Marianne Elizabeth Hammer (top young adult novels TXT) 📖

Not really—she threw them on the floor. She fixed her underwear when she glimpsed her backside in the dresser mirror and stepped into the dress, angling away from the mirror so she wouldn’t have to see how things jiggled when she moved. The new position was worse. Now all the Muppet Babies on the wallpaper border seemed to be laughing at her.

She yanked the zipper up as smoothly as she could manage, stopping halfway up to loosen the lacing. Pausing to take a deep, constricted breath, she turned to the mirror.

Son of a...

Marianne heard a sharp snap as she tore at the zipper. She was scary, frankly. Lumpy. Shapes. She’d known the dress was too small—stupid, stupid, stupid. She ripped the dress off so fast that she stumbled sideways and slammed into the footboard of the bed.

“Fricker!” Marianne kicked the dress under the bed and just about bit off her lip to kill the pain in her foot. She slapped her hands on her bare thighs in time to the music and ran down her list of diets. She was already on a diet, but variety never killed anybody. Atkins, Low-fat, South Beach, Zigzag...

Just then, Marianne heard her neighbor walking up the side of the house to the trash cans, so she ducked down below window level. No need to torture Danielle with all her naked shapes and sizes.

She heard a lid slam closed and then Danielle’s voice. “Marianne! Get over here and watch my kids for me!”

Marianne smiled from her hiding place. The barbaric children next door were always a good distraction. She crawled across the floor and searched out her jeans and tank top from one of the laundry piles. She dressed, not bothering with shoes, and walked over to Danielle’s.

As she crossed the lawn, the screen door slammed open, spilling out myriad black-haired children. School-aged, toddlers, babies. They descended with glee on the scattering of toys and bikes on the driveway, shouting out claims to certain items and threats if those claims weren’t honored. On her way to the door, Marianne intercepted one kid attempting to assault another one with a brick that had come loose from the planter. It was way too heavy for his skinny little arms, and he relinquished it without a struggle. She checked to make sure that all six kids were accounted for and then walked inside.

Danielle shouted to her from the kitchen at the back of the house. “Throw a box of Ding Dongs on the porch and lock the door.”

“Don’t you have Pop-Tarts or anything?” said Marianne, going into the all-black kitchen to find her. Everything Danielle decorated was black and slightly 80s-ish. “Jam filling is distantly related to the fruit group.”

“Very funny,” said Danielle. Her curly, dark brown hair was especially feral today. “Just don’t let any of them back in.” Danielle was all twitchy and nervous-looking, smoking a cigarette inches from the back window and blowing the smoke out through the screen where the cat had ripped a hole. It was obvious that she’d called Marianne over for the company, not the babysitting. She was so adorable that Marianne wanted to go over and hug her, but Danielle didn’t appreciate those kinds of gestures in the way that normal humans did.

Marianne grabbed a bag of dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets from the freezer. “Some closet-smoker you are,” she said. “Michael’s still going to smell it.” Danielle’s husband didn’t like that she smoked, though he usually kept his mouth shut about it. The man wasn’t quite as stupid as he looked. “Go in the backyard or something.”

“Nu-uh,” said Danielle. “The kids will find me and want to talk to me. I bet the big ones are picking the lock to the side door as we speak.”

“Your kids don’t need to pick locks, they’ll just burn the door down,” said Marianne. “I have it from reliable sources that Mickey started a clandestine Pyro Club, complete with a hidden arsenal of matches.”

Danielle snapped her head up to stare at Marianne in terror, looking extremely ridiculous. Danielle Padilla was a very pretty woman when she wasn’t so hyper-panicked—olive skin, square jaw, all that good stuff. “You’re kidding, right?” said Danielle.

“No, no. It’s real.” Marianne turned around to start the oven and hide her face. “Mickey made all the neighborhood kids join up. Forced them at lighter-point.” Marianne heard Danielle exhale.

“Nice, Marianne,” said Danielle. “But I almost wish you were serious; then I could report him and get some serious government help. One of those juvie-camps is just what that kid needs.”

“He’s six.” Marianne hopped up to sit on the speckled granite counter while she waited for the oven to heat. “Maybe you should try Little League first.”

“Don’t go there. You’re stressing me out.”

Puh-leeze. Marianne turned and fixed her bangs in the reflection on the microwave. “I’m stressing you out? Who’s the one who locked her kids outside to live on frosting and hose water? I think you were stressed before I got here.”

“I know, I know,” Danielle whined. “I’m a bad mom. I’m just wigging out because I stupidly begged my little brother to move in here and help us with rent,” she pretended to bang her head against the wall, “and he’s coming today.”

“Really?” said Marianne. “What’s his name again?”

“And the house is a mess.”

“Your house is OCD clean, as usual.”

“And my demon kids are going to attack him the second he steps out of his truck.” Danielle made her hands into talons and clawed the air, almost dropping her cigarette. “And then he’ll get right back in and drive away, taking his money with him.”

“What the heck?” said Marianne. “You should have asked me to move in with you.”

“You’d have to pay, stupid,” said Danielle. Stupid was Danielle’s pet name for everyone she loved best in the world. “That means you’d have to get a job on top of going to cosmetology school. And that means I’d have to