I am so so so sorry that it's been forever since I've updated. I don't know where the time went. I was having a bit of writer's block, and then before I knew it, it had been a few weeks. Oh my gosh. I'm seriously sorry. I'm hoping that I'll be able to put up a few extra chapters for you guys tomorrow, to make up for my absence. I hope you enjoy this chapter, though! I had fun writing it.
APRIL 1
I stumbled into the kitchen, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes. I'd stayed up way too late, texting Mal. I didn't fall asleep until nearly three in the morning. But, to be honest, Mal and I did that a lot.
There was a box of custard-filled donuts on the counter, with a pitcher of orange juice beside it. Huh. Everybody in the house was just starting to get up, and there hadn't been any donuts or orange juice out the night before, so I had no idea where they would have come from.
Oh, wait. Mom had probably gotten a craving in the middle of the night, and sent Dad down to the store to get them. She'd been craving anything else with sugar, really. Her cravings during this pregnancy were pretty insane. She'd wanted sour gummy worms covered in peanut butter. Donuts were actually pretty normal for her. Sure enough, there were three missing from the pack of a dozen. Mom had definitely eaten some of them.
I grabbed one and bit into it. Hey, if they were sitting out on the counter, they were fair game in this house.
Bad idea.
Really bad idea.
I nearly choked on the...abomination in my mouth.
I spit it out into the garbage can. It wasn't filled with custard, like I'd thought. It was filled with mayonnaise. What in the world? Why would a donut be filled with mayonnaise? Who would do that?
Not really thinking, I filled a glass with some of the orange juice and guzzled that, trying to wash out the nasty taste in my mouth.
And spit it right back out. That was not orange juice.
It tasted like…cheddar cheese.
What the –
Oh.
I should have known better. I really should have. It was April Fools Day.
My mom's favorite holiday.
The rest of us in the house – other than the twins – pretty much hated it. We could never pull anything over on that woman. She was the queen of pranks. Not even the twins could prank her, though that didn't seem to bother them. They tried every year. Mom always upstaged them. Dad, Bex, and I had all given up a long time ago. There really was no point in even trying to prank her. She never fell for anything we tried. We'd even tried to work together, a few years back.
That was the worst April Fools ever.
Two things happened just then.
Bexley screamed at the top of her lungs, and Dad yelled, "Mackenzie Tess Amala!"
Ooh, he called her by her middle name, too. He was mad. And Dad rarely got mad like that. I wondered what she had done to him. Some years, she used magic to pull her pranks. Some years she didn't. Last year, she'd used her magic to put all of the furniture on the ceiling. Throughout the entire house. It was ridiculous. And then the year before that, she'd put all of the keys and stuff inside jello. Seriously. And she was never content with just one prank. Oh, no. She would prank all day long.
It was seriously my least favorite day of the year, because of my mom.
"Mom!" Bexley hollered.
Just then, Mom came into the kitchen, laughing hysterically. She was wearing a pair of Avalon University sweatpants and a loose plain grey tee-shirt, but I could still the outline of her pregnant belly. She was six months along, so you could definitely tell that she was pregnant, and she tended to waddle sometimes. She was usually pretty cranky, too.
"Did you have a donut?" she asked, still chortling.
I narrowed my eyes at her. "Yeah, hilarious." Of course she'd known that I would eat one. Although I was kind of surprised. This was kind of tame for her. And she never did just one prank. She kept going until midnight. She had to have something else up her sleeve. Mayonnaise-filled donuts wasn't up to her usual standards. Not by a long shot. "You know Dad's not going to fall for the donuts and OJ, right?"
She shrugged. "No, but Bex will drink the juice. She won't eat the donuts. And you know your brothers can't resist donuts."
I shook my head. She had a point, though. Those boys had a major sweet tooth. Both of them. And donuts were their absolute favorite. Bex, on the other hand, tried to stay away from sugary stuff. She'd eat some every now and then, but most of the time, she didn't care for donuts and stuff. "You are completely evil. What did you do to Bex and Dad to get such reactions out of both of them? And don't tell me you forgot about the twins."
"Dad got a face full of chicken bouillon in the shower. I put it in the showerhead last night. Probably not the most pleasant thing in the world. And I drew a spider on Bex's toilet paper roll." She was quite proud of herself.
I chuckled. "It doesn't take much with Bex."
She smirked. I'm telling you, my mother had a black spot in her heart. She really did. "It really doesn't. And the twins…I've magicked them to look like girls. I'll take the spell off before they go anywhere, but they're going to get quite a surprise when they wake up, which should be any minute."
It was pretty amazing that they weren't already awake. Somehow, they had managed to sleep through my sister's banshee scream. Then again, they were really heavy sleepers. Mom usually woke them up by tickling their feet – they were extremely ticklish.
"How are they going to wake up if you're in here?" I asked.
Mom wiggled her fingers at me. "Magic."
"Ah."
From upstairs, I heard the twins yell, "We're girls!"
"Okay, where did you get this evil streak of yours? You certainly didn't get it from Mamie or Pappy."
"Oh, they can both be a little evil every now and then."
I shook my head again, turning back toward my room. I didn't see the saran wrap stretched across my doorway until I'd already run straight into it, which nearly caused me to fall flat on my butt.
Mom burst out in laughter.
She must have used her magic to put it up while we were talking, because it had not been there when I'd left my bedroom earlier.
"Stupid April Fools Day."