And The Winner Is...
by TheBucketWoman
Disclaimer: The LWD people would never hire a drama queen like me to write for them, and just for that I shall go throw myself onto my bed, cry, and kick stuff. That was my less than subtle way of saying I own no rights to Life With Derek.
Chapter Twenty-One
Part One: Derek
After he dropped the bomb, he made the perfect dramatic exit. If there was one thing Casey taught him it was that you only got so many of those, and they were not to be wasted.
He got all the way to the kitchen before he even thought to turn around. Casey was right behind him as he'd hoped she would be. He said nothing as he went to a cabinet and took out two bowls. He got a banana from the bunch on the counter. Then, he went to the refrigerator and pulled out a two liter soda bottle.
"Want?" he said. Casey shook her head, so he took a mighty gulp directly from the bottle.
"You actually asked if I wanted some first?" Casey said. "You're going soft, Venturi."
He belched in response.
"Deny it all you want," Casey said, sliding her arms around his waist from behind and whispering in his ear. "Soft."
"Says you," he said. Not the most brilliant of retorts but he tended to lose brain power when she whispered in his ear.
"Are you okay?" she said.
"Nope," he said. "Starving to death."
"And pissed off," she added.
"I'll live," he said. He turned his head to get a look at her. "You're dying to ask, aren't you?"
"Ask what?"
"Whether I was telling the truth before," he said.
"Nope," Casey said.
Bullshit, he thought. But he did admire her restraint. "Really?" he asked.
"I know that you wouldn't lie about something that important," she said. "It practically killed you to talk about it, though didn't it? Sometimes I think that you're the most private person in the world. I mean you don't even kiss in public, that tells me that you don't take things that lightly. So I believe you."
God, if I ever screw this up, please strike my sorry ass with lightning and send me straight to Hell. I will deserve it, he thought.
He nodded.
And for the record, he was telling the God's Honest Truth—Casey was the first. Kendra had been the only other girl he'd even considered sleeping with—he'd done every other thing he could think of with her, but it hadn't been right and both of them had known it.
Because it was all about Casey.
He went into the freezer and pulled out a carton of cookie dough ice cream. He'd already killed the moment by standing there like a doofus, so there was nothing to do but slice the banana in half and dump some ice cream on top. He then got some crushed walnuts, whipped cream and chocolate sauce. He spent some time muttering about the lack of cherries.
"Only two bowls?" Casey asked.
"Yep," Derek said. "I'm mad at them; let em eat that rainbow sherbet with the ice crust."
Part Two: Lizzie
This felt a little like when Lizzie was four and she knocked over the lamp. She'd stood staring at the little pieces of ceramic littering the floor for half an hour, unable to believe that she'd actually made that mess. She'd been too busy trying to telekinetically will the pieces back together to imagine the possibility of cleaning it up. In this case, she was staring at a dust bunny in the corner of Edwin's room near the window seat, in the hopes that it might have some advice.
She finally turned to Edwin, who was busily staring at the ceiling.
"We gotta go talk to them," Lizzie said.
"Hell with that," Edwin said.
"Edwin," she said.
"If you want to..."Edwin said.
"You don't?"
"That would be a no," Edwin said.
It was pretty impossible to reason with him when he was hostile like this, so Lizzie decided that the best move was to leave him alone for a bit.
But she really wasn't in a hurry to go downstairs.
So she locked herself in her room. She sank to the carpet with her back against the door while she tried to think of how she could put the words "Sorry" and "Derek" together. She couldn't remember ever having had to do that before. It had always been her job to guilt him into apologizing. This was unnatural.
Going downstairs, she thought. Right now. Now. Being an idiot. I'm still sitting here.
She growled in frustration as she hopped back up to her feet and headed off to find Casey and Derek.
She peeked into their respective bedrooms and finding nothing, she went downstairs. She finally found them in the kitchen.
Derek was busy pledging his undying love to a bowl of ice cream and Casey was watching him, throwing out the odd sarcastic comment as she picked lightly at her equally massive sundae. So neither of them saw Lizzie come in.
"Seriously, Derek," Casey said. "This is more sugar than I eat in a year."
"It's got bananas, and walnuts," Derek said. "It's good for you. Practically trail mix."
"That argument didn't even hold up when Marti tried to get out of eating your Dad's beans and escarole soup," Casey said.
"That's a special case," Derek said, his mouth full. "How Dad thinks he can get an eight year old to eat that stuff is beyond me."
"It's good, though," Casey said. "And healthy."
"I eat it," Derek defended. "Tastes okay. But it looks like vomit. Put it in front of a kid and you pay the consequences. Dontcha think, Lizzie?"
Lizzie let out a tiny, almost inaudible "eep" when Derek turned to her.
"Um," Lizzie said.
"When did you come in?" Casey asked.
"Just now," Lizzie said.
"Well, have some of this, 'cause I can't even look at it until it's diminished," Casey said. She got another bowl and scooped some of her ice cream into it. Derek put some extra whipped cream on it.
"Where's your evil step brother?" Derek asked.
"Giving me whipped cream," Lizzie said. He responded by spraying her in the face with it.
"De-rek!" Lizzie said, trying to fend him off. "He's upstairs. Brooding. Being all emo."
"Figured," Derek said. "So he's mad at me and doing his best to stay that way."
"Doesn't remind me of anyone," Casey said.
"Don't help," Derek said, smirking at her.
"How mad are you?" Lizzie asked.
"Meh," he said, sticking a finger in her ice cream.
Lizzie knew better. She'd never seen Derek's face turn the shade of red that it turned when Edwin had to open his big stupid mouth and say the one thing that he knew would end the conversation.
"You're full of it," Lizzie said.
"Ice cream?" Derek asked. "Not quite yet."
"De-rek!" Lizzie said.
"I seem to be hearing that a lot, lately," Derek said. "Liz-zie!"
"Quit joking around," she said. "I'm really sorry I yelled at you."
"I'm sorry you yelled at me too," Derek said. "You got some lungs on you."
Casey and Lizzie shot him dirty looks.
"Okay, okay," he said. "I'm sorry too. Though you do realize that I would've been a royal pain in the ass with any boy you brought home, right?"
"Yeah," Lizzie said.
"So do you think I should go up there?" Derek asked.
"No," Lizzie said.
"Uh-uh," Casey said. "Baaad move."
Part Three: George
George got home late, and he groaned when he remembered that it was his turn to cook.
"Noraaaa?" he whined. He found her on the couch reading that book again. He'd have to read it next, because she'd barely put it down since the day before.
"I'm not cooking," she said, not even looking up.
"Would you kill me if I got pizza?"
"Yes," Nora said.
"What can I nuke without turning it rubbery?" George asked.
"Dunno," Nora said.
"We have lasagne," Marti said, from her spot under the table. He would've thought she'd outgrow that habit, but there she was with a book of her own.
George walked over to the table and peered underneath. "Do we have salad fixings?"
"Uh-huh," she said.
"Wanna help?" he asked.
She looked down at her book—George saw that it was Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (God that made him feel old), but then she marked her place with a bookmark that had a plastic cat's head on it, and crawled out.
Marti scrubbed the carrots and the cucumbers to surgical sterility while George set everything else out.
Derek stole a carrot, and Marti yelled at him, pretending to be mad while he pretended to be sorry. Casey and Lizzie trickled in and Marti warned them against taking anymore carrots.
Casey reached for one of George's cucumber slices. "Only if you want to lose that finger," he said, knife poised over the cutting board, menacingly. She pouted until he rolled his eyes and pretended to be interested in looking out the window, so she could steal a few pieces. Marti handed him an extra cucumber from the sink, certain that they'd need it. This was a game they played every time they made salad. George chopped a little faster, secure in the knowledge that Edwin was on his way to complete the circle of face stuffing teenagers.
"There's someone missing," George said, putting the knife down after a few minutes to scratch his head in puzzlement.
"Edwin's in a bad mood," Marti said.
"And why's that?" George said, looking around at the room for clues. He got shrugs and precious little eye contact.
"He's fourteen," Marti said, swiping her own cucumber slice.
He would get to the bottom of this.
The microwave dinged.
"Lasagne's ready," George said. "Somebody go get him."
Part Three: Casey
After about the third knock on his door with no answer, Casey decided that she was barging in.
"You'd better be decent 'cause I'm coming in," she said as she turned the knob. The knob turned, but the door didn't open. Doors in this house tended to stick in the summer, so Derek had taught her how to put her shoulder into it. She got it open, but it ruined her entrance.
He looked at her, eyebrows raised.
"Dinner's ready," she said. He turned his head back to the ceiling.
"It's lasagne," she said. When she got no response, she said. "Your Dad's already asking questions; do you want to make him any more suspicious than he is?"
"Did you tell him anything?" Edwin asked.
"Nope," she said. "Marti said she thinks it's 'cause you're fourteen, so your Dad isn't worried. Yet. So come on and eat."
He showed signs of willingness to move, but to hurry it along, she said: "Lasagne, Edwin. I think there's garlic bread, too. Foooooood."
She tried not to giggle as she heard his stomach rumble. Venturi men were notoriously suggestible. Derek got the crawlies if he saw other people scratch. George couldn't stand by a fountain without eventually heading to a bathroom. Edwin got up grudgingly and went downstairs with Casey following.
Part Four: Edwin
Edwin was in anger limbo. His problem really no longer had much to do with Derek and Casey and their need to play Mommy and Daddy to him and Lizzie; it had more to do with his inability to stop himself from opening his mouth and becoming the ultimate hypocrite by asking a question that he really didn't want to know the answer to. It also had to do with Edwin's certainty that Derek was lying through his teeth, even though he acknowledged (to himself at least) that it was none of his business. The anger also came from his inability to look anyone in the eye all through dinner. He passed people whatever they asked for, and gave monosyllabic answers to all questions, though he knew that he was only raising more suspicion. Why did he have to look so guilty? He was unable to even bring himself to ask for the romano cheese even though the lasagne needed it desperately.
Really, Edwin had only asked Derek about his sex life to hurt him, and that made Edwin feel worse than ever. It wasn't like Edwin didn't know that Derek, in his own bumbling way, was trying to be helpful by trying to give him the talk.
He noticed that Lizzie was getting along fine with the both of them, and she was looking at him like she was afraid he'd think she was a traitor. Mainly he was jealous of her ability to fix things that needed to be fixed. He could feel himself acting like a kid, but was very much unable to stop.
Part Five: Nora
Edwin would barely respond to questions. Nora knew not to ask yes/no questions to teenagers because they rarely elaborated on their answers, but here was their normally cheerful Edwin grunting in response to complex, open-ended questions. He was out to drive her nuts.
"So, Edwin, what are you doing tonight?" Nora tried, hating how perky-camp-counselor her voice sounded. Casey got it from somewhere.
His answer was something that sounded like "House is on," but he managed to make it sound like all one word: "howzizzon." It took George's complaint that House would be a rerun for Nora to translate what Edwin had said.
Lizzie shot a surprised look at Edwin at this, catching his eye quickly, but he left it at that. The kid was definitely casting a pall over the table. Derek and Casey made half-hearted attempts at conversation, mostly about Casey's weird habit of squeezing lemons business side up.
"What?" Casey said. "It's supposed to keep the seeds out."
"And is it keeping the seeds out?" Derek asked.
"Not really," she said.
Normally those two could turn something as dumb as that into a two hour discussion, but it hung in the air until it flopped dead on the table. George looked as bewildered as she felt.
Finally, it was time for Casey and Derek to leave for Casey's rehearsal, and they rushed out, clearly in a hurry to leave the funereal atmosphere. Derek planted a sloppy wet kiss in the part in Marti's hair on his way out because poor Marti was showing signs of impending doom. She kept staring at Edwin, big-eyed, as if he'd burst into flames at any moment. She asked to be excused, so she could go see Dimi. On her way out, she gave Edwin the most heart-wrenching sad-owl face Nora'd ever seen, and Nora thought, Well, if that doesn't thaw him, nothing will, and we can give him up as a lost cause. Marti tried to give him a hug, which he allowed, finally whispering something in her ear and giving her a kiss on the cheek. All Hail Smarti, Nora thought. Lizzie began to clear the table without a word, but Nora cornered her, suggesting they go pick up some ice cream since they seemed to be fresh out.
"Do you know anything about this?" Nora asked, gesturing toward the house as soon as they were outside.
"About what?" Lizzie tried.
"Come on, Lizard," Nora said. "Did you two have a fight?"
"Nope," Lizzie said.
"Are you sure?" Nora said. What a stupid thing to say, Nora thought, of course she's sure. Jeez. She was reminded of when she used to ask the girls if they were sure that they didn't have to go to the bathroom.
"Uh-huh," Lizzie said, much the same way she did when she was three.
"You know what's wrong with Edwin, Lizard," Nora said. "It seems like something important, and I think that George and I should know what it is."