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“Oh, thank God,” JB grumbled, as he spotted his friends entering into the foyer, fumbling to remove their coats. He moved through the crowd of mourners, all family relatives and friends who had come to his uncle’s (Not really an uncle. Was he a cousin? He was his mother’s cousin, so that made him JB’s…? Ugh, JB didn’t wanna think so hard right now) house for his great-aunt’s wake, towards his friends.
“JB,” Jude smiled as he saw him, “We aren’t late, are we?”
“No, not all. Thank you boys for coming,” JB said solemnly, dramatically, “It’s nice to have some support in this… very difficult time,”
“Cut the crap, JB, you never even mentioned this great-aunt before. You couldn’t give less of a fuck about her,” Willem teased, “Are you only here because you’re getting some kind of inheritance from her?”
“No, there’s no inheritance,” He grumbled, “I’m only here because my mom’s making me go.”
“Why didn’t you just say you didn’t wanna go?”
“Because she’d be pissed off at me! It doesn’t help that she’s way more on edge because of what happened with my great-aunt,” JB said, “She’s avoiding most of the family because of it.”
“Why? What’s the bad blood here?”
“Well, they think my mom might’ve killed her, but I think that’s just bullshit,” JB shrugged.
“I’m sorry, what?”
“It was at my mom’s cousin’s daughter’s wedding a few days ago, you know the one I told you that some lady who wasn’t the bride showed up wearing all white and a fucking tiara?” JB began, as the four of them moved away from the foyer, “Well, at the reception, I said something to my great-aunt’s son, and he got all offended and went snitching to his mommy.”
“What’d you say?” Malcolm asked
“I don’t even remember, I was drunk. But anyways, my great-aunt comes up to my mom and bitches at her about it. And I mean, she’s always bitchy so we’re used to it, but I guess she was being bitchier than usual, and my mom had enough because she stood up and told her to drop dead,” JB explained, “And then she did!”
“She died right then and there?” Willem was bewildered.
“Yeah! Just keeled over right in front of everyone!” JB said, “So, now everyone thinks my Ma’s a witch and that she put a hex on my great-aunt.”
“Sometimes I wonder why you are the way you are, JB,” Malcolm said, “But it’s becoming more clear now.”
“Jean-Baptiste?” A sweet, old woman’s voice rang out, and they all turned to see Yvette walking towards them, “Oh, Mignon , I didn’t know your friends were coming.”
“Yeah, I brought them for moral support.”
“I see,” She smiled, turning to them and speaking in her syrupy Creole lilt, “Thank you boys for coming.”
“Thank you for having us. I’m very sorry for your sister’s passing, Ma’am,” Jude said, “If there’s anything we can do for you, anything at all, please let us know.”
“Oh, how sweet,” Yvette cooed, pinching Jude’s cheek, “What a darling boy!”
“JB!” Another voice rang out, a younger woman’s but still mature and low, and they followed its source to JB’s mother, who had spotted them loitering around the living room, “I said you could bring one friend to the wake, just one!”
“Ma, they don’t come separately,” JB complained.
“It’s true, Mrs. Marion, we’re pack animals,” Willem grinned, dialing up the charm more than usual.
But Mrs. Marion wasn’t phased. “We have enough trouble as it is,” She said, glancing over at her cousin, who was across the room. I expect best behaviour, all four of you,” She pointed, “Well, except for Jude. I’m not worried about him.”
“Hey!” The three of them exclaim, as Jude ducked his head, flushing.
“Have you not spoken to him yet, Ma?” JB asked
“No, I’ve been avoiding him completely.”
“Well, he’s coming towards us right now,” JB said, and his mother turned around to see her cousin walking towards them, oddly smiling.
“Ah, Augustin!” She tried to smile, but it came out too wide and strained.
“Thank you for coming, Celine,” Augustin smiled.
“Of course,” She said, “God, this is a big turnout, isn’t it?”
“Well, Maman was just so well liked.”
“Right…really?”
“I suppose because she was the life and soul, wasn’t she?” Augustin laughed, “Full of joy, always laughing!”
“We’re talking about great-auntie Anne, right?” JB whispered to his mother.
“Yes, JB,” She hissed back.
“Look, Celine, there’s something I need to say,” Augustin began.
“Is this about the curse, uncle?” JB said. His mother’s eyes widened and she glared at him.
“Sorry?”
“Because Ma said she didn’t do it and that’s good enough for us.”
“It’s the truth, Augustin,” Celine interrupted her son, “I don’t know where to start with all of that—”
“No, Celine, no,” Augustin chuckled, “I was just gonna say that my poor mother—God bless her and keep her—well, she didn’t mean what she said to you at the wedding.”
“Please, you don’t need to explain.”
“You think I thought you put a curse on her?” He burst into laughter, “That’s hilarious! I mean, of course, the curse was my original thought. But I looked into it, and Maman’s death doesn’t fit the official requirements for a curse. So you’re completely in the clear on this.”
“...Right,” Celine grimaced, “JB, why don’t you hand over these chip bags to your aunt in the kitchen.” She plopped a plastic shopping bag into his hand, and looked pointedly, sternly at them to go away.
The boys stopped outside the kitchen doorway, peering inside where they saw several women, many of them old, running around from counter to counter as they put together sandwiches and fried various foods in pans and pots, sprinkling seasonings until the whole kitchen was awash in a thick, mouth-watering aroma.
“Auntie, are you in—why are you sweating?” JB’s aunt, Christine, was hunched over a cutting board, with piles of sliced bread and various chopped vegetables and fixings on and around the cutting board. Her teeth were grit as she chopped vivaciously, and the boys swore they could see tiny splinters stick out where the knife was repeatedly slamming down on the board.
“Can’t talk, JB!”
“Christine!” An older woman ordered, “Three cheese and tomato on brown bread!”
“Brown, right, got it!” She called back
“Four salad on white,” Another older woman called out.
“Salad, white—hang on! Are they rectangles or triangles?”
“Two with no onion!”
“Hold o—”
“We’re low on pate, Christine!”
“Why aren’t the plantains cooked yet? Christine!”
“I think we should go,” Willem whispered, and the four of them nodded, JB placing the bag on the close counter before they quietly left the kitchen.
After an hour of chatting with his friends and various people (Many of JB’s relatives marvelled over Jude being so young and in college, and he’d gotten his cheek pinched more times than he could count, the bold affection foreign to him), Jude had broken away from the group to sit down on the couch next to an older man, his legs having begun to ache. The older man offered him a cup of tea, which he accepted gratefully.
He’d been hoping for a few moments of silence, until his legs felt better enough for him to get up again. But what originally began as polite small talk, transpired into the man telling Jude some long-winded story. Worse, he spoke agonizingly slow, pausing in between every few words.
“I’ll tell you, I was at a wedding there, up in the Cathedral last week,” He began a second story, after finishing telling Jude about the wedding JB and his family had gone to a few days ago, “By God, the wind could have cut you in two. Fierce it was. Now, I don’t mind a bit of a breeze, if anything I prefer it, but my God it was aggressive.”
“Interesting,” Jude muttered, his hands folded around his now cooled cup of tea.
But the man only continued, unphased by Jude’s disinterest, “So, I said to myself, Alexandre, this is no day for a wedding. For, when the bride arrived, and by this time the wind was fierce. I’d never heard wind quite like it. Howling like Baron Samedi, it was. So, the poor girl—the bride—she arrives anyways and she isn’t two steps out of the car when she was lifted up into the air like a paper doll and blown into a flowerbed.”
Jude was silent for a few seconds, before he snorted, “That’s actually quite funny.”
“JB?” Aunt Silvia called out to where he was leaning against the wall, roped into a lecture by one of his uncles about the major he’d chosen, holding two emptied cups of tea in her hands, “Everyone’s going upstairs to see Auntie Anne. You can take your friends and go on up too.”
“Okay, Auntie,” JB nodded, right as Willem and Malcolm finally found their way back to him.
“Where’s Jude?” Willem asked.
“Jude? He’s—,” JB’s eyes widened as he looked somewhere behind Willem, “Oh, poor Jude,” he sighed.
“What? What happened?”
“He’s being held hostage by my boring great-uncle,” He said, looking over at one of the couches where, as Willem turned to look, were Jude and an older man sitting, the latter talking as the former just stared, “One time he spent forty-five minutes talking about his new shoelaces.”
“ Yikes . We should save him, then.”
“Hell no, I don’t wanna get trapped into conversation with Uncle Alexandre,” JB said, “Jude is on his own here. It’s every man for himself when it comes to my uncle.”
But Willem went ahead, walking up to the couch where Jude and Alexandre were sitting. “Sorry, I just need to borrow him for a second,” Willem said to the older man, taking Jude by the arm and leading him away to where JB and Malcolm were.
“Can’t believe you got stuck listening to my boring uncle,” JB said, “I swear, he has nothing interesting to say, ever.”
“What do you mean? He was just telling me the funniest story,” Jude said, confused.
“Jude,” JB stared, “Are you being sarcastic?”
“No?”
“What was the story?” Malcolm asked.
“ Don’t answer that,” JB interrupted, “Let’s just go upstairs, I have something I wanna show you guys anyways and I’m not showing it here.”
“Great,” Malcolm drawled, “Can’t wait.”
“This was definitely how I wanted to spend my Saturday, thanks JB,” Willem muttered. They were in a small upstairs room, spackled with tacky green wallpaper and nearly-smothered by the amount of lit candles spread around it on every surface except for the coffin in the middle. The boys all stood around the coffin, staring down at the woman stuffed snugly inside of it and dressed in her Sunday best; an egg-white blouse, overtop it a pale yellow cardigan, a powder pink pleated skirt, and a simple string of pearls with earrings to match.
“She kinda suits being dead, doesn’t she?” JB said, in an almost wistful tone.
“ What?” Willem asked, incredulous.
“Okay…just to check something,” Malcolm began, his voice dry and croaked, “Everyone else can see the dead body, right?”
They all looked between each other, “It’s just my great-aunt?” JB said.
“It’s your great-aunt’s corpse,” Malcolm stared at him, “It’s your great-aunt's dead corpse.”
“Yeah? It’s her wake, Mal. What were you expecting?”
“Haven’t you ever seen a dead body?” Willem laughed.
“No, of course not!” Malcolm said.
JB rolled his eyes, “You can even touch her, if you like,” He said, reaching out to pat his great-aunt’s face.
“Why the hell would I want to touch her?”
“It’s nice,” JB shrugged.
“Stop that!”
“It’s just a dead body, Mal, we’ll all be one someday,” Jude said.
“Oh, thanks for that, Jude!” Malcolm cried, “Yeah, that’s definitely helped!”
“It really makes you think, huh? Death and all that,” JB said, pointedly not looking at any of them, “Just makes you wanna…do everything and try everything.”
“What’s going on?” Malcolm squinted at JB.
JB grinned at him, before reaching into his backpack and pulling out a large tupperware container, setting it down on top of the body, “Feast your eyes, boys!”
“Scones,” Malcolm deadpanned, “Also, get those off your great aunt’s corpse, JB!”
“What’s so great about scones?” Willem asked, quirking an eyebrow.
“I like scones, Willem,” Jude said, picking one of them up and examining it, “Did you make these yourself, JB? They look lovely.”
“Thank you, Judy, I did in fact make them myself,” He grinned, “But they aren’t just any kind of scones.” He waits as they all look at him with varying degrees of confusion on their faces.
Then, the realization sets in.
“JB!” Malcolm groaned, “Did you bring fucking edibles to your great-aunt’s wake?”
“Seriously, JB?” Willem sighed.
“Oh!” Jude said, quickly placing the scone he’d picked up back into the container, as if it was going to bite him, “They’re drugged scones…”
“I tried to make brownies, but I fucked up the recipe and wasted a bunch of weed,” JB explained, “Scones were easier.”
“Only you could fuck up brownies,” Willem said
“Anyways,” JB said, ignoring Willem, “Feel free to help yourselves.”
“I’m not having one,” Jude shook his head.
“Oh, come on, Jude!” JB pleaded, “Just have one!”
“I told you, I don’t want to do drugs, JB.”
“JB, leave him alone,” Willem said, “If he doesn’t want to take one, he doesn’t have to.”
“You won’t get high off one scone, Jude.”
“You don’t know that, JB,” Jude frowned, “And we don’t know just exactly how much you put in there.”
“Well, I’m not having one either,” Malcolm huffed
“Me neither,” Willem added
“Seriously guys?” JB stared at them, “Come on! It’ll be fun!”
“Just because you wanna get high at your great-aunt’s wake, doesn’t mean we do,” Malcolm snapped, “Not everyone shares your fucked up interests.”
“Boys,” A female voice suddenly spoke, and they turned to see an old woman standing in the room, her sleeves rolled up to her elbows. “Are there any dishes up here?” She asked, before her eyes settled on the scones, “I’ll take those,” She plucked the container out of JB’s hands and walked right out of the room before anyone could say anything.
The boys stared at each other, eyes wide and mouths agape.
“What the fuck just happened?” JB broke the silence, looking between them and the door.
“What are we gonna do?”
“It’s fine!”
“It’s most certainly not fine! There’s drugged scones down there! If people eat those scones, then you’ve drugged those people, JB!” Malcolm whisper-yelled, the four of them huddled at the top of the stairs.
“So? Drugging people isn’t a crime,” JB said, his face turning red.
“You have a very loose grasp of the law, JB,” Jude shook his head at the same time Willem said, “Please tell me you don’t actually believe that, JB.”
“I mean, what kind of person brings weed scones to a fucking wake?” Malcolm said.
“Typical!” JB huffed, “I try to do a nice thing and this is the thanks I get?”
“This is terrible, this is really, really bad,” Malcolm panicked, “There’s old people down there, JB, what if an old person takes one?”
“Why does everyone get so sentimental about old people? Old people are dicks,” JB retorted.
“We have to get the scones back,” Willem said.
“Look, I’m not disagreeing with you, I brought those scones so that I could get high, not my great-uncle Alexandre,” JB said, then muttered, “Ugh, could you imagine?”
“Okay, here’s the plan,” Willem said, pulling the four of them close in, “I’ll head for the kitchen and grab the container, the rest of you scour the area for any ones that have gone rogue,” He looked determined, “And remember, be subtle.”
The boys descended upon the cramped townhouse, scattered as they scrambled to find the missing scones.
Jude spotted a woman, nestled into a fat, ancient armchair, holding a small serving plate with one of the scones on it. He quickly limped over to her as fast as he could, though coupled with his crutches and the congested crowd, he was nearly too late as she began to pick up the scone.
“Wait!” He stopped her, “I’m so sorry to bother you ma’am but I need to take your scone.”
“Why?” She asked, though she didn’t seem bothered or upset.
“Um—I’m not allowed to say.”
“Okay?” She said, clearly confused but nonetheless held out the plate to him.
“Thank you,” He took the scone, running off.
Malcolm found himself trying to distract a stern, rake-looking woman he only knew as someone JB wholly detested and often mocked for being uptight and ‘snobby’ (in his words at least). The woman seemed vaguely annoyed and dismissively listened to Malcolm as he talked on and on, hoping he could swipe the scone off her plate before she noticed.
“JB’s told me so much about you,” Malcolm rambled, watching as the woman lifted the scone to her mouth, “He told me you went to architecture school? I just have so many questions for you, I’m not quite sure where to start—”
Before the woman could bite into her scone, she stopped, her nose wrinkling. She sniffed the scone, “Are these cinnamon?” She asked, in her nasally tone.
Malcolm blinked, “Why do you ask?”
“I hate cinnamon.”
“Oh! Well, they are cinnamon, actually,” Malcolm said, plucking the plate out of her hand, “I’ll just take that away for you, then.”
After being trapped by JB’s uncle Alexandre himself (seriously, how did Jude not go crazy talking to him), Willem navigated his way through the thick crowd (were there more people now than before?) on his way to the kitchen, when he bumped into Malcolm, who was carrying two scones he’d managed to seize. Jude followed behind, holding one scone in his hand.
“Is JB even helping?” Malcolm asked.
“Probably not,” Willem answered.
“Typical of him to make us clean up after his messes,” Malcolm snarled.
Then, a tall man suddenly pushed his way through Jude and Willem, and they looked up to see it was Malcolm’s father. He had an odd, unreadable expression on his face, made all the more terrifying by his sharp, hard features. He ignored Jude and Willem, walking up to Malcolm, and pointing a finger at him, “Listen here, you.”
“Yes, Dad?”
“I just wanna say,” He began, before dissolving into a fit of giggles, “You’re doing a fine job, Malcolm. I’m proud of you.” He reached out and pinched Malcolm’s cheek, before patting him on the shoulder, “Keep up the good work.” He walked away then, still giggling under his breath.
Malcolm looked vaguely confused and terrified. Willem’s face was pallid, his lips pressed tight. Jude had the same neutral expression he always wore.
“What the fuck?” Macolm whispered.
“Do you think he—?” Jude looked at Willem.
“Definitely,” Willem nodded, “I’m gonna grab the container before anyone else ends up like the Chief.”
As he got closer to the kitchen, Willem could hear a familiar voice yelling at the top of her lungs. He peeked into the doorway and found JB’s aunt Christine terrorizing the other women in the kitchen, barking orders.
“Where is the Pikliz?” She shouted, “How can you have griot without Pikliz! Come on people get it together!” Her anger found a new subject, as her eyes locked in on the plastic bag JB’s mother had given them to bring to the kitchen. “And there’s still a multipack of Soldanza waiting to be bowled up!” She yelled, “I want no cross contamination this time! Ripe in one bowl, not ripe in the other! It is not that difficult!”
Willem grimaced as he watched Christine verbally tear into the women, who’d taken her place of being frantic and vaguely sweaty, the atmosphere akin to a drill sergeant’s training field. Willem quietly scanned the kitchen, until he spotted the scones. While the women’s backs were turned, Willem snatched the container off the counter, making a swift exit without being seen.
He regrouped with his friends, holding up the container like a trophy. Jude and Malcolm tossed the scones they’d managed to find into the container. JB, unsurprisingly, had none to toss in.
“I think we’ve managed to get all of the rogue scones,” Willem confirmed.
“That box looks a lot emptier,” JB said, frowning.
“Yeah, well, some people have probably already eaten theirs, JB,” Willem said, “Okay, now we’ve gotta get rid of them.”
“What!” JB exclaimed, “No way!”
“There’s no way I’m letting you ingest these,” Willem said sternly, “The Chief’s had one, and now he’s being really weird.”
“You’re just paranoid, Willem,” JB brushed him off.
“He was nice to Malcolm,” Willem looked pained, “He said he was proud of him.”
At this JB gaped, turning to Jude who nodded, his expression solemn, “You’re kidding!”
“I wish,” Willem said, “We really need to dispose of these.”
“But how?” Jude asked.
“Are you sure this will work?”
“Trust me, Jude, this is how you get rid of drugs,” Malcolm said as he broke the scones into crumbly bits and dropped them into the toilet bowl, “I’ve seen Goodfellas, like, twenty times.”
“That’s not the only way,” JB added, “I knew this girl once who was trying to smuggle drugs and what she did was she shoved them right up her —”
“I’m not shoving a scone up my ass, JB,” Willem deadpanned as JB shrugged.
“Okay, flush now.” Willem flushed the toilet and the four of them stepped slightly back, anxiously silent. The toilet made a choked gurgling noise as the pile of crumbled scones slowly sucked into its pipe.
“Is it working?” Jude asked nervously.
“Of course it’s working,” Malcolm smiled. Suddenly, the pile of crumbs stopped sinking and started coming back up further than they were before.
“Is the water rising?” Willem asked.
“Why is the water rising, Malcolm?” Jude panicked.
“I don’t know, the water didn’t rise in Goodfellas!”
“Fuck, fuck, fuck! We’ve clogged it!” JB yelled, “Does anyone have a plunger?”
“Why would any of us have a plunger?,” Jude said.
“ How does this bathroom not have a plunger!” Malcolm shrieked.
The toilet bubbled forth more and more water that began to spill out of it, as the boys yelled and scrambled around the bathroom, their shoes squeaking with the friction of the dampening floor beneath them.
Back downstairs, JB’s mother and aunt Silvia, were looking down at Aunt Anne in the coffin, the former (trying to be) sympathetic and the latter bored and preferring to look at the art hung up on the walls.
“I liked her quite a bit, you know.”
“No you didn’t,” Silvia raised an eyebrow, “You thought she was a bitch.”
“I never said that,” Celine scoffed.
“You definitely said that.”
The door then opened, and in walked Celine’s cousin Augustin. “Celine, there you are,” Augustin said, smiling tightly,
“Augustin, how are you?” Celine said, “What brings you here?”
“It’s my mothers wake?” He laughed awkwardly, gesturing to the dead body in the casket.
“No, I mean—did you need something from us?”
“Oh, right, haha,” Augustin said, looking nervous, “Look, this is a bit awkward, but there’s been a few complaints from the kitchen about Christine—”
“Ugh!” Silvia suddenly cried, interrupting him, “What is that ?”
The three of them turned to look at where she was pointing. On the ceiling, there was a damp spot steadily dripping with a strange, murky liquid.
“What on earth?” Augustin muttered, his face crinkled in disgust.
“Where is it coming from?” Celine asked.
“I think that’s the upstairs bathroom, I’ll go have a look,” Augustin said, leaving the room with the two women following behind him.
They clambered up the stairs, looking back at each other in confusion as loud, sloshing sounds coupled with what seemed to be panicked whispering echoed from outside the bathroom door. Augustin quickly opened the door and the three of them went silent with shock as they took in the scene before them.
The entire bathroom floor was flooded with the same murky water, vomiting forth from the toilet incessantly. The boys were huddled around the toilet, each of them in varying degrees of distress.
Upon their entry, JB turned around sharply, nearly slipping in the process. He could only stare at his mother, aunt, and uncle, his mouth hung open as if to say something, but was rendered speechless. Jude was holding several towels, his face half-hidden. The towels in his possession were dripping with water, heavy and dark with the weight of it. Malcolm was standing off to the side, holding a towel in his hands that looked completely dry, his back pressed against the wall. Oddly enough, Willem was half-kneeling on the floor, his jeans soaked with the murky water, frozen in his position of scooping handfuls of the water from the toilet and into the sink.
“Dear God,” Celine whispered.
“It looks worse than it is,” JB nervously smiled.
“My mother was right about you people,” Augustin fumed, “Wild animals would have more manners!” When the boys only stood there dumbly, his anger intensified, “Get out! Get out of here!” The boys quickly scrambled out of the bathroom, Jude and Malcolm abandoning the towels they were holding, the adults following behind them. When they came downstairs, everyone else had gone silent and were staring at them, mostly at the boys whose clothes were strangely damp or soaked.
“Look, Augustin—”
“For God’s sake, Celine,” Augustin snapped, “First the curse, now this?”
“What? You said there was no curse!”
“Of course I had to say that! I didn’t need you getting ticked off at me too!”
She stepped towards him, “Now, listen—“
“Get away from me!” He shouted, “I’ve just buried my mother, don’t make me drop dead too!”
“Oh, this is ridiculous!”
“Ridiculous? You killed my Maman!”
“I did not! It was just an unfortunate coincidence!”
“ Such an unfortunate coincidence that you told her to drop dead, and then she did!”
“I’m not taking any more of this,” Celine glared, “Boys! In the car now!”
“What’s going on?” Yvette came into the living room, Christine behind her looking scolded.
“We’re leaving Maman!” Celine grumbled, as she moved towards the foyer, Silvia trailing behind.
“So soon?”
“Yes, we’re going right now!” Yvette only looked towards Christine with worry, the latter only shrugging as she followed behind her sister.
The boys meekly made their way through the crowd, their clothes heavy with dampness, as they followed Celine and Yvette and JB’s aunts out the door, ignoring the piercing stares of the people around them. Outside, they were stuffed into the car (None of them, not even Willem, tried to speak up and say they had come with Malcolm’s family and should be in their car, only obediently following Celine’s orders), the four boys packed like sardines in the backseats, and ventured off into what would be the most suffocatingly silent car ride any of them had ever experienced.
“Absolutely mortifying,” Celine shook her head, her hands in her hair, “I mean—everyone was staring at us!”
JB was abnormally quiet, only smiling at his grandmother when she passed by him and pinched his cheek, before she began rifling through the cupboards and pulling out boxes of biscuits. All of them were donned in black as they sat around the table, having just returned from the burial where they faced a particularly frosty reception from the other funeral goers. JB had received mostly looks of disgust thinly veiled as sympathy.
“All being said, it wasn’t a bad send-off in the end, hm?” Yvette said, setting out the tea mugs on the table.
“I just want to forget the whole thing,” Celine sighed as she slumped in her chair, wrapping her hands around her steaming mug.
“How’s your runs now, JB?” Silvia asked, taking a sip from her own mug.
He grimaced, “It’s clearing up.”
“What a nightmare,” Silvia shuddered, “I couldn’t imagine being caught like that, and in someone else’s home.”
“I just don’t understand why you had to bring your friends in there with you,” Christine asked.
“I panicked, Auntie,” JB said defensively.
“Look, can we quit talking about JB having the runs? We’re about to have tea,” His mother said.
“Did any of you try the scones that were at the wake?” Yvette suddenly asked, as she was putting together a plate of pastries.
“There were scones?” Celine asked.
“I didn’t get to have one myself, but John Irvine had one, and he was telling me how lovely they were,” Yvette said, bringing the plate to the table, “So I’d snatched a few from the container for us.” JB watched in horror as his grandmother set the plate down, on which there were biscuits with jelly centers, party rings, lemon biscuits, and the scones he and his friends had flushed down the toilet. Or so he thought.
“How nice,” Silvia said as she reached for one.
“Don’t mind if I do,” Christine added, taking one herself.
“Pass one here, JB,” His mother said, holding out her plate to him.
But JB could only stare down at the scones, his mouth agape in shock. “ Shit.”
“Jean Baptiste! Language!”