Tales from a Not-So-Fabulous Life (16 page)

I was like, OMG! OMG! OMG! Today was the party I had not been invited to.

It was like a demented nightmare. I was trapped in MacKenzie’s bedroom, my sister was locked in MacKenzie’s bathroom, and my dad was exterminating MacKenzie’s house. And if
all
that wasn’t awful enough, our van, with a humongous roach on top of it, was parked in MacKenzie’s driveway with MY last name plastered across the side of it (the van, not the roach).

I wanted to dig a deep hole in the lush pink carpet, crawl into it, and DIE! I pounded on the door.

ME (HAVING A MELTDOWN!)

“BRIANNA! COME ON!
OPEN UP!”

“I’m busy. Go away!”

“You’ve been in there long enough. Now open the door!”

“Say ‘pretty please.’”

“Pretty please.”

“Now say ‘pretty please with sugar on top.’”

“Okay. Open the door, pretty please with sugar on top…”

“NO!! I’m NOT done yet!”

“Mommm! This party is going to be a DISASTER! My reputation will be ruined! We
have
to cancel it.”

I could hear MacKenzie’s shrieks getting louder. She was coming up the stairs!

“Brianna. Open the door quick! PLEASE! It’s an emergency!” I hissed through the door.

“Wait! I’m putting on the yummy-smelling cupcake body spray now. Um…what’s the emergency?”

Now MacKenzie was in the hallway.

“Mom, I’m calling Jessica. She’ll never believe this is happening to me…”

I had exactly three seconds to convince Brianna to open the bathroom door.

“Brianna! It’s the TOOTH FAIRY! She’s coming, and we have to get out of here!! NOW!!”

The lock on the door clicked, and Brianna whipped open the door.

She looked even more afraid than she had been at the
Princess Sugar Plum
movie.

“D-did you say T-T-TOOTH FAIRY?!”

“Yes! Come on, let’s HIDE! Quick!”

Brianna was panicking and starting to whine.

“Where is she? I’m scared! I want Daaaaaddy!”

“Let’s hide behind the shower curtain. If we’re really quiet, she’ll never find us.”

Brianna shut up instantly, but her eyes were as big as saucers.

I actually felt a little sorry for her.

We dove into the bathtub and huddled behind the shower curtain.

I could hear MacKenzie stomping around her bedroom and screaming into her cell phone.

“Jess, there’s no way I can have this party now! Our house is crawling with bugs! What?…How am I supposed to know what they are? They’re these big black, er…roaches or something. Some guy is here spraying, but now the house stinks! It STINKS, Jess! How can I have a party with the house STINKING!”

“Nikki, I’m a-scared. I want my daaaddy! NOW!”

“I BEGGED Mom to let me have my party at the country club! Lyndsey’s mom let her have
her
party at the country club. But NOOO! Getting my mom to do anything these days is like pulling TEETH!.”

WHY did MacKenzie have to say the
T
word?!

Brianna totally lost it and started climbing out of the tub.

“OH NO! Did you hear that! She’s says she’s going to pull out my TEETH! I wanna go hooome!”

“Brianna!! Wait…!” I tackled her and held her in a headlock. Finally, she stopped squirming and went limp.

Then the little brat BIT me!! HARD! I let go of her and yelped in pain like a wounded animal. “YEEOOOOW!” But I did it inside my head, so no one else heard it but me.

Brianna scrambled out of the tub, opened the bathroom door, and disappeared into MacKenzie’s bedroom!

I froze and held my breath. I could not believe this was happening to me.

Then I thought, maybe this is just a nightmare. Like those scary-weird dreams I was having earlier in the week about Chloe and Zoey. If I could just wake up, this would ALL go away.

So I closed my eyes, pinched myself really hard, and tried to wake up.

But when I opened my eyes, I was
still
standing in
MacKenzie’s bathtub, with Brianna’s (now black-and-blue) teeth marks on my arm, next to a throbbing red pinch mark.

I SO wished I was DEAD!

Suddenly, another idea popped into my head. If I turned on MacKenzie’s shower and stood under freezing cold water for an hour, I might die of pneumonia. But even that could take a few days, and I needed to be DEAD, RIGHT NOW!

“OMG! Jess, there’s a little KID in my room!…How would I know? She appeared out of nowhere. I’ve told Amanda a million times my room is off-limits to her and her pesky little friends. Hold on…”

“MOM…!! Amanda and her friends are playing in my room again! Would you please do something…?!”

“Okay, Jess, I’m back. If they so much as touch my makeup again, I swear, I’m going to strangle…”

“Don’t you dare touch me you, you…WICKED
tooth fairy!” Brianna screamed at the top of her lungs.

Suddenly I felt really light-headed. I was sure I was about to faint.

“Hold on a minute, Jess…”

“WHO told you I was the tooth fairy? WHAT are you doing in my bedroom? And WHERE is Amanda?!!”

“You can’t have my tooths! NEVER!” Brianna shouted bravely.

“MOM!! AMANDA!! Hold on, Jess. I have to get rid of this little kid. Then I’m going to KILL Amanda! Okay. Outta my room, right this—”

“STOP! Let go of me! I LOVE my tooths!”

There was a loud thump, and MacKenzie shrieked.

“MOM! I’ve just been attacked by a demonic munchkin! OMG! I think I’m bruised! I can’t wear my new

OOOW! YOU LITTLE…! BRIANNA BATTLING THE WICKED TOOTH FAIRY!

Jimmy Choo flip-flops with a big bruise on my leg!”

“Are you still there, Jess? I can’t have my party like this. I’ve got a bruise the size of a pancake. NO!…I didn’t get bruised
by
a pancake! I said…Hold on…!”

I could hear MacKenzie hobbling down the stairs like a one-legged pirate. Click-klunk, click-klunk, click-klunk.

“MOM! Last week Amanda and her friends put gum in my hair and colored with my lipsticks! Now one of them just…”

When it sounded like MacKenzie’s screeches were coming from a safe distance away, I jumped out of the bathtub, grabbed Brianna, and tossed her over my shoulder like a sack of rotten potatoes.

Without stopping even once, I hauled her down the stairs, through the hall, to the foyer, and out the front door.

I deposited her butt in the backseat of the van and slammed the door.

My dad was in the back, loading up his equipment.

“Oh, there you girls are! Perfect timing. I’m all done.”

As Dad started the van and drove off, I stared at the house, half expecting MacKenzie to come limping out the front door ranting that Brianna be
arrested for creating a bruise that prevented her from wearing her new Jimmy Choos at her birthday party. Amazingly, Brianna sat calmly in the backseat and seemed quite pleased with herself.

“Daddy, guess what? I went to use the bathroom, and after I washed my hands with strawberry soap and put on cupcake body spray, I saw the tooth fairy with rollers in her hair talking on a fairy phone, and she said she was going to strangle me and pull out all of my teeth to make dentures for old people. So when she grabbed me, I kicked her and she let go and started screaming for her mommy. Then she flew back to fairyland to go to a party for Jimmy Shoe. She’s not so nice, that’s for sure! I like Santa and the Easter Bunny much better.”

Lucky for us, Dad was only half listening to Brianna’s rambling. “Really, pumpkin? So is that what your
Princess Sugar Plum
movie was about?”

At the next stoplight, I noticed a carload of teen
boys pointing and laughing. I put my plastic bag back over my head and slouched down in the seat.

I was so mad I could SPIT!

All of this drama for a measly ten bucks!!

I’m starting to get really excited because the avant-garde art competition is only eight days away! I decided to enter my watercolor painting that took me two whole summers at art camp to complete. I spent more than 130 hours on it.

The only complication is that I gave it to my mom and dad last spring for their sixteenth wedding anniversary. So it’s technically not mine anymore. It was either my painting or spending my entire life savings of $109.21 to buy them dinner at a fancy restaurant.

But I knew the dinner was going to be a total ripoff, because I watch the Food Network. All of those five-star restaurants serve really gross stuff like frog legs and snails, and then give you a tiny portion on a really big plate with chocolate syrup drizzled over it and a garnish. And “garnish” is just a fancy name for a plain old piece of parsley.

So, to save money, Brianna and I decided to cook
a romantic candlelit dinner for Mom and Dad as an anniversary surprise. We took a big bucket and a net to the pond at the park and hunted down some fresh frog legs and snails.

It was MY brilliant idea to make it an all-you-caneat buffet, since we were basically getting the food for FREE.

CHEF NIKKI AND HER ASSISTANT PREPARE A TASTY GOURMET DINNER OF FROG LEGS AND SNAILS

Trying to prepare a gourmet dinner was definitely a lot harder than I thought it would be. The frogs kept jumping out of the bowl, and the snails wouldn’t stay on the plate. Unfortunately, none of those shows on the Food Network explained how to control all the critters while you’re trying to cook ’em.

And Brianna was no help WHATSOEVER! She was
supposed
to be my assistant, but she kept swiping the frogs and kissing them to see if they’d turn into princes. I scolded her really good about that because she had NO IDEA where those frogs’ lips had been!

Not surprisingly, Brianna threw a big hissy fit when it came time to put the food in the oven. She said they were her friends and “friends DON’T COOK friends!” I had to admit, she DID have a good point. So we decided to take Mom and Dad’s anniversary dinner back to the pond and let them go. I guess you could say they were really lucky. “They” meaning the frogs and snails, not Mom and Dad.

Since our dinner plans fell through, and I didn’t
want to part with my life savings, I stuck a big red Christmas bow on my watercolor painting and used that as a gift instead. Mom and Dad must have really loved it, because they paid a ton of money to have it professionally matted and put into an expensive antique frame. Then they hung it in our living room, right over the couch.

Even though it’s now a priceless family heirloom with tremendous sentimental value, Mom said I could borrow it for the avant-garde art competition as long as I took really good care of it.

I was like, “Mom, don’t worry! Nothing’s going to happen. I’ll be supercareful. I PROMISE!”

Although, now that I think about it, Jamie Lynn Spears probably told her mom the exact same thing. Hmmm…