Friendly Face, page 7
“Hey, Theresa.”
“Hi, Mott. Are you here alone?” Theresa gestured at the empty chair next to her, and Mott took it.
A ponytailed server on roller skates zipped past with a fresh pizza. Aromas of tomato, basil, and cheese teased Mott’s nose. His mouth watered. He hadn’t eaten before he and Rory came here, figuring they’d get a pizza right away. But Rory had been obsessed with the games since they’d arrived, and they hadn’t ordered anything yet. Mott was getting so hungry that even the sickly sweet blue-frosted birthday cake that sat near the stage was starting to look good.
“No,” he said. “I’m here with my little brother. He’s friends with the birthday boy.”
“Same here—my little brother, too.”
“Which one is yours?” Mott asked, mainly because he had no idea what else to say.
Theresa pointed at a boy with dark curls dancing with a bunch of little kids up next to the stage.
“Yours?” she said.
He looked over at the arcade. Rory’s bright hair made him easy to spot: He and Ben had left the air hockey table and were charging this way. Rory probably wanted more money for tokens.
“Wow, really? He doesn’t look like you,” Theresa said.
Mott wasn’t sure what to say to that, so he just shrugged. But she was right. Rory got his red hair from their mother. Mott had their dad’s plain brown hair, thankfully. Rory, with tufts of red that refused to lie down properly on his head, his overlarge eyes and mouth, and his face full of freckles, was always going to be kind of goofy-looking. Mott, on the other hand, had been getting girls’ stares long before he wanted to. When he turned thirteen a few months before, he finally began to welcome all that attention. According to his mom, he was “objectively good-looking.” The components of this assessment apparently were his naturally wavy hair, his “hooded” dark brown eyes, his “strong chin,” and his “great teeth.” In the last couple months, he’d also shot up a few inches, and he’d started working out. His shoulders were getting broad. He was beginning to see what his mom saw. Apparently, girls like Theresa were seeing it, too.
“Don’t let it go to your head,” his mom had told him. “If you do, I’ll ground you for the rest of your life.”
Smiling at the memory, he said to Theresa, “On a good day, I’ll admit Rory looks like our mom. On a bad day, I tell him he was left on our doorstep by sea monkeys.”
Rory raced up to the table just in time to hear what Mott had said. “I was not!” he shouted. Then he stuck out his hand. “I want more tickets!”
Mott sighed and dug in his pocket for a few more dollars. He’d have paid several hundred dollars to make Rory go away so he could keep talking to Theresa.
Rory took the money Mott held out and ran off without saying thank you.
Theresa laughed, then made a face. “I hate sea monkeys.”
Mott laughed, too. “Exactly. Creepy little things.” He winked. “The real ones, not my brother.”
Theresa shivered. “I know what you mean. The real ones are like centipedes with tentacles and tails.”
Freddy and his band segued into another cover of a popular song, this one with a rocking beat. Theresa scooted her chair closer to Mott. “This is a good song, don’t you think?”
Mott nodded. “I do, but I think I like this group’s ballads better.” He named another song by the same group who’d originally done this one.
Theresa bounced in her seat. “Oh, yeah, that’s a really good one. You like ballads? I’m learning to play the guitar, and that’s what I like to sing.”
“I’d love to hear you sing sometime,” Mott said.
Theresa beamed at him.
They spent the next several minutes talking music, and Mott had pretty much forgotten where he was until he glanced up and saw Rory galloping over, bouncing off a couple other little kids and two tables as he came. He was grinning wildly, and he held up what looked like a new toy … something in bright-colored cardboard and plastic packaging.
Rory was going so fast that when he got to the table he plowed right into Mott and started to lose his balance. Mott grabbed his brother’s arm and kept him upright.
“Look what I got, Mott!” Rory half yelled, half screamed.
He was only a few inches from Mott now, and Mott winced at the excessive decibel level. As he often did, he wished Rory had a volume control he could dial down.
Rory’s blaring announcement had gotten Theresa’s and her parents’ attention. They all smiled at Rory as Mott asked, with as much enthusiasm as he could muster, “What did you get?”
Rory started waving around his treasure. He waved it so rapidly that Mott still couldn’t tell what it was. He frowned, trying to read the words on the waving package.
“Sea Bonnies!” Rory said. “I got Sea Bonnies! Look!” He kept waving the package.
“I’m trying to look,” Mott said. He reached out and snatched the package.
Rory jumped up and down like he was on an invisible pogo stick.
Mott focused on the package in his hand. Against a black-checked background, bright red letters announced that the package contained “Astounding Live Sea Bonnies!” Under the words, the image of a seriously disquieting little purplish-blue creature that appeared to be a cross between a sea monkey and a rabbit was encircled by a bright blue blob of what was probably supposed to be water. Next to the image, the package promised, “Contains everything you need to grow and nurture your own Sea Bonnies.” Beneath that, plastic sheathing covered four packets, “Designed to start your own healthy colony of happy Sea Bonnies.” There were two packets of “Sea Bonnie LIVE EGGS,” one of “Sea Bonnie Water Purification Powder,” and one of “Sea Bonnie Super-Duper Growth Food.” At the bottom of the packaging, bright blue letters proclaimed, “Guaranteed to live for three years!”
Mott made a face and looked at Rory. “Really?”
Rory was still hopping up and down. Now he giggled and shouted, “You said sea monkeys left me on the doorstep. Not sea monkeys! Sea Bonnies!” Rory let loose with one of his high-pitched laughs. He clearly thought he was hilarious. He spun in a gleeful circle. “Now I can have some of my real brothers and sisters around.” He laughed some more, quite pleased with himself.
Mott shook his head. He felt Theresa leaning in behind him, and he showed her the package.
“Ew,” she said.
He nodded in agreement.
Rory plucked the package from Mott’s hand. “They’re awesome!”
“Sure they are,” Mott said.
* * *
As soon as Mott and Rory got home, Rory darted into the kitchen to find their mother, who was tearing up lettuce for a salad. Beef stew simmered on the six-burner Viking range that was his mom’s pride and joy. She loved to cook. Rory showed his mom the Sea Bonnies package and started talking nonstop as he climbed up onto one of the wood stools in front of the granite-covered island where she worked.
Their mom set the lettuce aside and began chopping tomatoes and cucumbers for the salad. For one blissful moment, all Mott could hear was the faint hum of the fan above the range, the intermittent tap of his mom’s knife against the cutting board, and the delicious stew bubbling. But then Rory started jabbering, and all Mott could hear was his chatterbox of a brother.
Rory waved his Sea Bonnies package under his mother’s nose. She blinked at it but kept working on the salad. Rory didn’t seem to care.
“Sea Bonnies are basically like sea monkeys, but they’re genically engined to look like Bonnie, you know Bonnie from Freddy’s,” Rory said.
Mott and his mother exchanged a smile at Rory’s version of “genetically engineered.”
Rory kept talking. “They’re super-cool looking, and Fazbear Entertainment only came out with them last month. That’s what Ben said. He usually buys all the new stuff, but his parents wouldn’t let him get any Sea Bonnies because they said Puter might eat them, and they didn’t think that would be good for Puter, and that wouldn’t be good for the Sea Bonnies, either.” He giggled wildly.
Mott looked at his mom over the top of Rory’s head. He shrugged.
Wearing her usual stay-at-home clothes—black yoga pants and a baggy white shirt—his mom brushed a strand of red hair from her blue eyes. She scratched her freckled nose and smiled.
“Puter is the family cat, right?” his mom said.
“Hm? Oh yeah,” Rory said. “Don’t you think I should get a bigger fish tank now that Fritz’s going to have friends? I mean, I know the small one fits on my desk, and the Sea Bonnies can help Fritz keep me company while I do homework and color and stuff. But if we got me a big tank with a stand, I could put it on the other side of the room, under the window. Oh, no, wait. What if we got a huge one, and we put it in the living room? Oh, no, wait. Then I wouldn’t have them in my room. I think I want them in my room. Maybe I could get more and we could get two tanks and …”
While Rory talked and Mott tried not to listen to him, their mom wiped her hands on a dish towel. She stepped over and gently put a hand over Rory’s mouth. “Take a breath, sweetie,” she said.
“It’s genetically engineered,” Mott said in the blessed quiet that suddenly filled the kitchen. “Not genically engined.”
His mom gave him a look and shook her head. He rolled his eyes.
She crossed the shiny wood floor to the stainless-steel refrigerator and opened it to grab a bottle of salad dressing. “Do Sea Bonnies have the same water temperature requirement that Fritz has?” she asked.
Rory said, “Huh?”
“May I see the package?” Mott asked Rory.
Rory shrugged and handed it over.
Mott scanned the instructions on the back of the package. He frowned. “Isn’t it seventy-four degrees now?”
His mother nodded.
“The water needs to be seventy-five to eighty-one degrees for them to hatch. Then it can go back down. I wonder if cranking it up to, like, seventy-eight or something would be okay for a goldfish for the twenty-four hours it takes to hatch the Sea Bonnie eggs?”
“Maybe you can research that after dinner,” his mom said.
Mott shrugged. “Sure. Why not? That’s what all the cool kids do on Saturday nights.”
She laughed. “No, that’s what the cool kids wish they were doing. Instead, they’re going to boring things like movies and parties.”
“I feel sorry for them,” Mott said.
Rory, who had been examining his Sea Bonnies with great pride and joy, suddenly pointed at a spot on the package. “What’s that word?”
Mott looked under his brother’s dirty index finger. “Colony.”
“What’s a colony?”
Mott let his mom take that one. When she finished defining the word, Rory screwed up his face and announced, “I want an empire, not a colony. That’s bigger, right? Maybe I should get another package of them.”
“One package is enough,” his mom told him.
Rory squinted and took a deep breath, in clear preparation for a loud rebellion.
Mott spoke quickly. “You can call it whatever you want, you know.”
Rory tilted his head. “I can?”
“Absolutely,” Mott and his mom said in unison.
After dinner and after determining that Fritz wouldn’t be harmed by a day or so of seventy-eight-degree water, Mott helped Rory get his tank set up for the Sea Bonnies.
Rory’s tank was small, maybe sixteen inches by ten inches or so. It held five gallons … more water than Fritz needed, but Mott thought Fritz always looked content in his domain. Mott idly wondered what Fritz would think about the soon-to-be interlopers. Did fish think?
Lifting the tank’s lid and waiting while Rory said hello to Fritz, Mott opened the Sea Bonnie packaging.
“Okay, the first step,” he told Rory, “is to put this in.” He handed Rory the packet of water purifier. At Rory’s insistence, he read the ingredients: salt, some kind of water conditioner, and some brine shrimp eggs.
“That’s all we can do today,” Mott told a frustrated Rory when his little brother wanted to dump all the other packets in, too.
“The instructions say to wait twenty-four hours. Then we’ll put in the eggs. Those will be the genetically engineered eggs.”
“Why do we have to wait?” Rory scowled.
Mott shrugged. “Because the packaging says so.” He didn’t bother telling Rory that the whole process was weird. He read the contents of the eggs packet, and he was surprised to see it also contained yeast, borax, soda, salt, and blue dye.
“What about this?” Rory asked, holding up the food packet.
Mott referred to the instructions. “That goes in after the eggs hatch.”
The food packet contained more yeast and some spirulina. It would have to be added every few days.
Because Mott didn’t trust Rory not to dump everything in the tank at once, he took the packets when he left Rory’s room. Rory protested, but when he started to throw a tantrum, their mom appeared to smooth things over.
Mott felt bad that she had to intervene. Their dad was a commercial airline pilot who was often away, which meant Mom had to run the house and do most everything at home. She also worked full-time at an event-planning firm and was trying to start her own company in her spare time (of which she had little). To compound matters, most of the events she planned happened in the evening, and she had to be there to oversee them. Mott wasn’t sure when his mom slept. And even with all that, she never acted annoyed when she was interrupted.
“Mom,” Mott said, “I’ll get him ready for bed. Go rest.”
“Sure?” she asked.
“Sure.”
“You’re a good son,” his mom said.
“I know.” He laughed.
With just a little wheedling, Mott got Rory into the bathroom to brush his teeth. While he brushed, Rory chattered about school and his friends and the new puppy that Danny and his family had gotten a couple weeks before. Toothpaste shot all over the place as Rory talked.
Used to this routine, Mott wiped down the counter and the floor. Eventually, Rory spit the remainder of his toothpaste into the sink. Mott used a wet washcloth to wipe Rory’s face. Rory wriggled out of his reach.
“I want a puppy,” Rory said. “When’s Dad coming home?”
“He’s doing nonstops this week,” Mott said. He’d opted for answering the second question first. It was easier. “I think he’ll be home for a few days next week.”
“Maybe he’ll get us a puppy while he’s home,” Rory said.
“Maybe Mom will get us a puppy when you demonstrate a little responsibility.”
Rory twisted his lips in concentration. “How do I do that?”
Mott considered what he could get away with. “Well, maybe if you cleaned up your room, didn’t yell so much, and stopped interrupting me and Mom whenever—”
Rory shouted, “No! I know what I can do!”
“Shh.”
Rory lowered his voice, to just above normal volume. “I can help Danny with Dapup.”
“Dapup?” Mott repeated.
“That’s the puppy’s name. His dad kept asking, ‘Where’s da puppy?’ and his mom said they might as well call him that. His whole name is Dapuppy, but they call him Dapup. Danny likes to follow Dapup around and say over and over, ‘What’s up, Dapup?’ ” Rory giggled gleefully.
Mott laughed. He couldn’t help it. Rory was a lot of annoying things, but he was also entertaining as all get out. Apparently, so were Danny and his family.
“Okay,” Mott said. “Let’s get you to bed.”
Following Rory into his room, Mott shut Rory’s bedroom door so Rory’s jibber-jabber didn’t bother their mother.
“Now Danny’s bugging his parents for a kitten,” Rory went on. “He wants to name it Dacat or Dakitten.” Rory launched himself toward his bed, spun in midair, and landed on his back. He kicked his legs in the air like an upturned beetle and let out another trill of giggles.
“Where are your pj’s, goofus?” Mott asked.
Rory sat up, his eyes dancing. He grabbed his pillow. “Under the bed, doofus!”
Mott bent over to look under the bed, and a pillow hit him in the side of the head. He rose to find Rory looking at the ceiling and whistling.
Mott glanced around as if searching for something. “Hm. A pillow just hit me in the head. I wonder where it came from.”
Rory giggled.
“Did it come from under the bed?” Mott asked. He stuck his head under the bed and spotted green-and-yellow dinosaur-patterned pj’s. As he reached for them, another pillow struck his shoulders.
Mott whipped his head out from under the bed and jumped to his feet, feigning shock and outrage. He dropped the pj’s on the bed. “Another one? Is there an invisible Pillow Thrower in the room?” He whirled in a circle, wearing a fierce expression as Rory giggled louder.
“Show yourself, you pillow-throwing milksop!” Mott leaned over and picked up the thrown pillows. “I’ll beat you in a fair fight, if you have the mettle!” He struck a warrior pose, both pillows raised.
Rory, struggling against a rising tide of giggles, shouted, “What’s a milksop, and why does he need metal?”
Mott cocked his head. “Hark, methinks these questions are a misdirect.” He glowered at Rory. “Dost thou do the Pillow Thrower’s bidding, young lad? Are thee in cahoots with the namby-pamby?”
Rory laughed so hard he snorted. He reached for the only remaining pillow on the bed. Mott turned his back to Rory and pretended to look for the Pillow Thrower again. The third pillow hit him in the back.
“Outrageous!” he bellowed, leaning to pick up the latest pillow. He rotated to face Rory. “I’ve no choice but to unleash my retaliation upon thine own countenance, young minion of the invisible Pillow Thrower!” Making sure he didn’t throw too hard, Mott fired all three pillows at Rory, who dove under the covers squealing and laughing.
Mott fell on him and started tickling him. Rory shrieked and laughed louder.
“Dost thou surrender?” Mott asked.
Rory gasped. “Yes! Yes!” His breath smelled like his peppermint toothpaste.
