Slob - Ellen Potter [44]
I stood there for a second, staring at the gloves and feeling the awful ache in my belly. Then I sat back down again. I slipped on the gloves, picked up an issue of Retro TV Magazine, and resumed my search for the cheerleader episode of Charlie’s Angels. The painful feeling in my gut didn’t leave. If anything, it grew worse, but I just kept my butt planted in that chair and the gloves on my hand. As long as the gloves were on my hands, I reasoned, I could not eat.
I finished my search at a little past eleven. To my dismay, I found that the episode, called Pom Pom Angels, was on a total of twenty-three times in the past two years! I hadn’t counted on that. No doubt that particular episode was so popular because of the cheerleaders.
Well, I would just have to catch some more old signals, and with any luck they would be from really unpopular shows that were aired only once in the past two years.
I watched the Freakout Channel until three thirty. I was watching out of habit, really, since I now knew that the signal from Nemesis wouldn’t come in until the evening. At three thirty I took Honey out for a walk and came back and watched more TV until Mom said dinner was ready. My eyes were burning from watching all that TV, and I felt slightly nauseated. Apparently Jeremy was not feeling so good herself. She had come back from ice skating around four and hadn’t been out of her room since.
“Go tell Jeremy that dinner is ready,” Mom said as she gave the salmon burgers a final flip.
I knocked on her door. “Jeremy. Dinner.”
“I’m not hungry,” she called back.
“You all right?”
“Yes,” she said. Then added, “I’m sleeping.”
“She’s sleeping,” I told Mom.
“Really? Is she sick?” I could practically hear Mom sorting through her brain’s stockpile of teas with healing properties.
“I think she’s just tired,” I said. Actually, I guessed she was mad about this morning, and that made me mad. She was the one who was being difficult. I suspected she was jealous, although I never would have thought her to be that type. People change, though. She should have just been thankful, she should be thinking of something more than herself. She should be thinking about our mom and dad and doing what was right.
After dinner I went back into my room and into the world of Freakout. By now, I probably knew just as much about these shows as Arthur. Speaking of which, when I turned on the TV, an episode of Happy Days was playing. After watching a few episodes, I was beginning to get the appeal of The Fonz. He was tough on the outside and nice on the inside. People love that. Somehow it’s even better than being nice all over.
Then came B.J. and the Bear, which is about a truck driver and a chimpanzee. Yes, it is as stupid as it sounds. And wouldn’t you know it, they had a marathon that night. Three B.J. and the Bear episodes in a row. I didn’t know if I could stand it. I pulled the scavenged junk box out of the closet and started messing around with some of the items, just for something to do. I picked up an old bike chain and turned it over in my hands. I’d always wanted to do something with it, but I never could think what.
Suddenly there was pift.
My heart jumped and my head shot up. On TV a fuzzy Jan Brady was sneezing like mad. I watched long enough to get the gist of the plotline (six minutes). Jan was allergic to the family dog, Tiger,