I’m not here to bother you. Devon’s picking me up in a couple of hours, but until then I have to do my homework in here because my underwear is being smoked.”
“For any particular reason, or were you just in the underwear-smoking sort of mood?” Brother asked.
“It’s because your eldest child has weird friends. Oh, poop, Jack, not now!”
“Out,” Brother ordered, pointing to the door. “I’m working on an important bit of research into an anthroponomical problem during the early Middle Ages. I cannot draw logical conclusions into the origin of sutlers with that thing squalling.”
I sighed and put my key into Jack’s back. “I’m an outcast in my own home,” I said as I left the library.
“One more reason not to engage in sexual intercourse until you’re thirty,” Brother yelled after me.
It took me forever to calm Jack down. I went into the kitchen where mom was painting another ceramic bowl with scenes from the Doomsday Book (can my family get any stranger?), and told her that Horseface clearly set Jack up to deprive me of much needed sleep and that she should write a really stern note to Mr. Krigon and tell him to fire her for harassment.
“It might not be sexual,” I said as I walked around the kitchen patting Jack on the back, “but it sure is harassing me!”
“It’ll be over tomorrow night,” she said. “Should I put the section with William the Conqueror on the pickle tray or the nut bowl?”
“Gee, Mom, pickles or nuts, what a dilemma. Why not put him on a fruitcake plate and call it done?” I said with much inner snickering. Nut bowls! Pickle trays! Hoot!
“A fruitcake plate?” Mom set down her paintbrush and reached for the ceramic supply catalog. “I must have missed that. A fruitcake plate. That sounds like just the thing I need to complete the set...”
I went back out and sat on the stairs until Jack shut up, then put him in his carrier and did some homework until Bess burst into the library all schitzy, like something awful had happened. She jumped up and down a couple of times, coughing and choking and waving her hands toward the stairs like she was a crazy mime. Brother looked at me, his Unibrow raised. I looked at him. We both looked at Bess.
“I think she’s insane,” I told Brother. “You should probably have her locked up. For her own good, of course.”
“Fire!” Bess finally spat out. “Em’s underwear is on fire!”
“What?” I shrieked, and shoved her out of my way as I ran out the library and up the stairs. Brother wheezed and knee-cracked his way up the stairs after me. The door to my bedroom was open, with great huge billows of smoke filling the hallway. Aurora was standing in front of the dresser with the tiny bathroom trash can, pouring water all over my dresser.
“I think it’s out,” she said when I stood in the middle of the room and wailed. Brother opened the windows and went over to the dresser to stare at the mess.
“I’m sorry Emily,” Aurora said. “I don’t know what happened, but the herbs must have started smoldering in your things...”
“Oh, great, just great!” I stomped over to my underwear drawer and looked in. All my things, all my lovely satin undies, and matching bras, and my Wonder Bra, and the naughty black lace undies I was saving for Devon (not for him to wear, silly, although ahahahahahah wouldn’t that be funny to see him in them?), and my everyday undies, and the bras I don’t like but don’t want to throw out because they make my boobs look good, and all the other stuff in there was just one big, black, wet, mucky scorched mess.
“I’m very sorry,” Aurora said again. “I used a fireproof bowl. I don’t know how it could have set fire to your clothes—”
“It’s the ghost,” I said, waving my hands around dramatically. I mean, what else could I do? “It’s doing this on purpose. Well, it had just better watch out because THIS MEANS WAR!”
After we dug everything out of the drawer and made sure the dresser wasn’t burning (it wasn’t, which is more or less absolute proof that the ghost was trying to get back at me for ousting it), and opened up all the windows to air the room, Mom told me she’d take me to buy new undies before I left for Paris.
By the time Devon came to take me to the movie,