There’s No Place Like
Home…Sort Of
After my tryout, Dad opens the door to Hillcrest. It’s the middle of the day on a Saturday, so many of the maids, cooks, gardeners, and horsemen are hard at work. Still, a few people are watching TV or reading the paper in the large common area, which is filled with comfy couches and squishy chairs. Two younger boys are huddled together over a comic book. Fifteen people live in Hillcrest, hence my sudden-onset claustrophobia.
The second I cross into the kitchen, She Who Must Not Be Named is all over me, Mom-style. Must be the hormones. Cindy hugs me long and hard, and I get a whiff of apple shampoo. Her new blue maid’s uniform stretches over her rounded stomach; my little brother or sister is growing in there.
She’s nearly five months pregnant. Dad was really apologetic and embarrassed this happened, considering it’s just gonna make things harder on us. He stayed single until about a year and a half ago when he started seeing Cindy, who’s twenty-eight. She’s nice enough, I guess, but I don’t think of her as my mom.
I’m still pissed she got pregnant—it’s not like they’re married…or that we have the money for this. In a way, it’s a good thing we left West Virginia, because at least here we get free housing. Maybe now Dad will have more money to spend on baby clothes and insurance and stuff. I may not like the situation, but I sure want the kid to have a better life than I did growing up.
Cindy brings my hand to her stomach. “He’s real active today.” I can’t help but smile when I feel the baby moving.
“Wow,” I say. “If it’s a boy, we should name him Hercules.”
“We are not naming the baby Hercules,” Cindy says.
“How about Zeus then?” Dad asks.
“That sounds like a name Jack Goodwin would give one of his hounds,” Cindy replies. “I heard one of his dogs is named Athena and one is Thor. He also let his little sister name one of his dogs Jasper, after the Twilight character.”
“I think you should name the baby Yvonne,” Yvonne says, sewing a man’s shirt at the table. The Goodwins’ Laundry Dictator wears her gray hair in a bun and her maid’s uniform miraculously doesn’t have a single wrinkle. She glances up, sees my clothes are splattered with dirt, and leaps to her feet as if she’s twenty years old, not sixty.
“Get those clothes off, girl. Gotta get them in the wash before a stain sets.”
“It’s okay, I can do—” I start to say, but Yvonne gives me a death glare.
“Don’t you dare go near my laundry room.” I smile at the thought of Yvonne standing in front of a laundry room door, holding a battle axe, ready to fight off any intruders who want to do a load of whites.
“I know how to wash my own clothes,” I say.
Yvonne wags a finger in my face. “One time I found Mr. Goodwin in my laundry room teaching Master Jack how to wash colors, and after I got done yelling at those boys, they looked like I’d caught one of them doing the nasty in the backseat of a car. They probably wished I’d caught them doing that.” She grumbles, “Mr. Goodwin claimed he was trying to teach Jack an ‘essential life lesson.’ Sheesh!”
Dad cracks up. “Doing the nasty.”
“Gross,” I say. I never want to hear my dad say “doing the nasty” again.
“The moral of the story is stay out of my laundry room,” Yvonne goes on.
“But laundry is an essential life lesson,” I say.
YOU ARE READING
Racing Savannah
Teen FictionThey're from two different worlds. He lives in the estate house, and she spends most of her time in the stables helping her father train horses. In fact, Savannah has always been much more comfortable around horses than boys. Especially boys like Ja...
