The Encyclopedia of Me (11 page)

Grandma was my best friend and best family combined, which just made her the best.

See also
Apple.

I do not have to tell you what it means to be grounded. I only mention it because I am struggling to come up with
G
words that are captivating enough to warrant a mention in the Encyclopedia of Me.
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I have been grounded more times than I can count, from crimes ranging from Not Actually Crimes (e.g., the rescue of Mr. Bigglesworth) to things that may, in fact, BE crimes, such as sneaking into movies that are for mature audiences, or stealing the Aardie costume and putting it in FB's mom's bed with her, so that when she woke up in the morning and stared right at it, she screamed for forty-five minutes and then called the police.

Really, FB's mom should not be allowed to call the police.She does it with the kind of reckless abandon that ties up the police force and distracts them from whatever real crimes might be happening in this city. If you think about it, she's the one who should be punished, not me.

Besides, everything is usually Freddie Blue's idea. I just go along for moral support. Because that's what BFFs do, right?

See also
Aardvark; Anderson, Freddie Blue; BFF; Couch, Itchy.

One of the steps on the road between being born and getting old and dying. The part that includes all the “responsibility” and things like “jobs” and “bills.”

Sometimes at night when I'm supposed to be asleep, I hear Mom and Dad worrying and/or arguing about what will happen to Seb when he graduates from high school (if he graduates) and grows up. How will he go to college? How will he get a proper job? My parents are unable to imagine a future for any of us that does not include college, which is funny because Mom only recently went back to school and Dad never did.

Dad says, “Let's take it one day at a time.” Which is fine for Seb apparently, but he'll often give
me
a bad time about what I'm going to be when I grow up, which is a writer, which Mom and Dad say is not a “real job” so I need to have “a backup plan.” My “backup plan” is to marry Prince X, which I would never be dumb enough to tell Mom and Dad! So instead I lie and say that I plan to go to law school. Everyone in the world thinks that “law school” sounds impressive, but I think it sounds painfully dull and horrific and therefore is parent-approved and a good answer. If you are looking for an answer to supply to your own parents, please feel free to steal mine.

See also
Aaron-Martin, Sebastian (Seb).

Cats. With no hair.

I don't know that much about hairless cats, but I can't leave out Hortense, our family pet, who you already know a lot about. Hairless cats are sometimes also called “Canadian Skinless Cats.” I'm not making that up. It's true. Being Canadian ought to make Hortense extra polite, but I do not believe that is the case. Hortense can be very ornery.

This photo of a hairless cat looks exactly like Hortense (or a handbag) but it is not Hortense (or a handbag).

I can tell you that — unlike regular old cats — hairless cats like baths. Hortense takes a bath once a week. Well, when I say she “takes a bath” that implies that she just hops into the tub and washes herself, when in fact it is my job to do it. I don't mind, though, because she likes it so much. If you put a regular cat into the bathtub and started washing her, she'd as likely as not scratch your eyes out with her razor-sharp claws. Hortense lies back like she's having a day at the spa. And she purrs.

Hortense is just
not
a regular cat, although she
does
have razor-sharp claws that she uses more frequently than she should, just never in conjunction with a bath.

The last day of October, during which everyone dresses up and demands candy from the neighbors or goes to a party and screams when they put their hand in a bowl of spaghetti labeled “brains.”

Last year for Halloween, Freddie Blue and I dressed up as dice. It was
wildly
funny. We did this whole thing where people would pretend to toss us and we pretended to roll around and we'd land on a different number each time. Actually, now that I've written that down, it sounds incredibly stupid, so you'll just have to take my word for it when I say that it was hysterically funny. Freddie Blue peed her pants, but you couldn't tell at all because she was wearing a box.

See also
Anderson, Freddie Blue; BFF.

Another word for “out of control.”

Lex is in a band called Haywire. If by a “band,” I mean “a group of boys who never actually practice but sometimes scream into microphones during parties or at ‘talent' shows, which they have never won.” Originally, it was meant to be a band for Lex and Seb, both, but Seb hates music. Especially the kind of music that Lex plays. He says it makes him feel like he's been put into a blender with a bunch of nails and broken glass and tinfoil and then blended at high speed.

He is not wrong.

So Lex is on his own. Secretly, Lex thinks that one day Haywire will be famous and will make billions of dollars and he will have enough money to take care of Seb forever, like when we are grown-ups and Mom and Dad are dead. I know this because I read it on the laptop. I guess he was trying to write a blog but didn't realize that the Internet was involved and never got around to uploading it during his allotted thirty minutes. His attention span is quite short. The file was called “haywire.doc.” How could I know it was private? When he caught me reading it, he deleted it and everything else on the laptop's hard drive too. He was grounded for a week, which did nothing to get my stuff back. I am still mad.

Haywire is also how Seb gets when he is melting down. “Meltdown” is the correct word for “going haywire,” according to Charlotte Ellery, who is a big fan of using only the right word for anything, so if any of us say, “Seb went haywire,” she sighs and looks depressed, like she can't believe we never listen. Then she says, “Actually, what you mean is that Seb had a meltdown, as is common among people with autism.”

Honestly, I don't see what difference it makes.

Worse, I'm the “trigger.” The Haywire Trigger. Maybe Dad should call me that instead of the Peacemaker. Because it would probably be more true.

Like yesterday, Seb went haywire. And it was my fault.

I was writing my book when the boys came tumbling into the room, knocking over the mail, a glass of milk, and a table lamp,
66
much like two unattractive ponies who have accidentally had a double-shot espresso.

“What are you so happy about?” I said.

“We're going to be in
Everybody
magazine!” said Lex.

“Give me five, Seb, my man, my bro, my brown, my MAIN FAME.”

Seb slapped his hand. “European green crabs are now living at our beach,” he said.

“Gosh,” I said. “That's scintillating, Seb.”
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“What I wouldn't do to see a Chinese mitten crab,” he said. “Want me to draw you a picture of one?”

“Hey,” said Lex. “You can tell that to the people from
Everybody
magazine. About the crabs.”

“Really?” said Seb. “Cool. Maybe I could catch one for them, if I can find one. They're hard to find. I wonder if they'd wait if I took a long time to find one.”

Then for some reason, I said, “
Everybody
magazine! Gosh, that's exciting. Imagine all those hundreds of cameras snapping your picture, Seb. Over and over again. Picture after picture after picture. I can't imagine a crab would like that.”

I knew it was mean, but still, Seb did not freak out.

“Pictures?” I repeated. “Of you? With a camera?”

Seb shrugged and said, “You're crazy, Freckles. Must be a freckle in your brain. Freckle-brain.” He laughed his I-am-a-weird-maniac laugh.

Lex laughed too. They have the exact same laugh. It's like being trapped in some kind of nightmare echo chamber of bullying brother laughter. “Freckle-brain, good one. Hey, I wonder if Freckles does have freckles in her brain. That's hilarious!”

“Shut up,” I said. “You're bullies.”

“Bullies who will be in
Everybody
magazine,” said Lex.

“Don't call me names,” said Seb. “Don't call me a bully.”

Then Dad came clomping into the room, wiping grease off his hands. “I heard you talking about
Everybody
!” he said. “This is going to be so great.”

“Whatever,” I said. “Big deal.”

“It IS a big deal,” he said, grabbing me off the couch and whirling me around the room and then throwing me back, nearly breaking my neck. “I'm getting the video camera! Let's interview each other about how it feels to be famous.” He turned the camera on and started this pretty bad voice-over about how we're going to be in
Everybody
magazine. And then.

Then.

The minute the camera hit Seb, he started an A-1 haywire meltdown freak-out. Whatever Charlotte Ellery wants to call it, it doesn't change what it was.

Which was terrible.

I won't say what he said, but it was a lot of swearing and yelling. At me. At everyone. When he gets like this, he's said that he actually doesn't even really see anyone else, but it sure seems like he does. Then he started hitting himself on the head with one of the encyclopedias. I think it was
S
.

It was really hard to watch, but also hard to know what else to do. Sometimes when it happens, I feel like I become part of the wall. I am invisible. And I can't move. I can't look away. What happens to Seb seems totally private, but he does it in such a berserko way that it's completely public, so you look. Even when you shouldn't. Even when you don't want to.

Dad tried to wrestle the book out of his hands, and the rest of the pile of encyclopedias teetered and fell in a cloud of gold dust. The fan hit the floor and Hortense jumped and meowed so loudly, everything paused for a second while we watched her climb up the drapes. Then Seb let go of the book, pushed Dad off, and ran up the stairs into his room. He was sweating. His hair was soaked.

He slammed the door so hard I could hear Lex's signed, framed poster of LeBron James smashing on the floor. Then I heard Seb throwing more stuff around. I could see Lex's jaw working, but he didn't say anything.

Dad sighed and put the camera down as though it weighed a thousand pounds. For a second, he leaned on the table. It almost looked like he was going to cry. Lex went, “I'll go.”

And Dad said, “No, I'll do it.”

“I don't mind,” said Lex. “No big.”

“Lex!” shouted Dad. “I'm going.”

“Fine,” said Lex. “Whatever. Do your thing.” He sat down on a chair and started tipping it backward.

“Stop it,” I mumbled.

“Don't tip the chair,” said Dad. Lex ignored him.

“DON'T TIP THE CHAIR!” Dad repeated.

“STOP IT!” I yelled. “It's not Lex's fault!”

“HE'S TIPPING THE CHAIR!” yelled Dad.

“BUT HE ISN'T WHY YOU ARE MAD!” I shouted.

“Hey,” said Lex. “Forget it. It's fine. I'm not tipping. See? Nice work, Peacemaker.”

“Don't call me that,” I said.

“Guys,” sighed Dad. “Oh, forget it.”

We listened as Dad went and knocked on Seb's door and Seb screamed, “Go away! Get the #^&@^&# out of here!”

Dad called, “Go ahead, guys, go outside.”

“But . . .” I started.

“GO,” he said. “NOW.”

Dad gets way stressed out when Seb's in his rage cycle. I should also mention that Dad handles Seb completely differently than Mom does. Mom's done a lot of research and has all these elaborate steps that she follows, and the step she'd take right then would be to ignore Seb entirely. It's part of the chart that she has attached to the fridge.