is
a painfully obvious metaphor. No wonder I got a C in English.”

That does make Dr. B. chuckle a little, and I instantly feel better.

When I first started coming to Dr. B.'s, I figured he would be all about the Prozac. Half the kids in school are on Ritalin or Adderall or some other pharmaceutical (to be fair, a lot of those aren't doctor-prescribed meds but stuff bought from Sketchy Mike, this stoner senior who deals from the storage closet behind the gym), but Dr. Brooks explained that he's a psychologist, not a psychiatrist, and that just any prescriptions would have to come from a doctor. He looked
over the stuff Dr. Calvin had me on and said that we should stick with that for a while.

But with what happened the night of Alex's show and missing my appointment last week, I keep wondering about the attractive lady with her attractive family and attractive dog in the antidepressant commercial. Like, maybe it's time for something new? At the very least it's got to be more medically viable than Mom's cake cure-all.

It feels kind of weird to bring it up though—like I'm not loving Dr. B.'s treatment or something—but all the commercials do say,
Talk to your doctor
.

“So, um, the other day I saw a commercial for some new wonder drug antidepressant . . . ,” I start cautiously.

“Which one? The little sad-faced yellow blob, or the blue robe of sadness that the woman can't take off?” Dr. B. asks.

I laugh and tell him about the Attractives. “I don't know. Do you think maybe it's time to switch it up?”

“Well, there are a lot of things they don't recommend for people under twenty-five,” he says. “Therapy is generally considered the best treatment for people your age.”

“Oh, okay.” All of a sudden I feel tears tickling my nose. I guess I didn't realize how much I just want some quick fix back to the original Molly Byrne, before the recast.

“Molly?” Dr. B. asks gently, but I don't want to look at him, because it's so stupid that I'm upset. Seriously, how hard is it to
not
cry in front of people?

“I get it. I just thought, well . . . There's been a few bad days lately.”