The Life of Ty: Penguin Problems by Lauren Myracle

Author:Lauren Myracle
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2013-04-11T04:00:00+00:00

Here is what I learn about pacifiers. I like them! When I suck one, it’s like something safe is pressing up close.

Another interesting thing is their smell. They smell like my pillow, when I first wake up.

I hold the green teddy bear pacifier to my nose and breathe in. Then, right at the very second when I’ve stopped expecting him, Dad appears out of nowhere. I shove the green pacifier under my leg. The others are by my crossed legs. I swoop them behind my back.

“Hey, bud,” Dad says. “Can we talk, man to man?”

“Okay. How was your day?”

He settles himself on the edge of my bed. “Having a new baby in the house . . . It’s a big change, huh?”

“No.”

He studies me. He’s got beard stubble on his chin.

“Are you doing okay with it?” he asks.

“What ‘it’?”

“The new baby. Baby Maggie.”

“Baby Maggie’s an ‘it’?”

Dad bows his head. He breathes. He looks back at me and says, “I know she takes up a lot of Mom’s attention. And she cries sometimes. But she’s kind of cute, don’t you think?”

“Like seaweed,” I mutter.

“Seaweed? How is your sister like seaweed?”

“The way her arms wave about. Like seaweed deep in the ocean.”

“Ahhh. But your sister is a little girl.”

My face warms up. I never said she wasn’t.

We sit there. Finally, Dad smacks his hands against his thighs and pushes himself up. “Well, try to help your mother out. Don’t cause her any trouble. And why don’t you give me those pacifiers, huh? I think it’s time we got rid of them.”

“Why?”

“Because pacifiers are for babies. And you, Ty, are a big guy.”

“I won’t use them. I just want to keep them.”

Dad holds out his hand. “C’mon, buddy. Pass ’em over.”

My stomach tightens.

His hand stays where it is.

I scowl and give him the seven pacifiers that were behind my back. Greenie is a hard plastic lump beneath me. So? I don’t look at Dad, because I don’t even want to.

“Thank you,” Dad says.

“Don’t throw them away,” I say. “I want to give them to my own children one day.”

“Ty,” Dad says wearily. “When you have kids, you can buy them new pacifiers. These are too old.” He tugs on the rubber tip of the blue pacifier, and part of it comes off. What’s left is a ragged hole.

Dad looks shocked. He stands up straighter and says, “See? If a baby was sucking on that, the baby would have choked.”

I dig my fingernails into my palms. I would have never ripped off the head of my blue pacifier. Also, I want to touch the torn part. But I can’t. Dad would say no.

Dad puts all the pacifiers into his pockets, plus the scrap of rubber that used to be part of the blue one. The way he does it says, There. Done.

What he doesn’t know is that I still have my green one.

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