Read Fabulous Five 006 - The Parent Game for Free Online Page B

like to see you sometime?
    "Jana?" her mother spoke from the doorway.
    Jana slid her school notebook over the letter. "Oh, hi,"
she answered stiffly.
    "May I come in?"
    "Sure."
    "What are you doing, sweetheart?"
    "Just my homework."
    "My, that's a big dinosaur. Where did you get that?"
    "It belongs to Shane Arrington. It's a Tyrannosaurus
rex, and it's supposed to be one of our make-believe babies for the Family
Living project. We decided to have a boy and a girl."
    "Oh, I see," said her mother, chuckling as she
looked Rex over. "And your rabbit is the other baby?"
    Jana nodded and wished she had not put the bunny her father
had given her where her mother could see it.
    "Do you have a minute to talk, Jana?" she
continued. "We just have to set a time to find you a dress. Since evenings
are out, and we talked about Saturday, can we make it definite?"
    Jana shrugged as the old feelings of resistance returned. If
she could just put off shopping for a dress until she got her feelings sorted
out. "Now I've got the problem of what to do with Rex," she offered
hopefully.
    "Rex?"
    "Yes, the dinosaur. That's what Shane named him. I can't
leave him and my bunny alone, and he's almost too big to lug around the mall."
    Her mother stared at the stuffed animals. Rex seemed to be
smiling back at her with his idiot grin. "You can't leave them at home?"
    "No, not without someone to sit them. That's one of the
rules. Remember? I told you about it," she said sharply, and then wished
she could bite her tongue. Her mother was so preoccupied with the wedding that
she couldn't concentrate on anything else. "You can leave them with a
sitter, but it can't be a parent," she explained patiently. "If I did
and Mrs. Clark found out, I could get an F on the project."
    "Can't you get Shane to take care of them?"
    "Oh, he will, but I said I'd take care of them when he's
playing football, and he'll take care of them when I'm working on the yearbook.
The other times we'll take turns. There's a game with Trumbull Saturday
afternoon."
    Her mother looked frustrated again. "Jana, we have just got to get you a dress. Can't one of your friends sit for you?"
    "They'll all be at the game, and they've talked
everyone who isn't going into sitting for them."
    "Well," her mother sighed, "we'll just have
to take your babies shopping with us."
    "But Rex is so big. "
    "Jana, don't you want to get a new dress for the
wedding?"
    Jana ducked her head so that her mother couldn't see the expression
on her face. "Sure I do, Mom. It's just that I've got problems." Why
couldn't she understand? "I'm not doing it on purpose."
    Jana's mother looked at her. "Jana, honey, don't you
like Pink anymore?"
    Jana looked at her in astonishment. "Of course I do."
    "Well, the way you're acting, I'm beginning to wonder."
    "The way I'm acting? I just have school things that I have to do, and now I have to take care of Shane's dumb dinosaur. I didn't invent
them. They have nothing to do with Pink."
    "Well, young lady, we're going shopping Saturday
morning for a dress, and that's final." Sparks flew out of her mother's
eyes. "We'll just have to manage to do it with the animals."
She stood up and looked down at Jana.
    Jana fought back tears. "Okay," she said weakly. Her
mother turned and left abruptly.
    As the door closed, the tears gushed and spilled down Jana's
cheeks. Her mother hadn't spoken to her like that since she was a little kid
and had done something naughty. And now she felt as if she were being treated
as if she were a little kid again.
    She took the unfinished letter from under the notebook and
wadded it up and threw it at the pink rabbit. It bounced and ended up on the
floor. She stared at it for a few moments, then got up and retrieved it. She
spread it flat on the desktop and tried to press the wrinkles out of it. A tear
splashed on the paper and made the ink run. Why couldn't her mother understand?

CHAPTER 9
    "Wow, Jana, are you so lucky! It's not every girl who
gets a chance to be