Posted by PK on April 16, 2003 at 17:24:44:
"Nicole! Dinner's ready!"
There was no reply from upstairs and Mrs. Robinson returned to the kitchen where the rest of
the family were assembling as usual for the meal their parents insisted they took together at
least once a day.
"I don't know what's gotten into that girl," she fretted. "Do you think it's me?" This remark she
addressed to her husband, who grunted a denial meant to be comforting from behind his
newspaper. It had been some time since she had replaced the first Mrs. Robinson but she
still felt sometimes that not all of the kids had fully accepted her, despite the fact that she had
never insisted they call her 'Mom'.
"She's been that way since she got her notice," Katy offered helpfully. "It's not you."
Her stepmother brightened for a moment. "Do you really think so? I hadn't thought...." Then
she frowned. "I didn't know she had a problem with that. It's not as if she's going to be
processed..." She grimaced with automatic distaste at the unpleasant thought.
Katy shrugged, her precociously ample breasts following the movement. She had been the
first of the five Robinson sisters to accept her birth mother's replacement. "Me neither. It's a
great gig. Spring Feast, we get to host it and Nicky gets the guest spot. What's her problem?"
She shrugged again, spreading her hands palms up.
"I could do it," Tammi offered.
Mrs Robinson was busy setting out platters of food, but she didn't miss that. "You know the
rules," she reproved.
"I know, I just meant..."
"Has she been skipping her classes?"
Jack Robinson put his paper down at last. "No daughter of mine misses her classes without I
know about it," he stated. There was a moment of silence, the paterfamilias had spoken.
Lucy spoke up at last. "I think I know," she said nervously. Every eye turned to her. "But I
can't tell." An awkward silence followed.
Adam broke the tension in his usual brusque fashion. "Maybe she don't wanna get naked," he
grunted, pulling off his headphones.
"'Don't wanna?' How many times have I told you? And you're not to wear those things at
table."
"At ease, stepmom." Adam adopted the world weary scorn of obnoxious teenage boys
everywhere. "She doesn't want to, okay? Give her a break. All of you, okay?"
Katy stuck her tongue out at him and he just grinned. He could wait until he got his sister's
fanny on a plate. He'd eaten his first girlfriend at the fall celebration last year and was
accordingly smug.
"I don't understand," his stepmother insisted. "Why wouldn't she want to...?"
Adam sighed theatrically. "I don't know, just an idea. maybe I got it wrong. Let me talk to her,
okay?" With the air of one condescending to right the world's wrongs despite being
unappreciated, he got up and headed for the staircase.
"What was all that about?" asked Bobbi, surfacing from the food she had been shovelling in.
"Did I miss something?"
Adam knocked on the door of the bedroom Nicole shared with Lucy. "Sis? Are you decent?"
he called.
"Go away!" issued faintly from behind it. He went in to be met with an outraged squeal and a
flung pillow. "I SAID go aWAY! I might have been, you know..." Nicky was sitting on the bed
in a bathrobe, her dark hair slightly damp.
"What, undressed? You're won't be wearing a whole lot when we cook you, what's the diff?
Come on, Sis, what's the big deal? Is it about the Feast or what?" He still had his suspicions
but it would do no good unless she told him herself.
Nicole shrugged and looked away. "No! Well, yeah, sort of..." she trailed off.
"How come? You must'a passed all your coursework, they'd've told Dad if you hadn't." Like
all good American girls, Nicole had been both raised and trained to be ready and willing to be
eaten when her time came. If Nicole had a problem it should have been spotted before.
"Come on, it's a great gig, everybody wants to go on Spring Feast."
"Easy for you to say," Nicky sniffed.
Adam had to give her that, men didn't have to get cooked unless they wanted to and Mr.
Robinson, always a traditionalist, didn't approve of that sort of thing. "Katy would'a loved it,"
he pointed out.
"Easy for HER to say," Nicky retorted.
"Oh, how come? She'd do it in a second. Come on, what's really bugging you? Don't tell me
you've gone phobic." It was half-jokingly said, but it did happen. Sometimes girls and even
older women did harbour deeply hidden irrational fears about being roasted, killed and eaten
that surfaced only when their number came up. Adam didn't want his sister to embarrass the
family or herself like that.
Nicky sighed in exasperation and flung open her robe with a dramatic flourish, baring a neat
pair of pink-tipped breasts. "Now do you get it?"
Adam made a show of examining her dispassionately and then said, deadpan, "I think they're
tits, Sis. Don't worry, it's normal, all the girls get them."
"KATY would do it in a second," Nicole mocked. "KATY's got TITS. I've got two fried eggs.
Remember when Mom went on the pole? Canteloupes. Your Julie? Melons. Me? I get these.
Flea bites." She sighed again and went on more calmly (now she'd got it off her chest, Adam
thought) "I was kind of hoping they'd fill out a bit one day. Me the late bloomer, you know?"
Adam nodded sympathetically. Now they never would. "Come on," he said reasonably,
"Okay, they're not real big. But they're not THAT small." In fact, they were perfectly normal
for someone Nicky's age but he had little hope she'd see it that way. "I think they're kinda
cute." Uh oh. Wrong, wrong, wrong...
"Cute? Oh, how nice, they're CUTE."
"Nicky, calm down...."
"Bunnies are cute. Fluffy little Easter chicks are cute..."
In the kitchen the noises from upstairs were becoming audible but not intelligible. "Whatever
big Bro's doing I don't think it's working," was Katy's opinion.
Mrs Robinson frowned but just said, "I just wish she'd come down and eat something. She's
going to make herself sick, always moping in her room." She glanced hopefully at her
husband, who addressed himself to his food. Solving feminine problems had never been his
strong suit.
"I still think it's something to do with the Feast," Katy insisted. "I just can't figure out what.
I'd'a loved to do it, it'll prob'ly be years now before I get cooked. It's not fair, they should have
picked me. I'm ripe." She flaunted her buxom figure again, something she could do even
sitting down.
"You know that's not how it works, dear," Mrs R. said automatically, but Katy wasn't listening,
she had caught something in Lucy's face.
"What? That's it?" Katy scented a clue.
Lucy reddened. "I promised I wouldn't tell," she said unhappily.
"That's it," said Katy triumphantly. "She doesn't think.."
"She doesn't think her tits are big enough," said Adam, re-entering with Nicky hot on his
heels.
"You bastard!" she wailed. "You promised you wouldn't tell.."
"No I didn't," said Adam, and "Watch your mouth, young lady," Mrs R. snapped
simultaneously.
"That was me," Lucy said apologetically.
"Sorry Mom," Nicky muttered.
Mr Robinson took over at last to restore order. "Nicole, go to your room until you remember
to mind your manners. We'll discuss this in the morning. Lucy, you finished? Take her up
some stew and bread and see she eats it. Adam, sit down and finish your dinner." He
exchanged a look with his second wife and said, "Joanne, we have a problem."
That evening was not a cheerful one, Nicole's obvious unhappiness cast a gloom over the
household. In their bedroom that night Lucy attempted to cheer her up.
"Remember that time I got a notion in my head about going to Africa?" she reminisced. "I got
real excited about it. Told everybody I didn't want to get roasted like everybody else, I wanted
to travel, see exotic places..."
Nicole smiled despite herself. "Oh, yeah. You wanted to be cooked in a big black pot by real
savage cannibals with bones through their noses..."
"Or eaten by a crocodile. Daddy got awful upset. Found out about those websites I was
reading. Said the Internet was putting silly ideas in my head. Said sites like that should be
illegal, they were unAmerican and a moral danger....."
Nicole giggled. "Crocodiles and cannibals, yeah. What were they called? Drumbeats, Big
Gulp, all those weird fantasy sites. Didn't they get banned in the end? Something about that
child protection act a couple of years ago...."
Lucy's voice took on a hushed tone as if her father might be outside the door listening. "They
got shut down here, but they moved to somewhere in Europe. England, I think. You can still
get them if you know how to get past the Barrier."
Nicole was surprised and guiltily excited. Everyone knew that US Customs had put blocks
and controls on American based ISPs accessing forbidden foreign sites, everyone also knew
the rumours that there were ways around it. "You didn't." But maybe she had. Quiet little Lucy
had hidden talents, she had a way of finding things she wasn't supposed to. "How?"
"Deke helped..."
"Deke the Geek? You didn't!"
"Shh. Keep it down. Anyway, he's nice."
Nicole didn't argue. "You can get stuff from there?"
"Anytime. Well, sometimes." Lucy sighed. "It's kid's stuff really, but I still like it. Remember
how disappointed I was when Mom told me they didn't really boil people in pots in Africa?"
"You sulked for a week. You said she was making it up."
They both fell silent for a moment, remembering their mother.
"She was right, of course, " Lucy said at last. "She said it was okay to have fun with it while
we were kids, but you know, it's just playing..."
The implication was clear. Dreams and fantasies were one thing, reality another. When you
grew up you had to accept the truth of how things were, the world wasn't perfect. Lucy would
never be boiled in a big black pot in the jungle surrounded by hordes of spear-wielding
savages chanting hunting songs in a primitive tongue.
And, she thought, I am not going to get a big set of jugs to strut with between now and Spring
Feast. Time to grow up, girlie. Play the hand you're dealt. Still...
"Maybe we can get your boyfriend to smuggle you in a crocodile," she teased.
Lucy caught the ball. "We could put it in the Morgan's swimming pool," she said. "See how
many of them it gets."
"Then we could....."
The game went on until they were tired enough to sleep.