First off, HUGE shout-out to "alwaysorange73 fan". Your name touched me. Not, like, inappropriately, 'cuz that'd be bad. Haha, I told Emma, my twin sister, about it and she goes, "That was me. Kidding. If it were me, it'd be, "AlwaysOrange73 needs to pick up her socks...or die." I love my sister! A shout out to Emma, as well! And one to Genesis, my little sister. Oh, I might as well shout out to all my siblings! I love you, Emma! I love you, Genesis! I love you, Amethyst! I love you, Dmetri! I love you, Jimmy! There we go. All done.
My heart drops. Allulah- Angie. Allulah got the part. My part. The part I want. Of course she did. My heart drops even further as I read Once-ler-Ray. My heart just about hits the floor when I remember they have a kissing scene.
"Everyone get their parts?" Lolly calls out. I nod fuzzily. I'm the understudy. Goody. "Okay, good! We'll start rehearsal tomorrow! But today, we're having our history quiz!"
"But we don't study history in here," Carlos Marina says.
"Exactly." Everyone laughs. The quiz, though, when passed out, turned out not to be a history quiz, but a personality quiz instead.
1.) You're stuck on an island with no food. Would you eat your own leg?
I roll my eyes. Only Lolly would think to ask that. I write, Depends on which leg it is.
2.) A madman is following you around. What do you do?"
The answer comes to me in an instant. Turn around and say, "Once-ler, go home!"
3.) Write down your biggest secret.
If I wrote it down, it'd no longer be a secret, now would it?
A piece of paper lands on my clipboard. I look at it and read Oncie's handwriting, Would you eat your own leg?
No. My leg is too awesome. I'd eat you. I pass it back.
Who says I'd let you?
I do.
Well, I just won't go with you to any deserted islands, then!
No, you'll come. I know you will. Just trust me. I grin and look back down at my quiz.
4.) What is your biggest fear?
My biggest fear. Now that's tough. Falling endlessly? A giant lizard eating me while I'm in the shower? No...someone taking Oncie away.
Not being able to see my best friend any more.
There. A sweet, sappy, completely honest answer.
5.) What do you want to be when you grow up?
An inventor.
6.) Are you happy you're almost done with this test?
"Allulah, you're finished already?" I look up and see Allulah handing her paper to Lolly. She shrugs.
"It was easy."
"Good point. I suspect everyone's nearly done."
"The Once-ler's only on number two," I say, looking at his paper.
"Once-ler, you're only on number two?" Everyone looks at Oncie, who looks up from his paper, his cheeks a faint red.
"...thousand!" There's about four seconds of pause before the class erupts into laughter.
"I love you so much, Oncie!" I breath. He grins.
"Hard not to."
~!~!~!~
"Hey, 'Lissa," I say, sitting beside Melissa.
"Hey, Sally."
"How was your morning?" I ask as Yo-Yo sits across from me.
"Alright. Yours?"
"Fine." I glance across the cafeteria and see a poster for the upcoming dance. "You going to the dance?"
"If someone asks me," she replies.
"Will you go with me?" I ask sarcastically. She laughs.
"I'd say yes, but that'd mean you're cheating on the Once-ler."
"What?" Oncie's voice says at the same time as mine as he stops just before sitting beside me.
"I can't go to the dance with Sally because she'd be cheating on you," Melissa repeats, cocking an eyebrow.
"We aren't dating!"
"You aren't?"
"No!"
"I thought you were!" Melissa exclaims.
"No!"
"Oh..." She pulls out her sandwich. "Well, you should be."
"No!" I exclaim. "We're best friends."
"Nothing else," the Once-ler adds.
"That can change," Melissa says, smiling slightly. I roll my eyes and open my lunch bag. Melissa isn't the first person to guess we're dating, and not the first to attempt to get us to, either. All attempts, however, fail.
~!~the Once-ler's POV~!~
"...now if the Once-ler and Sally would kindly act their age!"
Ms. Dans' voice rings across the room to the table Sally and I share at the back of the health room. We look up from the game of slides we were playing. Slides is complicated to teach, but easy once you understand. You take your partner's hand, slide yours back to yourself, clap, then hit their hand with yours, then the other, then smack the back of your hands together, then the front, then clap again. After that, you do it all again, besides the slide, but two times. Then three. Then four. You mess up and the game's over. We were in a good game of eleven when Ms. Dans yelled at us.
"Thank you." She forces a smile. "Now, as I was saying, you're all going to be parents." Sally and I glance at each other.
"Ma'am?" Yo-Yo raises her hand. "I'm sixteen and single. Unless you expect me to be artificially inseminated, you're outta luck there." The class laughs.
"Thank you, Yvonne," Ms. Dans says, "for your comment. No, you are going to be paired up, and each pair will have a child." She pulls a box from under the table and puts it on her desk. Then she opens it and pulls out a rather realistic looking baby doll.
"You keep babies in a box?" a kid named Aaron yells. "No wonder you aren't married!" The class laughs again.
"Very funny, Mr. Herman," Ms. Dans says. "You'll be paired with Daniella." She tosses him the baby, which promptly begins to cry. "Andrew, you'll be with Masa." She tosses a girl a baby. "Yvonne, you'll be with Mike."
A small laugh bubbles in my chest as I see Yo-Yo's sickened face as she catches her crying child. Sally laughs out loud. "Sally, you'll be with the Once-ler."
"What?" A baby lands on our table and immediately starts screaming. It's little plastic face is emotionless, staring up at us with blank blue glass eyes. Sally looks at me.
"Well!" she exclaims.
"Well?"
"Pick up your kid, Daddy!" She picks the baby up and tosses it at me. I catch it upside down.
"You are to treat your baby -" Ms. Dans comes to our table and flips the baby right side up, giving me a stern look "- like it is an actual, living child. You are to feed it, change it, care for it as you would an actual baby."
"We got one ugly-ass baby," Sally whispers to me. I laugh and look at the baby again. It's true. Though it's still crying, it's lips are pulled up in a smile and it has a small hole in it's mouth, where I assumed a bottle would go.
"Here are your baby bags." Ms. Dans places a blue bag on our table. "They have everything you'll need. Washable diapers, bottles, formula, clothes."
"Ah, Ms. Dans?" Sally raises her hand. "Does it actually, like...like, pee and stuff?"
"Well phrased," I whisper. She smacks my arm.
"Yes, it does," Ms. Dans replies. Sally gets a sickened expression on her face that makes me laugh.
"Take your baby, Mommy." I hand the kid to her and it makes a loud spitting sound that makes her crinkle her nose up disgustedly.
"I think I just changed my mind about becoming a mother one day..."
~!~Sally's POV~!~
The first problems with the baby erupted about five minutes after we got out of school, when we were walking home.
"What should we name him?" I ask, tickling him under his chin, making him giggle with delight.
"How do you know it's a him?" Oncie asks.
"I changed its diaper before we left while you were cleaning up it's puke," I say darkly. "So, what should we call him?"
"Um...I don't know...Gregory?"
"Eww, why Gregory?" I crinkles my nose up.
"I don't know. I just like the name. Why? What did you have in mind?"
"Uh, duh. Cooter."
"Sally!"
I laugh. If I had to pick one name to call everything, it'd be Cooter. I love the name so much. When I we were younger, and we found a dog sniffing around town, Mom said I could keep it. But then someone came and said it was their dog, and that his name was Cooter. That's when it began, my strange love for the name Cooter. Anything I got, I'd call Cooter. When Allulah and I got a pet lizard, I called it Cooter. When Cooter the Lizard died and we got a turtle, I named it Cooter. When Cooter the Turtle died and we got a snake, I begged to name it Cooter, but Allulah called it Sweetie-Pie. But then Sweetie-Pie got out of his cage and bit my father, so we got rid of him.
"We aren't name it Cooter!"
"But why not?"
"You name everything Cooter! Remember Cooter the Canary that nearly killed me?"
"Cooter the Canary did not nearly kill you!"
"Sally, I was sleeping and he went down my throat!"
"Your own fault for snoring!"
"I can't help it!"
"Whatever...can we please name him Cooter?"
"No!"
"Then what are we gonna call him?"
"I don't know...Death-Kill-Murder-Face?"
I stop in my tracks and stare at him incredulously. "Death-Kill-Murder-Face?"
"Yeah. DK for short." He shrugs. "Better than Cooter." I look down at the gurgling baby.
"Well...okay. Death-Kill-Murder-Face, or DK, it is."
~!~!~!~
I have definitely rethought being a mother. DK, while plastic, is impossible. He pees like a newborn puppy! I had to change into my gym clothes in the middle of second period because he peed all over me while I was changing his diaper! Not only that, but he won't stop crying. He cries, I feed him. I stop feeding him, he cries. I give him his pacifier, he stops crying. I take it away, he starts crying. I change him, he pees all over my favorite shirt.
"This boy is devil's spawn!" I explode in the middle of doing my math homework when I heard him wake up and start crying. Oncie looks up from his homework.
"Sal, he's a little baby."
"You're a little baby!" I yell.
"Sally!" He laughs. "It's okay. The project is over next Wednesday."
"But. It's. Thursday."
"I know it is." He smiles reassuringly at me. "It'll be okay, really. And if it helps at all, I think you're a great mother." He walks over to my bed and lightly kisses my forehead. "I'll see you later." He grabbed his bag and glanced back at the baby, saying, "Bye, DK." Then he left. My face was on fire. When we're stressed, a simple kiss on the cheek or something is a reassuring touch from both of us and means nothing. But still, every time it happens, I blush insanely and my stomach jumps like crazy.
It takes me about two minutes to come back down to Earth and realize DK is still crying and my math homework still only has one problem completed.
Did you like this one? Huh? Huh? Didja? I LIKE TO THINK SO! Anywho, you guys should do me a favor. Review and tell me what you want to happen, and what your favorite part is. Like, copy and paste your favorite line or something? Please and thanks!