Thanks to those of you who have read and reviewed! More little Jamie flashbacks ahead!
CHAPTER 2
Erin's Confirmation Locket
"Danny, watch your brother for a few minutes. I've got to go find another box for the cupcakes," Mary ordered her oldest son.
"But I'm busy frosting these ones. How can I do both of those things?" Danny all-but whined.
"Just do it, Daniel. And next time, let me know before Saturday night that you signed up to bring snacks for your Sunday School class." Mary left the kitchen to look for an appropriate box in the basement.
"Fine," Danny muttered with a glare at his baby brother, who was sitting across the kitchen table, watching the cupcake production with great interest.
"Danny, can I have one? Please?" Jamie longingly eyed the blue-frosted cupcakes.
"Nope, kid. Mom already told you no." Danny turned his attention to smearing frosting haphazardly on top of the cakes.
Jamie frowned. Joe probably would have given him one or split one with him. Erin too. But they were both upstairs bathing to get ready for church tomorrow. His bath time was up next, once Mommy finished with Danny's cupcakes. Bored, he reached for the little pointy-topped bottle of blue food coloring Danny had left sitting on the table. He pulled at the lid, but the tiny conical lid slipped out of his chubby fingers. He turned the bottle upside down and watched the air inside move to the top while the blue liquid inside slid down the sides. He turned the bottle on its side, and the air bubble moved again, along with the blue liquid. That's when he noticed something interesting about the bottle. Two of the sides were flat, and two were round and stuck out further. He turned the bottle so the lid faced him. Yep, two of the sides definitely were not flat. He wondered if he could squeeze the rounded sides down flat like the other two. Only one way to find out! He squeezed the bottle between his fingers. It looked like it was working.
And then, with a quiet pop, the lid launched off the bottle and bounced off Jamie's forehead. He yelped in surprise.
Danny looked up. "Jamie! What the hell!" he yelled, then started laughing.
Jamie wiped at the moisture he felt on his face. "Danny! I'm bleeding!" He looked down at his hand. "Danny, it's blue! Why's my blood blue?"
Danny laughed loudly. "Kid, that's not blood. That's the food color. You got it all over you, you little smurf."
Alerted by Jamie's yelp and Danny's laughter, Mary ran back into the kitchen. "Jamie! What did you do? Danny, why weren't you watching him?"
"I was trying to make the bottle sides flat," Jamie mumbled.
"And I was busy frosting cupcakes," Danny replied.
Mary grabbed a handful of paper towels and wiped up as much of the loose food color as she could. "Jamie, it's bathtime for you. Right now. And don't touch anything on your way upstairs."
Mary led Jamie upstairs to the bathroom he shared with Erin. Unfortunately, it looked like Erin was still using it. She knocked on the door. "Sweetie, can Jamie and I come in?"
"Mo-om!" Erin whined through the door. "I'm almost done with my hair rollers. Can he wait a few minutes?"
"Sorry, honey. It's kind of urgent. You can take your rollers to my bathroom."
"Fine," Erin sighed. She opened the door. After one look at her baby brother, she burst out laughing. "What happened to him? He looks like a baby smurf!"
"Do not," Jamie whined. He was getting tired of people laughing at him. "And what's a smurf?"
"He was playing with the food color bottle," Mary explained.
Erin laughed again. "I've got to go get Joe. He's got to see this." In her eagerness to show her younger brother what their baby brother had done to himself, she forgot to pick up the Confirmation locket she'd removed before showering and placed on the edge of the sink. "Joe, come here," she called as she headed down the hall toward their bedrooms.
Mary picked Jamie up and put him in the tub, then turned on the water. "Okay, sweetie, let's see what we can do about this blue dye."
Half an hour later, it appeared the answer was 'not much.' Despite multiple rounds of soaping and rinsing, the skin of Jamie's face, hands and arms, and strands of his fair hair remained tinged in blue. "Well, kiddo, that's the best we're going to do. Maybe we can find some matching clothes for you to wear tomorrow." She pulled the drain on the tub, then picked Jamie up and put him down on the bath mat beside the tub.
Jamie smiled. "Okay." Now that he'd some time to think about it, the blue marks on his hands looked kinda neat, like Joey had told him when he popped into the bathroom earlier.
Mary shook her head and started to reach for one of the towels stacked on the rack beside the tub, then hesitated. If she used those light yellow towels on Jamie, they'd likely end up streaked in blue. There were some dark green towels in linen closet. Those would hide any residual blue dye. "Jamie, stay there on the bath mat. I'll be right back with a towel."
"Okay," Jamie agreed. But as soon as his mother left the room, he walked over to the sink to see how much blue dye remained on his face. Joey said the blue dye on his face had been even cooler than the blue on his hands. He grabbed the edge of the bathroom counter and pulled himself up to look in the mirror. "Wow," he said to himself. With all the blue streaks running across his face, he was going to look really cool in church tomorrow!
As he stepped back from the counter, he finally noticed the item his left hand had been resting on. Erin's Confirmation locket. He picked it up and looked at it. It was a different color metal from those coins of Danny's. They had been silver and… there was a special word for the orangey metal… Copper. That was it. But this was more of a yellow color. He wondered if it tasted different also. He carefully put the locket and chain in his mouth. He wasn't going to swallow it; after he swallowed Danny's coins, Mommy and Danny had told him not to swallow stuff that wasn't food, and Mommy had made him drink some yucky tasting stuff that made him have to go the bathroom a lot.
Jamie rolled Erin's locket around on his tongue, trying to decide if it tasted different. It did, he finally decided. And the chain was interesting; kind of like tiny metal spaghetti. Then the chain slipped further back and tickled the back of his throat. He coughed. Maybe it was time to put the locket back on the counter. Just then, he noticed the door opening again. Mommy was back! And she was going to catch him with Erin's locket in his mouth! He didn't have time to put it back where he'd found it. Only one alternative came to mind. He swallowed hard, and the locket slipped right down his throat.
"Okay, kiddo. Let's get you dried off and into bed." Mary wrapped the towel around her son. "Sweetie, have you seen Erin's locket? She thinks she left it in here."
Jamie swallowed hard. "I don't see it, Mommy," he said. Hopefully, if Mommy didn't know he'd swallowed Erin's locket, she wouldn't make him drink that yucky medicine.
Mary looked around the bathroom herself, checking both the counter and the floor around it. "It's probably in her room somewhere."
"M'hm," Jamie mumbled. He was already starting to feel bad about lying to his mother. Or was it because of the locket? Maybe he was allergic to it, like his friend Logan was allergic to walnuts.
Mary toweled off her son, blew his hair dry and got him tucked into bed. She noticed he'd seemed quieter than usual since she'd returned to the bathroom with the towels. "Sweetie, are you worried about people teasing you about the blue dye?" she asked him after they finished bedtime prayers.
"No, Mommy," Jamie replied. "Joey said it looks cool."
"Well, if Joe says it looks cool, so it does." Mary leaned over and kissed her son goodnight.
The next morning, both Erin and Jamie were out of sorts. Erin was still fretting about her missing locket, and no one could figure out what was wrong with Jamie. At least, until after Sunday School, when Mary came to pick him up from his class and found her youngest son crying in the arms of the assistant teacher. "Jamie, honey, what's wrong? Did someone make fun of you?"
Jamie shook his head and moved into his mother's arms. "No."
"What happened?" she asked both her son and the assistant teacher.
"Today's lesson was about honesty and telling the truth. Jamie just seemed to get more and more upset throughout the lesson," she responded.
"Jamie, did you tell a lie about something?" Mary asked.
Jamie nodded miserably. "Yes, Mommy," he mumbled.
"Tell me the truth now. I won't be mad at you," Mary encouraged.
Jamie sniffled. "I know where Erin's locket is."
"Where, honey?" Mary asked, while she wondered why Jamie would have taken and hidden his sister's locket. She watched as he looked down and put one hand on his stomach. Oh, no. Not again.
"In my tummy," Jamie confirmed.
Mary hugged her son. Actually, twelve hours later, it probably wasn't in his tummy; it was probably working its way through his little digestive system. "Oh, Jamie. You have to stop swallowing metal objects. They're not good for you."
"I just wanted to see what it tasted like," Jamie argued.
"Jamie, if you have to taste things, put your tongue on them, not them on your tongue. It's safer," Mary advised her son.
"Okay," Jamie agreed. "But I don't like the way yellow metal tastes, so I won't try it again."
Mary rocked Jamie. "I'll be sure to tell your sister that her locket tasted bad."
"Yeah!" Jamie perked up. "Maybe she won't be mad at me if she knows that. Can I tell her?"
"You should let me do that, Jamie. I think she's going to be angry anyway. But you will have to apologize to her taking her necklace."
"Why? She'll get it back, like Danny got his coins back."
"I don't think she's going to feel that way. Girls can be pickier than boys about that kind of thing," Mary tried to explain without going in to too many details. "So don't taste-test any more of Erin's things, okay, kiddo?"
"Okay," Jamie agreed. That still left most of a house full of small metal objects just waiting to be explored.
A few days later:
Mary carefully retrieved Erin's locket from the pot of boiling water on the stove using a disposable wooden chopstick left over from the last time the family had ordered Chinese take-out for dinner. "Looks like it's all cleaned up this time, Jamie. Let me cool it down and you can go give it back to your sister," she told he youngest son. She ran the locket under the cold water faucet.
"Will she stop being mad at me then?" Jamie asked. Erin had hardly spoken one word to him in the two days since he'd confessed to swallowing her locket.
Mary looked over the locket. The outside didn't look any worse for its trip through Jamie's digestive system, but the pictures inside had been destroyed. "It will help. Here, go give this back to Erin."
Clutching the locket in his hand, Jamie ran from the room. "Erin! Erin, where are you?"
"In the sunroom, Jamie," Erin called. "We're out here playing video games."
"Erin, I have something for you!" Jamie called as he ran into the room. "Here!" He held out his hand with the locket in it to his sister. "It's all shiny again. You can't even tell it was in my poopy an hour ago!"
At Jamie's announcement, Danny and Joe looked up from the video game they were playing. Joe choked on a laugh. Danny didn't even try to hide his laughter.
Erin picked up the locket by the clasp, touching it as little as possible. "That's… nice."
"Aren't you going to put it on, Erin?" Jamie asked.
"Yeah, Erin, aren't you going to put it on?" Danny repeated, trying to hold back more guffaws.
"No, Jamie. I'll save it for special occasions," Erin explained to her brother. "Thank you for giving it back to me. I'll put it in my pocket for safekeeping right now." She wrapped the locket in a tissue and tucked in into her jeans pocket. There was no way she was ever going to wear that thing again, not knowing exactly where it had been. So. Gross.
==BB==BB==
Erin laughed at the memory. "It was so gross."
Jamie tried to brace himself against the chair to protect his ribs. "Come on. I'm begging you." As his family muttered halfhearted apologies for making him laugh, Jamie recalled another incident involving his swallowing jewelry. His mother's pearl earrings…