Page 5 of Ensnared
It’s actually a cute name. Every single time I’ve called home for the past month and change, it’s been the only thing my six-year-old brother has wanted to talk about. Apparently the Boo Bash is a huge school carnival to which everyone wears costumes.
Sammy wanted me to match him, but there was no way I was showing up as Ben Ten’s cousin Gwen. Luckily, he agreed I could wear my MMA attire and gloves, and come as myself, essentially. Blocking off time a week and a half before my fight was hard enough. A ready-made costume was a major plus.
I shouldn’t really be here at all. Sousa will kill me if I eat so much as a handful of candy. If I hadn’t promised Sammy, I wouldn’t be tempting fate, but as the youngest child in a family with four children, he’s let down a lot. I don’t want to be the cause of any additional disappointment for the little guy.
“You’re here!” Sammy’s face lights up when he sees me. With his speech delay, it sounds more like, “yow heyah!”
“I said I’d come.”
When he races toward me, I hold out my arms, my hands snagging him underneath his armpits and swinging him around. I can’t believe he’s wearing a jacket in this weather—seventy degrees. Typical Texas fall—but Ben Ten is known by that green jacket with the stripe and number.
The second I set him down, he’s jabbering again. “When I said my sister beat people up for her job, Jackson said I was lying,” he says, which sounds like ‘wying.’
“Where’s this Jackson?” I ask. “I think he needs a punch on the nose.”
“Lizzie!” Mom’s familiar voice behind me has me spinning around for a hug.
Nothing can really prepare someone for the sheer force of my mother. First I hear the schlepping sound of her flip flops, and then the smell of patchouli slams into my olfactories like a fly swatter. Last but not least, her arms wrap around me and squeeze. For a small, slender woman, she really knows how to commit to a hug.
Most people think I take after my dad—discipline, restraint, insane dedication—but they don’t see the real core of who my mother is. She’s stronger than anyone I know, and she’d do anything in the world for her family. Once, my vegetarian, save-the-planet mother actually punched a guy who was harassing the girls at the outdoor eating area of a Jimmy Chang’s Mexican restaurant. Her solid right cross sent him flying backward into the painted monkey on the brick wall. Dad thought the guy was gonna sue, but I guess he wasn’t keen on telling people that a tiny woman had beaten him up.
“I’m so glad you could come,” Mom whispers, “but don’t punch any of Sammy’s friends, no matter how irritating or rude they are, alright?”
As if she needs to remind me of that. “My hands are licensed as deadly weapons,” I say. “I promise not to use them in any way at an elementary school carnival.”
“Thank goodness.” She releases me.
I finally take in what she’s wearing. “Sammy said we all had to come in costume.” I arch one eyebrow. “You just came as yourself?”
“I’m a fortune teller. That’s a legitimate costume for most people.” She shrugs. “You came in your normal workwear, too, so you’re one to talk.” She gestures toward what looks like an enormous, human-sized rubber band launcher. “Coral and Jade are the cutest hippies you’ve ever seen. They’re both over there waiting in line to do the bungee jump again, or I’d show you.”
Oh my word. The school carnival has a bungee jump? “I can practically see Sousa’s eyes bug out right now at the whiff of a thought that I might try that.”
“You should. You only get one life.” Mom’s mantra for as long as I’ve known her. “Just don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
Which rules out precisely nothing. “Thanks, Mom.”
Sammy’s pulling on my hand pretty hard now. “Jackson’s this way.”
I’ve been his go-to bully shield for years. It’s sad that a six-year-old has needed a bully eliminator for years, but preschoolers aren’t nice to little kids with speech delays. They used to say he sounded like a monkey right in front of him, as if his speech delay meant he also couldn’t hear. Or, probably more likely, as if they didn’t care what he thought or felt, because he was different from them.
I usually try to remember to give kids a pass—it’s their parents I should probably blame. Some adults don’t bother teaching manners to their children, because they don’t have any themselves. They should be ashamed of the things they say and do, but instead, they’re modeling to make kids just like them. Luckily, this Jackson kid turns out to be your average loudmouth who doesn’t think, and after just a few insistent explanations, he and Sammy seem to be fine.
An hour and twelve carnival games later, a fun-size Snickers is calling my name. I’m still not sure why they call them fun size. There’s nothing fun about one bite, but it’s better than no bites. I’m seriously wondering how much sugar it would take before I’d get sluggish at tomorrow morning’s stair run when I recognize Jade’s cry for help.
Thanks to my training, I’m good at dealing with rushes of adrenaline. It only takes me two seconds to locate her—bouncing up and down on the bungee line. She’s still shouting, but she’s laughing now, too.
Coral’s dying laughing beside the line, having already gone again herself. You’d think, since Jade had already gone twice just like Coral, she wouldn’t shriek so much. The two of them are only a year apart, but they manage to be opposite souls in almost every way. Luckily, they’re still thick as thieves, almost inseparable most days. I actually feel sorry for Sammy. There’s no one in our family close to his age, which I know all about, and Coral and Jade are usually playing girly things with no interest in modifying to include him.
Mom catches my eye and shakes her head from where she’s stuck, manning the bake sale goods. Luckily, I know just what she means, because less than thirty seconds later, the girls ask me for money to do the bungee just one more time. “Mom already said no,” I say. “She’s worried you’ll get sick.”
“I won’t get sick,” Coral says with a sigh. Then her eyes cut sideways.
“Hey, I won’t either,” Jade says.
Which we all know is probably not true. She’s a lightweight in all senses of the word. “Regardless, the answer’s no. You’ve gotten to fly through the air several times. Now, gather up your little bags, and let’s get ready to go.”
“But we haven’t bobbed for donuts yet,” Jade says.
