Free Adopting Jenny by Liz Botts

 
    Equations swam on the textbook page in front of me, mocking me in my confusion. Math made my brain hurt. The phone began to ring as Dad strode in the back door, fresh from a day of concrete finishing. I could smell him before he even hit the porch, something like sweat mixed with tar. Soap suds dripped down Mom’s arms as she did some pre-dinner dishes. A tiny bubble drifted up out of the sink. I watched as it spiraled lazily toward the ceiling. The phone was still ringing.
    Mom sighed. “The lord love a duck! Joanie, would you please get that? It’s going to ring off the hook.”
    I blinked at her but dropped my pencil. The phone trilled a fourth time. Dad dropped his heavy work boots in the mud room and walked across the kitchen. From the firm line of his jaw, I knew how irritated he was that I hadn’t moved my butt faster.
    â€œHello?” Despite the way his body was set, tension oozing out of his pores, Dad’s voice drifted across the phone lines as mellow as could be. “Uh huh, she’s here, but she’s busy at the moment. Can I take a message?”
    My heartbeat picked up. Could someone be calling me? Jimmy Michaels had said he might call me. So far he hadn’t, but… could this be it? I stared hard at Dad, trying to get some sort of reading out of him. A split second later, I got my answer as his eyes cut to Mom, still standing at the sink. My shoulders slumped in defeat. I picked at the edge of my paper as I listened to the rest of Dad’s side of the conversation.
    â€œIs that right?” he said. Mom had turned to look at him now. He motioned for her to take the receiver, so she carefully dried her hands on a towel she kept hanging near the sink.
    â€œThis is Barb,” she said. As she started to “uh-huh” along with whoever was on the other end, I lost interest.
    Four more math problems stared up at me from the page. If I just finished them, I’d be done with my homework for the whole weekend. Two whole days without Ms. Peck or pre-algebra. I tapped my pencil in an off-beat rhythm as I tried to reason out one of them.
    Dad stilled my pencil with his large, calloused hand. “Your mother is on the phone,” he said.
    I bit my lip to keep from pointing out that a pencil doesn’t make that much noise, especially the eraser. Dad didn’t look like he was in the mood for my observations. Instead, he moved off through the kitchen, presumably to change out of his work clothes. The cuffs of his work pants were torn again and spattered with dried concrete. That’d be tough to scrub out. I was sure glad that I wasn’t on laundry duty this weekend. I’d take scrubbing the bathroom over scrubbing Dad’s work clothes any day.
    â€œWe’ll take them,” Mom said, her voice raising an octave in excitement. “Sam! Sam!”
    Mom hung up the phone with a resounding thunk. She skittered out of the room in a flurry of activity. I set my pencil down and eyed the doorway. Curiosity gnawed at me. Careful to avoid the creaky floorboard, I crept toward the living room. Standing at the bottom of the stairs, I could hear the murmur of my parents’ discussion. Mom’s tone rose and fell in a cadence that told me she was excited about something. Dad’s voice provided a calming baritone. Disappointed that I couldn’t actually hear their conversation, I slunk back to the kitchen. My math homework glared at me from the table. With a shudder, I headed for the refrigerator to get a glass of milk.
    As I sipped my milk, I leaned against the sink and gazed out the window at the lengthening shadows on the back lawn. I was just rinsing my glass when my parents came back into the kitchen. Mom’s eyes were shining with enthusiasm, the corners of her eyes crinkling. The back door banged open, and my older sister, Kaye, tromped in followed closely by our dog, Pepper. The dog wiggled and wagged as she danced around Mom and