The Perils of Pauline by Collette Yvonne Read Free Book Online Page B

upon me, the long awaited coming of age that heralds full day, every day, school attendance. This represents a huge developmental milestone. For me, that is. From now on, I can blame everything that Olympia says or does on her teachers.
    Turning six also means Olympia’s character is, according to the childrearing manuals, almost fully set. I’m terrified that this may be true. Last night at bedtime, Olympia announced firmly, “I don’t believe in God.” That’s ten perfectly respectable commandments gone right out the window. I pity her teachers. They don’t have a prayer.

CHAPTER 4
Chaff
    Chaff: Radar confusion reflectors, consisting of thin, narrow metallic strips of various lengths and frequency responses, which are used to reflect echoes for confusion purposes. Causes enemy radar guided missiles to lock on to it instead of the real aircraft, ship, or other platform.—Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms
    The alarm didn’t go off. Now I have to leap around like a demented squirrel to get ready for my first day of school. I arrive downstairs as Jack howls, “You shut up, loser,” and picks up a fork in an attempt to threaten Serenity.
    “Don’t cry, it only makes me stronger,” she taunts, laughing, at which he stabs her in the forearm with the fork.
    Serenity lunges for Jack while I throw my body between the two and yell, “What’s going on here?”
    Olympia pipes up from the sidelines: “Serenity and Shae ate all the Honeycomb in Serenity’s room last night.”
    “What? The jumbo box I bought yesterday?” I’d like to jab Serenity with a fork myself.
    I send Jack to his room while Serenity stomps off to find a bandage. Olympia is winding up to tears over the loss of sugary cereal. I make Olympia a plate of toast and hand it to her. So much for last year’s course in handling sibling rivalry. I learned all about acknowledging their anger and describing the problem respectfully while Jackclobbered Olympia, Olympia bit Serenity, and Serenity creamed both of them.
    I run down to the basement to search for a clean shirt. There are easily ten loads of laundry piled in front of the machine plus the contents of the hampers upstairs. I feel a strong urge to cut classes on my first day.
    Jack appears beside me. “Where’re my gym shoes?”
    “Where’s your father?”
    “Dunno.”
    I ship Jack off with clean underwear and call upstairs to summon Donald. No answer. Where is he? We set a schedule and he promised; today was his turn to get the kids organized for school. He’s a Certified Financial Planner with an MBA from Harvard. He can create a complex financial spreadsheet, but has no idea how to operate a household. It’s time he learned some basic domestic management skills like how to fix the washing machine, which is suddenly refusing to start.
    Remembering my race against the clock, I sort everything into piles for later and iron my blouse in record time. I run upstairs. Olympia is watching television in the family room, still wearing her pajamas. I yell for Donald again.
    Serenity pops her head up from the couch. “Oh yeah. Donald left. He said to tell you he had an early meeting.”
     
    Arriving on campus, I stop to double-check my timetable: I have five minutes to get to the Administrative Studies Building for my first class, Organizational Behavior.
    Congratulating myself for being exactly on time, I select a seat near the front of the lecture hall. I’m fully armed to take exceptional notes with my fine tipped roller ball pens and notebook, neatly dated and operationally ready on the desk before me.
    Scanning the room, I can see that none of the students are prepared like me to take proper notes, and all of them look decades younger than me. A girl sitting in the next row is wearing silver kneehigh gladiator sandals. She has a matching silver bag. Worse, there’s a woman standing near the door wearing bright yellow crocs and white capris. She looks like a