Just Another Girl

by Melody Carlson

  But here’s the honest truth: I think my mom likes working those long hours, and weekends too. I think that work is her way to avoid our happy home and family life. Also, I think it’s her personal escape hatch—from Lily.

  6

  I go through the paces of finishing up the laundry, putting things away, and vacuuming Lily’s chip mess on the rug. I know I should make her do it, but the last time I tried to get her to vacuum, she sucked up a spoon, which broke the belt, and I had to spend about an hour fixing it. It’s just not worth it.

  “I’m hungry,” she announces at 5:45. “When’s dinner?”

  “I don’t know,” I say in a grumpy tone. “Mom’s working late, and I don’t know when Rose is coming—”

  “Rose has a date,” Lily informs me. She always loves it when she knows something that someone else doesn’t. I think it makes her think she’s smarter than she really is.

  “How do you know?”

  “I heard her talking to her boyfriend on the phone.”

  “When?”

  “Today. Before she went to work.” Now Lily gets her sly look. “And I heard Rose say ‘I love you too.’ ”

  “You shouldn’t eavesdrop.”

  “I told Kellie about it too. I told Kellie that Rose loves her boyfriend.”

  “You shouldn’t gossip.”

  “And you know what Kellie said, Aster?”

  “No, I don’t know what Kellie said.” I pick up the last plates from the dishwasher, then slam the door too hard.

  “Kellie said that when people love each other, they sometimes get married.”

  “So?” I put the plates in the cupboard and turn to face Lily. She looks very worried now.

  “You think they gonna get married, Aster? You think Rose and Jared will get married?”

  “I hope so,” I say.

  “Why?” Lily demands. “Why you want Rose to get married, Aster?”

  “Because then she’ll move away, and I can have my own room.”

  “I don’t want Rose to go away.” Now Lily looks like she’s about to cry, and I feel bad. I know better than to rock her boat. Lily never wants anything to change, not even the sheets on her bed. I’m sure she thinks that life should go on and on just like it is, with the four of us Flynn women living in this cruddy ranch house until we’re all old enough to go into a nursing home together.

  “Rose isn’t going away,” I assure Lily. I force a goofy smile. “She’s not old enough to get married.”

  “How old you have to be to get married?”

  “I don’t know. But older than Rose anyway. Don’t worry, Lily. I’m sure Rose is going to be around for a long, long time.”

  “Oh.” Lily nods, seemingly satisfied. “Aster?”

  “Huh?”

  “I’m hungry.”

  “Fine. I’ll fix you some dinner.”

  “Okay.”

  I open the freezer and look at our current selection of Lean Cuisine. Mom got it for herself, then I told her that it would be good for Lily too. Finally we all decided we liked it okay, and it’s lots easier than fixing regular dinners. Especially when it’s just Lily and me. “How about turkey?”

  “Not turkey.”

  “Beef stroganoff?”

  “No. Not that either.”

  “What then?”

  “Lasagna.”

  It figures. I had been eyeing the lasagna myself. And there’s only one package of it. “Fine,” I tell her. “Lasagna it is. Now you go watch TV, and I’ll fix it.”

  I take my time in the kitchen. It’s nice to have some peace and quiet. As I poke around, I think about Owen. Oh, I know it’s hopeless. I know that I had my chance, and now it’s over. But I can’t help but daydream about what it would be like if Lily hadn’t called. Or what it would be like if I was someone else—a normal girl in a normal family with normal friends and a normal life.

  This is where my imagination always lets me down. I cannot imagine having a normal life.

  Lily and I eat our Lean Cuisine dinners at the breakfast bar. I insist on this to make for easier cleanup. After we’re done, I want to do some drawing, but as soon as I get out my sketchbook and charcoals, Lily insists she must draw too. So I get out her tablet and return to what is turning out to be a pretty good-looking oak tree, but she’s still complaining. Her tablet and no. 2 pencil aren’t good enough. Even when I let her use my good colored pencils, she’s still not happy. But there is no way I’m going to let her use my charcoals and good paper. Not only would that be a waste of expensive supplies, but she’d probably get it all over her. Finally I convince Lily that we should both color together in her Beauty and the Beast coloring book.

  So my art supplies are safely on top of the fridge, and Lily and I are sitting at the breakfast bar coloring. I’m coloring the teapot, making it very psychedelic, and Lily is giving Beauty a makeover that causes her to resemble the Beast. Maybe it’ll help their romance.

  The landline rings, and I decide to let it go to the machine since it’s probably just a dumb telemarketer, and hearing the machine will make them hang up. But suddenly I hear a guy’s voice speaking very politely into the answering machine.

  “Hello, this is Owen Swanson, and I’m calling for Aster. I hope this is the right Flynn—”

  I snag the phone before Lily can grab it. “Hey,” I say as calmly as I can. But now she’s standing there staring at me with way too much interest, and I give her the evil eye, meaning back off, sister! “This is Aster.”

  “Hey,” he says back. “How are you doing?”

  “I’m all right.”

  “Did everything turn out, uh, okay for your sister?”

  “Yeah. She’s fine.” My cheeks feel warm as I remember how I told him Lily needed “feminine hygiene products.” Ugh!

  “I felt bad for not being more help. If I had my pickup at the mall, I could’ve driven you from—”

  “It’s okay. It all worked out.”

  “You didn’t even get to eat your lunch.”

  “Oh well.” I’m narrowing my eyes at Lily now, trying to appear threatening. But she’s not budging, and this stupid phone is the one with a cord, keeping me stuck right here. “Hey, how about if I give you my cell phone number,” I say suddenly.

  “Yeah, sure, let me grab a pen.”

  “I mean, then I won’t be tying up the landline in case someone’s trying to call for, well, you know . . .” Okay, I know I must sound like a complete idiot.

  “Okay, I’m ready.”

  So I tell him my cell number, say a quick good-bye, then run to my room to make sure that I can find my charger. I plug it in, stick my phone in it, then close the bedroom door practically in Lily’s face. “Just give me some privacy, okay?”

  “Aster’s got a boyfriend. Aster’s got a boyfriend,” she says again and again in her best attempt at a singsong voice, although it comes out in a monotone.

  I shove a chair against the door, a trick I learned from Rose since we can’t have locks on the doors, thanks to Lily’s knack for getting herself locked into places she should be staying out of. My phone rings.

  “Hey,” I say in a quiet voice.

  “Is that better?” Owen asks.

  “Yeah. The truth is, I just wanted to escape my snoopy sister.”

  “Which one?”

  I laugh. “Lily.”

  “Is it rough being the middle child?”

  I consider this. “I don’t know . . . I mean, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t want Lily to be older than me. And I wouldn’t really want to be the oldest one either. Maybe being stuck in the middle’s not so bad.”

  “Well, my brother Wayne is always complaining about being the middle brother. He thinks he misses out on everything.”

  “So you have another older brother?”

  “Yeah. Eric. He’s like twenty-three, or is it twenty-four now? About four years older than Wayne.”

  “Does that make you the baby?”

  Owen laughs. “I guess.”

>   And so we talk for a while. Oh, we don’t really say much. But I can tell we’re trying to get to know each other better. Kind of poking around and seeing how it feels, whether it fits or not.

  “Well, I should probably let you go,” he finally says, and I realize we’ve been talking for an hour. My mom will probably be getting home soon, and I haven’t helped Lily get ready for bed yet.

  “Yeah, maybe so.”

  “But before you go . . . I was wondering, Aster, would you ever want to go out?”

  “Go out?” The pitch of my voice sounds higher.

  “You know, on a date, with me.”

  “Sure.” I try to sound calmer than I feel.

  “Cool.”

  “Yeah, cool,” I repeat, instantly thinking how dumb that must sound.

  “How about Friday?”

  “Sure, Friday sounds good.” Even as I say this, I know it could be a problem. Rose will probably have a date, and Mom will probably work late. And who will stay with Lily?

  “Maybe we could catch a movie or something.”

  “Yeah. That sounds great.” Then we settle on a time and say good-bye. After I hang up, I do the happy dance around the bedroom. But my celebration comes to an end when I realize that I’ll have to come up with some kind of a plan for Lily, which might include hiring a babysitter. Well, we’ve done that before. Not that Lily likes it.

  I unwedge the chair from the bedroom door and go out into a strangely quiet house. “Lily?” I call uneasily. Oh no, what if I hurt her feelings and she’s gone outside to hide or walk the streets or do something else equally stupid?

  “Lily?” I call again. “Where are you?” No answer. Then I go into the kitchen, and to my relief she’s there, but her face and hands are covered with dark smudges, almost as if she’s planning to do a performance in blackface, which I should warn her is not PC.

  Then I see that she’s gotten down my art supplies. She’s been into my charcoals, which are smeared all over the countertop now. And she’s been drawing in my tablet too. What had started out to be a good-looking tree now looks like a black tornado. “Lily!” I scold her. “What have you done?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You got into my things.” I now observe that all my charcoals are broken and virtually useless. “You ruined my charcoals!” I shake my finger at her. “You ruined my drawing!”

  “No!” she shouts back at me. “I did not!”

  So I grab her by the shoulders and drag her over to the mirror that’s by the door. “Look at yourself, Lily. You’re covered in black. You got into my things!”

  Then, just as Lily starts to cry, our mother walks in and stares at us like we’re a couple of sideshow freaks. And maybe we are.

  “What is going on here?” she asks with highly arched brows.

  “Aster being mean!” Lily cries. “She hurting me!” “I am not. Lily got into my art supplies and made a huge mess.”

  “I can see that, Aster. But where were you when this happened?”

  “Aster was in her bedroom talking to that boy!” Lily shakes her finger at me now. At times like this I think that in a previous life Lily must’ve been a member of the Gestapo or KGB.

  “You have a boy in your bedroom?” my mom asks.

  “I was talking on the phone.”

  Mom just shakes her head. “Well, go help Lily get ready for bed, and you can clean this up later. I’m exhausted.”

  “Get to the bathroom,” I command Lily after Mom disappears to her bedroom at the other end of the house.

  “Quit being mean!” Lily shouts.

  “You haven’t begun to see mean.” Then I give her a slight shove toward the direction of the bathroom.

  “Don’t push me, Aster!”

  Now, I know that I need to take a deep breath and mentally count to ten or maybe a hundred. I know, I know, I know from years of experience that getting tough with Lily will only make everything much, much worse. Still, I feel so angry at her, not just for messing with my art supplies and making a mess of the counter and herself. I feel like she’s messing up my entire life.

  “Sorry,” I say to her as kindly as I can muster. “It’s just that I feel bad that you got into my stuff, Lily. You know how much I like doing art—”

  “I like doing art stuff too.”

  “I know. And we were doing art stuff together, Lily.”

  “But that stupid boy called.”

  “He’s not stupid.” I soften my voice again. “Remember that cute boy who gave you a ride to the pool so you could be with your friends?”

  “That boy?” She actually seems interested now.

  “Yes, that boy. His name is Owen, and he’s my friend.”

  “Your boyfriend?” She gets that mischievous twinkle in her eyes now.

  “He’s a nice boy, Lily. He’s my friend.”

  “Is he my friend too?”

  “Yes, of course. He helped you get to the pool, didn’t he?”

  She seems to consider this, then nods. “Yes. What’s his name?”

  “Owen.”

  “Owen,” she repeats as I gently guide her toward the bathroom. She says his name a few times like she’s seeing how it feels on her tongue. “Owen. I like that name, Aster.”

  Then I fix a bath for her and tell her she has ten minutes to get clean. Fortunately, this is something that Lily can do for herself, for the most part anyway. “And don’t get your hair wet,” I remind her. Then, just for good measure, I soap up a washcloth and hand it to her. “And get all that yucky black stuff off of your pretty face, okay?”

  “Okay,” she chirps back at me. She loves it when I call her pretty.

  “I’ll get your pj’s and be right back.”

  Her ten minutes stretch into about twenty. But finally we’ve gone through all the regular bedtime routine, and she’s tucked into bed and ready for prayers.

  “Dear heavenly Father,” she begins just like usual. “Bless Mommy. Bless Rose. Bless Aster. And bless Owen!”

  This makes me laugh.

  “Why that funny?”

  “It’s not funny, Lily. It’s just sweet that you remembered Owen.”

  “He’s our friend.”

  I nod. “Yes, he is.”

  Lily continues her prayer. She says she’s sorry for a couple of incidents that must’ve happened at the pool or the park, and she also says she’s sorry for getting into my art stuff. “And help me be a good girl,” she says finally. “And help Micah to be my friend. I don’t mean boyfriend, God. I just want him to hold my hand sometimes. Amen.”

  “Who is Micah?” I ask as I pull the sheet up around her chin the way she likes it. Even though it’s still pretty warm in the house, Lily likes to have her covers on.

  “The new boy.”

  “Does he go to the rec center?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is he nice?”

  “Yes. But he doesn’t want to hold my hand.”

  “Why not?”

  She wrinkles her nose. “He says I have girl germs.”

  I laugh. “Well, just tell him he has boy germs.”

  “Does he?”

  I shrug. “I guess.”

  “Maybe I don’t wanna hold his hand.”

  “Maybe not.” I turn on her Winnie the Pooh night-light and turn off the overhead one. “Good night, Princess Lily.”

  “Good night, Princess Aster.” She giggles over our old good night game. I haven’t called her Princess in ages. “I love you!”

  “I love you too,” I say. “And I’m sorry I got mad at you.”

  “That’s okay.”

  And as I close her door, leaving it cracked open the prerequisite six inches, I realize that she means it. It is okay. She has forgiven me. But when I go to the kitchen, begin cleaning up the mess she made, and toss my ruined charcoals into the trash, I’m not so sure that I have totally forgiven her.

  7

  I have less than two days to figure this out. How can I go out with Owen on Friday night and stil
l be sure that Lily is taken care of? I know I can’t count on Mom. She almost always works late on Friday nights. In desperation, I decide to ask Rose. She’s been out with Jared again. Not only is it past her curfew, since it’s after midnight, but I can tell she’s been drinking too. And I actually think if I’m just desperate enough that I might use this evidence against her. Am I above blackmail? Maybe not . . . not when it comes to my second chance with Owen.

  But after I nicely ask Rose about staying home with Lily, she just laughs in my face, then says, “Yeah, right.”

  “Why not?” I plead.

  “Because I’m going out with Jared, that’s why not.” She pulls her shirt off and throws it onto the floor with the rest of her slush pile.

  “You could invite Jared over here, and you guys could—”

  “Like that’s going to happen.”

  “But I need a break, Rose. I take care of Lily all the time. 24-7.”

  “She goes to the rec center during the day.”

  “Yeah, but who gets her to the rec center? Who picks her up? Who is constantly on call for her? Who feeds her and stays with her and puts her to bed?”

  “Poor little you.”

  “I’m not asking for sympathy. Just some help.”

  “Well, here’s my help for you, Aster. Let me give you a bit of advice.”

  “Huh?”

  “Tell Mom to find someone to take care of Lily or to take care of her herself—period. How simple is that?” She staggers slightly as she leans forward to make her point.

  “Yeah, right.”

  “See!” She shakes her head like I’m this hopeless case. “That’s your problem, Aster. You are such a pushover. You let Mom and Lily walk all over you.” She kicks off her shoes and walks around like she’s imitating them.

  And you too, I want to add. You walk on me too.

  “You just need to learn to say no.”

  “Just say no. Yeah, that’s going to work.”