Fic: Like Mother, Like Daughter
Title: Like Mother, Like Daughter
Author: cameroncrazed
Characters: Sylar/Claire, OFC, other (surprise!) character
Rating: um… let’s go with PG-13, that sounds good
Category: fiction
Spoilers: none
Summary: The eldest Sylaire daughter brings her boyfriend home to meet the family. Does. Not. Go. Well.
Written for: filmchickjen
Prompt: “story told from their son or daughters point of view, I would prefer it not be fluff” - I’m aiming for a mix of angst and dark humor here, so hopefully it’s not too fluffy.
Disclaimer: Don’t own the characters or concepts from “Heroes”, please do not be the suing type if you are the rightful owner.
Author’s note: Sorry it took me so long to get this prompt written (eep, I really did mean to get this out by the end of December!) Thanks to ladyanne525 for beta reading :)
So… today’s the big day. The day I bring the boy-shaped friend home to meet the parental units. D Day, where D stands for Doom. Or Daddy. Or Death, winging swiftly o’er the plains. Or all three. Doom Day when Daddy does his Death impersonation. Triple D Day. I think I’m gonna hurl. I just know that everything’s going to go just horribly wrong. I wonder if it’s too late to talk El out of this crazy idea of his. Meeting the parents is so last century, maybe he’ll buy that?
Don’t look at me like that. I know what you’re thinking: I’m being overly dramatic, I’m just anxious and all cold foot-y, that everyone goes through these sorts of feelings when they bring a boy home for the first time. You’re wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. First of all, it’s not the first time I’ve brought someone home - more like the fiftieth. That’s how I know just how awful this can be and how badly that my parents can react and/or how badly my flavor-of-the-weeks can respond to the massive freak show that is my well-hidden family life. Second, I’m not scared of disappointing my parents or anything like that - if they’re not disappointed by some of my siblings (*cough* Jack, the amazing blob boy *cough*), then they sure as hell won’t be disappointed by me - it’s just that Daddy hasn’t completely given up his semi-criminal ways, and he tends to go a bit scarily evil-like and all “grrr, die!” and all head-cutty and flat-out weird when he thinks about me getting groiny and orgasmy with someone, and nothing makes him think about it more than when I bring a boyfriend home. Which brings us to point the third - I’m not entirely sure I can call El my “boyfriend” and I can’t just stumble through supper by referring to him as “hey you”. Boyfriend has all sorts of interesting implications, like we’re dating casually or that he’s a boy. And we’re not and he’s not. Oh, I don’t mean that El’s of a feminine persuasion, it’s just that I find it difficult and ludicrous to call a man eighteen years older than me “boy”. And Daddy will seriously blow a gasket if I refer to El as “lovah” or “Mr. Super-Duper-Freak-in-the-Sack.” Accurate descriptions, yes, but also one hundred and ten percent guaranteed to cause an aneurysm or a severe case of must-punch-my-daughter’s-sexual-partner-in-the-nose-itis. Been there, done that, cleaned up the blood, not doing it again.
And again, don’t look at me like that. It’s not like El’s my creepy sugar daddy or something along those lines. I just am so tired of dating the brainless twits that are my age - have you ever dated a college-aged boy? Ugh. El’s just so… stable… and employed and sober (and, yes, I do mean that in both ways) compared to the frat boys on parade that I used to screw around with. Besides, Mom took up with Daddy even though he’s thirteen or fourteen years older than she is, not that either one of them look anywhere close to their real ages, so it’s no biggie. So what if I’m bringing home an almost forty-year old man?
Guh, there’s that lovely “gonna hurl” feeling back. Why did I ever agree to this?
Oh yeah, ‘cause El asked me to. “Act like a grown up,” he’d said. “No, we can’t just elope or run away, it’ll break your mom’s heart, trust me on that,” he’d insisted. Because he’s a good guy, and wants to do the right thing. I hate doing the right thing, it always just gets so messy and complicated. You know, I really should have probably dumped him right then and there. Would have saved me a lot of heartburn-inducing angst over the last week. But, nooooo, I had to agree to his crazy demands. Never again.
“Um…” How do I tell El about just how messed up my family is? “There’s a few things that I haven’t told you.” I leave the ‘that I probably should have told you before we were standing at the doorstep of my parents’ house’ unsaid.
“Relax, it’s not going to be that bad.” El squeezes my hand, in what I’m assuming he means to be a reassuring way. Instead, I just think that if he’s that limp wristed when he meets Daddy, he’s going to get all those delicate little bones in his hands crushed and ground into all sorts of powdery bonemeal. Daddy thinks he’s being funny and/or intimidating when he does shit like that; I think he’s being all jackassy.
What would make El less likely to freak out, the truth that my parents are superpowered immortals or a lie about how they have some sort of sick addiction to plastic surgery, hair dye, and Bowflex? Hmmmmm. Everyone stopped believing the “power of organic food” and “benefits of exercise” excuses when Daddy still looked twenty-ish on his fiftieth birthday, and everyone knows Mom would have gotten all saggy and icky and fat after ten kids if there wasn’t something strange and super-unnatural going on. Even moving every other year didn’t really help, people still figured it out. Hmm. Maybe I’ll just see how he reacts and then make up something later. Or distract him with a blowjob or sex, that usually works. It certainly distracted him that one time when my powers kicked in while we were watching TV.
I’m apparently visibly super-freaked, so he tightens his grasp, then pulls me close to him. Mmm, kissage. French-style kissage, even better. I lean back, and he presses me up against the wall of the house. Something’s digging into my back, and I realize too late that it’s the doorbell. Daddy yanks the door open before the ringing can get too annoying, catches El slipping me the tongue, and goes ballistic.
Oh, not pretty. I wonder if I should point out that spittle is really an unattractive look on him, and that veins really shouldn’t pulsate like that. If he wasn’t impossible to kill, I’d already be whipping out my ever-ready cell and fingering 9-1-1.
“Gabriel, stop screaming! Don’t scare the company!” My mom yells out from somewhere back in the house, probably the kitchen, where I know she’s re-plating the carry-out onto the good china in a futile attempt to make it look like she isn’t a complete failure in the Mrs. Domesticity contest.
“That’s odd…” El blinks, confused, when Mom calls out. “She sounds just like… no, can’t be.” He looks at my dad - really looks at him - and I can tell he’s even more confused. “I know you. How do I know you? We didn’t go to college together, and I think I knew you before then. Maybe it was high school… did you used to date my sister?”
Daddy just glares at him. Oh, I wish he hadn’t have done that. The glare just makes him even more recognizable, and I know it’s just going to be another second or two before El realizes that Daddy looks suspiciously like that psychotic mass murderer on that ABC special we were watching last week. Great, another date’s going to end in a brainwashing a la Uncle René. Brilliant, just absolutely brill.
El closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose, and I know all hell’s about to break loose.
Turns out I’m right, super psychic powers, activate! I got the who, what, when, and where right, I was just a bit off on the why aspect. Okay, way off. Mom walks into the room with a platter of “homemade” Southern fried chicken (thanks, KFC, we totally luv you!), and as soon as she spots El, she drops the platter. Fried chicken everywhere. We’ll never get the grease out of the carpet, but no one other than me really cares about that right now. I’ve never seen Mom that shade of white, not even when the twins decided to play “cowboys and Indians” and scalped the baby.
“Claire?” El sounds ten types of strangled. “Is that really you?”
If Mom used to date my boyfriend, I’m running away and never coming back. I mean it this time. I watch them both carefully as Mom starts shaking, and El keeps looking back and forth between me and Mom, and he’s gripping my hand like he needs my strength to keep from falling over. I know he’s comparing and contrasting, seeing how I have her height and Daddy’s hair, her eyes and his eyebrows. I know that I’m not as pretty as she is, and if he says it too - or worse yet, that I look just like her when I know that’s a lie - I’m going to punch him.
Daddy breaks the tension with hysterical laughter. He has such an odd sense of humor. He laughs until he starts crying, then leans up against the wall and starts laughing even harder. He finally manages to wheeze “Like mother, like daughter, it’s like the Peter incident all over again” then starts howling again.
Now what is that supposed to mean? Who’s Peter?
El looks at me again, then Mom, then he starts laughing too. Great, insanity must be catching. Viral madness, like some sort of crazy-inducing swine flu, is that even possible? When he stops laughing, he lets me go, and slowly reaches out for Mom. She takes a few steps, and then she’s in his arms and they’re hugging. When they finally break apart, she grabs his hand and interlaces her fingers with his. I really am going to hurl.
Daddy finally stops laughing, and pulls me into a hug from behind, and I hate that type of hug because in this family, it’s always the prelude to something bad happening, something that Daddy knows I’m not going to like. “Baby, I see you’ve met Lyle. Your mother’s brother Lyle. Your uncle Lyle.”
Oh mi god, so this is what a stroke feels like. Or maybe it’s a heart attack. Which one is it where everything goes black and all spinny and your chest hurts and left is right and up is down and dude. Can’t breathe. It’s like when the snot factories masquerading as my younger brothers shrunk my bra three sizes - while I was still wearing it. El’s my fucking uncle? And I think I just vomited a little in my mouth as it hits me just how accurate that description is and I’m some sort of awful incestuous freakazoid rex, I belong on fmylife.com or cretinsrus.com or a sexual pervert list or “To Catch a Predator” or something, and it’s all my parents’ fault because Mom never ever mentioned that she had a family before and how many other uncles do I have running around loose on the world and oh emm gee, does Daddy have another family too, and why have I never met or even heard of these people before now and… aaaaahhhh, this is why I hate my family! Why can’t we just be normal, for once? Once? Is that too fraking much to ask? A house in the suburbs, a dog, two children instead of an entire football team worth of super-powered kids, normal parents who do normal things and don’t hide from the cops or hide extra family members and just act normal, that’s not too much, is it?
In the middle of my world, like, imploding or going kerblowy, or whatever it’s doing that makes me feel so faint and ickyfied, no one even notices. See what I mean about us not being normal - normal parents would see their kid getting severely freaked out and respond. Instead, Mom and Uncle (gack!) El just keep on hugging and chatting about Daddy and something called a “muggle the fifth” and Daddy just keeps laughing and why can’t they see what’s going on here?
“What the hell is wrong with you people!” Okay, that sounded shrill even to me, but they deserve it. “Mom, you have a brother? Why didn’t you ever tell me that and I bet you’re hiding grandparents, too!”
You know, I think El might fit into this family better than I do. He just pats me on the head and says, so nonchalantly, “Your grandmother Sandra’s going to love meeting you. I’d already planned on you having supper with us tomorrow, so is that okay? By the way, we’re picking her up from the airport at noon. Claire, Sylar, want to come with us?”
Sure thing, I’ll gladly meet my lover’s-mother-turned-my-own-grandmother tomorrow. Fabulous. Can he not see how ridiculous this whole fiasco is? Why is he not the least little bit concerned about the fact that he’s a sexual deviant?
“Lyle, I don’t know.”
Thank you, Mom! Way to be the voice of reason after twenty-odd years. Please put a stop to this insanity. My hopes are completely shot down as soon as she keeps on talking.
“Mom’s going to be so mad. Maybe you can just mention that you bumped into me and slowly work her up to a family supper? It might be a bit much to spring a long-lost daughter, son-in-law, and eleven grandkids on her.” Mom bites her lip, and it’s the first time I’ve seen her nervous in a long time.
Eleven? Mom’s either going senile - so not a possibility - or she’s pregnant. Again. I thought they’d finally stopped after the last baby was born with her power, so she wouldn’t have to keep pumping ‘em out in order to have replacements for when we get old and wrinkly and then die, but apparently not. Great. Another reason to hate this family. Oh, that ‘can’t breathe, need to pass out’ feeling’s back, only this time with extra ‘my vision’s going all red and I’m really pissed off’ anger too.
“Hey, kids!” Daddy bellows up the stairs, “I want you to come meet your Uncle Lyle!” You know, of all people, I thought he’d at least react a bit more to this entire situation - react violently, but at least react in some visible way other than calling down all the rest of the family to view my shame and embarrassment. It’s just like when my period started for the first time and he took us all tampon shopping together as a “family building activity”, only even worse.
I wonder if my grandmother is crazy too. Probably, but maybe she’s a different type of crazy. I wonder if I have a grandfather, too. That would be a kinda cool plus-side to this horrible no-good day, to have actual grandparents, just like I’d asked Santa for back in second grade. I’m a bit too old to ask for a pony or for whatever it is that normal kids ask their grandparents for, but it would be nice to have grandparents for once. I bet my granddad (Grandfather? Grampa? The Grampsmeister? Big Pop?) is all kindly and has nerdy glasses and an even nerdier hobby and my grandma (hmm, I think I’ll go with Gramma for her) makes cookies and knits and has like a thousand cats, and you know, I do want to meet them. If only so I can hear Gramma yell at Mom for not letting them see us kids before now.
As the wild horde (aka, my younger siblings) run into the room, swarming around El like some sort of swarming swarm that swarms around unsuspecting yet delicious prey, Daddy hugs me again and kisses my forehead. “You know, Ginny, you are so much like your mom. At least Lyle’s not your biological uncle. And he’s not nearly as much of an annoying twat as Peter was.”
And again with the Peter reference, who was (is?) this mysterious dude? Wait, what? What’s the distinction about biological uncle for? El’s not really my uncle? That buzzing in my ears and the tightness in my chest start to dissipate. Oh, blessed air, how I’ve missed ye. Now that my oxygen-deprived brain can function again, I realize that he really doesn’t look all that much like Mom, so maybe he’s adopted. Maybe I freaked out for nothing. Maybe I’m not a complete and total perv who keeps it in the family. Hmmm. Grandparents and a technically-not-related hottie… maybe this night isn’t totally ruined yet.
Author: cameroncrazed
Characters: Sylar/Claire, OFC, other (surprise!) character
Rating: um… let’s go with PG-13, that sounds good
Category: fiction
Spoilers: none
Summary: The eldest Sylaire daughter brings her boyfriend home to meet the family. Does. Not. Go. Well.
Written for: filmchickjen
Prompt: “story told from their son or daughters point of view, I would prefer it not be fluff” - I’m aiming for a mix of angst and dark humor here, so hopefully it’s not too fluffy.
Disclaimer: Don’t own the characters or concepts from “Heroes”, please do not be the suing type if you are the rightful owner.
Author’s note: Sorry it took me so long to get this prompt written (eep, I really did mean to get this out by the end of December!) Thanks to ladyanne525 for beta reading :)
So… today’s the big day. The day I bring the boy-shaped friend home to meet the parental units. D Day, where D stands for Doom. Or Daddy. Or Death, winging swiftly o’er the plains. Or all three. Doom Day when Daddy does his Death impersonation. Triple D Day. I think I’m gonna hurl. I just know that everything’s going to go just horribly wrong. I wonder if it’s too late to talk El out of this crazy idea of his. Meeting the parents is so last century, maybe he’ll buy that?
Don’t look at me like that. I know what you’re thinking: I’m being overly dramatic, I’m just anxious and all cold foot-y, that everyone goes through these sorts of feelings when they bring a boy home for the first time. You’re wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. First of all, it’s not the first time I’ve brought someone home - more like the fiftieth. That’s how I know just how awful this can be and how badly that my parents can react and/or how badly my flavor-of-the-weeks can respond to the massive freak show that is my well-hidden family life. Second, I’m not scared of disappointing my parents or anything like that - if they’re not disappointed by some of my siblings (*cough* Jack, the amazing blob boy *cough*), then they sure as hell won’t be disappointed by me - it’s just that Daddy hasn’t completely given up his semi-criminal ways, and he tends to go a bit scarily evil-like and all “grrr, die!” and all head-cutty and flat-out weird when he thinks about me getting groiny and orgasmy with someone, and nothing makes him think about it more than when I bring a boyfriend home. Which brings us to point the third - I’m not entirely sure I can call El my “boyfriend” and I can’t just stumble through supper by referring to him as “hey you”. Boyfriend has all sorts of interesting implications, like we’re dating casually or that he’s a boy. And we’re not and he’s not. Oh, I don’t mean that El’s of a feminine persuasion, it’s just that I find it difficult and ludicrous to call a man eighteen years older than me “boy”. And Daddy will seriously blow a gasket if I refer to El as “lovah” or “Mr. Super-Duper-Freak-in-the-Sack.” Accurate descriptions, yes, but also one hundred and ten percent guaranteed to cause an aneurysm or a severe case of must-punch-my-daughter’s-sexual-partner-in-the-nose-itis. Been there, done that, cleaned up the blood, not doing it again.
And again, don’t look at me like that. It’s not like El’s my creepy sugar daddy or something along those lines. I just am so tired of dating the brainless twits that are my age - have you ever dated a college-aged boy? Ugh. El’s just so… stable… and employed and sober (and, yes, I do mean that in both ways) compared to the frat boys on parade that I used to screw around with. Besides, Mom took up with Daddy even though he’s thirteen or fourteen years older than she is, not that either one of them look anywhere close to their real ages, so it’s no biggie. So what if I’m bringing home an almost forty-year old man?
Guh, there’s that lovely “gonna hurl” feeling back. Why did I ever agree to this?
Oh yeah, ‘cause El asked me to. “Act like a grown up,” he’d said. “No, we can’t just elope or run away, it’ll break your mom’s heart, trust me on that,” he’d insisted. Because he’s a good guy, and wants to do the right thing. I hate doing the right thing, it always just gets so messy and complicated. You know, I really should have probably dumped him right then and there. Would have saved me a lot of heartburn-inducing angst over the last week. But, nooooo, I had to agree to his crazy demands. Never again.
“Um…” How do I tell El about just how messed up my family is? “There’s a few things that I haven’t told you.” I leave the ‘that I probably should have told you before we were standing at the doorstep of my parents’ house’ unsaid.
“Relax, it’s not going to be that bad.” El squeezes my hand, in what I’m assuming he means to be a reassuring way. Instead, I just think that if he’s that limp wristed when he meets Daddy, he’s going to get all those delicate little bones in his hands crushed and ground into all sorts of powdery bonemeal. Daddy thinks he’s being funny and/or intimidating when he does shit like that; I think he’s being all jackassy.
What would make El less likely to freak out, the truth that my parents are superpowered immortals or a lie about how they have some sort of sick addiction to plastic surgery, hair dye, and Bowflex? Hmmmmm. Everyone stopped believing the “power of organic food” and “benefits of exercise” excuses when Daddy still looked twenty-ish on his fiftieth birthday, and everyone knows Mom would have gotten all saggy and icky and fat after ten kids if there wasn’t something strange and super-unnatural going on. Even moving every other year didn’t really help, people still figured it out. Hmm. Maybe I’ll just see how he reacts and then make up something later. Or distract him with a blowjob or sex, that usually works. It certainly distracted him that one time when my powers kicked in while we were watching TV.
I’m apparently visibly super-freaked, so he tightens his grasp, then pulls me close to him. Mmm, kissage. French-style kissage, even better. I lean back, and he presses me up against the wall of the house. Something’s digging into my back, and I realize too late that it’s the doorbell. Daddy yanks the door open before the ringing can get too annoying, catches El slipping me the tongue, and goes ballistic.
Oh, not pretty. I wonder if I should point out that spittle is really an unattractive look on him, and that veins really shouldn’t pulsate like that. If he wasn’t impossible to kill, I’d already be whipping out my ever-ready cell and fingering 9-1-1.
“Gabriel, stop screaming! Don’t scare the company!” My mom yells out from somewhere back in the house, probably the kitchen, where I know she’s re-plating the carry-out onto the good china in a futile attempt to make it look like she isn’t a complete failure in the Mrs. Domesticity contest.
“That’s odd…” El blinks, confused, when Mom calls out. “She sounds just like… no, can’t be.” He looks at my dad - really looks at him - and I can tell he’s even more confused. “I know you. How do I know you? We didn’t go to college together, and I think I knew you before then. Maybe it was high school… did you used to date my sister?”
Daddy just glares at him. Oh, I wish he hadn’t have done that. The glare just makes him even more recognizable, and I know it’s just going to be another second or two before El realizes that Daddy looks suspiciously like that psychotic mass murderer on that ABC special we were watching last week. Great, another date’s going to end in a brainwashing a la Uncle René. Brilliant, just absolutely brill.
El closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose, and I know all hell’s about to break loose.
Turns out I’m right, super psychic powers, activate! I got the who, what, when, and where right, I was just a bit off on the why aspect. Okay, way off. Mom walks into the room with a platter of “homemade” Southern fried chicken (thanks, KFC, we totally luv you!), and as soon as she spots El, she drops the platter. Fried chicken everywhere. We’ll never get the grease out of the carpet, but no one other than me really cares about that right now. I’ve never seen Mom that shade of white, not even when the twins decided to play “cowboys and Indians” and scalped the baby.
“Claire?” El sounds ten types of strangled. “Is that really you?”
If Mom used to date my boyfriend, I’m running away and never coming back. I mean it this time. I watch them both carefully as Mom starts shaking, and El keeps looking back and forth between me and Mom, and he’s gripping my hand like he needs my strength to keep from falling over. I know he’s comparing and contrasting, seeing how I have her height and Daddy’s hair, her eyes and his eyebrows. I know that I’m not as pretty as she is, and if he says it too - or worse yet, that I look just like her when I know that’s a lie - I’m going to punch him.
Daddy breaks the tension with hysterical laughter. He has such an odd sense of humor. He laughs until he starts crying, then leans up against the wall and starts laughing even harder. He finally manages to wheeze “Like mother, like daughter, it’s like the Peter incident all over again” then starts howling again.
Now what is that supposed to mean? Who’s Peter?
El looks at me again, then Mom, then he starts laughing too. Great, insanity must be catching. Viral madness, like some sort of crazy-inducing swine flu, is that even possible? When he stops laughing, he lets me go, and slowly reaches out for Mom. She takes a few steps, and then she’s in his arms and they’re hugging. When they finally break apart, she grabs his hand and interlaces her fingers with his. I really am going to hurl.
Daddy finally stops laughing, and pulls me into a hug from behind, and I hate that type of hug because in this family, it’s always the prelude to something bad happening, something that Daddy knows I’m not going to like. “Baby, I see you’ve met Lyle. Your mother’s brother Lyle. Your uncle Lyle.”
Oh mi god, so this is what a stroke feels like. Or maybe it’s a heart attack. Which one is it where everything goes black and all spinny and your chest hurts and left is right and up is down and dude. Can’t breathe. It’s like when the snot factories masquerading as my younger brothers shrunk my bra three sizes - while I was still wearing it. El’s my fucking uncle? And I think I just vomited a little in my mouth as it hits me just how accurate that description is and I’m some sort of awful incestuous freakazoid rex, I belong on fmylife.com or cretinsrus.com or a sexual pervert list or “To Catch a Predator” or something, and it’s all my parents’ fault because Mom never ever mentioned that she had a family before and how many other uncles do I have running around loose on the world and oh emm gee, does Daddy have another family too, and why have I never met or even heard of these people before now and… aaaaahhhh, this is why I hate my family! Why can’t we just be normal, for once? Once? Is that too fraking much to ask? A house in the suburbs, a dog, two children instead of an entire football team worth of super-powered kids, normal parents who do normal things and don’t hide from the cops or hide extra family members and just act normal, that’s not too much, is it?
In the middle of my world, like, imploding or going kerblowy, or whatever it’s doing that makes me feel so faint and ickyfied, no one even notices. See what I mean about us not being normal - normal parents would see their kid getting severely freaked out and respond. Instead, Mom and Uncle (gack!) El just keep on hugging and chatting about Daddy and something called a “muggle the fifth” and Daddy just keeps laughing and why can’t they see what’s going on here?
“What the hell is wrong with you people!” Okay, that sounded shrill even to me, but they deserve it. “Mom, you have a brother? Why didn’t you ever tell me that and I bet you’re hiding grandparents, too!”
You know, I think El might fit into this family better than I do. He just pats me on the head and says, so nonchalantly, “Your grandmother Sandra’s going to love meeting you. I’d already planned on you having supper with us tomorrow, so is that okay? By the way, we’re picking her up from the airport at noon. Claire, Sylar, want to come with us?”
Sure thing, I’ll gladly meet my lover’s-mother-turned-my-own-grandmother tomorrow. Fabulous. Can he not see how ridiculous this whole fiasco is? Why is he not the least little bit concerned about the fact that he’s a sexual deviant?
“Lyle, I don’t know.”
Thank you, Mom! Way to be the voice of reason after twenty-odd years. Please put a stop to this insanity. My hopes are completely shot down as soon as she keeps on talking.
“Mom’s going to be so mad. Maybe you can just mention that you bumped into me and slowly work her up to a family supper? It might be a bit much to spring a long-lost daughter, son-in-law, and eleven grandkids on her.” Mom bites her lip, and it’s the first time I’ve seen her nervous in a long time.
Eleven? Mom’s either going senile - so not a possibility - or she’s pregnant. Again. I thought they’d finally stopped after the last baby was born with her power, so she wouldn’t have to keep pumping ‘em out in order to have replacements for when we get old and wrinkly and then die, but apparently not. Great. Another reason to hate this family. Oh, that ‘can’t breathe, need to pass out’ feeling’s back, only this time with extra ‘my vision’s going all red and I’m really pissed off’ anger too.
“Hey, kids!” Daddy bellows up the stairs, “I want you to come meet your Uncle Lyle!” You know, of all people, I thought he’d at least react a bit more to this entire situation - react violently, but at least react in some visible way other than calling down all the rest of the family to view my shame and embarrassment. It’s just like when my period started for the first time and he took us all tampon shopping together as a “family building activity”, only even worse.
I wonder if my grandmother is crazy too. Probably, but maybe she’s a different type of crazy. I wonder if I have a grandfather, too. That would be a kinda cool plus-side to this horrible no-good day, to have actual grandparents, just like I’d asked Santa for back in second grade. I’m a bit too old to ask for a pony or for whatever it is that normal kids ask their grandparents for, but it would be nice to have grandparents for once. I bet my granddad (Grandfather? Grampa? The Grampsmeister? Big Pop?) is all kindly and has nerdy glasses and an even nerdier hobby and my grandma (hmm, I think I’ll go with Gramma for her) makes cookies and knits and has like a thousand cats, and you know, I do want to meet them. If only so I can hear Gramma yell at Mom for not letting them see us kids before now.
As the wild horde (aka, my younger siblings) run into the room, swarming around El like some sort of swarming swarm that swarms around unsuspecting yet delicious prey, Daddy hugs me again and kisses my forehead. “You know, Ginny, you are so much like your mom. At least Lyle’s not your biological uncle. And he’s not nearly as much of an annoying twat as Peter was.”
And again with the Peter reference, who was (is?) this mysterious dude? Wait, what? What’s the distinction about biological uncle for? El’s not really my uncle? That buzzing in my ears and the tightness in my chest start to dissipate. Oh, blessed air, how I’ve missed ye. Now that my oxygen-deprived brain can function again, I realize that he really doesn’t look all that much like Mom, so maybe he’s adopted. Maybe I freaked out for nothing. Maybe I’m not a complete and total perv who keeps it in the family. Hmmm. Grandparents and a technically-not-related hottie… maybe this night isn’t totally ruined yet.