Walking quickly up beside me, she leaned against my arm and looked at her. “Why’s she looking like that?”
That panic I’d been so proud of not feeling the other day came back. On the back of it were a ton of possibilities, including her seeing a ghost. I’d seen the movies and the videos on YouTube, that shit was legit. Videos of toddlers standing up in their beds and holding their hands out to the figure beside them, photos where the baby had been staring at something and they didn’t know what until they got the photos developed and saw a ghost beside the kid… you name it, YouTube had it all. Before I could tell Jose my theory, though, a growl rumbled in her belly, and she gave the loudest burp I’d heard come out of her. If I was ranking it in one of the burping competitions men had, I’d give it at least a seven, maybe even an eight it was that good. Did I get to feel relieved that it was just impressive wind? Did I fuck, because in the next second a flow of puke came flying out of her like someone had turned a hose on, hitting both of us.
“Oh my God,” Jose screeched, putting a hand up like that was going to save us. “What do we do?”
No sooner had one spasm of barf stopped, another one started. “If I move, I’ll get the furniture,” I yelled, not moving a muscle and trying not to add my own throw up to the shit coming out of her. It was a struggle, and I could feel it rising, but I would not be a puke pussy and give in. I. Would. Not.
“I think I’m going to be sick,” Jose gulped, slowly raising an arm that had stuff dripping off it onto the floor. “Don’t you dare,” I croaked. “And put your arm down unless you want me to lose control.”
Both of us took a second, and then another, and when we couldn’t take anymore because we were in the most disgusting predicament ever, Jose whispered, “I’m going to take my shoes off and go get scissors and garbage bags. Wait here.”
Where could I go? I was covered in orange chunks for Christ’s sake.
The bit that amazed me was that aside from the tiniest dot on the front of her t-shirt, Liv hadn’t landed any of it on herself. As I watched her, she brought her hand up to her mouth and started chewing on it, watching me back wide eyed. “That taste good?” I nodded at her hand. I took the grunt she made back as a yes, and continued, “See what you did here, princess? Next time could you aim it somewhere away from me? Maybe we could come up with a sign, like you hold a fist up or wiggle your fingers?”
Then a thought hit me: on the same video I’d found with the baby exercises on them, they’d also discussed baby sign language. I needed to get on that shit so she could give us some warning, because I never wanted to be in a situation like the shituation from the other night, and the barframa I was in at this moment. That’s right, it was a barf drama, and I didn’t even want to discuss it ever again, let alone feel it like I was right now. And the sound of it when a drip fell off me onto the floor…
Think about anything that isn’t what’s going on. Football, the math I couldn’t figure out at school, the frog I dissected in biology. Literally anything!
“What do you think about making hand signals about stuff like this?” I asked Liv, grinning when she shook her head. “Is that a no because you don’t want to learn, or a no because you just want to shake your head?”
“More than likely she’s just shaking her head,” Jose confirmed, walking up just then with the scissors and garbage bags which she shook out and lay on the floor. “Ok, so my plan is to just cut the clothes off us, and then we run to the bathroom. Do you have any objections or suggestions?”
“Yeah, more cutting, less planning.”
What followed next was the hacking of fabric and clothing, ones saturated with Liv’s puke obviously, that then landed loudly on the floor. Once we were all done, Jose included, we ran toward the bathroom between Liv and Jose’s rooms. I rarely used it because I had my own in my bedroom, and this one was loud as hell. It sounded like you had a waterfall in the room next to you if you were sitting in one of the rooms while it was running, but it wasn’t that loud in the bathroom itself. I had no idea what they’d done, but Jesus.