Chapter 24:
Sam POV-
Don't get me wrong, I love Jazz like a sister, but sometimes…I swear…
Take now for instance, apparently, I'm going to be "surprised" but right now, I'm just blindfolded and irritated, while being dragged God knows where by Danny's sister.
"Jazz…" I whined, yes, that may be a little unlike me, but let's face it I haven't been "me" for a while now.
"Calm down, we're almost there," Jazz replied, almost smugly, it that 'I-know-something-you-don't-know' way. Underneath the blindfold, I rolled my eyes.
Finally, we stopped walking and I heard a door open.
"Okay, you can take off the blindfold now," Jazz told me like she was trying to suppress laughter. I rolled my eyes again, and took off the blindfold.
I opened my eyes to the Fenton living room, decorated with light pink and blue streamers and balloons, and full of people. And by people, and by that I mean many girls in my grade and their moms (no boys allowed) which meant…
"Hey, Sam," Paulina said in her, 'I'm-pretending-to-be-nice-to-you' voice.
I tried to turn around and walk out, but Jazz stopped me.
"I didn't send out the invitations," Jazz whispered, "but at least try to stick it out, if nothing else you'll get some expensive baby gifts. Plus, my mom made cake."
I sighed, turning back around to face the baby shower guests, and, attempted to put on a happy face, although I think it turned out more like a grimace.
"Hey Sam," Mrs. Fenton, waved cheerfully, coming out of the kitchen and wiping her hands on her apron, "Surprise!"
"Wow, you got me Mrs. Fenton," I replied, awkwardly.
"Well, don't just stand in the doorway! I made lots of snacks, and I have plenty of party games for us to play," she told me.
The snacks included a pink and blue two-layered cake, pink and blue cupcakes, a Costco-sized cookie, cheese, and veggie tray; a watermelon cut in the shape of a baby carriage and filled with fruit, and little baby booties filled M&M's.
Unfortunately, a lot of the anorexic girls in our grade only picked at the vegetable tray, and I'm sure some of the others were afraid of anything that Mrs. Fenton made (that is, if they remember the bake sale from last year. Let's just say the janitorial staff had to work overtime to clean up the chocolate-chip ectoplasm explosion).
Another way I know that Paulina is pregnant, the girl who usually eats the least out of everyone in the school, had piled her plate with food after the first couple of seconds.
But the games were really the most…interesting part.
And, quite honestly, the baby shower might have actually been fun, if Paulina hadn't been there, but, then again, it's not like she really participated anyway.
The first game was, by far, the most entertaining to watch.
It was called Dirty Diapers.
And everyone at the party was tasked with smelling dirty diapers. Now, they weren't really dirty diapers, they were just regular diapers with melted chocolate bars on the inside, and we had to guess which chocolate bar was which.
Paulina would take no part in it, no matter how many times Danny's mom told her that they weren't actually dirty diapers.
Honestly, I think being pregnant gave me the advantage in this game, with my ability to smell everything within a mile radius; I could easily make out the distinctions between the candy bars.
The girl, who came in second place, was a girl, who I barely knew. She had frizzy light brown hair, blue eyes, and freckles and was only slightly overweight, but not fat, just enough to have curves. Although, I didn't miss the popular girls chuckle when she came in second.
"Of course, she knows what all those candy bars smell like," I heard Paulina hiss to her satellites, and they all giggled, "I bet she'll lick them off of the diaper too," and they giggled again.
Wow, I actually couldn't believe there was someone who Paulina mocked more than me, and, honestly, it pissed me off. I gave Paulina and her cohorts a death glare, and they all stopped laughing, and looked like I had just rained on their parades.
"Now Sam," Mrs. Fenton asked, "Am I correct in saying that you and Danny haven't told anyone the names of the babies?"
"Nope, not yet," I replied, "Well, no one except Tucker…so who knows how far the gossip has actually spread," I joked, and, to my surprise, several of the girls, girls who have no doubt been hit-on by Tucker, laughed. Mrs. Fenton cracked a smile.
"Does anyone else know the names of the babies?" she asked the group.
I saw various people shake their heads or mutter "no" in reply.
"Great!" Mrs. Fenton clasped her hands together, "Than this should be fun. Okay we have two lists, one boy's and one girl's. You will each write one first and one middle name from each list on the paper, and give them back to me. Whoever is the closest gets the prize."
So, all the girls took the piece of paper and scribbled down their choices of names from the list. Most of them were way off. Seriously, I think most of the girls picked the most bizarre names on the list just because they thought that I might have chosen them.
We got a lot of Violet's, a lot of Raven's, which, now that I think about it would not have been bad names. We got several Luna's but most people used them as a first name, and most bizzarely, Josequinlynn. And for boys the name choices were even weirder: Eagle (who names their son eagle), and Lucifer, which, might have been a good name, that is, without the connotation.
The person who won was Valerie. She had guessed the names: Elizabeth Raven and Dylan Grayson, which, was still closer than anyone else had gotten. In fact, she was the only person who had guessed "Elizabeth" and "Grayson" at all.
She was awarded with a gift basket filled with girly soaps and sprays and hair products.
"What are the babies names actually going to be?" Star asked once the guessing was over.
"Danny and I decided on Elizabeth Luna Fenton, and Grayson Xavier Fenton," I replied and many of the girls nodded in response.
"Okay," Mrs. Fenton announced, "I have one more game before we open presents: a relay race. You will all be divided up into teams of four and each team will have a different color bib to wear. Two people with take a full laundry basket and a diaper bag and do a lap around the house before passing it off to the next person. If you drop anything, you have to start over. Then, the third person in the line will run the basket to the laundry and put the baby bag on the counter, take a diaper out, and then run back to the fourth person in line. The fourth person will take off the diaper on the baby doll and replace it with a new one, and then they will wrap the baby up in a blanket and run it to the stroller and strap it in. Then all four of you have to sit down on the couch. First team to do this wins."
I was put on the blue team a team with Valerie, Star, and the girl who had won the diaper game.
Star was the first one to volunteer to do the diapering, which surprised me.
"I have three younger siblings," she shrugged, "I'm used to it."
So we let her do that. Valerie and the other girl, whose name I discovered to be Rachel, offered to do the running with the laundry basket considering how I'm pregnant, leaving me, to do the final take off with the laundry basket and diaper bag and to tap Star into the game.
Paulina, one the other side of the room, decided to sit out, leaving Jazz to take her place.
"On your marks," Mrs. Fenton counted down as the first group of runners lined up, loaded down with the clothing piled in the baskets and the bulging diaper bag, "Get set. GO!" she announced waving a purple checkered burp cloth.
The eight girls sped off, running around the house, trying not to drop their clothes while the rest of us cheered for our teams and waited for them to come around and tap the next girl. Most of the girls dropped something, or toppled their entire basket, except ours. Valerie almost dropped a towel that teetered on the top of the stack, but she managed to catch it with two fingers before it touched the ground and kept running. Then she handed the basket off to Rachel who threw the loose towel back on the top of the pile and continued running. Although she might not look like it, she can actually run pretty fast, and made it around the house while most of the teams who had dropped their baskets were just beginning the second lap.
My turn.
I picked up the bag and basket, throwing the bag over my shoulder and carrying the basket with two hands and rushed it to the laundry room, setting it on the designated spot on the floor and taking the bag to the kitchen, setting it on the counter and pulling out the diaper for Star before racing over to her.
Star took the diaper out of my hand and had the baby doll diapered in a matter of seconds, racing over to the stroller and securing the baby inside.
With that done, the four of us raced back to the couch, sitting down when many of the other teams had just started their diapering.
Mrs. Fenton blew an air horn, signaling the end of the game.
"The blue team wins!" she announced. We cheered, and I felt, strangely exhilarated, as we all high-fived each other. And the other teams, who had also gotten into the game, seemed disappointed at loosing.
"Okay, present time," Mrs. Fenton told us, sitting me down in a seat in the middle of a sea of pastel-colored packages.
"Start with the one from us," Jazz beamed, pushing three large boxes at me.
"You guys didn't have to get me anything, you already got us the car," I protested.
Mrs. Fenton brushed it off, "Sam, please. You are having our first grandchildren; we can't help but spoil them. Plus, part of this is from Jazz. Just open it."
I opened the two largest, identical boxes first. They were the same. Fisher Price Baby swing chairs. They both had place for the baby suspended from the top that played music and vibrated while they swung back and forth. But, they were different colors and neither one was pink. And, for that I was grateful.
"Thank you," I told them. Mrs. Fenton smiled and I saw her eyes sparkle with delight.
"Open the other one," Jazz pushed the other box at me.
I opened it up. The box was full of stuff. Diapers, bottles, formula, clothes for both boys and girls, personalized blankets that had their names stitched on the soft fabric. And then two things, the only two things that were actually identical in the box. Two, obviously, handmade (by Jazz I suspected), neon green ghost stuffed animals, again, with their names stitched on them, although not as neatly done as one the blankets. I smiled, giving Jazz a one-armed hug.
Mrs. Fenton laughed, but I could tell something was troubling her.
Then, I started opening everyone else's presents. I got a lot of diapers, clothes, pacifiers, room accessories, toys, and picture frames. These were just sort of the generic things people give at baby showers. And then there's the stuff the moms obviously picked out from their own experiences. A play mat, a baby bath with all the soaps and towels and washcloths to go with it, and a bottle holder for the dishwasher, along with some more bottles, and an insert for a baby to sit in a shopping cart.
When I unwrapped these things, Mrs. Fenton remarked how useful those things had been when she was pregnant.
And then, there's Paulina's gift.
A parenting how-to book, and a million pairs of baby shoes, almost all, for girls.
As if she actually has the grounds to give me aparenting book. I mean, yeah, that may be helpful, but the look on her face made it obvious that she did not intend it that way, and I am going to be a much, much better parent than her!
I tried to hide my anger, and I looked over the shoes. Like I said, most of them were girls, which doesn't help Grayson in the slightest, but, more than that, most of them are shoes I would never put on m daughter, in various shades of pink and, oh yeah, high heels.
Baby high heels.
Seriously, Danny and I had been joking!
I resisted the urge to glare at her, and, instead, thanked her through gritted teeth as Mrs. Fenton took down the gift on her note pad for the thank-you notes, and I could tell, that even Mrs. Fenton was…unimpressed with the gift.
Finally, all the girls and their moms left, leaving just me, Jazz, and Mrs. Fenton in the house.
We all took one look at each other and burst out laughing. I don't even think we knew what we were laughing about, but it was probably the mere fact that we had survived that baby shower with our sanity intact.
"I'm sorry, Sam," Mrs. Fenton told me through her laughter.
"For what?" I asked.
"Well, for starters, because the shower was so early, but Jazz insisted," she told me, and I gave Jazz a subtle look, "But also, because I know most of those girls weren't exactly in your…social circle, but, well, for one thing, you don't exactly have many girlfriends, and, also…I wanted to check something out," she told me.
Mrs. Fenton checking something out? That could never be good.
"What?" I asked, a little suspiciously.
"Well…purely for scientific reasons, I wanted to see if Paulina, was, well, you know actually pregnant with Phantom's baby," she pulled the little device she had introduced to us when I had first discovered I was pregnant.
"And?" I asked, although I already knew the answer. Jazz and I shared a knowing look.
"0.05, with isn't even a full percent, just a trace amount. She is not carrying Phantom's baby," Mrs. Fenton told us.
"Somebody call the Maury Show," Jazz muttered and we laughed again.
"Well, I knew that all along," I shrugged. Mrs. Fenton paused and looked at me curiously.
"How?" she asked me. Shit! How did I know that?
"Well, even ghosts have their standards," I joked. She laughed. Phew, moment of panic gone.
"How about we take all of this stuff upstairs?" Jazz suggested. We agreed,
It took several trips and two of us to push each of the giant baby swing boxes up the stairs, but finally, we had everything in the room. Then the three of us hung up, or put away all of the clothes I had gotten.
"It actually was really fun," I told Mrs. Fenton, "I actually enjoyed it much more than I thought I would, even with the popular girls there. And, I think if Paulina hadn't been there, they would have been even easier to get along with."
"Well, I'm glad you liked it," Mrs. Fenton smiled.
Then we moved onto all the other stuff I had gotten: diapers, room accessories, blankets, pillows, stuffed animals and began placing them in the room. And we put the bath stuff in the adjacent bathroom. I draped the monogramed blankets over the sides of each crib, smiling as I did.
Mrs. Fenton pulled the two monogramed ghosts out of the box, frowning.
"What is it?" I asked curiously.
"Well, Jazz, these are both really cute, but did you have to put our grandchildren's names on them? I don't want them growing up thinking that they have the same worth as a couple of awful ghosts," she said.
I sighed internally. Raising kids in this house would be incredibly difficult if we didn't tell Danny's parents soon enough.
"Oh, come on Mom, it's just symbolic. Two kids born into a family of ghost hunters. I meant it to be cute, not to imply anything, and I'm sure the kids won't take it that way, it's not like they are ghosts or anything. Haha, that's just ridiculous. That would mean that—" Jazz was rambling, and lying badly, so, in the most discreet way possible, I elbowed her in the ribs and she shut up.
Thankfully, Mrs. Fenton hadn't noticed her rambling, or my shutting her up, she just held the two ghosts in her hands, looking at them thoughtfully.
"I'm sure you're right," she said finally, placing one ghost in each crib, "We have nothing to be worried about." I swear she gave me a slightly suspicious look, which I returned with one of false ignorance.
She accepted my fabricated obliviousness, and went on unpacking.
An hour later, we had everything unpacked and set up, including the two swings that we had set up and placed in separate corners.
This was when Danny and his dad finally decided to come home.
They loudly came up the stairs and found us in the nursery. Danny smiled taking in all the new stuff that had been set out.
"So, you had a nice baby shower?" Danny smirked.
"You knew?" I asked him.
"Of course, I did," he grinned. He knew that his mom and sister were throwing a surprise baby shower for me and inviting the entire female population of our class and he didn't tell me!
"Danny! I am going to kill you!" I yelled at him, chasing him down the hall, while his family laughed behind us.