What Comes Next

Chapter 10: Antoinelle

Chapter 10: Antoinelle

"We're never going to finish! I never should have started this. I mean, what was I thinking putting pre-teens on baby duty?! Those poor babies probably need rescuing by now!"

"Nel."

"And then the prizes haven't come in yet. No one is going to want to play stupid little kiddy games if there are no prizes to it!" I continued.

"Nel." Leo said louder.

"Not to mention that little stunt Jack pulled on us yesterday. I think I'm going gray from the stress. My hair is brown but I saw a strand of light brown hair leaning towards gray this morning. I'm almost positive it wasn't a strand of string."

"Nel!" shouted Leo as he grabbed onto my shoulders. "Everything is going to be just fine. The babies aren't going to die today, Jack is going to be less of a pain in the butt today, and I'll force everyone to play Group Charades if my life depends on it."

"I can't believe we're actually going to play that." I told Leo as he let go.
"It was an amazing idea you had. Teams having to create pictures and symbols with their bodies? Golden." he said as he smiled at me. "Everyone's going to love this Fall Fest. Not everything is your fault."

"I'm just worried about Jack." I confessed to Leo. "He sure may be a big pain in the you-know-what but I still care about him." Leo ruffled my hair. I scrunched up my face, understanding his dislike for the action. "Just focus on the Fall Fest. Jack has a better handle on things than we think, and not in an evil mastermind kind of way." he said as he tried to appease me. I smiled at him. "Okay, you're right."

We went to the kitchen bar counter to check in on the meals. We had been here since the wee hours of the morning. I had taken off work for yesterday and today, saying I wanted to spend time with my family. Technically I wasn't lying.

Leo had gotten here by eight o'clock so he could catch the Fall Fest from the beginning, and that included breakfast. "Kids! You better get your buns down here or I'll shove these pancakes into your noses!" Leo widened his eyes at Mave's choice of wording. I chuckled. "She didn't work an entire week for nothing. It took her an entire hour to make the pancakes in the shape of a turkey. She even tried pouring the batter around her hand to give it the feather look." "Man," Leo said, "I remember drawing around my hand when I was younger to make a turkey."
"Well," I responded, "same goes for now. Except Mave graduated to a squirt bottle for batter."

It was nine o'clock by the time breakfast was ready. Leo and I were manning the Dixie cups filled with apple juice while Mave and the other worker crazy enough to be here this early, Daisy, had plates with pancakes in hand. Kids lined up in the hallway leading to the living room, curving the line back and forth as needed. No specific gender was first today; it was every man (or woman) for themselves.

One by one plates and cups were given, pancakes were flipped, and apple juice was poured. Once the kids able enough to feed themselves were fed, the four of us workers went to grab a baby. Normally we had eight but it looked like two were with their parents this year.

Leo was lucky, he got to bottle feed the younger babies. Mave, Lily, and I were stuck feeding the older ones that were past the bottle stage and on to soft foods. We cut up the pancakes into little, chewable cubes and poured a little syrup on them. Then, we turned to face the little (and adorable) beasts. We would place a plate of food in front of them and then they would attack it with their grubby (yet again adorable) fingers. By the end of it all, they would be a slobbery, messy, sticky (you know what I'm going to say, adorable) mess. Cleaning them up was the easy part.

We would start on some games now. First off would be a group game for everyone to play while we waited for the rest of the fifteen (give or take a few) volunteers to come. That would be when everyone would choose their own separate games to play. For now, we would play the ultimate game ever. Only the most diligent would come out on top. The seriously invigorating, exciting, sweat-breaking Ultimate Simon Says.