Medicine tastes awful, at least most of the
times. Lily wasn’t just going to drink it and she made sure her mother realized
this very late at night. Lily would not go wouldn’t go to bed without her
mother reading a story and she had decided that was the best time to make Lily
drink a new medicine. Wrong. All wrong, Lily thought, because ruining story
time was for her one of the worst things any of her parents could do to her.
Granted, they could get violent but the most violent she had seen them was in
Christmas when Dad had decided to yell at Sparky, their dog, for “unwrapping”
the presents at an earlier time. He yelled at him for several minutes until the
dog left the room and wasn’t seen until the next day.
But Lily wasn’t Sparky and, to be fair, Mom
wasn’t yelling. She was just being a mom and who could blame her? Lily
understood it was kind of like a job and that they had responsibilities as
making her do things she hated, but that was a bit too much. Lily thought that
it was time to make her voice heard and she bluntly said no to the medicine.
She didn’t even felt sick. She was jus fine but her mother insisted every
single night for the remainder of the week and Lily refused every single one of
those times. To be honest, Lily was amazed at herself. She was known to be very
obedient and a “good girl” most of the time, but she just felt this time her
mother had gone too far, she was overdoing the whole mother thing and that was
not acceptable, not for Lily.
Of course, she told this to her mother who
looked at her and smiled. Yes, she smiled. Lily was equally as surprised. It
didn’t make sense that a parent smiled when their children misbehaved. But
there she was, her mom just smiling and almost laughing. The most offensive
thing happened the next morning during breakfast when Mom told Dad about the incident.
Dad laughed louder and grabbed his sides because they hurt of so much laughter.
It was so unbearable to see, Lily just wanted to get on her bus to school and
get it going with numbers and historical characters and all that. She’d rather
have that than her crazy parents back home. It was even weirder because a laugh
hadn’t been heard at home for quite some time.
In school, Lily told her best friend Anne
about what had happened. Anne was fast, which Lily liked, and told her parents
had times when they behaved like that. They just went crazy for a few hours and
then they returned to whatever they were doing or thinking before. According to
Anne, this behavior was natural when people grew as old as their parents were.
Just imagine living up to forty years old! It wasn’t an easy thing, or at least
that’s what Anne thought. After their discussion about parents, they had a nice
lunch together, sharing what each one had brought from home. Anne ate Lily’s
ham sandwich and Lily took Anne’s carrot cupcake. She liked doing that every
day.
Back at home, Lily realized Anne had been
correct: her mother was behaving normally, busy with her work at home. Her dad
wasn’t going to be there for a few hours so it was safe for her to assume that
he was normal again too. She smiled at the thought of it and realized that
maybe her parents had still some child like feelings inside. She thought that
forty years was a long time but maybe in all that time, they still remembered
how it was when they were smaller. It had been grandma who explained to her
that her parents hadn’t been adults all the time and than they had been kids
like her one day. Her mother had shown her pictures and it was amazing how
similar the girl in the picture was to her.
At dinner, her parents attacked again. Yes,
her dad was normal, not crazy. They told her that taking the medicine would only
take some time and after that every single medicine would be barred from the
house, never coming back again. She was almost convinced by them but decided at
the last minute to stick to her revolution. She told them that she was tired of
drinking all those medicines and that she had just had it. She didn’t want to
keep feeling that awful taste in her mouth every time she went to bed. She told
them that she just wanted to be like Anne, who hadn’t taken any medicine in
years and who never went to the doctor. She was just tired of it all and wanted
to be just a normal girl, like any other.
She had won the round. Her parents changed the
subject to something about the house, something with bills or who knows, so he
tuned out after that. What was worth
mentioning was the fact that apparently her decision had been respected and
that she had done something for herself. And that felt great. She felt like all
those girls in the movies or in TV that just stand up for what they think and
like. She felt really good and told Anne the following day. Anne was very happy
for her and told her that her mom said that every girl needed to stand up for
herself, especially against men. Anne’s mom had divorced her husband recently.
But the girls didn’t understood about that but they did understand what she
said.
They decided to recruit other girls and form
the first Young Girls Alliance against every single thing that was done against
them. Basically, whenever they got reunited, whereas it was in school or
outside, they would discuss ways to persuade their parents not to make them do
things they didn’t want them to do. Even a boy, Roger, wanted to come into the
group but they told him it was only for girls but that if they decided to
accept boys they would tell him right away. He smiled at this and left.
Essentially, it was all about not been forced to eat broccoli, visit people
that they considered gross o do things
that no one ever wanted to do like cleaning their bedrooms.
Word got to a teacher, apparently because
someone had betrayed the Alliance, and then several parents were called to the
school. The girls thought they would all be suspended from school to something
but nothing as bad ever came to happen. Their parents had been in the school,
talking to Mrs. Steele who was the headmistress, but apparently things were not
as bad as they thought. If anything, things had become a little more enjoyable,
both at home and in school. At home, Mom and Dad were always smiling and
playing and just having a nice time, like never before. And it school, every
single adult had been infected with the “smiley” virus. It was amazing to se it
all around them, never stopping. Maybe they really had been successful in
changing things for girls all around, maybe the Alliance was just what the
world needed.
But that thought didn’t last much longer. One
day, in the middle of their break, a woman came for Roger and took him away.
This was very odd as Jason’s parents, like Anne’s were divorced. But what was
very weirder was that his mother had never come to leave him in school or pick
him up. Actually, Lily did not recall having never seen her and she had known
Roger for quite some time. He had been the only boy she had ever liked as a
friend, as he was polite and clean, not like all the others. He was almost like
a girl, which was the way things should be in a perfect world, at least
according to Lily.
She told what had happened at school to her
parents and they didn’t seem surprised but their smiles were absent during
dinner. It was of particular note that it was one of the few days she had
received so many kisses before bedtime and from both of her parents. Both of
them tucked her in and told her how much they loved her and how much they
wanted her to be the best girl ever. They told her that they were very proud of
her and her convictions and they encouraged her to be the best Lily she could
ever be. It was a very strange thing but the truth was that Lily loved it. And
she did because he loved her quirky parents, always saying and doing weird
things that she may never understand.
Roger never came back to school and it was a
very hot topic during the morning break and lunch, at least for a week. Then,
everyone stopped speaking about it. It was sad she would never see Roger again
but maybe he was going to be happy in his new school, as she was sure his mom
would put him in another school. It was strange, but that whole thing and the
war about her medicine made her think a lot. She realized that parents were
strange but not only them but all the rest of the adults and the world too. She
discussed at length with Anne, who thought parents were just doing what they
knew how to do and that’s why they were parents.
Lily went on with her Alliance, advising
girls in every single kind of problem or inconvenience. She knew that they all
needed help for something or other and she wanted to be there to help. Maybe
that was what she was going to do wen she became an adult. But thinking about
it scared her and made her feel sick, so she decided to be the best girl she
could. There would be another time to be a grown up but, for now, it was best
if they just talked with Anne about those singing boys on TV.
