Читать книгу The Original Ginny Moon - Benjamin Ludwig, Benjamin Ouvrier Ludwig - Страница 16

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11:03 AT NIGHT, SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 12TH

I am in bed now breathing fast and trying to calm down. We went to Portland today to see the tall ships. Plus the fireworks. It’s the last fun thing we’ll do before my Forever Mom starts getting ready to have the baby, she told me. I left my watch at home because I got poison ivy on my hands and wrists yesterday. I thought it was okay to leave my watch at home because there’s usually a clock nearby to tell me what time it is but I got distracted because the fireworks were loud and made lots of smoke and everyone kept saying “Ooooh!” when they saw them. It was like they were all ghosts. And the smoke was like the ghost of the fireworks. Then I learned that you can keep fireworks and smoke in your brain if you just close your eyes afterward. The pictures stay there with you.

Which was what I was doing when we got back to the car. That was why I didn’t see what time it was right away. I sat in my seat with my eyes closed and leaned my head against the window and kept looking at the blue and green and red and white sprays of fireworks in my brain. Only the music was different. At the fireworks there were big speakers playing music with flutes and drums. In the car my Forever Parents had the radio on instead. Someone was singing about a girl whose name wasn’t even Billie Jean or Dirty Diana. It was Caroline or something. So I opened my eyes and said, “Can’t we get some flutes and drums? I’m trying to watch the fireworks.”

And then my Forever Mom said, “Honey, the fireworks are over.”

Which was when I saw it was 10:43. It was way past nine o’clock.

I started picking at my fingers. “Do you see what time it is?” I said.

“It’s 10:44,” said my Forever Mom.

I looked and she was right. The clock had changed. It wasn’t 10:43 anymore. It was 10:44 so I said, “Well dang!”

I started biting the skin on my lips. “It’s past my bedtime,” I said and in my head I wrote,

Bedtime = 9:00 at Night

“That’s okay,” my Forever Dad said. “It’s okay to stay up late once in a while, isn’t it?”

“But it’s past nine o’clock,” I said.

“That’s right,” said my Forever Mom. It sounded like she wanted to say something else but then she didn’t. She just sat there quietly in the front seat while someone on the radio sang about the numbers twenty-five and six-two-four. And now the numbers on the clock said 10:45. None of those numbers were like the numbers in my head which were still nine and zero and zero.

“I have to go straight to bed,” I said.

“Do you want to stay up a little to watch some TV? Just to decompress?”

Decompressing is like deescalating. It means let’s take a little time to calm down. I shook my head no. “I have to go to bed now,” I said because nine o’clock is my bedtime and I have to have nine grapes with my human milk in the morning. Nine years old is how old I was when the police came. It’s how old I was before Forever started.

“What about brushing your teeth?” said my Forever Dad. “Don’t you want to brush your teeth first?”

It’s a rule that We always brush our teeth before going to bed. And I like rules. “Okay, yes, fine,” I said. “After I brush my teeth. And after I go to the bathroom and wash my hands. And after I get a drink of water to put on my dresser and put on jammies. Then I’ll go straight to bed.”

“Which jammies will you wear tonight?” my Forever Mom asked. “The ones with the cats, or the ones with the sock monkeys?”

“The ones with the cats,” I said. “The ones with the sock monkeys are for Mondays.”

Then I thought about my Baby Doll and decided to sing it a lullaby. Even though it couldn’t hear me. Because I could still see the fireworks in my brain which is where I see my Baby Doll. I started singing “I’ll Be There” for it. My Forever Dad turned off the twenty-five or six-two-four and my Forever Mom put her hand over the clock. When it came to the part about looking over my shoulder I said, “Oooooh!” just like Michael Jackson which is not the same way a ghost says it but still. Then I looked over my shoulder and inside my eyes I saw Little Michael Jackson giving Bubbles a great big hug through the bars at the zoo.

“You’re doing great, Forever Girl,” my Forever Dad said. It’s all right for them to call me that for now because it’s still true. I like being their Forever Girl and I’ll miss them both but it’s already way, way, way past my nine. Past nine o’clock and nine years old. I don’t want to go back to that scary place but I have to, have to, have to.