My Life Next Door(82)

George, crunching, suggests we build the walls out of marshmallows instead. “I’m sort of sick of sugar cubes.”

Duff reacts with a rage out of all proportion. “George. I’m not building this as a snack for you. Marshmallows don’t look anything like glass bricks in a wall. I need to do well on this—if I do, I get a ribbon and next month’s camp costs half off.”

“Let’s ask Dad,” Harry suggests. “Maybe boat shellac? Or something?”

“My life is over,” Andy sobs from upstairs.

“I think I should go talk to her,” I tell the boys. “You call your father—or Jase.”

I head up the stairs toward the echoing wails, grabbing a box of Kleenex from the bathroom before I go into Andy and Alice’s room.

She’s lying facedown on her bed, in her soggy bathing suit, having cried so hard that there’s a big damp circle on her pillow. I sit down next to her, handing her a wad of Kleenex.

“It’s over. Everything’s over.”

“Kyle?” I ask, grimacing, because I know that’s what it has to be.

“He…he broke up with me!” Andy raises her head, her hazel eyes swimming with tears. “By…Post-it note. He stuck it on my lifejacket while I was practicing rigging the jib.”

“You’re kidding,” I say, which I know is the wrong thing to say, but honestly.

Andy reaches under the pillow and pulls out a neon orange square that reads: Andrea. It’s been fun, but now I want 2 go with Jade Whelan. See ya, Kyle.

“Suave.”

“I know!” Andy bursts into a fresh round of tears. “I’ve loved him for three years, ever since he taught me how to make a slip knot on the first day of sailing camp…and he can’t even say this to my face! ‘See ya’?! Jade Whelan? She used to take boys behind the piano in fourth-grade assembly and show them her bra! She didn’t even need one! I hate her. I hate him.”

“You should,” I say. “I’m sorry.”

I rub Andy’s back in little circles much the way I did Nan’s. “The first boy I kissed was this guy Taylor Oliveira. He told everyone at school I didn’t know what to do with my tongue.”

Andy gives a faint watery giggle. “Did you?”

“I had no clue. But neither did Taylor. He used his like a toothbrush. Yuck. Maybe because his dad was a dentist.”

Andy giggles again, then looks down and sees the Post-it note. The tears resume.

“He was my first kiss. I waited for somebody I really cared about…and now it turns out he was a jerk. Now I can’t take it back. I wasted my first kiss on a jerk!” She curls into a ball on the bed, sobbing even louder.

“Shut up, Andy, I can’t concentrate on my project!” Duff calls up the stairs.

“My world is coming to an end,” she retorts loudly, “so I don’t particularly care!”

At this point Patsy wanders in, having recently learned both to climb out of her crib and to remove her diaper, in whatever state it may be. In this case, fully loaded. She waves it triumphantly at me. “Poooooooooop.”

“Ugh,” Andy moans. “I’m gonna throw up.”

“I’ll get it.” I reflect on the fact that two months ago I had never come in contact with a diaper. Now I could practically teach a Learning Annex course on the many ways of dealing with any potential toileting disaster.

Patsy watches me with detached curiosity as I clean up her wall (ew), change her sheets (again, ew), plunk her into a short bath, and re-diaper and clothe her in something sanitary. “Where poop?” she asks mournfully, craning her neck to examine her bottom.

“Gee-ooorge!” a furious voice bellows from the kitchen. I go down to find that George has used the hammer from his Bob the Builder tool kit to smash the remaining sugar cubes while Duff was on the phone with his father. Now George, spindly legs flying, is running out the door, wearing nothing but Superman underpants, with Duff, angrily brandishing the phone as though it’s a weapon, careening after him.

I chase them up the driveway just as the Bug pulls in and Jase climbs out, all loose-limbed grace.

“Hey now.” He reaches out to me. We stand in the driveway with Jase kissing me as though the fact that Harry is making vomiting noises and Duff is about to kill George doesn’t matter at all. Then he loops his arm around my neck, turns to his brothers, and says, “Okay, what’s going on?”

In no time he has it all sorted out. Duff is painting Popsicle sticks white to replace the crumbling sugar walls. Andy’s eating a Milky Way and watching Ella Enchanted on the big bed in her parents’ room. Pizza Palace is on its way. Harry’s making a gigantic pillow house cage for Patsy and George, who’re pretending to be baby tigers.