Mission (Un)Popular (4 page)

M
Y TRIPLET SISTERS
are only two, so it's not surprising they've got a few things left to learn about the way the world works. For example, they still don't get how mostly unfair life can be.

That Friday night, Aleene screamed like a maniac when my mom washed Alex's hair first at tub time. “Nonefair!” she wailed. And she
hates
hair washes (they all do), but that wasn't her point. Her point was she didn't get to go first.

“Here, Aleene. You're next. Look at this,” Mom said, distracting her with a rubber duck, which Aleene accepted, still whimpering.

It sucks, but soon she'll realize that being denied the first hair wash is nothing. The older you get, the more unfair life becomes, and the worst part is, no one even thinks about handing you a squeaky duck to console you anymore—even if your weekend, like mine, was nonefair in about ten different ways.

Every Labor Day weekend Erika's parents take her to Toronto to visit her rich aunt and uncle. And when I say rich,

I mean mansions and sports cars rich. Even Erika thinks they're rich (and her pool is bigger than my house). Her aunt takes her to the mall and lets her pick out whatever back-to-school clothes she wants. And even though Erika was going to be wearing a uniform this year, they still went. I couldn't pretend I wasn't insanely jealous, but at least Erika made her parents stop on their way out of town to drop off the jeans.

“Hi,” she said, holding out a Holt Renfrew bag.

“Hi.” I took it. The jeans were folded perfectly inside. I think her mom had even ironed them.

We looked at each other miserably for a while, not knowing what to say, which—trust me—never happens.

“It's going to be all right,” she said finally, but there were tears in her eyes.

“Yeah, sure,” I said, but I was crying too.

We hugged and stood at my front door, sniffling into each other's shoulders until her mom started honking. Clearly, she was in a hurry to get to Toronto so she could browse for a new Gucci bag before drinking martinis at some fancy restaurant.

Erika gave me one last hug. Then she got in the car and pressed her palm against the glass. I stood on the lawn, watching them drive away until they disappeared around a bend. Then I moped back into the house to start my exciting long weekend at home with my mom, Bryan, and the triplets.

That afternoon I spent hours in the backyard drawing my sisters a city out of sidewalk chalk on the patio stones. It even had tiny roads for riding trikes down, an ice cream parlor, a railroad, and (by special request) a dog zoo. The next day I went shopping at the dollar store for a few last-minute school things—a new pencil sharpener and a few erasers shaped like Japanimation hamsters.

Finally, on Labor Day, I helped my mom bake zucchini loaf and prune her hibiscus—then I plonked down on the sofa, ready to spend my last afternoon of freedom doing something
I
wanted to do—watching decorating show reruns. It wasn't easy, either, considering that I had to try to block out the deafening sounds of the triplets playing on their battery-powered TinyTikes electric guitars in the next room. Their grandma Dotty (Bald Boring Bryan's mother) bought them for their birthday, and I swear I'll never forgive her.

Still, even though I was getting a huge headache and was totally depressed, I had to admit it was inspiring what you could do with paint, some custom cabinetry, and a bit of crown molding. I'd just watched the decorating team turn a nasty green kitchen into a bright, cheery, retro space, and was about to tune in to the next half-hour episode—a bedroom—when Bald Boring Bryan sulked wussily into the living room and stood with his head tilted to one side, waiting for me to pay attention to him.

“Margot,” he started finally, scratching at his temple. “It would be incredibly helpful to me if you could watch the girls for half an hour while I nip out to the convenience store and get gas for the van.”

“Can't you take them with you?” I asked, not looking away from the TV. “I'm watching this.” The
Decorating by Design
theme song played as they came back from commercial. I hummed along as the little cartoon theme-song lady walked into a falling-apart cartoon room, pasted up fresh wallpaper with the show's logo on it, then, poof, the room transformed into a tasteful space using a coordinating pallet of neutrals. Cartoon lady turned and winked at the camera. I winked back. There was something about her that always made me feel better. Like, no matter how bad things looked, with a little wallpaper and a snap of her fingers, she could make it beautiful. Now, if only she could come fix my life.…

Bryan stood, staring over my shoulder while they panned the camera around for the “before” shot of the bedroom. It had bright purple walls and curtains with geometric shapes on them. It looked like it had been decorated by a first grade math teacher.

I could hear him take a deep breath, trying to center himself. It's part of this new yogic-peacefulness thing he's doing. You're supposed to “rise above your challenges” and “ride a wave of calm.” I know it's mean, but sometimes I like to see how far I can push him.

“Couldn't you turn it off?” he tried again. “I'd be back from the store in half the time. Also, you and your sisters could spend some quality time together. We would all benefit.”

“That might be true, Bryan,” I said, still not looking at him, “but I think I would benefit more from watching this show because I really want to redecorate my room.”

I could hear him breathing even more deeply; so deeply I had this vision of him accidentally inhaling the magazines I had lying on the coffee table. And, I swear, the pages of the September
CosmoGirl
did flutter when he exhaled.

“I understand that you're enjoying your television program, Margot, but sometimes we need to make sacrifices in this family to help each other out.” His voice was less yogicly peaceful now, but I honestly didn't care. I can't stand when he pulls that “in this family” stuff on me; like he suddenly gets to decide what “this family” does and doesn't do. He's
not
my father, and it's not like I asked for three sisters.

“I need some time alone right now, okay?” I said, looking up from the couch. “I'm dealing with a lot. And in case you don't remember, I spent quality time with my sisters pretty much every day this summer. Can't you please take your children to the store so I can mourn the loss of my best friend in private?”

Bryan took another deep breath, then turned and left the room. Thank God, I thought, directing my full attention back to the show.

But before you go thinking I'm a big unhelpful jerk, let me explain. It's not that I don't love my sisters. I do. I've loved them right from the start, but that doesn't mean I want to be with them constantly, and it doesn't mean I feel the same way about Bryan.

I was just about to start fourth grade the summer my mom met him at a vegan potluck dinner. (They brought almost exactly the same couscous salad with raisins, so it was like fate or something.) If I'd only known how much damage he was going to do to my life, I would have definitely tried harder to scare him off. But Bryan looked so harmless with his flaxseed cereal and drippy sentimental ways that he hardly seemed worth the trouble. Plus, Mom had never gotten very serious about the other guys she'd dated, and I figured it would be the same. Huge mistake.

Eight months later he gave my mom a moon-and-star engagement ring and proposed by candlelight on the winter solstice—something she thought was totally romantic, but I thought was kind of cheap. He could have at least sprung for a diamond and some electricity. I mean, my mom's pretty amazing, as moms go. She's smart and resourceful, not to mention beautiful—with light blue eyes and long blond hair that reaches all the way down her back and is just starting to go gray.

Still, she said yes, and four months later I was the flower girl at their riverside wedding. All of Bryan's family came, including his horrible mother, Dotty.

“I think it will be nice for Margot,” she'd said to her cousin Flo, as they heaped their plates full of salads and casseroles at the homemade buffet. “It's sad, you know, her father wanting nothing to do with her. But now she'll have Bryan.” She didn't know I was crouched behind the nondenominational minister's podium with Erika, picking field mushrooms for something to do. “Now, what do you suppose this green stuff with the nuts is?” she whispered loudly, then snorted. “One thing's for sure. Bryan won't get fat eating the food she cooks.” Flo guffawed and slapped Dotty's arm, and after that Erika and I spent the rest of the reception hatching a plan to sneak the field mushrooms into Dotty's next helping of vegetarian lasagna—Erika was pretty sure they were the poison kind—but we never worked up the nerve.

Next thing I knew, I found myself packing my stuff into cardboard boxes and walking through the strange emptiness of our little brick bungalow—noticing the dark spot on the wall where our embarrassing Goddess of Fertility painting used to hang; running my hand over the door frame my mom had been notching to measure me since I was old enough to stand.

When we got to Bryan's house, nothing fit. Our sofa looked too small. Our sari curtains looked too bright against the white walls. Still, my mom threw our Peruvian blanket over Bryan's ugliest chair, rearranged his furniture to make room for ours, and hung up the fertility goddess painting right in the front hall. I'll never know for sure if it's what gave him the idea, but a few months later, Bryan decided he wanted to have a little bald baby. He and my mom found this top-notch doctor and went for all kinds of tests. By Christmas they were showing me a black-and-white photo from her ultrasound. “Surprise, surprise, surprise!” my mom said, pointing to each bean-shaped blur.

My mom was almost forty when my sisters were born, and she never stops saying what a miracle they are. She didn't think she'd be able to have another kid after me. I was ten at the time. I couldn't understand why she'd
want
another one. And I definitely couldn't (and still don't) understand why she married Bryan. I thought we were doing perfectly fine—and that we were happy. But I guess she wanted more from life, like a bigger house with more people in it, piles and piles of laundry, and someone to bore her to sleep at night…and, if that was the case, she'd definitely found the right guy.

Still, dull and wussy as he might be, I had to admit Bryan had a few surprises up his sleeve. The decorating team had just started to take down the hexagon-shaped light fixture when my mom came in, grabbed the remote from the coffee table, and switched off the TV in one motion.

“I'm doing a tarot reading in the front room, and I need you to watch the girls.”

I was stunned. First of all, I couldn't believe that Bryan had had the nerve to interrupt my mom. There's a strict “don't even think about interrupting a client unless you want bad karma to rain down upon you” policy in our house. Mom put her hands on her hips. “Bryan has to get to the convenience store before it closes.”

I stared up at her. Her jaw was all clenched, and her forehead was all wrinkled. She barely even looked like herself. “He's had a difficult enough week. I don't understand why you can't treat him with a little respect, Margot. Bryan is an important member of this family.”

“If Bryan thinks he's had such a difficult week, he should try my life. In case you're forgetting, I just lost my best friend to another school. All I want to do is watch TV and try to forget about it, okay?” I made a grab for the remote, but my mom got in the way, which made me even more annoyed. “And why did he go crying to you? It's kind of pathetic, don't you think? Plus, why do I
always
have to babysit? They're not my kids. And Bryan's
not
my family.”

There's an expression—about a straw and a camel's back. Maybe you know it. If you don't, what happened next is a good example of how it works. Basically, a camel can carry a lot of straws without even caring. But eventually, no matter how chilled out the camel is, or how light each straw is, there's a limit to how much any desert-dwelling animal in its right mind is going to put up with. My mom was the camel. That last thing I said was one straw too many.

“I'm floored,” she began. She wasn't yelling, but her eyes were narrow. “Did you just say what I think you said?” It didn't seem like she actually wanted an answer. “I know you're upset because Erika won't be going to your school this year, but that's not an excuse for this behavior. Bryan is part of your family. I don't want to hear you say a thing like that again.”

She turned to go. “He's not,” I muttered under my breath. “You're the one who married him, okay?”

I obviously hadn't muttered quietly enough. “No. It's not okay, Margot,” my mother snapped, turning back. “It's really not okay.” She picked up
CosmoGirl
and threw it. The pages made a loud slapping sound as they hit the carpet.

I sat up straighter. My mother never yells. And she definitely never throws things.

“Okay. Fine. I'll watch them,” I said quickly. Then I couldn't help adding: “But only for half an hour. And he has to stay until the next commercial break.”

She shook her head like she was just too annoyed with me to discuss it anymore. “Thank you, Margot,” she said, already on her way out. “I appreciate your help.”

After Bryan got back from the convenience store, I went straight to my room—partly to avoid my mother, but also to try on the Parasuco jeans with this long brown waffle-material top I thought would look okay. There was no way around it: school would be starting the next day, and it would probably suck, but that didn't mean I shouldn't try to look decent. I packed my new binders into my same old green backpack, opened the package of hamster erasers, and tossed aside the waffle top, settling instead on a gray-and-black-striped Mexx shirt that Erika gave me because she never wore it anymore. It was a bit weird and bunchy at the bottom, but it was the best thing I had.