Will threw his head back and burst out laughing hard enough to rock his chair while Charmaine fanned her face with her hand.
“I’ll have you know, Kenton Heath, that none of that went on. We were just looking at what our kids have been doing to the house, and then Will helped me with some dishes in the kitchen.”
Logan made a choking noise, and I caught on to what’d happened.
They’d seen the titty paint. Oh, sweet baby in a star spangled manger, they’d seen the boobies on the wall.
I was going to die.
To hell with a piece of literature talking satirically about a lock of hair getting cut off and society being scandalized by it. In years to come, there’d be a piece about a girl whose ta-ta’s left boobie prints on her wall while she was having sex and her parents were knocking on the door, that the parents then found, and she’d turned to stone in front of them.
It might sound dramatic, but there was no coming back from this. I should know because I was going to live out the rest of my life praying for someone to cast a spell and turn me into a statue.
Actually, let me be specific on that in case what Dad had said earlier about putting things out into the universe was true. I wanted to be a statue with no brain function whatsoever. I didn’t want to be stuck in place, being tormented by my mind for centuries.
“I—” I started, then stopped because I didn’t know what to say.
“Great shade of blue, isn’t it?” Logan asked, sounding like he was choking back laughter now.
How could he find this funny?
“Oh, yes. It’s unusual, like a light gray-blue,” Charmaine nodded, looking at Mom for confirmation.
“You should get some art for the walls,” Will suggested, crossing his arms over his chest as he looked between Logan and me. “Birds, maybe? There’s so much out there that’d brighten a room up, you know.”
He paused and then clicked his fingers together, making me jump. “I’ve got it. I follow this British artist on Facebook, and just last week he posted a photo of a detailed ceramic figurine he’d come across of a bird called a blue tit. I don’t know if we get those here…”
I was wrong before—now I wanted to die. I’d never been this embarrassed in my life. In fact, I was fairly certain now that nothing could make me feel worse than I did.
Then Dad got up from his chair, saying he was going to check out the rooms we’d worked on, and that’s when I realized that even if you didn’t need to say something out loud for it to be put out into the universe. All I had to do was think it.
If I survived this, I was definitely playing the lottery. Then I was buying an island in the middle of nowhere and leaving in the middle of the night to go and live on it. No one would know my name, I’d get a boat into shore to get food whenever I needed it, and I’d be a hermit forever.
Mom got up to follow him, hopefully to steer him clear of the front room, and I covered my face.
“Your mom won’t let him see it, honey,” Charmaine whispered in my ear. “You could always just say you were testing out paint effects if he does.”
Fudging hell.
“Bexley!” Dad roared, making me jump. I was done for. “There’s a mutant coming out of your cat’s ass.”
The moment the words hit me, I was up and running to where they were standing in front of Prince, who was walking around on his bed in circles, his stomach straining every couple of seconds. Doyle was whining next to him, looking like he wanted to run away.
And yes, there was definitely a mutant coming out of its ass.
“Oh my God,” I cried, sinking down onto my knees beside him. “Call the vet.”
Beside me, Logan muttered, “Told you you’d find the soul of Satan and devil horns inside him.”
The alien coming out of him dropped down onto the soft cushion of the bed with blood and gunk smeared all over it now.
“What the hell is that?” Will asked, looking over our shoulders at the wriggling ball wrapped in a weird bag.
“Beelzebub?” Logan suggested sounding disgusted, but then he ran the tip of his finger down Prince’s back and moved his hand up to scratch behind his ear. “You’re okay, little guy. We’ll get this fixed for you.”
His hand quickly pulled back, though, when Prince leaned down and started to lick the alien.
“I think—” Charmaine said, laughter clouding what she was trying to say. “I think your Prince is a Princess, guys, and that’s a baby.”
Sure enough, when I squinted, I could make out a kitten inside the bag.
Logan jumped up and ran out of the room.
“Is he gonna puke?” Dad asked Will, both of them staring as another mutant started to emerge from poor Prince.
Before Will could answer, Logan was back with the large black bag he kept in the back of his truck. Opening it up quickly, he pulled out a pair of gloves from a package, put them on, and tore open another one that had a pair of wicked looking scissors in it.
“What’s that for?”
Looking from me down to the scissors, he explained, “I need to open the sac. She’s distracted by the next baby, and I don’t know enough about what’s meant to happen when cats give birth to sit back and wait for her to help this one out.”
Then, leaning in, he pulled a small section back and cut into it. Carefully, he managed to open it enough for the
