Good Luck, Fatty

and that aggressive tongue away from me just long enough to ask, “So…um…do you have anything? Because, if you don’t, I do.” He reaches for his back pocket as if I’ve demanded proof.
    By “have anything,” I assume he means birth control of some kind and, more specifically, condoms (which I am THE BIGGEST IDIOT ON EARTH for being without, given the scare I’ve recently survived). Even The Pill is history, due to its propensity to create birth defects in my imaginary fetus.
    He pinches the condom with his thumb and forefinger and holds it at eye level between us, its shiny blue wrapper reminding me of Denise’s drinking glasses. “We’re good,” he tells me, bringing the condom (the existence of which somehow makes the prospect of screwing more titillating) to rest on his lap and his palm to rest on my boob.
    All systems go, I think, getting into his pants without delay. Or disappointment.
    He presses me against the arm of the couch, his eagerness rubbing on my hipbone. (I have a visible hipbone now, thanks to the Schwinn! And the beginnings of knees too!)
    Slap! Crash! Bam! goes something in Gramp’s front yard.
    It’s the jerkwads, I think, returning to inflict more damage.
    Tom flinches. “What was that?”
    I haven’t told him about the Royale, but now is definitely not the time. “Huh?” I say, hoping to sound dumb and unconcerned.
    There’s some clattering on the porch, but so far nobody’s hurled anything through what’s left of the window, Orv’s cardboard patch-job still holding strong.
    “Don’t you hear…?” Tom murmurs, his breath hot in my ear.
    I want to say no, but an erupting screech of tires deters me. “It’s probably nothing,” I settle for remarking.
    Tom is upright now, his ears pricked, his eyes fixed on Gramp’s front door. “Something’s scratching…” He gets on his feet and, before I can stop him, stalks over and cranks the doorknob.
    When he finally manages to coax the swollen slab of wood from its casing and peer through the screen, an amused look crosses his face, convincing me that whatever is going on outside bears no relation to the jerkwads.
    I slink up behind him, glance over his shoulder (or, well, around the side of it, since he’s at least six inches taller than me). “No way,” I say, awestruck by the sight of Duncan’s bird-machine (maybe I should start calling it the cheater-mobile, since my father designed it specifically to steal the Yo-Yo), which has been unceremoniously deposited on Gramp’s bristly lawn.
    The wacky contraption doesn’t explain one thing, though: the ongoing high-pitched scraping sound that reminds me of nails on a chalkboard.
    Or claws on metal.
    I duck under Tom’s arm and pop the screen door open, making way for—no surprise—Buttercup the cat (but also bumping up against something that, although I can’t see it from here, must be occupying a decent percentage of the porch).
    “Can you hit the light?” I ask Tom with a wave at the wall switch, which is a few steps away. “I’m trying to see…”
    I get up on my tiptoes and stare down, my gaze falling on the stoop just as the bare bulb illuminates the source of the obstruction (and it’s a doozy): peeking out innocently from his infant car seat is my baby brother, Roy.

 
     
    chapter 21
     
    THE ONLY good thing I can say about Duncan and Marie is that, this time, they left a note. And a check. The twenty-five-hundred dollars in prize money from the Yo-Yo, to be exact, signed over to Orv in my father’s schizophrenic chicken scratch. Money Orv and Denise used to pay off the car, replace the smashed window, and turn Gramp’s old room, which has been sort of a creepy shrine since he died, into a double nursery for Roy and the new bundle of joy, who’s set to arrive any day now.
    The excuse Duncan and Marie gave for abandoning their second-born (God bless them for at least feeling the need to explain) was their calling to aid tornado victims, this spring being the most destructive cyclone season in nearly a century.
    Too bad they’re immune to recognizing the damage they’ve spawned in their own lives.
    Part of me says I should’ve seen this coming, should’ve known Duncan and Marie wouldn’t change. (I mean, people seldom do.)
    Except for me, I think. Thanks to a nice old dude with a bike shop, a couple of abnormally grown-up cousins, a best friend who not only loves me but LOVES me, and, of course, a scraggly little puss-face called Buttercup