I Wish

Chapter 55

Okay… Okay, right. So here’s the thing. The really very extremely f****d up thing. Everyone loved Ivy. Everyone! What the hell? I knew my family, and I loved my family, but they didn’t like anyone. Not when I was bringing them home. Ever. This was so beyond weird, and I sort of just wandered around in shock like someone who’d stood too close to an explosion. Too out of it to do anything other than let it happen. Ivy liked to cook with me and dad, and she did Jeremy’s make-up. Let's be clear, it was not every day going to the shop's make-up. This was the kind of artsy event level fantasy dream that I resolutely was not jealous of, at all. I lie, I was so very jealous, but I really couldn’t be getting judgy of a twelve year old. Especially not my brother. Not to mention, I could find her chatting to my mother for hours at a time. I don’t know where they were planning to take over, but they were getting along far too well for anything else. More than that I was rooting for them, because I wanted to live. Opposing them would be very stupid. It wasn’t even like Ivy ignored my youngest brother, which everyone I’d ever dated had always done. Because Mark? Mark was not brushed aside like a dumb kid, she watched horror movies with him, and she watched them with glee. Actually the amount of glee they’d both displayed while watching them was down right creepy from an outsider's perspective. Remembering Isaac I felt bad for anyone who tried to fight her after this, because Ivy was all but writing down ideas.

“This is so awesome,” she whispered in awe, watching some poor bastard be ripped apart. There were sound effects, and I did my best not to connect them to the visual in front of me. This was no eighties cheesy horror flick, this was something within the last decade with some fairly decent special effects and it seemed to be taking a great pleasure in flexing them.

“The two of you terrify me,” I told them, shaking my head and plonking next to them. Sinking into the soft cushion, squarely between the two of them. They both grinned, and I shivered, they were having way too much fun messing with me. I should have worked harder at hiding that.

“You love me,” they replied in unison, before turning to each other and bursting out laughing. I stopped for a beat stunned before I joined them, because what were the odds? What were the odds that they both come out with the same thing? It only got weirder as the next person on the screen started screaming and dying. The amount of laughing we were doing could only be the thing of nightmares, if we’d actually been directing it to the death scene playing out in the background. Seriously though, I resolved right then and there to never leave them alone together because I did not even want to imagine the trouble that they could get into unsupervised.

The whole week was great, we still took picnics in the backyard with food that didn’t taste like ash and wouldn’t result in starvation. Seriously, food had been okay before. Some things had been better than others, and those things were usually bad for me. Health wise, there was generally too much sugar involved. Now… Now I understood what all the foodies were going nuts over. I would never underestimate how fantastic food could be ever again. The picnic’s were called dates now, and my family would peek out the windows to spy on us like we were something cute. Nothing says no getting frisky on the lawn like random checks, and their willingness to use a hose. We’d square away a blanket, pillows, and lights. Oh my god, lights. It was so nice not to be eating in the dark anymore, or by phone light. The amount of light was usually fine, the angle of that light? It would be fine, if this were a comedy. Still though, the outdoor lights meant that we could actually see what we were eating. 

“This is nice,” I said lying on my back, with our legs tangled together, “Can we keep it this simple all the time?” I asked her, and she hummed. Hiding her face in my arm, and twisting into a pretzel to do so. The blanket under us was soft and fluffy, a pastel pink color that we would be picking grass off of until tomorrow night when we were back here again. Starting they cycle from the beginning.

“If I have any say, it would definitely always be this simple,” she responded and my nose crinkled. I wouldn’t say that I was perfect, but I’d had a bumpy education of what happens when I don’t read between the lines when Ivy says something. This did not sound promising in the slightest.

“So that’s a no, huh?” I answered grumpily, “Those other people messing it up? They suck.” They completely blew, or if not then they could go blow something unsanitary. 

“Yep. Great big physically incorrect animal genitalia,” Ivy told me proudly. I laughed again, loving how on the same wavelength we were and kept I laughing, because all I could picture was Kaede’s stupid face. Ha-ha-ha, that’s gold that is. I kind of wanted to drop a mountain on this asshole and forget about him, but at the same time I hated him so bad. That meant that I was involuntarily picturing his misfortune in various twisted and humorous ways at random. Well, you can’t win them all.

“If it isn’t Kaede we’re throwing him in that category anyway,” I replied as seriously as I could, given how bad I was losing it in hysterics, and she joined me laughing. It made me feel better that I wasn’t the only person to imagine or take joy in the idea or, god yes please, actual suffering of this clown.

“He’s already there,” she said coughing, with tears streaming down her face, “I love how much you hate that asshole.” Well that was an awfully polite way to refer to him. 

“He makes it very easy… Is looking at his smug face something I’m going to have to tolerate?” I asked her and she choked on her inhale.

“Probably, but I hope not. Does that mean that you’re coming back with me?” she asked hopefully, green eyes shining with it. Oh… I hadn’t actually thought about that implication.

“I don’t know. Maybe, this is going so well that visits are definitely on the table,” I said, feeling compelled to tell her the truth and knowing it was because she was forced to pony up for me.

“Yeah?” she clarified, as if she didn’t believe her ears, and I nodded. She threw herself at me, and if I hadn't already been flat on the ground I would have been now, squeezing me I just sort of sit there and let her body weight press down on me. Not that she was all that heavy to begin with.

“Yeah,” I said surely, “But give it to me straight, how much am I going to have to interact with that smug prick?” Ivy winced, I felt it, and popped back up guilty. 

“If it makes you feel any better, he hates you just as much as you hate him and I think that you could even manage to earn that if we tried hard enough,” she says, doing her best impression of a straight face, and failing miserably. Her lips keep twitching up like she’s trying not to smile, and her eyes sparkle with malice and mischief. And make no mistake, it was malice. There was nothing benigne about this. The amount of thrill I felt at that left me feeling like some kind of badass movie super villain boss b***h, and I had to admit it felt good.

“Hell yes,” I agreed in delight. Anything that messed up Kaede… emotionally, physically, and actually even settling for his day was A-OK in my book. Like I said, her being here was going well. It was also setting off all sorts of alarm bells. If I’m not going to lie, they’d been going off consistently and constantly for longer than we’d been back in the human world. She had a very sketchy pop-culture base and it was, as far as I could see, totally random. Which was how we wound up watching ABC Kids… Not even joking, she looked at me and said, “Can we watch 22?” After marshalling every bit of self-control into keeping my face from showing just how almost psychotically gleeful I was at the idea of subjecting her to that, I nodded. It felt like a perfect round off revenge for all the crap she’d pulled since… well pretty much since I met her.

Channel 22, if you were unaware, boasts of such titles as Baby Jake, In the Night Garden, and Teletubbies.  Things like Bingo, Sesame Street, Twirly-Woo’s and Peppa Pig. I wanted to know, I had to know, who’d been telling her about the human world? I had to know who set her up, with this comedy gold, because as I wordlessly switched it over I knew that this was going to be hilarious.

Ivy did not disappoint.