Fabulous Five 006 - The Parent Game (4 page)

Jana hurried to school the next morning. She held her books
in one arm and in the other hand carried a brown grocery bag containing her
make-believe baby. It was okay to carry it that way until next week, after it
was approved by the teacher and became an
official
baby. All around the
grounds were seventh-graders carrying bags and boxes and stuffed animals.

"Hi," called Dekeisha Adams. She was carrying a
big kangaroo and walking with Marcie Bee, who had a clear plastic cleaning bag
with a rabbit in it slung over one shoulder.

"Hi, Dekeisha. Did you wash Buniper, Marcie?" Jana
called.

"Yes, and I hung him on the line by his ears to dry and
they stretched three inches." Marcie sounded exasperated. "Now they
won't stand up."

"Why don't you tie them in a bow and tell everyone
Buniper is a girl?" Jana asked with a laugh.

"Good idea."

Katie, Christie, Beth, and Melanie were already at their
special place by the fence.

"Oh, no, Melanie!" cried Jana as she stepped up. "Is
that
your baby?"

Melanie was holding a gray walrus with saggy skin and white
tusks. Black whiskers stuck out from both sides of its nose. "Don't laugh,"
she warned. "Everyone else has been making fun of me since I got here."

"Why isn't Scott carrying it?" asked Jana. "It's
his—isn't it?"

"He wanted to go to the Quick Stop for a slushy with
Matt Zeboski, and he asked me if I'd hold it."

"I told you," said Katie. "Boys will have you
doing all the work. That's why I'm going to be a single parent."

"Just because I'm doing it this once, doesn't mean I'm
going to do it all the time," said Melanie, glaring at Katie.

"Right," said Katie with a cynical look on her
face.

"Well, I don't think that Sheena doll you're carrying
is such a cute baby either," Melanie shot back.

"It's the only thing I could get away from Libber. That
cat sleeps with all my animals and toys."

"Your bunny in the tennis outfit is cute, Christie,"
said Jana.

"My dad gave it to me when I was little. I think he
thought I'd be a better tennis player if I kept it near me."

"What's in your bag, Jana?" asked Beth.

Jana opened it and held out the sides so her friends could
see. In it was the pink bunny with no name her father had given her when she
was a baby.

"Quiet down, class," said Mrs. Clark. "It's
time to check your choices for babies. Why don't we start with you, Whitney?
Will you show us your child?"

Whitney Larkin, who was a brain and had skipped sixth grade
at Copper Beach Elementary and come straight to junior high this year, stood
up. "Curtis Trowbridge and I have decided to be make-believe parents
together, and we have chosen this robot to be our baby," she said, as if
she were reciting an algebra formula.

She held it up for the class to see. The plastic toy looked
like something out of a science fiction movie. Whitney punched a button and a
red light moved behind its visor, and then it started walking around the floor.
Jana looked at Curtis, who was beaming like a proud new father. Curtis, who had
gone to Mark Twain Elementary with her and was the nerd of the world, had been
walking through the halls holding hands with Whitney ever since school began.
They're the perfect couple if there ever was one, thought Jana, and they couldn't
have picked a better child.

"Hmm, it's certainly different, but I see no reason why
you can't use it, Whitney and Curtis. Very good. All right, Clarence Marshall,
what have you chosen for your baby?"

"This mouse," said Clarence, holding up a small,
gray, hairy mouse for everyone to see. He squeezed it and it went
Squeak!
Squeak!
The rest of the class broke up laughing.

Mrs. Clark frowned but finally she said Clarence could use
the mouse. He stuck it back in his jeans pocket.

Each of the students took turns showing their make-believe
babies. When it was her turn, Jana took the rabbit from the bag and was about
to show it. Clarence Marshall, who was seated in front of her, twisted around
to see.

Squeak! Squeak!

"Clarence, don't hurt your baby!" veiled Joel
Murphy.

"Mouse abuse!" veiled Shane. The whole class
started yelling at Clarence not to hurt his baby.

Clarence grinned as he dug into his pocket and pulled the
mouse out by its head.

"Clarence, next week you'll have to treat it better,"
scolded Mrs. Clark. "Think of it as a child. Class"—she looked at
everyone as she spoke—"I want you all to understand that this is to be
taken
seriously.
If
anything
happens to the toy or stuffed animal
that you have chosen, you could fail the course. You are responsible for it and
must
follow the rules and keep a detailed schedule of feedings,
bedtimes, and so forth. If you have chosen to be partners with someone else, it's
up to
both of you
to make sure it is taken care of properly, or you
both
could fail. You can get a sitter for your child, but it cannot be one of your
parents. Is that perfectly clear?" The room was so quiet you could hear a
pin drop. Jana smiled to herself as she saw Clarence lay his mouse very
carefully on a tissue as if it were a tiny bed.

"All right, let's continue. Shane, what do you have in
the box?"

Jana had been wondering about the box ever since Shane had
brought it into the classroom. It had two or three holes punched into it on
each side.

Shane untied the string and gently reached into the box. Out
came a large iguana with its legs and tail protruding through a small diaper.
Its tongue flicked out at Mrs. Clark, and she pulled back in surprise.

"IGOR!" everyone in the class shouted.
"It's
Igor!"

Jana threw her head back and laughed as everyone in the room
shrieked at the sight of Shane's pet lizard. I should have guessed that Shane
would try to use Igor as his baby, she thought.

Mrs. Clark was struggling to regain her composure. "Shane
Arrington, what is that?"

"It's Igor," said Shane with a cool smile. "He's
my iguana."

"Humph!" Mrs. Clark said softly. "Live
animals are
not
to be used in the Family Living project, Shane. You will
just have to choose something else."

"Gee. He really wanted to be a part of it," said
Shane. Then he spoke to the lizard. "Sorry, old buddy. I told you it
wouldn't work."

As they were leaving class, Shane came up to Jana. "Hey,
Jana. Would you like to be partners?"

"Partners?" Jana echoed in surprise. Being
partners with Shane would probably be lots of fun, and now that Randy was going
to be partners with Taffy, it was probably all right if she had a partner, too.
"I guess so," she said, "but only if we don't use Igor, as Mrs.
Clark said. And . . ." she added, remembering what Katie had been telling
Melanie about boys trying to get out of all the work, "if I don't have to
take care of it all the time."

"That's cool," he answered. "I believe in
equal opportunity. Remember my folks were liberated a long time ago."

Jana knew his mother and father had been hippies in the
sixties and still wore beaded headbands and patched jeans, so it was probably
true.

"When I'm playing football, you can take care of them,
and when you're working on the yearbook, I'll take care of them. Otherwise we'll
switch off evenly."

"That sounds okay." A warning bell went off inside
her head. "
Them?
But Mrs. Clark said Igor can't be used."

"I know," Shane replied with a grin. "But I
thought it would still be fun to have a boy and a girl. Your bunny can be the
girl, and my dinosaur can be the boy."

"Dinosaur?"
asked Jana incredulously.

"Sure. Don't worry. He's stuffed. I asked Mrs. Clark
about him just now, and she said okay."

Jana smiled weakly and headed for her next class. Oh,
brother, she thought. First Igor and now a dinosaur. What am I getting myself
into?

Jana wadded the sheet of stationery into a ball and threw it
into the wastebasket next to her desk. The pink bunny her father had given her
sat on the desktop in front of her, and Rex, Shane's dinosaur, was in the chair
next to her bed. He had said that he'd named it Rex because that's what it
was—a Tyrannosaurus rex.

The whole thing seemed like a story out of a little kids'
picture book to Jana. Both of the stuffed animals were dressed in makeshift
diapers she had made from clean dustcloths, and they had soda bottles with
rubber nipples on them filled with the make-believe formula that she had
prepared. She had even filled out the schedule on their feedings and things.

What made it even more weird was the way Rex looked. Rex was
the biggest stuffed animal Jana had ever seen. He was green with a purple belly
and a yellow tuft of hair sticking up from the center of his head, and the
wacky look on his face was positively stupid.

Jana shook her head in disbelief at the dinosaur and pulled
another sheet of stationery from the desk drawer. She tried starting the letter
for the third time.

Dear Father:

I am writing this letter to tell you about Mom and Pink's
wedding. I am sure you will be just as happy about it as I am.

Jana paused and looked at what she had written. Did it still
seem too formal? Or was it too casual? She didn't want him to think that she
was dying to see him, because she wasn't. But she also didn't want him to think
that she hated him, because she didn't think she did. She didn't really know
how she felt—about him, about Pink, about the wedding, about
any
of
it—but she knew someone should let him know about the wedding.

Pink is a very nice man.

Would her father think she meant that
he
wasn't a
nice man? She crossed out the last sentence and thought for a moment.

It will be nice to have a man around the house to help
Mom with things.

If he thought that was a slam about his not being around,
well, he could just think it. He hadn't even come the one time he had written
to say that he would.

They are getting married one week from Saturday.

Would he think that was an invitation for him to come to the
wedding? No, of course he wouldn't. Children of people getting married didn't
send out invitations. She didn't know if he even cared that her mother, his
ex-wife, was getting married. He hadn't cared enough to keep up the alimony and
child support payments, and her mother had quit trying to collect them a long
time ago. There had been times when her mother sat at the kitchen table with
the bills, and Jana knew she was worrying about having the money to pay them.
Why should he start caring now? Why was she even writing the letter to him
anyway?

She leaned back in her chair and stared at the ceiling.
Probably for the same reason that I keep putting off getting my dress, she
thought. It was hard to admit it to herself, but she knew that getting the
dress would mean that everything was set. All the details were taken care of,
and the wedding would take place. That was okay for her mom. In fact, it was
super for her.

"But what about me?" she whispered. Just as tears
started to well up in her eyes, she was aware of Rex, smiling at her from his
chair.

Jana glanced at the green and purple dinosaur again and
smiled back at him, in spite of herself. Shane had said that Rex was the only
stuffed animal his parents had given him as a baby. He said for a long time he
had thought Rex was his big brother. He was only kidding of course, although
Melanie, who was with them at the time, had believed him.

Her thoughts went back to the letter. What else should she
say to her father? How are things going? I'd like to see you sometime?

"Jana?" her mother spoke from the doorway.

Jana slid her school notebook over the letter. "Oh, hi,"
she answered stiffly.

"May I come in?"

"Sure."

"What are you doing, sweetheart?"

"Just my homework."

"My, that's a big dinosaur. Where did you get that?"

"It belongs to Shane Arrington. It's a Tyrannosaurus
rex, and it's supposed to be one of our make-believe babies for the Family
Living project. We decided to have a boy and a girl."

"Oh, I see," said her mother, chuckling as she
looked Rex over. "And your rabbit is the other baby?"

Jana nodded and wished she had not put the bunny her father
had given her where her mother could see it.

"Do you have a minute to talk, Jana?" she
continued. "We just have to set a time to find you a dress. Since evenings
are out, and we talked about Saturday, can we make it definite?"

Jana shrugged as the old feelings of resistance returned. If
she could just put off shopping for a dress until she got her feelings sorted
out. "Now I've got the problem of what to do with Rex," she offered
hopefully.

"Rex?"

"Yes, the dinosaur. That's what Shane named him. I can't
leave him and my bunny alone, and he's almost too big to lug around the mall."

Her mother stared at the stuffed animals. Rex seemed to be
smiling back at her with his idiot grin. "You can't leave them at home?"

"No, not without someone to sit them. That's one of the
rules. Remember? I told you about it," she said sharply, and then wished
she could bite her tongue. Her mother was so preoccupied with the wedding that
she couldn't concentrate on anything else. "You can leave them with a
sitter, but it can't be a parent," she explained patiently. "If I did
and Mrs. Clark found out, I could get an F on the project."

"Can't you get Shane to take care of them?"

"Oh, he will, but I said I'd take care of them when he's
playing football, and he'll take care of them when I'm working on the yearbook.
The other times we'll take turns. There's a game with Trumbull Saturday
afternoon."

Her mother looked frustrated again. "Jana, we have just
got
to get you a dress. Can't one of your friends sit for you?"

"They'll all be at the game, and they've talked
everyone who isn't going into sitting for them."

"Well," her mother sighed, "we'll just have
to take your babies shopping with us."

"But Rex is so
big.
"

"Jana, don't you
want
to get a new dress for the
wedding?"

Jana ducked her head so that her mother couldn't see the expression
on her face. "Sure I do, Mom. It's just that I've got problems." Why
couldn't she understand? "I'm not doing it on purpose."

Jana's mother looked at her. "Jana, honey, don't you
like Pink anymore?"

Jana looked at her in astonishment. "Of course I do."

"Well, the way you're acting, I'm beginning to wonder."

"The way I'm acting? I just have school things that I
have
to do, and now I have to take care of Shane's dumb dinosaur. I didn't invent
them. They have nothing to do with Pink."

"Well, young lady, we're going shopping Saturday
morning for a dress, and that's final." Sparks flew out of her mother's
eyes. "We'll just have to manage to do it
with
the animals."
She stood up and looked down at Jana.

Jana fought back tears. "Okay," she said weakly. Her
mother turned and left abruptly.

As the door closed, the tears gushed and spilled down Jana's
cheeks. Her mother hadn't spoken to her like that since she was a little kid
and had done something naughty. And now she felt as if she were being treated
as if she were a little kid again.

She took the unfinished letter from under the notebook and
wadded it up and threw it at the pink rabbit. It bounced and ended up on the
floor. She stared at it for a few moments, then got up and retrieved it. She
spread it flat on the desktop and tried to press the wrinkles out of it. A tear
splashed on the paper and made the ink run. Why couldn't her mother understand?