It’s maybe even my favorite.
There is no one out on the streets at the crack of ass, so I let loose with a couple of verses and suddenly I’m off to see the wizard in my mind. I’m a freak. True. But it ain’t like I’m hurting anybody, and Bobby Big Boy gets a big bang out of the fantasy too, I know because the very second I start singing and skipping he goes mad, jumping like some tiny furry ballerina. And BBB can JUMP—like—three feet into the air, which is pretty good considering that he is only maybe twelve little inches tall.
And then I’m at Ricky’s, so I key into the back door, using my very own key that Donna made for me a while back.
By the refrigerator, BBB has a little setup—two bowls that are Phillies red, because Ricky likes the Philadelphia Phillies and so does Donna. Donna spoils B3 with the wet stuff in cans. No dry crap for him. I feed my pup and he eats merrily, his little tail going like a frickin’ windshield wiper.
Next I unload the dishwasher, which doesn’t take all that long.
Today is omelet day, so I crack a half-dozen or so eggs into a big old silver bowl, add milk, and then whisk the hell out of it all. I find tomatoes and mushrooms and a red pepper in the vegetable drawer, so I chop that hooey up like a pro, using one of Donna’s super expensive knives and a thick-ass chopping board.
All those sliced veggies go into my silver bowl.
I add pepper, salt, a dash of hot sauce, and a shot of tequila from the liquor cabinet, which is my newest secret omelet ingredient. When it comes to cooking, I can get quite loopy. The alcohol will get cooked out, and it’s only a single shot split between three servings, so no worries about getting drunk before school or anything like that.
I spray the frying pan with Pam, and then let it get good and hot, while I halve oranges and put Donna’s automatic juicer to use.
Bobby Big Boy has finished his breakfast and is lying on his back in the middle of the kitchen floor so that his tiny legs are in the air and I can see he has a stiffy, which is gross. But I don’t want him to feel self-conscious, especially since lying on his back with a full belly is his second favorite, next to pissing, so I pretend I do not notice.
It takes three to four oranges to make a tiny glass of juice, and I end up using twelve, just so Ricky, Donna, and I will get all the vitamin C we need to fight frickin’ colds and whatnot.
The pan is not quite hot enough yet, so I retrieve the newspaper from the driveway, remove the plastic wrapper, and put the paper on Donna’s seat.
I set the table and put on coffee.
The pan is popping now so I pour some omelet jizz onto the metal and let it spread out into a perfect O.
When it gets hard enough, I fold over the yellow O into a D and flip it a few times, until the outside gets golden brown.
“Amber, someday you really have to let me cook for you. I’m getting to feel like Thomas Jefferson every time I come down into my kitchen and see you slaving away. You’re robbing me of all my Mom-ness and making me feel like writing some sort of proclamation or something.”
I just smile dumbly at Donna and shake my head—spatula in hand—like a moron.
Donna is my hero—plain and simple.
Sometimes, when she is being extra cool, I can do little more than marvel at her.
I admire Donna more than anyone.
I want to be Donna.
She grew up on the other side of the tracks, as they say. Her father was a truck driver, her mother died of cancer when she was seven, but she kicked butt in school and got a scholarship to Bryn Mawr College, which is a school for women who do not need a man to take care of them. She kicked butt at Bryn Mawr, earning a scholarship to Harvard Law School, where she became a lawyer. She wanted to have a child but not a husband, so she purchased some sperm and had Ricky, who turned out to be autistic, which did not freak her out at all, even though the sperm was supposedly screened for potential birth defects or something like that. She loves the hooey out of Ricky, and will kick your butt if you mess with her boy.
Donna is model tall with naturally blond shoulder-length hair. She wears these very cool business suits that are sexy in a serious womanly way, and she sports these killer heels every day. Men must seriously dig her, I’m sure. She drives a black Mercedes SUV that can fit all five members of the Franks Freak Force Federation—which is one of the awesome team names me and my closest friends, my boys, call ourselves—we all fit in the SUV if we put Chad on someone’s lap, and Donna is always carting us around, because she digs freaky teenagers like me and the rest of The Five.