Anything but Normal - Melody Carlson [7]
Finally, like putting the cherry on top, Mrs. Vincent plastered Sophie’s wounds with brightly colored bandages. “Sorry about the Disney theme,” she told Sophie. “But it’s the only way I can get the boys to allow me to put a bandage on them these days.”
“What’s up?” a familiar male voice asked from behind the small crowd of onlookers.
“Hey, Dylan,” April said. “Nice ride out there.”
“Thanks. But what’s going—” He stopped suddenly, looking straight into Sophie’s face and then quickly away.
“Sophie had a little accident,” Carrie Anne explained. She smiled shyly, almost hopefully, at Dylan.
Sophie wanted to die. Instead she looked down at her thighs, which suddenly seemed larger than life, splayed out like filets on the hard wooden bench. If only she could just vanish—poof. Beam me up, Scotty.
“You should’ve seen her,” April said with macabre enthusiasm. “Running down the boat ramp, and then splat—she fell smack on her face. Don’t you think her chin looks kinda like Jay Leno’s?”
“April!”
“Sorry.” April giggled.
Sophie looked up to see that April had her arm linked with Dylan’s. She was smiling up at him like they had just said their vows and were ready to head out for their honeymoon. “I want to go out in your boat now, Dylan. Will you teach me to do that jump like you said you would?”
Dylan looked at Sophie again. His eyes looked sad . . . and something else too. Maybe just worried, like he was afraid she was going to say something—something that might blow his cover.
“Come on,” April said. “Are you going to teach me or what?” “Uh, yeah, I guess so,” he said to her. He turned back to Sophie. “I hope you’re going to be okay.”
She forced a smile and held up a brightly bandaged arm. “Yeah, and when Mrs. Vincent is done, I think I’ll join the circus.”
They all laughed. Dylan, seemingly satisfied that Sophie wasn’t going to do or say anything embarrassing, turned and walked back toward the dock. April was still clinging to him, and Sophie thought she could see the bounce return to his steps as he got farther away from her. Soon the others dispersed too, going their separate ways. Dads and kids down to the boats, the other moms back to the picnic site. Sophie encouraged Carrie Anne to go out in the boat with her dad and her little brothers.
“But what about you? Aren’t you coming?”
Sophie shook her head, smiling as big as she could manage and hoping to fend off tears. “No, I think I better stay out of the water today.”
“I think that’s wise, Sophie,” Mrs. Vincent said. “You don’t want to risk getting an infection.”
Soon the boats were loaded up and roaring away from the dock. Mrs. Vincent led Sophie over to join the middle-aged moms. To make matters worse, Sophie suddenly found herself alone with Dylan’s mom. Mrs. Vincent had just introduced them before she and Mrs. Stewart headed over to the pump for a bucket of dishwashing water.
“That was quite a fall,” Mrs. Morris said.
Sophie smoothed down the edge of a pink Minnie Mouse bandage on her right forearm and nodded. “I know. It’s like one minute you’re having a good time, and the next thing you know, you’re a limping, walking billboard for the Disney channel.”
Mrs. Morris chuckled. “At least you’ve got a sense of humor about it.”
“Yeah . . . sometimes that’s all a girl’s got.”
3
Sophie swatted a mosquito on her neck and imagined herself not only bruised and scabby for the first day back at school, but swollen with insect bites as well. Lovely.
Still longing to disappear, she quietly moved her chair a few feet away from the middle-aged mom club and settled into the tree shadows, where she proceeded to sip a Diet Coke and daydream about what it would be like to attend her own funeral. Hopefully Dylan would come . . . and feel guilty.
Soon the moms, not even noticing her, were chatting candidly among themselves. They seemed perfectly oblivious to the fact that Sophie was still sitting nearby and listening. She considered warning them that a spy was in their midst, and then decided, Why bother?
“So how are you feeling about Dylan leaving home for college?