Phillip
We had been traveling for one whole day.
Well, it wasn't actually too bad, because we were traveling on horses. Nela was on an old mare carrying the kid, I was on Samson, who was stopping every two feet to munch on wild carrots, and James was astride a black horse who was treating James surprisingly well despite his annoying habits of eating crackers while traveling.
Munch munch munch.
James dropped cracker crumbs on the forest floor.
"Phil, look!" Nela pointed. "Look—a Customer Service Center."
What. The. Heck? A Customer Service Center? In the middle of the woods?
"That's suspicious," I said.
The building was crumbling and covered with ivy. Yuck.
Nela rolled her eyes. "Aw, Phil. Come on. Let's go ask for a map or something because we really have no clue what we're doing."
Munch munch munch. James nodded. "I t'ink 'at we sh'd ak fer a' map."
I blinked. "I—"
As usual, Nela and James ignored me. Nela slid off her horse and wrapped his reins around a tree branch before knocking on the door of the rickety old house.
A balding man opened the door. He looked Nela up and down and smiled welcomingly. "Hello!"
Nela smiled. "Hi! We saw the Customer Service Center and we just wanted to ask for a map."
The man bowed. "Anything for a beautiful lady."
"A married beautiful lady who is in a wonderful and warm relationship," I snapped, hurrying to Nela's side and sliding in front of her.
James stood nearby, munching on that stupid packet of crackers.
Nela awkwardly jounced a sleeping Josh on her hip.
"Well," said the man, even more awkwardly. "I'll get you a map."
He disappeared inside.
"Nice guy," said James, finally swallowing a mouthful of crackers.
"I think so too," Nela commented.
I stood there, my mouth a straight line. I was just done.
The man appeared in the doorway. "Hello again. Well, here's your map."
Nela beamed. "Wow! Thanks! This should really help."
The man nodded. "Enjoy your trip through the Enchanted Forest."
James whipped around. "This place is called the Enchanted Forest?"
"Yes."
James giggled. "Do elves live in these woods?"
The man raised bushy eyebrows. "Why, boy, did you see any? They bite something nasty."
James stopped laughing.
The man closed the door in our faces.
"Well, that was kind of him." Nela smiled at me. "Now we have a map. Finding the Dawn flower should be a piece of cake."
"Can it be chocolate?" James asked.
"What?" I just couldn't even process what was going through that fool's mind.
"Can the cake be chocolate. A piece of cake," James reminded me.
I turned to Nela. "I like vanilla. Plain vanilla."
"It suits you," James said pleasantly. "Since you're so plain. As for me, I'm a chocolate sundae with nuts."
"Yeah, you're nuts," I responded, and we all turned around.
Nela gasped.
James dropped his crackers in the ground.
I couldn't believe my eyes.
Our horses were gone.
Nela
"WHAT DO YOU MEAN IT'S MY FAULT?" I screamed at Phil, totally out of my mind.
"It was your idea to ask for this fricking map!" Phil yelled back at me. "And look at what happened now! Our horses are gone!"
"I didn't throw the horses over a cliff, did I?" I shrieked at Phil. "I just wanted to go to the Customer Service Center and ask for a map!"
"Oh, yeah," Phil said sarcastically. "Awesome plan. Approach an old abandoned house asking for directions."
"Phil, I really can't believe you. Blame, blame, blame, blame, BLAME!" I was sick and tired of him at this point. "That's all you do. Blame me, blame James. You're such a..." I searched for words bad enough to call Phil, but my angry red mind couldn't think of anything.
"Blamer?" James offered meekly from the sidelines with Josh.
"Yeah! Blamer!" I shot back, thrilled by my intellect.
Josh chose that moment to start bawling his eyes out.
"Oh, Josh," I began tiredly.
"Shut that kid up!" Phil said angrily. He turned to Josh. "I'm trying to work things out with your mother and you need to get a clue and shut up!"
"HOW DARE YOU SPEAK TO MY CHILD IN THAT WAY!" I yelled at Phillip, pushing him away.
"You care for that child more than you ever cared for me!" Phillip yelled, kicking up dust.
"Because I'm a mother!" I shouted as loudly as I could. "And that's what mothers do!"
"You know what?" Phil hissed. "You wouldn't be a mother if we hadn't—you know what!"
I glared. "Phillip."
"Him," Phillip said through gritted teeth, pointing at Josh with his finger, creating an accusatory sword in Josh's face. "He was an ACCIDENT! He wasn't meant to happen! In no way did I want him. I only decided to keep him because he made you happy!"
I stopped. The words rushed through my blood. Phillip didn't want our child. He was blaming me for making Josh. He didn't want Josh at all, not one bit. He called James an accident, an illegitimate. This wasn't happening! Oh, God, this isn't happening!
Josh continued to wail. Phillip didn't say a word. He took a deep breath. "Oh, Nela," he said finally.
I am not a crier.
I am not a person who shows any type of emotion.
I hide my pain behind a wall of joy.
I slip on a happy mask if I am feeling down.
But in that moment, I felt something wet on my cheek.
I looked up.
It wasn't raining.
Phillip
"I'm sorry."
It's two words.
It's supposed to be easy.
It shouldn't be this hard.
The sorries shouldn't be stuck in my throat like a barrier blocking an exit.
I walked up to Nela.
She was leaned back against a tree, her hands massaging her temples, her flashing platinum eyes shut tightly, her lips pulled into a sobbing grimace.
Tears leaked out of her eyes.
James quieted Josh a short distance away, and Nela was hidden in the refuge of the trees.
Sunlight made patterns on her beautiful face.
She was happy with children.
What did I say?
Was I insane?
I walked up to Nela slowly, touching her shoulder.
"Get off!" she hissed.
"Take it easy," I breathed. "I just want to talk to you. Okay?"
"No."
"Nela."
"Go away."
"Nela, come on."
"Phillip, I don't want to talk to you right now."
"Because I said a bunch of bad stuff about the kid?"
Nela was incredulous. "The kid? He has a name and it is Josh! Joshua! Prince JOSHUA of DEANDRA who will rule over the throne when you die."
"When I die," I repeated hollowly.
"It can be arranged soon," Nela said darkly.
"Oh-ho," I said with a bark of a laugh. "You're an evil woman."
That made her cry even more.
I closed my eyes. "Oops. I—uh, can you just hear me out, Nela? Please?"
She raised her head. "Why do you hate him? Josh, I mean."
"I don't," I said painfully. I didn't know how to express it. "I just—I don't feel comfortable as a father. Do you get it?"
Nela shook her head. "Why did we—you know what!—if you didn't want a child?"
I was honest. "I didn't know anything would come of it."
Nela closed her eyes. "So you really hate him."
"No. I—" I took a deep breath. "I do like him. I just feel a little—weird around children. Like I'm going to do something stupid and—I dunno. Drop them or something."
"You did," James chimed in helpfully from behind me.
I ignored him. "I will try, Nela," I said, cupping her face in my hands, and kneeling down next to her. "I will try to be a good father for Josh."
Nela looked up at me. "You promise?" she asked doubtfully.
I nodded. "Yes. I promise."
We kissed.
"Eeew!" said James, bouncing Josh. "Isn't Funny Phillie gross?"
He was just teasing me—he kissed Aurora so much more than Nela and I kissed.
I heard Josh repeating James: "Gwoss! Is gwoss!"
And you know what?
I smiled.
James
"You know what we need?" I said to Phil that afternoon. "A job."
To my intense shock, he agreed with me. "Yeah," he agreed. "We need a job."
It took us awhile to actually find a building where we had a fractional chance of getting a job. What we found was actually a marketplace.
Phil, Nela and I wandered through the marketplace with Josh in a baby backpack thing on Nela's back.
"Hey! Strays! Plannin' to buy or what?"
We turned around to see fat man with a bandanna around his head and a gold earring approach us. He looked like a pirate, and I took a teensy step back.
We waited for Phil to say something, looking at him. But he just stared right over the man's head.
"Hi," Nela said at last.
Jolly Old Nela.
The man raised a bushy eyebrow. "Why you three here?" He leaned forward. "To stir up trouble?"
"Nono!" I raised my hands quickly in the air. "We're actually looking for jobs. We're rather short on money, and we need to help my very sick wife."
The man raised an eyebrow again. "You're married? You seem a little young."
I was truly flattered. "Why, thank you!"
"It wasn't a compliment, you dingbat!" Phil hissed under his breath.
"Will you two stop?" Nela asked us politely, but I knew she'd whip our butts as soon as we were out of there if we lost this job opportunity.
The man leaned back and shifted his weight.
He was so fat, he reminded me of someone. I was thinking. Who? Someone I knew well—it was on the tip of my tongue—
"I'm O'Keefe," he said, surveying us. "You three are?"
"I'm Nela." Nela gestured to herself. "This is Phillip. And that is James."
"Phillip's father!" I yelled. I got it! O'Keefe looked just like King Hubert, Phillip's walrus-fat father! If Hubert was a pirate, I bet he and O'Keefe would be twins.
"You're his father?" O'Keefe raised his eyebrows even higher, gesturing to Phillip.
"No—" Nela began.
"No, he's not." Phillip looked grim. "He's just—not right in the head."
I grinned at O'Keefe. "Neither is he. We're a happy group of losers."
Nela turned to me with the fiercest expression on her face.
I cowered. "Except for Nela because she is high and mighty and beautiful and awesome and not a loser at all like me and Phil."
"Are you right in the head?" I asked O'Keefe with a smile.
He began to walk away.
"James," Nela hissed, and followed O'Keefe. "Please, sir," she was saying. "Come on, please? Let us work! We promise we'll do a good job. Here: test us for one hour and then give us some money, and then we'll work the rest of the day. Like, we'll work really well. Please?" Nela leaned forward. "Give us a chance, Mr. O'Keefe."
O'Keefe looked at us for a long time, muttered something that sounded like, "Loony bunch," under his breath, and then pointed at me. "You. In the Baking Goods section."
And five minutes later, standing behind flour, baking powder, sugar, eggs, and cream, I had never felt so alive.
No. Just kidding. I actually fell asleep...
But that's where the trouble began.
Phillip
After an hour, like he had promised, O'Keefe had given us our paychecks. Now all three of us were working happily—Nela at the fruit stand; me at the pie stand; James at the baking goods stand.
Well, James was sleeping with his head in the flour.
I handed a woman her key lime pie and went to wake James.
There was a line forming at the baking goods section.
"James," I said, poking his ear.
"It wasn't my ferret," he snorted, waking up, his face covered in white dust.
"James, your customers!" I hissed.
He glanced at the first person. "Did you want flour?" he giggled drunkenly, half asleep. "I put my face in it."
I winced.
The lady grabbed her handbag and whacked James across the face with it.
He fell over, and then grabbed a bag of sugar, throwing it at her head.
"James, stop it!" I howled. I tried to stop him by smashing him with a can of baking powder.
James responded by cracking eggs over my head.
Real nice way to be—standing there with egg yolk leaking into your eyes.
Somewhere along the way Nela arrived and grabbed a giant bag of rice. Yes. She lifted it all by herself, and I don't know where she got it from, but she crushed James with it.
By then, she was screaming, "I'm gonna kill you, James."
But I think the customers would probably beat her to it.
"And you!" she shrieked at me. "You immature little toad!" She grabbed my shirt collar and shoved me. I grabbed her, taking her down with me. We both smashed into a banana cream pie.
I laughed and smashed a pie into Nela's face.
She was not amused.
"Wait, where's Josh?" I asked her.
"Over there by the fruit section." Suddenly Nela gasped. "Oh, no! Someone's taking him—Phil, look!"
I whirled around.
Josh was happily sitting there trying to smush bananas on some bald guy's head.
I turned around. "Hey—"
Nela smashed a pie into my face.
I tackled her into the table of pies. But not before James, laughing like a maniac, threw salt into my eyes.
"OWWWWW!" I screamed in agony. "James you FOOL!" I lunged blindly at him, but he dodged and I ended up falling on an old woman.
"I'm sorry!" I exclaimed, trying to distangle myself.
"You might want to duck!" James screamed, throwing a handful of flour at me. I did, and it hit the old woman, getting in her mouth. She started choking. I tell you, it was utter pandemonium.
"Phillip, Phillip—" Nela was saying over and over again.
"Take this you ponyboy!" yelled a lady behind me and whacked me with a bag of flour.
"Wait a second!" I yelled, completely white. "James is the one—lady, hold on—"
"You're going to pay for what you did!" the old lady got up next to me. "Give me some money. You have to pay for the damage you did to my new stockings."
"Oh, poooor you and your poor stockings," James taunted, but not before I creamed a pie into his neck. He staggered off into a wall.
Josh laughed and clapped. "WAINBOWS!" he yelled.
"Yeah! Team Josh!" I cried, slapping a high five with him.
Nela looked strangely at me from her spot among the pies on the floor.
O'Keefe appeared in the doorway. He had a strangled look on his face. "What the—!"
"You have to pay!" The annoying lady tapped me on the back again.
I was so done. I whirled around. "I will not pay! Because I am COMPLETELY BROKE! AHAHAHA!" I let out a maniacal laugh.
Nela grabbed the cash register, broke it on the ground.
The customers were all over the money.
James grabbed tons, stuffed it into his shirt along with a bunch of stuff from the fruit stands, and was out.
"James, you traitor!" I yelled.
Nela grabbed a few fruits, a pie, and Josh, and raced out the door.
"MY OWN WIFE!" I screamed. I grabbed what was left of the money, grabbed a few pies for ammunition against the crazy people of the world, and raced away, my feet pounding against the ground in sync with the beating of my heart.
"YOU THREE ARE FIRED!" O'Keefe bellowed from the other end of the marketplace.
Outside, panting, I told James and Nela what O'Keefe had said.
James grinned. "I didn't even like that marketplace anyway. Their service sucked."