Let's make the best of the situation

Before I finally go insane.

Please don't say we'll never find a way

And tell me all my love's in vain.

Layla: Eric Clapton

-

Listen to the Hamster Sing

Chapter 1

It all started in the bird sanctuary.

Ma likes to pretend that we’re a normal family. She tends to sporadically take the lot of us out on little fieldtrips that seem to be taken straight from the “How to Lie to Everyone and Delude Yourself” guide to life. Most of the time I don’t mind. As long as Missy is seething, life is a daisy.

The thing is, I don’t like birds. At all. I, in fact, have a habit of running around in circles, shielding my head and screaming when seagulls come wheeling through on their way to do the work of the devil. Ma takes it as just another eccentricity, but it isn’t, really. Birds terrify me. Birds are my weakness. For Superman, it’s Kryptonite. For me, feathered goblins of the avian persuasion.

Missy dislikes them for such paltry reasons as the possibility of one of them squirting a little white missile into the depths of her bouncy blond curls. I have the rather larger concern that they’ll dive-bomb me in squadrons.

Dad was off frolicking with his mistress, though, and Ma needed some distractions. So she shoved and kicked and stuffed the six of us into the van, slammed the back bumper back into place before it could tentatively escape, climbed behind the wheel, and locked all the doors. She never had disabled the childproof locks. It was settled.

It was drizzling and most of us were half-dressed and unclean. I was most likely the worst. I usually am. This was why Opie was plastered against the window, gasping like a fish while I wore an extremely satisfied expression. The Guys, Titus and Booth, sat in the very back, arguing sleepily, which was the only reason the van wasn’t rocking like it was full of bear orgy. Missy was crushed between them. Klein sat next to Ma, his dirty feet propped up on the glove compartment. It was 8 AM at the time. That is when the ship logs start.

“Take it!”

“No, I don’t want it. You take it.”

“For Pete’s sake, I’ll take it.”

“…What are you going to do with it?”

“Well I’m sure I don’t know but at the very least I won’t have to shove it up your ass—“

“Children!”

“Ma. We argue, we slap each other around a bit, we threaten each other with vulgarity. This is how we play.”

“Titus, you are seventeen years old. You are far too old for this.”

“And what about Layla?”

This is deceptive. I was actually not involved in any of this backseat ragamuffinry, being far too involved with nuzzling my ratty curls against Opie as she tried to cringe away further than was physically possible.

I wasn’t mute. Since I was relatively friendless and had no one to depend on me for their entertainment, I tended not to talk a lot. In point of fact, I only talked when I was addressed directly—this wasn’t conscious on my part. Only noticed it recently, actually.

My family consists of the blond ones: Melissa, Booth and Klein; the black-haired ones: Titus and Ophelia; and me: ew. I am the middle child in every way. Ignored (well, that’s my fault), weird (also something to do with me), and average (a faulty mixing of uncooperative genes; nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that I have an immense fear of attempting anything). I’m not even the affair child (Booth), or the first marriage child (Klein). No, no instead I am the one that broke the bank, as Ma likes to say. Never mind that the mallrats were born after me in quick succession.

“Leave your sister alone, Layla.”

I took instead to unraveling the seatbelt with my teeth.

Anyway, the log of Space-Forager Copperdine. We docked somewhere around noon in a town far, far away. To visit an Aquarium & Aviary. Because this is what normal families do, the book tells my mother. Ma is a slave to “the book” (not capitalized, not blasphemous). I don’t know the title of “the book.” I suspect when she says she “read about it somewhere,” she in fact just made it up.

“Come on, kiddies, go stand in line while I park this beast.”

We tumbled out. I was the only one who fell; Booth kicked me in the foot both before and after. I absently dreaded a lock of hair as I stood in line with gravel in my knee. It was humid and gray and dull outside, and Missy was huddling under an overhang to protect her hair from rain and bird poop. Opie stood next to me and tried to pretend like she loved me despite my appearance.

I hadn’t brushed my hair since the previous morning, and it’s thick even after I tame it with a whip and bottle of hairspray. My tornado-like brown curls were in a giant bun that somewhat dwarfed my head and was collapsing under its own weight. The soccer jersey came down to my knees, so the boy’s shorts underneath did nothing to dispel the impression that I was running around pantsless. The legs I exposed were pale and covered in healing scratches and a few bruises. The full effect was definitely hobo-esque. Plus it was freezing cold outside. And yet Ma had said nothing.

I, too, can teach.

Ma finally reached us when there was only one nervous looking couple to go. Booth and Titus, inseparable as twins but nothing alike, were discussing nauseating things while hovering about negative three inches away from the strangers. The two bought the tickets and ran in. The turnstile caught the woman in the stomach but it didn’t slow her down. She gimped off.

“Two adults and five students,” Ma told the bemustached whale behind the glass. I admired the creature’s beautiful song as he demanded ID. The bigote twitched in a mesmerizing manner as he felt my gaze upon him and glared in return.

I slapped my junior year ID on the glass. He waved me away.

Not long after, I was standing with my hands against the snake tank.

“Come ON,” Missy urged me, trying to get me away before my crazed intensity drew any more attention. “We’re going to see the birds, now. Come on, Mustang Sally.”

I hummed entirely off-key as I let her drag me only as far as the entrance to the enormous birdcage. Then I stopped so quickly that it threw her off-balance, and I swiftly put myself out of reach and shook my head vehemently.

“Are you joking? Even I’m going in. If I’m going, you’re going,” she said, grabbing again for my arm.

As if her relationship with birds was anything close to the violence of the one I shared with them. Unlikely.

“Don’t touch. Shoo,” I said, panicking a little when she sank her claws into me. I shoved her hard, and she collapsed through the open door of the entrance. I slammed it shut behind her and mimed like I couldn’t hear her cursing me. The rest of the Copperdines were already inside. She brushed herself off, pointed a meaningful finger at me, and took off after them.

Safe.

“Have a thing against birds?” someone asked. I didn’t reply. Most likely they weren’t talking to me. People do not approach people such as I. I, hobo-child, would not get into conversations that were none of mine. “Hey?”

I finally glanced over to check the annoying chatter with a laser-like beam of my stare. One of the employees, a tall, goofy-looking guy with receding hair, was regarding me questioningly. A good half-minute silence stretched. His brown hair crawled back another inch. I didn’t feel the need to ask what he wanted.

“Do you…are you enjoying your visit to the Bookerville Aquarium?”

I wasn’t not enjoying it, but it seemed false to say yes. So I said nothing. That’s one of my habits that gets me in trouble with my teachers and won’t allow me to become anything more than an average student. That and my habit of answering Biology questions with descriptions of lizards and my fifth grade vacation to the Laray Caverns in Virginia. If I don’t know, I’m not going to dither about struggling to write what pathetic tidbits I can remember about duodenums and bryophytes. I’m never going to become a scientist or a doctor—I would be too excited about the prospect of accidentally killing someone.

“Well, enjoy the rest of your time here,” he finally said, wandering away in a haze of confusion. I peered into the aviary and wondered if my family had achieved a feathery demise. I saw bright red creatures bobbing along the path inside, and fancied that they were covered in the blood of my kin.

“Layla,” Ma snapped. I whirled around to see she and the Guys regarding me in amusement. The others were milling about. Klein was seated and picking at the loose sole of his shoe with a pocketknife. I fell in line behind Ma and snatched the knife away from him once she couldn’t see me anymore, using it to chop off a flower sticking out from the aviary. I stabbed it into my hair bun. The flower, I mean.

Anyway, it was a rare flower, and we had to leave after that—not because they told us to, but because once something like that happens, workers tend to scuttle after me in an attempt to prevent some sort of explosive disaster. No one was really mad at me, even though Missy rolled her eyes and called me a creeper. Ma was already irritated with us anyway; she can only take short stints of family time. One on one she can be great. When it’s six vs. one (granted I’m on no one’s side—or, if I were on any side, it would be the side of indiscriminate destruction), she has the patience of a gamboling river otter.

I sat in front of the downstairs TV with Booth, forced to watch his shark shows, which I would never admit that I loved like my own little misunderstood children. Booth is my favorite. He’s blond and angry and he breaks things a lot, but he’s the only big brother I have that doesn’t act like it, and if you do the math, he’s the middle child, too. Actually the middle child is somewhere in between us. That child is invisible. I talk to that child sometimes. Not really.

Basically I like Booth because he doesn’t complain when I shove my feet against him in my attempt to stretch out as far as possible on the couch so I can look at the TV upside down. I’m tall, so I get in people’s ways. Booth is tall, too, maybe three inches more than me, but he has a strange habit of sitting completely straight like he has a stick up his ass. He sits right up against the armrest, taking up the least room that any person larger than a baby has ever taken. We make for a good couch team. We don’t talk much.

“Do you know…if we have cheese?” I wheezed as the blood rushed into my hanging head after lying that way for a good fifteen minutes.

“Pepper Jack,” he muttered, his eyes never moving from the screen. I stole one of his shoes and went outside to sit on the rocking chair on the front porch. Pepper Jack was not what I was looking for. He followed me out.

“How are you getting along on that time capsule thing?”

“Stuck on the friend part,” I said shortly. He smiled and sat on the arm of the rocking chair, shoving his butt in my face. He’s the only one besides Klein who ever smiles at me for any reason other than to laugh at me. The assignment for everyone in the school—the first of it’s kind, the herald of a new age, the shining beacon of hope in the face of tragedy—was the creation of a time capsule, partially to honor a senior who died in a car crash over winter break. Every student had to write a valuable piece of literature informing future generations who care about us of just who we are (or were), as well as submit a photo of friendship. It was his friends’ idea, and a beautiful thought, but a serious bummer for people like me.

And by people like me I mean the person like me, i.e. me.

Bummer.

“I could be a friend.”

“That would be lame.”

“I had no idea that word was part of your vocabulary.”

“Look, sweet cheeks,” I said, finally looking at him. “I am an oddity, but that doesn’t mean I can’t degrade you for having your own little quirks. Go play with your sharks.”

Booth kissed me on the forehead and went back inside. I swiped off his spittle and slumped down, and I thought an earthquake was shaking the world until I figured out that my phone was vibrating. I pulled it out of the elastic of my underwear and flipped it open, saw it was an unknown number, and hung up. It rang again.

“My time doesn’t allow for these forceful intrusions, person I don’t know,” I said in a husky voice that made me dissolve into a fit of rasping coughs.

“…I’m sorry, I must have the wrong number,” the guy stuttered.

“Damn right, lover.” I hung it up again.

Monday morning was a blur, mostly because I overslept and Mom dragged me about the house in a chaotic fashion until I was clothed and almost hygienically presentable, except for the hair. Then she shoved me in the car after stuffing a cold toaster strudel in my mouth and drove me to school at a constant rate of panic. Titus was going to get it. My mom would prefer that he kept me on a leash until he was certain I was within the halls of the school.

She threw me out of the car and sped off, and I was ten minutes late into first period. My Biology teacher cringed when she saw me, which I think was a little unnecessary considering the fact that she was hideous. Waving me towards the back of the classroom, she went back to talking about plant sperm and whatnot.

The blonde in front of me twisted in her seat and gave me a little smirk. I’d forgotten her name. Virginia or Vagina or something?

“Hey Layla,” she said in a low, satisfied voice. “You know the friendship photos?”

I only looked at her, and she sent a smug little turtly expression to the boy sitting beside her, who was trying to watch us without seeming to.

“Are you going to have it taken with your voodoo dolls or something? I mean, this assignment’s gotta be pretty tough for you.”

What a confusing girl. “That could have been a good insult if you’d taken a little longer to think about it. It had potential, although you might not have been the best one to utilize it.” The guy looked directly at me for a second, probably surprised that I had spoken a full sentence. Two, in fact. Compound sentences, even.

“Can’t you talk like a normal person?” she snickered.

“Your bangs are blocking my view of the board.” They were rather poofy, and she seemed abnormally offended at what I’d said. Perhaps she had a giant forehead. Maybe it was her head disguised as bangs that were blocking the board. Perhaps she had a growth there. Horns, maybe.

“Gina, could you please turn around?” Ms. Carbinder snapped.

I peered at the hill of her bangs throughout the rest of the class, wondering how a demon would go about hiding certain demonic extremities. Electric sanders, maybe. Those were fun.

During lunch, where I was incredibly busy nibbling on the crusts of my Swiss cheese and mustard sandwich, my phone vibrated, forcing me to inconspicuously stick my head in my backpack to answer it.

“This is a rule-breaking time to call me,” I munched into the phone.

“…Sorry,” the guy replied. I recognized his voice from the day before.

“I don’t think you are. This seems like a deliberate disturbance, and I’d like to know what you mean by it.”

“What’s your name?”

There was a strange quality to his conversation, a quality that I like to call not listening to the other side of the conversation and instead acting like you’re talking to an unresponsive newt.

“Aphrodite. Who would you like me to spell?”

There was a chuckle in his voice, but I didn’t want him to think we were getting a rhythm. “How about Hephaestus, he was—“

“H-E-P-H-A-E-S-T-U-S, Hephaestus. Moving onto the second round. Unfortunately, my phone is dying.” I made a lame crackling noise and shut my phone, pulling my head out of my backpack only to see three classmates hovering and watching me in consternation. The foremost one, a petite brunette recovered first.

“Rat hunting?” she asked. I grinned wolfishly and the two guys behind her, one blond and one with almost black hair, contrived to look uninterested.

“I was just checking on my collection.”

She narrowed her eyes at me. “What kind of collection?”

My reply was an angelic expression.

“Look, freak, why don’t you just go sit at that table,” and here she pointed across the cafeteria to the fat-person table. I looked back at her and said nothing. “Look, there are a lot of us, we need a table. You obviously don’t, and your invisible friends don’t count.”

“Don’t let them hear you say that.” I didn’t normally humor people like her, but I felt the need to continue spouting things without thinking about them until she went away.

One of the guys wandered away. The darker-haired one stayed and started to watch the two of us. Then he came and sat down right next to me and stole the uneaten half of my sandwich. I watched him with something akin to utter and complete disbelief. When he refused to turn and be met, I snatched my sandwich and ate it all in one bite.

“Ninny,” I spluttered.

He just went after my Milky Way bar.

“Can you please take your pet?” I demanded, a little irritated as I retrieved the chocolate and hit him on the nose with it. He paused and a half smile flitted across his face before he relaxed back in his chair and watched me with amusement. A little unnerved, which I’m not used to, I turned back to the brunette, who was frowning.

“Joel,” she protested weakly.

“Can I have a dollar?” he asked her.

There was a pause, and then she tossed some quarters at him and stomped away. Joel handed them to me. “Can I have half of your Milky Way?”

“It’s my only food.” I ignored his hand full of shiny coins.

“What do you call the sandwich?”

“What sandwich? I don’t see a sandwich.”

“The way you ate it, I’d guess you’ll be seeing it again,” he said with a goofy grin. Truly surprised by the fact that he was still sitting there and talking to me, I unwrapped the chocolate and took a slow, deliberate bite. Joel pouted.

“Your friend left,” I pointed out.

“Will you be my friend?”

The Milky Way was no Snickers, but I used it to grab me some time to think anyway. “Are you…new?”

“Yes.”

“And the broad just latched onto you?”

“Yes.” The way he was eyeing my chocolate made me nervous, so I ate the rest quickly. He looked thoroughly disappointed.

I’m always more than a little confused when people try to hurt my feelings. I’m pretty detached. That’s probably why they like to call me a freak. I guess it never occurs to them that because of that I don’t really care about what they say. I also seem to neglect certain aspects of social relations that are required to gain friends. Which was why I was paying little if any attention to the guy next to me who, by most social norms, was pretty damn attractive.

“I’m Joel,” he said, shaking my hand even though I hadn’t offered it to him.

“Yeah, okay, I need that,” I said, smiling insincerely to take the edge off as I yanked back my appendage. He smiled widely, and I jumped when the other guy returned and dropped down next to him.

“You ran her off,” he said to Joel. “That takes some talent.”

“Wasn’t me,” he replied, jerking his head at me. I nibbled a little on my thumbnail and gave the newcomer a tentative smile. He only scowled at me. He had blond hair in a buzz cut, but he was scowling so fiercely that I couldn’t see the color of his eyes. I stared blankly back at him and then stuffed my trash into my backpack without looking.

“Nice to meet you both. Joel, angry fellow.” I nodded to each of them in turn and shoved in my chair. Joel jumped to his feet and held out a hand.

“Wait a sec, what’s your next class? Maybe we have some together!”

I squinted at him suspiciously. “My next class? I don’t go here.” I beat a very inglorious escape. I felt like he was staring after me, but I’ve been called paranoid before. More than once. And more than twice.

With my luck, I expected him to be in all of my classes for the rest of the day, but I didn’t see him again and I was able to slump back down and be invisible. In English class it was easier. The teacher here liked me. I might not talk at all, but I didn’t make fun of her behind her back and I got good grades. The angry boy from lunch was in my class, however. I’d never noticed him before—I don’t really notice people. I’ve seen my entire educational career as nothing more than transitional, so there’s no use getting attached to the faces around you.

When the bell rang to end the day, most people were out of the classroom before the last glorious peal could vanish from the air. I was slower, like always, and I was surprised when the angry boy nodded at me before the friend he’d been waiting for joined him and they left.

I took the long way home, trying out different ways of walking and deciding that my undecided walk was better than a saunter or a strut. I’m no Ministry of Silly Walks embodied, but I have an imagination. I remember a time somewhere at the end of middle school where I walked pigeon-toed for an entire month. It was painful, and Missy stopped talking to me.

I was shivering by the time I got back home. No one was home, which was surprising considering there were so many of us.

My phone ring when my key was in the door and I answered without checking to see who it was.

“I’ve figured out who you are,” said the irritating communication-wave stalker. I sighed and shoved open the door.

“Well then this little charade can finally come to an end. Adios.”

“You’re not going to ask me who I am?” He was amused and I was bemused.

“If you want me to know, you could just tell me,” I sighed, rummaging through the cabinets of my kitchen for something crunchy. I began to chew on some Cheerios and was no longer able to hear this creature breathing on the other end of the line.

“What’re you eating?”

“The bones of babies. What do you want?”

“I just want to talk to you. You seem interesting.”

I had nothing to say to that.

“You still there?”

“No.”

“We go to the same school, you know,” he said in a sing-songy voice. I rolled my eyes, a little exhausted with the conversation. I’m not really used to talking, and certainly not talking on the phone. I hate the little devices. They’re electronic demons, and I’ve never been good with them—I only have one because Ma seems to think I’ll die if I don’t. She doesn’t trust me to be sane. I’m sure she thinks to find me covered in fish and gibbering in an alley in Minnesota if I’m not in constant contact.

“I have to go.”

“I think you’re trying to avoid me.” He didn’t sound particularly wounded. I hung up the phone.

I didn’t want to have to think about the time capsule project. Other than that, homework was always a breeze, mostly because my answers had nothing to do with the questions, per usual. Loneliness had become something of the status quo, and as long as I didn’t get used to company, it never was a problem—I managed even in the midst of an insane, large family. This project just brought into focus the fact that I was a poor student and had no social life to account for it.

Useless and talentless, that was me.

The front door slammed and Klein came into the kitchen, looking tired and irritated. “Give me that.” He took the box of cereal and found a bowl. “Do you really need to stick your hands in it?”

Shrugging, I flicked some errant Cheerios off of my chest and sat down. He got a familiar expression in his eyes that told me he was about to bother me in his own bumbling, well-meaning way. “Still disturbing the world? Everything okay?”

I shrugged again. Klein sighed heavily, shoving some limp blond hair out of his face. “I really think this is around the time in your high school career where I need to do the brotherly thing and force you to go out into the world, my little butterfly.” Leaning on the counter across from me, he raised an eyebrow.

I concentrated hard on my fingers and felt something catch in my throat. He was making me miserable by trying to be so nice.

“Booth told me about the project. About your problems with it?”

He wanted me to join the conversation, but I hadn’t spoken yet and I didn’t want to. Klein was brave enough to tug on a lock of my hair. “Layla—“

“There’s nothing I can do. It’s too late.”

It was a little melodramatic and Klein smiled crookedly. “You’re sixteen, baby girl. It’s not too late for anything.”

I swallowed hard, and it was an impulse that made me speak, which isn’t normal for me. “Will you…spend time with me? I mean…just to get…you know…used to…people.” It sounded so sad.

“How about I spend time with you because I’m your brother.”

“That’s corny,” I sneered. Klein just laughed and mussed my already uber-mussed hair.

We were both silent for a while. I inched my hand toward the cereal box and then Klein spoke again. “Wanna…watch TV or something?”

I shrugged.