Divas and Dead Rebels by Virginia Brown

goodness, Trinket, what are you thinking? Of course they will. That’s one reason your father and I said we’d pay their way, because it’s so expensive to travel with a large family. Are you sure you’re all right? You look funny.”
    “I’m fine. It’s just . . . the spilled garbage. I’ll get it. Yes. That’s what I’ll do. If they bring all those kids—how many is it again? Six? Seven?—where will they sleep?”
    “Oh, we’ll find places to tuck them here and there. Yours and Emerald’s old room still has a good bed in it, of course, and the boys’ room . . . I’ve kept it with twin beds in it that will sleep at least two of her boys. That would be nice, don’t you think, to have boys in Jack and Luke’s old room again?”
    “Well,” I said, “I guess her boys can’t be any more destructive than Jack and Luke were. Their room’s still in one piece, so I doubt Emerald’s kids could destroy it in only a few days. It is only a few days, right?”
    “What’s the matter with you?” Mama asked me as she got up from kneeling on the floor by Brownie, who seemed to have fully recovered from his brief bout of nausea. “You don’t sound very excited.”
    “I don’t? Hm. Are you aware that one of her kids set the house on fire a while back?”
    Mama looked at me. “So did Bitty not so long ago.”
    Good point. I tried again.
    “It wasn’t too long ago that she told me her youngest twins are going through the terrible twos. They screamed the entire time she was on the phone with me.”
    “I didn’t get more than an hour’s sleep at a time from the day I brought you home from the hospital until you and Emerald started kindergarten,” Mama countered. “And her youngest twins aren’t two anymore.”
    Drat. She trumped me again.
    “They’ll probably torment Brownie,” I said in what was a desperate attempt to delay the inevitable. “You know he doesn’t like kids.”
    “He bites. They’ll learn.”
    I gave up. “You’re good,” I said, and she nodded sweetly.
    “I know. It’ll be just fine, Trinket. You can always hide at Bitty’s house when the kids get to be too much for you.”
    “That will be about four minutes after they arrive,” I said glumly. “I never could handle a lot of children at once. That’s why I had just one. And there were times I got crazy with only one child.”
    I finished picking up the trash I’d spilled, holding my breath so I wouldn’t gag, and took the bag outside to dump it in one of the big plastic bins. My twin sister would be here for Thanksgiving. Really, that’s not a bad thing. I love her and miss her. It’s just that she has so many little rug rats that my head begins to pound and my eyes begin to twitch, and they make fun of me. One of them insists upon calling me “Auntie Tinkle.” She giggles when she says it, so I know that she thinks it’s naughty. She’s my favorite.
    I sucked in a deep breath of fresh air before I went back inside the house and tried to keep my left eye from twitching too badly. Then I pasted a big ole smile on my face and went in to put another plastic bag into the garbage can.
    My mother insists upon coordinating her winter clothing with my father’s, and also with Brownie. Since Brownie was wearing a blue plaid sweater, and Mama wore a blue plaid cardigan, I assumed my father must also be wearing a blue plaid sweater. I felt out of place in my black jeans and green blouse. While Mama is dainty, with porcelain skin that has probably never seen a blemish of any kind, and her once-blonde-now-silvery hair is usually well-coifed, I am more like my father’s side of the family. Daddy is pretty tall, even though his over-six foot height seems to have slightly shrunk in the past few years, and his once-dark hair is now snow white. We’re both big-boned. Really.
    Mama patted me on the arm as she passed me on the way back to the kitchen sink where she washed her hands, then dried them on an old towel. She picked up