Yesterwary

“Hey, tubby!” Xander called from the kitchen.

“Do you want to get slapped?” Demi glowered as she wobbled herself up to the window. “Because that is how you get slapped.”

“I’m sorry,” he laughed. “You’re just so huge.”

“I know,” she muttered, struggling to reach for her chef’s hat. Trying to fit into her white coat was a lost cause. She couldn’t close the middle buttons, nor could she reach the bottom button without cornering the fabric against the wall and squatting into an awkward plié. “And look at this shit,” she said, shaking off a shoe to exhibit her inflated foot.

“It looks like someone tried to pack three of you into your skin,” he mused, bending down to help squeeze her shoe back on.

“That’s what it feels like, too.”

They tinkered around the kitchen in silence for a bit, until Xander got the nerve to ask the question he probably shouldn’t have asked.

“Have you felt it move at all?”

“No,” she said quietly.

“Well,” he said, patting her lightly on the back, “my mom couldn’t feel me move until she was about to explode.”

Demi nodded and forced a grin, appreciative that he was trying to say something helpful, but not feeling any relief about her situation. She wanted to believe that she would be different, that her child would actually exist. She’d grown to care for the thing that was developing inside of her. But at the same time, she wanted to believe that she wouldn’t be any different at all. Not because she didn’t want her baby, but because she did, and that terrified her. She knew the child would never have a good life in a place where love didn’t exist. It would have two parents who very much cared for it, but never to the extent that parents should. She knew, no matter how hard she tried, she would never be able to love her child any more than she could love its father—which was not at all.

“How many cakes do we have?” Demi asked, eyeing a towering stack of rectangular boxes in the hall outside the kitchen.

“Twenty. Ten more to go,” he said, taking the hint that she wanted to change the subject, and retrieving another finished cake from the oven.

“Right,” she sighed. “Let’s get to it.”

So many of the orphans arrived in Yesterwary too young to know their birthday. Because of this, tradition called for one collective birthday for all of them. In the past, it had involved tasteless platters of meats and cheeses, and a recount of the history of their town—the only story ever told, before Demi had showed up. The children who had outgrown their shoes or clothes were given hand-me-downs from the older kids, and all others went gift-less.

Things had certainly changed.

Bastian, Demi, and the entirety of the restaurant staff wheeled in carts of cakes in every flavor imaginable, assuming one’s imagination was limited to chocolate and vanilla. Children lined the hallways, backed up against the walls, eyes wide with excitement as Bastian and Xander made another trip, bringing in packages that were wrapped in plain, brown paper. Choices for gifts were few, in Yesterwary, so Demi had done the best she could. For the older children, each package contained a blank book and a bundle of pencils, with a handwritten inscription reading, “What’s your story?” For the younger children, she had included paint brushes, and containers of ketchup, mustard, and blueberry paste. And in Michael’s book, though half of it was still blank for his own use, she’d written every story she could remember telling him on the swing, and sketched pictures to go along with them. All the stories that were just for him, and no one else.

“Happy birthday,” Demi whispered to Michael, handing him the package that she’d singled out for him.

Shredding the paper to bits, Michael beamed as he flipped through the pages. He hugged her around her middle, arms barely reaching the edges of her belly. Demi grinned and excused herself, heading toward the bathroom with the urgency of someone who had consumed three cups of water in the past hour and also happened to be very pregnant.

Halfway down the steps to the first floor, she clasped a hand to her belly. It felt as if a white-hot razor had twisted itself around her insides. It had been so long since she’d felt pain, she almost didn’t recognize the sensation, but even in the old world she’d never experienced anything as soul-shatteringly agonizing as this.