We couldn’t have been moving any slower.
As we approached the fourth speed bump yet, Andrew eased his foot off the accelerator even more, slowing the small vehicle to a pace that wasn’t much of an improvement on being stationary. The wheels rolled over the tiny bump with ease, barely moving the car at all. However, it seemed my best friend was suffering from extreme sensitivity; he winced even at the miniscule vibration.
“Sorry!” he cried, shooting me an agonized look. “I knew I should’ve gone the other way. I forgot about the speed bumps.”
Wedged in the front seat with a bag at my feet and a baby carrier perched on my lap, I was already uncomfortable. The doll was strapped awkwardly inside it, its dodgy eye rolling backwards and forwards with every motion. No matter where I focused my attention, I couldn’t shake off the feeling that it was watching me. Andrew, however, seemed to think the slightest movement would be disastrous. From the moment we got into the car, he’d not stopped stealing nervous sideways glances, as if checking it hadn’t spontaneously combusted in my care. Driving at any speed over twenty miles an hour, he’d deemed, was way too risky.
Except in reality, the only danger we were in was being overtaken by passing snails.
“Andrew,” I said, “it’s not made of glass. If you don’t speed up a bit, we’re going to be driving all night.”
Maybe if it wasn’t so incredibly annoying, it might’ve been a bit cuter. The car’s internal temperature was not unlike the gym’s – stifling – and so anything that prolonged the journey wasn’t exactly in my good books. For me, the baby had only been an addition to an already bad day. I could already see it taking a lot of self-control to spare it the same fate as Andrew’s brother’s.
“Sorry,” he repeated, but my protests did nothing to improve his speed.
When we pulled up at my house twenty minutes later, I wasted no time in scrambling for the door, eager to breathe air that didn’t make me feel queasy.
“Do you want me to carry that?” Andrew asked, running a hand through his messy brown hair. His eyes darted to the carrier in my hand. “I mean, I can-”
“I’m fine,” I interjected, my lips twitching into a smile. “I think I can manage a few meters up the driveway. It’s really not that heavy.”
We headed up to the front door, letting ourselves in and going straight for our usual hangout spot – the kitchen. Maybe it was due to the abundance of food there (both of us were always hungry), but we always seemed to find ourselves hanging around in some way or another, whether it be crouched over homework at the table, or watching crappy shows on the tiny wall TV by the fridge.
Today, the kitchen contained only my mom, who was leaning over the counter, engrossed in a cooking show. She looked surprised, to say the least, when greeted by the sight of me lugging a pink baby carrier into the kitchen. Her eyes flickered suspiciously between us for a moment – mentally evaluating the possibility of me going through pregnancy unnoticed – before comprehension dawned. “Baby project?”
“Baby project,” I confirmed, heaving the carrier onto the countertop.
“And you two are partners?” I nodded in response, and a smile spread across her face. “That’s so cute. Do I get a look at my first grandkid?”
“Uh…” I resisted the urge to grimace. “I wouldn’t get too excited. It’s not pretty.”
She ignored me, twisting the carrier around for a better look. However, once she caught sight of the horror that lay within, her smile faded pretty quickly. “Oh,” she said slowly, “isn’t that… nice.”
“Mom, it’s ugly. We know.”
I reached inside the carrier and extracted the doll, eyeing it closely. I still didn’t completely trust it not to explode in my arms; I had heard the horror stories about this project before. Admittedly, none of them had included detonating babies, but I didn’t like to take chances.
At that moment, there was a muffled – yet unmistakable – meow from the door. Spinning around, my eyes fell upon my little sister, Millie, whose chubby hands were gripped on the handle of her beloved toy stroller. Upon closer inspection, however, it didn’t contain one of her toys; instead, under a thick blanket, lay our cat, Bertie. With a bonnet strapped on his fluffy head, he didn’t look too happy with the arrangement and was doing his best to escape.
“Millie!” I said, a frown slipping onto my face. “What have we told you about being nice to Bertie?”
She shook her head furiously, sending her blonde ringlets flying. “Not Bertie,” she stated. “Baby.”
Standing beside me, my mom tutted. “Come on, let him go,” she said coaxingly. Millie stared back at her for a second, obviously contemplating her next move. But then Mom made a mistake: she took a step toward her. Wasting no time, Millie seized the handles and shoved the stroller forward, weaving around the kitchen obstacles – including the dining table, chairs and appliances – with uncanny precision. I caught a fleeting glimpse of Bertie, wearing an expression that could only be read as terrified, as she jerked it to the side and made for the door.
It just so happened that this marked the end of her streak of accuracy; although she managed to flee from the kitchen, a flustered Mom on her tail, it wasn’t before she slammed right into me and knocked the baby out of my arms.
I could say it happened in slow motion, but I’d be lying. One minute it was safely in my arms, the next it was landing on the tiled kitchen floor with a gut-wrenching smack.
Andrew and I sucked in a tense breath, eyes locked onto the doll beneath us. A silence, weighed down by a sense of foreboding, fell across the kitchen. The moment passed, and for a second, I almost believed we were safe. It hadn’t triggered anything, we could just put the baby back into the carrier and pretend that never happened...
It’s a shame things never go my way.
It began to cry.
It wasn’t even a quiet cry, either – a sort of block-out-the-noise-and-you’re-fine thing. Oh, no. When the school installed speakers in the dolls, they obviously went all out. No expense spared to put a bunch of hormonal teenagers off kids forever. The kitchen was filled with a shrill, ear-piercing wail that resembled a siren more than it did a child.
“You’re kidding me,” I muttered, leaning forward to retrieve it from the floor. Up close, the scream was even less bearable. If its pitch got any higher, I was afraid it might do serious damage to my eardrums. I held it at arm’s length, shooting a despairing look at Andrew. “What do we do?”
However, the anguish etched across his features matched mine. He ran a nervous hand through his hair, biting his lip, as his eyes darted warily between the baby and I. “I don’t know... uh... maybe...”
Suddenly, an idea hit me. “The bag.”
It lay on the table alongside the carrier, unopened in our haste to get out of school. As well as the baby – or demon child, which I thought was a more fitting title in our case – Coach Davis had supplied each pair with a bag, although containing what, I wasn’t sure.
Truthfully, I was kind of hoping for a pair of ear defenders.
“Look, hold this,” I said, tossing the baby to Andrew. He caught it – just – but held it at arm’s length, as far away from his body as possible. If my ears weren’t currently being assaulted by the wailing, I might’ve found it funny. He couldn’t have looked more awkward if he had tried, and it was pretty comical.
Rifling through the bag, I felt a wave of disappointment rush over me. Its contents was limited to a plastic bottle, a pack of spare diapers, a rattle and a few baby clothes. No ear defenders or a magic baby-silencing wand in sight.
“Avery...”
My head snapped upward and met Andrew’s gaze; the baby’s crying had moved up a notch, and was now pretty much incessant, not to mention at an agonizing pitch. His eyes were glazed with panic, and I could tell he was hoping for a miracle solution just as much as me.
“Um... why don’t you try rocking it?”
“Try” turned out to be the operative word. Even after settling the baby awkwardly in his arms, Andrew’s discomfort pretty much took precedence over everything else. He tried to move it side to side in at least a slightly rhythmic fashion, but it did absolutely nothing to soothe the screaming infant. Apparently, being dropped face down onto the floor hadn’t exactly been a calming experience for it.
Eventually, I took over. I tried every rocking technique that sprung to mind – even if some of them did happen to look like odd dances – before finally settling for pacing the kitchen in desperation.
“Why,” I said exasperatedly, as I completed my second lap, “do they put us through this?”
“I don’t know,” Andrew answered. He was still chewing on his lip. “But I’m beginning to understand why my brother decided to chuck his out of the window.”
“Maybe that’s the smartest idea.” I grimaced. “It’s health... a good grade isn’t a matter of life or death, right? Is it really that bad if we fail this one project?”
Suddenly his face lit up; he looked as if he’d just been told he’d won the lottery. Brows furrowed, I peered at him curiously. “Avery!” he cried. “It’s stopped. The pacing... it actually worked!”
My gaze snapped towards the doll in my arms and, sure enough, I’d failed to notice the fact that the wailing was no longer echoing throughout the kitchen and causing long term damage to our hearing. The only audible sound was a faint thumping from upstairs: what I assumed was Mom still in pursuit of my rogue sister. A relieved grin spread across my face and I heaved a giant sigh. It had barely been ten minutes, but already I felt exhausted.
After sliding it cautiously back into the carrier, I turned back to Andrew, pointing a finger in his direction. “You,” I commanded, “are staying here tonight. There is no way I’m dealing with this thing on my own.”
He smiled sheepishly. “Then I better go grab my stuff before it wakes up again.”