Lipstick Walls and Missing Jumpy
The family vacation in France was going well, as it usually did. We were all having fun, camping every other night, parents going to the cafe together most evenings, cousins staying at the house of those friends they had met at the age of six. My cousin, Kam, and I went fishing every morning at the pond in the country. My other cousin, Kim, spent most of her time picking flowers and putting them on the graves of people she didn't know, had never known and never would know. My parents spent quite a bit of their time at the Nectary or the art museum. Callie, my oldest younger sister, spent her days playing her guitar outside of the cafe, soaking up sun and earning money for the car Mom and Dad refused to loan her the money for. Juliette and Sienna, my two youngest sisters, spent most of their time running around in te town square and visiting the houses of the other kids playing in the square. Callie was at the house of this boy she liked well enough to dance around with in France. Juliette was out at the park and Sienna was asleep in her tiny bed. I was hunting for a frog.
Earlier that day, Kam and I had been fishing, as per usual, and I caught a frog. I wanted to keep this frog and give it to Juliette for her birthday, which she would be celebrating while we were in France. I put the frog in some water and rushed it home on my bike. I hid it in my bedroom in the huge vacation home my mom had bought a couple years ago in a fit of spontaneity. I fed the frog and found some other things he might need. Setting the frog up took about twenty minutes and then I went downstairs to eat mac and cheese. While I was eating, Sienna set the frog loose. I went back upstairs to an empty cage and a crying four-year-old.
So now I'm searching a too big house for a too small frog. Waiting for a croak, a jump, or any kind of signal that the frog is alive. Sienna is asleep because I had to put her somewhere, but I really hoped the frog was not in her room. I was also crossing my fingers that I would be able to find it before my parents or Callie came home. I was standing in the kitchen, tired, upset and despairing of ever finding the frog. The fridge was humming, the table was covered in papers and I could just see my sister's homework from last month sitting on it. Juliette had covered a portion of the wall in lipstick earlier, so I wiped that off while checking behind the stove. Someone had dropped some eggs in the stove, but I wasn't about to clean them out. Kam could do that since it was almost certainly his fault. I pushed chairs across the room to the table and looked between the fridge and the wall.
Eventually I gave up on the kitchen and walked into the bathroom. Juliette had lipsticked the wall in here as well. I wiped it off and checked behind everything and in the shower. The bathroom exhausted all options quickly. I headed into my parents' bedroom and searched under their bed, then moved to Kam's room and moved the clutter to search under his bed, then KIm's, Juliette's, Callie's and mine. I checked behind the bookshelves in the hall and under the desk in the study. I hunted through the potted plants in the greenhouse, and in the fountain running though it. I had been exhausted when I started, and was quickly running out of energy. I turned back toward the house, and, as I opened the door, a little voice asked, "Ben, what should I do with Jumpy?"