Those Weekends

“Well, it’s another one of those weekends,” Malcolm grumbled that Saturday morning, twisting to knock the clanging alarm off the nightstand.

Little Molly, the youngest of the Petapotamuses, whimpered from beneath her pillow.

Tossing socks and underwear into her canvas knapsack, Marjorie informed her younger siblings that they could cry and complain all they wanted, but she was going to be proactive about it. “I’m hitching to Canada,” she huffed, breathless from her frantic packing.

But it was too late. They could hear Dad’s booming voice sneaking up through the floorboards. “He’s already here,” Malcolm groaned, slugging his mattress.

It’s not that they hated their father, but now he lives with his girlfriend Britney, who slinks around the house in nothing more than a ringer tee and satin panties and has a penchant for pinching them under their arms when their dad isn’t looking. Marjorie once invited her boyfriend over to help her with a school project, and when she returned from the kitchen with a tray of ants on a log, she caught Britney grinding against him “accidentally.”

Malcolm once foiled Britney’s plan of selling Molly on eBay, and had the good sense to snatch a screenshot, but their dad didn’t believe it. Or, if he did, he kept his big mouth shut. Dad had it too good with Britney. She served him expensive microbrews from real, honest to God German steins; whipped up genuine, award-winning jello salads loaded with exotic fruits; and lets him have the guys over for weekly poker games, and she would choose those nights to saunter around in tiny dresses while watering her strategically placed house plants.

Plus, she wore a double-D.

And so, at the start of all of those weekends, the Petapotamus siblings had to be pried from their mother’s calves.