Guests (N)



That’s when my parents arrived. They had a woman with them who I didn’t recognize. She had a big floppy hat on, with heart-shaped glasses and great big floppy bag of a purse.

My parents were grinning from ear to ear. Their guest was also smiling. She came up to the table and shook my hand. That’s when I recognized her. “Sam-“

“Just Sam,” Samantha Anthony said. “I’m incognito.”

“That’s a cognito? Looks to me like you’re in a sweater.”

She laughed politely. I could see her upbringing included diplomacy. “I didn’t want to make tonight about me,” she said. “And we’ll be in Cancun when you graduate, But…someone desperately wanted to see Electra’s project.”

“Jennifer’s,” I said automatically. I waved her to the table. She pulled a sylph carrier out of her bag and placed it down by Jennifer.

Jennifer and Amelia squealed and hugged, then held hands as my pet took Sam’s pet on a tour of the project. I had to translate from annoying squeak to human for Sam’s benefit.

Please don’t tell her I said that. Either her. Any of her, really.

Samantha had contacted my parents privately. They had been coordinating this visit without once letting me or my sylph know anything about it. They watched the surprise, laughed, then walked over to see Chrissy and Chip’s efforts.

I had no idea they were that sneaky. I mean, fooling me was no great difficulty. But if they’d said one wrong word in the house while Elec- Jennifer was there, she’d have heard them.

But the surprise was complete. I resolved to watch them like a hawk, too.

The judges were impressed with the project, and wrote wonderful notes on the score sheets. But in the end, Jennifer took fourth place. She got an A, but she didn’t score in the top three, so she would not go on to District level.

That was probably just as well, because we had to start reading her a Classic, a Memoir, and a recently published novel.

So we sent a copy of the report (with the grade) and all the charts to the address Amelia had given Jennifer and moved on with Operation Graduation.

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We drew lots and I got the Novel. I jokingly suggested ‘Fear of Flying.’ Electra pretended to think on it. “We’ll call that plan B,” she said.

She directed me down the bookstore aisle until she saw what she wanted. She pointed to something called ‘The Clan Of The Cave Bear.’

That sounded cool.

It was set over 25,000 years ago, it was about a Cro-Magnon girl who became orphaned and was raised by a clan of Neanderthals. Stone tools, hunting with slings, shamans, saber-toothed tigers.

“Okay,” I said. I picked up the copy and thumbed through it. I stopped on a random page and read. It was about 10-year-old Ayla, the heroine, being raped by one of the Neanderthals in the clan.

I could not imagine reading this to Electra.

“No,” I said, putting it back on the shelf.

“Okay,” she said without pause. “Let’s find ‘Fear Of Flying.’” She had a wicked smile on for such an innocent sylph.

I stood there, frozen. I hadn’t thought that far ahead. Everyone in school had at least heard from someone who knew someone whose mom had read it. Lots of sex scenes.

Sex scenes from the woman’s point of view. Which might be interesting in a sort of ‘what do women want’ kind of way, but I couldn’t imagine me reading to Electra about what she should expect to feel during sex.

Then again, I couldn’t tell her about rape.

I had never so clearly understood the phrase, ‘hoist on my own petard.’

I finally decided that there was little chance they’d be talking about the saber-toothed tigers’ orgasms.

“Fine,” I snarled graciously, picking up the Cave Bear book.

In MY English class, we only needed one book report this year. I picked The Running Man by someone named Richard Bachman. Something about a futuristic television show, should be good for laughs, I thought.

I don’t know exactly how much sex there is in Clan of the Cave Bear. Part depends on your definition, I guess. There wasn’t one instance of sex that Ayla enjoyed. Or initiated. She was coerced each time.

The entire time I was reading the book, I was either horrified that I was describing these acts to Electra, or anxiously awaiting the next doggie-style rape, or details about the character’s breasts growing when she was pregnant, or suckling babies, or… Or something else.

Electra’s book report, though, was amazing. She dictated a review of a book I sort of recognized, but didn’t actually remember.

It was weird.

What my sylph picked up from the book was a woman who was constantly being told ‘no’ as in ‘no you can’t do that’ and ‘no women can’t do that’ and ‘that’s not possible, you’re a woman.’

Ayla just went off and learned how to do it all, anyway.

For some reason, this appealed to my five-and-a-half-inch tall girl pet. Someone who had faced a certain amount of sexism all her life, and now was reduced to pint-sized property.

She was quite poetic about how Ayla and Amelia both inspired her, drawing comparisons between the ‘glass ceiling’ women faced in business and the ‘cage ceiling’ sylphs faced in daily life.

My God, did I regret comparing her to ‘real’ gymnasts that one time. She never mentioned it. She never mentioned me, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it.


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Index

37. The Fairest of Fairs

39. Proud