Mission (Un)Popular by Anna Humphrey Read Free Book Online Page A

wanting nothing to do with her. But now she’ll have Bryan.” She didn’t know I was crouched behind the nondenominational minister’s podium with Erika, picking field mushrooms for something to do. “Now, what do you suppose this green stuff with the nuts is?” she whispered loudly, then snorted. “One thing’s for sure. Bryan won’t get fat eating the food she cooks.” Flo guffawed and slapped Dotty’s arm, and after that Erika and I spent the rest of the reception hatching a plan to sneak the field mushrooms into Dotty’s next helping of vegetarian lasagna—Erika was pretty sure they were the poison kind—but we never worked up the nerve.
    Next thing I knew, I found myself packing my stuff into cardboard boxes and walking through the strange emptiness of our little brick bungalow—noticing the dark spot on the wall where our embarrassing Goddess of Fertility painting used to hang; running my hand over the door frame my mom had been notching to measure me since I was old enough to stand.
    When we got to Bryan’s house, nothing fit. Our sofa looked too small. Our sari curtains looked too bright against the white walls. Still, my mom threw our Peruvian blanket over Bryan’s ugliest chair, rearranged his furniture to make room for ours, and hung up the fertility goddess painting right in the front hall. I’ll never know for sure if it’s what gave him the idea, but a few months later, Bryan decided he wanted to have a little bald baby. He and my mom found this top-notch doctor and went for all kinds of tests. By Christmas they were showing me a black-and-white photo from her ultrasound. “Surprise, surprise, surprise!” my mom said, pointing to each bean-shaped blur.
    My mom was almost forty when my sisters were born, and she never stops saying what a miracle they are. She didn’t think she’d be able to have another kid after me. I was ten at the time. I couldn’t understand why she’d want another one. And I definitely couldn’t (and still don’t) understand why she married Bryan. I thought we were doing perfectly fine—and that we were happy. But I guess she wanted more from life, like a bigger house with more people in it, piles and piles of laundry, and someone to bore her to sleep at night…and, if that was the case, she’d definitely found the right guy.
    Still, dull and wussy as he might be, I had to admit Bryan had a few surprises up his sleeve. The decorating team had just started to take down the hexagon-shaped light fixture when my mom came in, grabbed the remote from the coffee table, and switched off the TV in one motion.
    â€œI’m doing a tarot reading in the front room, and I need you to watch the girls.”
    I was stunned. First of all, I couldn’t believe that Bryan had had the nerve to interrupt my mom. There’s a strict “don’t even think about interrupting a client unless you want bad karma to rain down upon you” policy in our house. Mom put her hands on her hips. “Bryan has to get to the convenience store before it closes.”
    I stared up at her. Her jaw was all clenched, and her forehead was all wrinkled. She barely even looked like herself. “He’s had a difficult enough week. I don’t understand why you can’t treat him with a little respect, Margot. Bryan is an important member of this family.”
    â€œIf Bryan thinks he’s had such a difficult week, he should try my life. In case you’re forgetting, I just lost my best friend to another school. All I want to do is watch TV and try to forget about it, okay?” I made a grab for the remote, but my mom got in the way, which made me even more annoyed. “And why did he go crying to you? It’s kind of pathetic, don’t you think? Plus, why do I always have to babysit? They’re not my kids. And Bryan’s not my family.”
    There’s an