My name is Rachel.
You know that show, Worst-case Scenario? They have nothing on the situation I was in. My friends and I are fighting alone against an alien attack. Parasitic aliens that crawl into your brain and take control of your body. My friends and I are Animorphs, that is, animal morphers. We turn into animals to stop them.
But right now, I was fighting a different kind of battle.
I glared at her. She glared right back at me. And that's when I knew she was really going to do it.
"Let's see . . ." My home economics teacher said, never taking her eyes off me. "Our next pair will be Rachel and . . ." she paused for climatic effect. She knew she was killing me. Ruining my life. "Marco."
They actually had a stupid little ceremony. They did for all the other "couples" too. But of course, Marco had to humiliate me even more then I already was.
"Hey, Rachel, why didn't you wear white? Oh. . . now I remember." He said with a wicked grin.
"You do realize I'm going to kill you for this, you little fungus?"
And with that, I was officially "married" to Marco for the next week.
"So, how does it feel . . .Mom?" he said, grinning at the doll sitting in an actual baby carrier. A small pink bow was taped to her forehead to show she was a girl.
"Call me that again and I'll break both your arms." I hissed, only half kidding.
"Aww, but then how will we cuddle at-hey, ow!" he yelped as my foot connected with his knee.
They say teachers don't have favorites, and don't get revenge against their students, but, oh, my home ec teacher had really outdone herself this time. All I had done was point out that her outfit was last season (and had a large, suspicious stain on it).
I wondered what had ever possessed me to take this class, and then remembered. Duh! I had thought it would be easy. Bake some cookies. Sew a button on a shirt or two. I had forgotten about Baby Think-It-Through.
Our school had gone about ten steps ahead of the infamous egg assignment. They had gotten actual dolls with computer chips that told if the baby had been neglected. The baby could tell when it was being held, when it was being fed, and when it was being changed. An egg wouldn't be squealing on you to the teacher if you didn't feed it. Baby Think-It-Through would. And the worse thing? You really did have to take it everywhere, or else hire a sitter, because it could start crying at any time. Hide Baby Think-It- Through in a closet so it's annoying robotic crying wouldn't bother anyone? Fail the project, which was a big old hunk of our grades.
To take a little of the work load off, and also teach us to work with other people, we had also been assigned spouses.
And my teacher, that horrible, horrible person, had made me "marry" Marco.
When the bell rang, I shoved the carrier, diaper bag, and Baby Pain-In-Ass at Marco and hurried out of the room. "Sure, honey, you can take her next hour." He yelled after me, loud enough for anyone and everyone to hear.
I would. If I didn't, no doubt Marco would find someway to give it to me anyway. I could just imagine him bursting into my fifth hour, dumping the "baby" on my desk and saying, "She's got a stinky. Might want to take care of it."
I groaned to myself and slammed my locker shut with a bang that made all the other lockers in my row vibrate.
What had I done to deserve this?
