Lori and Leni were sprawled across their beds, waiting for Rita to tuck them in for the night. The afternoon had moved smoothly after the whole tea party; the oldest two hung out in their room and the youngest three played in the living room with their parents.
"Hey Leni," Lori said, turning to the other bed, where the lying Leni was facing the wall, snuggling with her stuffed bunny Bun-Bun. She didn't respond, though. "Mom's belly is getting pretty big! Do you think the baby will be a boy or a girl?"
All she got for an answer was a familiar groan. It was the type that evoked indecision rather than discomfort or frustration. Lori took it as an audible shrug more than anything else.
"I want another sister," Lori continued, staring at the ceiling, "to make things easy. And when we get older, she will be one more girl to teach about boys and makeup and all that fun stuff! Having a boy around will make things all gross and weird."
She then turned to her sister, who hadn't moved.
"What do you want our new baby to be?"
Nothing. Not even a groan. Lori sighed, thinking about all the other times she had failed to get even a word out of her sister.
"Leni!" she said, raising her voice, "Do you want a brother or another sister?"
"I dunno..." she said, tightening her grip on Bun-Bun.
"Don't tell me you want a brother getting his yucky hands all over everything!" Lori said, "Dirty underwear, comics, Ace Savvy toys everywhere! So don't tell me 'I dunno'!"
Rita then walked in, going over to Leni's bed first.
"You got Bun-Bun with you, honey?" she asked as she wrapped the pink blanket around her, "Good night," she added, giving her a kiss on the forehead, "I love you so much."
Rita then made her way to Lori, who had her arms crossed.
"Mom, when are we gonna know if the baby's a boy or a girl?"
Rita chuckled and started to tuck her in.
"Me and Daddy are going to the doctor next week. There, we will find out once and for all. Won't that be exciting?"
Lori smirked and nodded her head.
"I'm glad that you're interested in the baby," Rita said, adding the finishing touches to the blanket, "no matter what, this baby will be a special addition to our family."
She then leaned in and kissed her eldest daughter.
"I love you honey!"
Lori couldn't help but smile.
"I love you too Mom."
"Good night."
With that, Rita exited, gently flipping the light switch on the way out. Lori didn't even bother trying to talk to her sister, who was probably already fast asleep. She lied there and closed her eyes. She thought a little more about the upcoming baby before falling asleep herself.
Lori and Emily loved hopscotch. It had been the game for recess since last year. Emily always brought her chalk box to school in case the design they had set aside was erased, which was usually every week.
The bell rung and the masses of first-graders and kindergarteners raced out to the playground like a herd of wild dogs. The group two arrived at the hopscotch court, their own special corner of the playground, and started playing.
"I still think Marcy is the best character," Lori said, skipping on each of the blocks.
"No way! Riley is way funnier. Plus she's pretty," Emily replied, watching on from the side.
"Marcy is pretty. Have you seen what she does to her hair?"
"It's okay, but Riley is so much better! It was even better in that episode from a couple weeks ago where they had the talent show."
"I guess."
Lori completed the course and swapped places, spectating Emily. Lori was no worse at hopscotch than any normal girl, but she was glad to have Emily. Unlike herself, Emily was a dancer and when she graced the chalk boxes, it showed. Lori never let this showmanship bug her in the way Carol's did; iif anything, it was exciting seeing such fine footwork.
"What did you think of Tyler in last night's episode?" Lori asked.
"Is that even a question," Emily answered, not even losing a breath in her movements, "Funny!"
"I know! I laughed so hard when he shot milk out his nose."
The two girls chuckled as they recalled the scene. Their six year old minds exaggerated the details, making it seem even funnier in hindsight.
"And when he told Mrs. Snootie he wrote his paper about boogers," Emily said, completing her set, "You know, Mrs. Snootie is kinda like Mrs. Turner. Kinda mean and boring."
"She's not that bad."
"She put Sean in time out! Sean is, like, the cutest boy in class. And he's funny, like Tyler!"
"He was rude to her," Lori said.
"But it was funny! Tyler does everything Sean does and he doesn't get put in time out."
"True," Lori said, looking down at her feet hopping along the court. She started feeling the urge to monitor her steps to keep from tripping. She took her time formulating her next thought, "Boys are weird."
"Nuh uh."
"The ones on TV are good. Tyler's really funny and all," Lori said. Upon reaching the end of the set, though, she just stood there looking to the street beyond the hopscotch court, "but then there's ones like Sean. They are rude and gross. None of them are like Tyler at all!"
It didn't take long for Emily to put the pieces together.
"Are you still mad that the baby's a boy?"
"A little," Lori responded, walking over to her, "It's gonna be weird having a little brother running around. I don't want him to be like Sean."
"Even if he does," Emily said, starting to chuckle, "it won't be that bad."
"Emily!"
The dancer continued laughing as she moved to begin her set.
"Having a brother can't be that bad," she said, starting to skip along.
"How do you know? You don't even have one."
"Come on Lori. They can't all be bad. Besides, you have four sisters. He will learn to be just like you. And then he won't be gross."
Lori hadn't thought about that. She was so mad and disgusted by having a brother that she forgot about the numbers game; her thoughts assumed she would have been caged with this "animal" without any help.
"Maybe," was all Lori could say, though.
Emily completed the hopscotch again and turned towards the side of the school.
"Speaking of sisters," she said, squinting her eyes, "isn't that Leni over there?"
Lori looked in the indicated direction and saw a small girl sitting against the brick wall. She silently sitting there, alone. Seeing this, Lori and Emily walked towards her. She wasn't doing or saying anything; the girl was in a world of her own.
"Hey Leni," Lori said as she arrived, "What are you doing?"
Leni shrugged.
"Why aren't you playing with anyone?"
Once again, a simple shrug.
Even though Lori predicted this was how her sister spent her recess, it still stunned her to see it playing out. Lori had a hard time understanding how anyone could avoid conversation or playtime to the extent Leni could.
"Leni," she said, extending her hand towards her, "me and Emily are playing hopscotch. And I want you to play with us."
Leni broke away from the girls, allowing her eyes to turn to the street behind the playground. Lori frowned.
"Leni. I don't like you sitting here all by yourself. Now I want you to play with us!"
Distressed by the familiar sharpness of Lori's voice, Leni slowly pushed herself against the pavement and wall to prop herself up.
"It will be fun," Emily said as she did this, "I've been dying to know how you've been liking Mrs. Egan's class."
Upon getting on her feet, Leni just stared at Emily creepily.
"If you were dead...how would you find out?"
Lori mentally face palmed.
"No, Leni," she said, "Emily is not dying, she just really wants to know about your time with Mrs. Egan."
Leni stood there, her face clearly lacking any registration of the input.
"Then...why didn't she just say that?"
Lori sighed and placed her hand at the back of her sister's shoulder.
"Never mind. Let's just play."
The three of them made their way over to the hopscotch court, stopping right at its entry point.
"Okay Leni," Lori said, having calmed down, "now in hopscotch. What you want to hop from box to box until you get to the other side. You want to touch every box, okay?"
Leni observed the arrangement of chalk boxes and then jumped, planting both her feet safely inside one of the boxes.
"No, no, no! That's not how you do it," Lori said, "You only put one foot into each box."
She then nudged Leni outside the court.
"Now watch me."
Leni stood there and looked at her sister, easily hoping her way through the court. To her, the maneuver was so fast and hard to do. Leni wasn't exactly the princess of balance or grace.
"Now you try," she said upon completing the set.
Leni walked her way to the front of the court. She looked down and saw the two neighboring boxes before her. Suddenly, she jumped and opened her legs. Each of her feet landed in a different box.
"Good job," Lori said, relieved, "Now do the next one. Don't stop until you get to the end."
Inputting the data, she examined the next row, which had only one box. For a moment, she was paralyzed, uncertain of how to go about it. And then she jumped, her legs never changing position. With a slight shift in trajectory, she landed with one foot in the tile and the other planted outside the court. Mentally, Lori face palmed again, which manifested as a frown.
"No Leni! That's not how you do it!"
She stomped over to Leni, who was frozen in place and looking off in the distance.
"You can't have any feet touching the ground outside the chalk. Your feet must always be in the air or in the boxes!"
Lori gripped Leni's offending foot and pulled it off the ground. There was a little struggle, but the older sister prevailed.
"When you get to the rows with only one box, you do that instead," Lori said. She gave Leni a quick look before walking back to Emily, "Now do it right!"
Leni gazed down and saw the next row, two boxes. Just standing, her balance wavered. She stretched her arms and shook them around, trying to stay afloat. Veering down at her object once again, she bent the knee of the grounded leg and pushed up. But rather than jumping, the leg in the air jerked forward and pressed itself on the ground, just in time to prevent a major fall. Leni took several breaths before walking off the court.
"I don't like this game..." she told Lori, looking at the brick wall she was previously sitting at.
Lori understood what Leni was inclined to do and was determined to stop it. Acting quickly, Lori extended her hand to her sister's shoulder and turned to Emily.
"That's okay," Lori said, creating a smile in the process, "you don't have to play. You can just watch me and Emily play. From there, you can tell Emily all about Mrs. Egan and school. Do you want to do that?"
She didn't answer, but she did turn her head away from the wall. Lori took that as a 'yes'. She and Emily raced to the entrance of the hopscotch court and began once more. Leni just stood there, looking at nothing in particular, even as the two friends engaged in serious foot tactics.
"So...," Emily said as she waited for Lori to finish her set, "do you like Mrs. Egan?"
"Yes," she replied after a momentary pause.
"Lori and I were in her class last year and we liked her too. She's nice and a lot of fun!"
Leni simply groaned and continued to stare at some figment of her imagination, one that was blurry, but amusing nonetheless. Before Emily could add anything, she started her set as Lori finished her's.
"Why don't you tell Emily about your classmates," Lori said as she walked past her, "I think she would like to know about them."
The incoherent blob had vanished, leaving Leni a little nervous. Her head lowered to the ground with her mouth open, unsure how to answer. She had tried to learn their names. She really did. Or at least, know some of their names. Lori looked on, waiting impatiently for her sister to answer.
"Well..." she started, concentrating on the subject, "there...Blacky and Ruth and Barbie and...Lilo..."
Dreaded silence re-entered the hopscotch court, breaking any sense of flow the conversation had earlier. Lori tapped her foot, watching Emily approaching the end of the path.
"Is that all?" Lori said sharply.
Another groan. It was clear that no amount of pressing would get even another name out of the girl, or what she thought was a real person.
Before either girl could ask Leni another question, the bell rang. Leni marched through the chalk court, her eyes focused solely on the door she had come out of at the start of recess. Lori and Emily just watched the girl walk so purposefully back to class, which differed so greatly from themselves and many other kids. After a little bit, they reluctantly joined the massive herd of children being sentence to several more hours of school.
Lori was sitting in her room playing with one of her Barbie dolls. For all that she scolded Leni for doing the same, the eldest sister admitted that a little alone time never hurt anyone. Once in a while. And only for a couple minutes. She felt that after a long day of Mrs. Turner's class and Carol's snobbishness, a little decompression was in order.
She was riding the doll around in the pink car accessory, imagining the aquamarine carpet as a beautiful road hugging the sparkling Pacific Ocean. Lori had seen California a lot on television, as it was the setting of most of the shows she watched. She fantasized herself being in that sunny paradise some day. To her, it seemed like a girl's dream.
Her play session was interrupted, however, by her tummy growling. It appeared that relaxing after a hard day had other parts to it.
Getting up, Lori exited her room and turned to the hallway. She noticed, however, that in the middle of the corridor was a wooden staircase going up; someone was in the attic. Curious, Lori approached it and ascended its decrepit, creaky steps. She thought she heard sniffling as she went up the first step, followed by hasty attempts to silence it. Upon reaching the top, Lori saw her mother, holding a baby blue book in her hand.
"Hey sweetie!" Rita said, suddenly perking up a smile, "What brings you up here?"
"I just wanted to see what was up here," she answered, moving closer to her mother, "What's that you got there?"
Rita then held the book with pride.
"This is a special book I made before you were born, honey," she said before turning back to an open cardboard box, "I have one for your sisters too. And I'm making one right now for your future brother."
Lori looked inside the box to see four other books, each one a different color and with a healthy film of dust on their covers. She then turned to Rita and noticed that her cheeks carried a tint of red and that her eyes looked a little glassy. Something looked off.
"Are you okay, Mom?" Lori asked.
"Oh honey," she said, hugging her daughter, "reading these books just make me think of how much I love you and your sisters."
Rita then sniffled a bit as new thoughts emerged.
"And sometimes they make me cry a little. I just can't keep it in knowing how wonderful you all have been to my and Daddy's life," she then squeezed her a little tighter, "I love you so much, Lori."
Lori was touched by the hug, but was uncomfortable to hear her mother cry. Still, she found it in her to hug back.
"Mom...could you make me a snack?" she asked, breaking the awkward series of sniffles and stifled sobs.
"Of course, honey..." she replied, her voice having gone hoarse.
Rita closed the blue book and rested it on top of the teal one. She then got up and helped Lori downstairs.