A N G E L (Roger Daltrey)

Twenty Eight

Janice's POV

My third day of work went breezily well. Aside from waking up before the sun had even risen, the job was really fun! I liked seeing all the little kids and baking gigantic cakes and chopping up a million potatoes into perfect squared off cubes.

Plus, I got to eat whatever I wanted and take my share of leftovers home. This would cut down our grocery bill by a lot, and it looked like there would sometimes be enough for Bev and her kiddos, too. The only things we were really spending money on was me riding the bus, a little bit of food, bathroom stuff, and food and litter for Ringo.

Nancy was already starting to lose her marbles from practically being tied down to her bed all day without even having me around to talk to, but she was combatting it by doing some weird exercises she came up with.

One of them involved putting her arms and legs straight up in the air like Frankenstein's monster rising up from the slab, except she couldn't actually get up. So that was pretty funny looking.

I decided to start scanning the curb for another television in the coming weeks. People would probably start getting new ones for Christmas and throwing their old ones out, and I wanted to find one and set it up in our room so Nancy could at least be entertained by daytime westerns or something. Maybe finding her a TV would make her like me a little more, too.

Nance's parents never called. I was half afraid they would and beg for her to come home, and three fourths afraid she'd say yes and leave me here in this eternally sticky, cramped-up hell.

Beverly was sitting in the living room crocheting. Ringo kept grabbing the yarn and trying to take off with it, much to her evident frustration.

"Hey Jan? I hate to ask but could you possibly put him up somewhere, just until the girls get up from their nap? I'm trying to make them something for Christmas and he keeps slowing me down." She sighed.

"Yeah, it's no problem. He still has a lot of kitten in him, hopefully he starts to outgrow the wildness soon." I scooped the cat up and he meowed in protest.

"The orange ones don't outgrow it!" Bev laughed.

"Oh, great."

I opened the door to "my" bedroom and unceremoniously dumped Ringo inside.

"What're you doing?" Nancy asked.

"Your cat was out there raising ten kinds of hell with Bev, she asked me to put him up until the girls wake up. Maybe they can tire him out." I explained.

"You say 'your cat' as if I could've done anything about it." She said, sounding a little annoyed.

I blew out a sigh. "I didn't mean it that way, I know you can't do anything about anything even if you want to, and I'm sorry."

"It's fine."

Silence filled the room for a second until I asked,

"Have you come up with any baby names?"

A slow smile crept across her face and she draped her hands over her stomach, which was really starting to pop out, sort of all at once. I guessed that was a good sign. The baby was growing.

"Well, I think if it's a girl I'll go with Melissa Dawn and call her Missy for short. And if it's a boy, I kind of like Michael, but I feel like every dude is named Michael. So I'm still thinking on it. But I really think it's a girl anyways, so I'm not too freaked out about it. Maybe I'll ask Annie what she thinks. Kids always come up with real funny names for babies. Christie from high school once told me she wanted to name her little brother Horseshoe or something like that." She laughed hard at the thought of some poor kid named Horseshoe, and then winced in pain. "Okay, guess I can't laugh like that for now."