We were going to have a yard sale.

We were going to have a yard sale and the sale wouldn’t even technically be in my yard.

Maybe it ought to be referred to as a garage sale… or quite possibly a rummage sale.

“How clean does this look?” my friend Kate asked me and held up a pink onesie from when I was a baby.

There was a large stain in the middle of the onesie that greatly resembled baby puke.

Disgusting.

Did my mom not wash any of my old things before putting them up here?

“It looks clean enough for someone to buy it and that set of booties for fifty cents,” I replied and pointed to the set of pink and white striped baby booties that had been lying underneath the onesie.

“Mark them and put them with the baby stuff,” I advised her.

Kate handed the clothes off to our friend Tarryn who was in charge of pricing the items and setting them aside in their designated spots. She only had the job because if she had to search for things, she would become distracted and then we would get absolutely no work whatsoever finished. That, and also because out of the three of us she has the best handwriting.

Tarryn wrinkled her nose and raised an eyebrow at me after she took the items from Kate.

“Are we not washing things now, Audrey?” she questioned.

“No clue. Maybe my mom planned on having it framed but forgot? It’s really disgusting, but you know what they say… ‘One man’s trash is another man’s treasure’.”

I cast a glance at Kate and she rolled her eyes.

“God, you’re such a loser. How cheesy is that?”

“And you know that she means trash quite literally. Because seriously, if this were my junk? That’s exactly where this would go,” Tarryn commented.

I looked over to see what she was talking about, figuring that she was still talking about the puke covered onesie, and saw that she was holding a large brown Pound Puppie by the ear between her thumb and index finger.

“Ralph! I had wondered what happened to you! You take that back; Ralph is not trash!” I shot a glare at my friend and she actually cowered, probably more for my benefit rather than actually from being afraid, but she cowered nonetheless.

I marched over to Tarryn’s designated area and grabbed Ralph from her hands before returning to my place on the floor.

“Sheesh, who forgot to grow up and graduate from kindergarten?” she observed.

“Well, I don’t know how you did things in Nebraska, but there was never an actual graduation when I was in kindergarten. We even still had naptime and didn’t get out early like the little kids now. What is up with that?”

“I don’t know, Audrey,” she replied slowly. “Would you like for me to ask someone for you? I’m sure the superintendent would stop everything that he’s doing right now just to answer that question for you.”

“Whoa, were you an ugly baby or what?” Kate asked from her corner.

I looked over to see what she was talking about and saw that she was lying on her stomach while flipping through a photo album.

“What are you looking at?”

She shrugged and turned one plastic wrapped page, “I dunno. I just found it. I guess it’s your baby album. Wow, you really weren’t a very photogenic baby at all were you?”

“I want to see!” Tarryn exclaimed and hopped up from her place by the labeled boxes and plopped herself down beside Kate. “Wow. You were scary looking.”

I frowned and crossed my arms in front of my chest before I joined them in looking through the album.

“I just had a lot of intestinal gas as an infant.”

“Sure, call it that if you want,” Tarryn said, “but I’m pretty sure you were just one ugly baby.”

I sighed, “Look, can we please stop debating how ugly of a baby I was and get back to pricing all of this junk? My dad’s so anal about us having the yard sale today and I don’t even know why.”

- - - - -

Five hours later it was no longer a yard sale just to help get rid of some of the clutter in the house.

About an hour into the yard sale a familiar green Explorer had pulled into the driveway. A tall blonde woman had stepped out of the car and walked up to where Tarryn and I stood with a young couple helping them sort through the baby things.

“Andrea!” she had greeted me.

This had caused me to raise and eyebrow as I corrected her and told her that my name was in face Audrey.

She had enveloped me in a hug and I almost choked on her perfume that had been applied much too liberally.

I had recognized her before she had even stepped out of her car. Her name was Sheila Taylor and she was my dad’s flavor of the week.

Not that my dad’s like a man-whore or anything. Man-whore he definitely wasn’t. He just liked to keep his options… open.

That was why I was surprised that Sheila was still around. Generally my dad only dated a woman for a couple of weeks before they broke up, he had been dating Sheila for almost a week, however, and it was starting to freak me out.

I liked things the was they were and did not want anything to change.

The only reason I approved of my dad’s freestyle dating or whatever was because it didn’t mean a committed relationship.

Because even though I was just fourteen, I knew that committed relationship means dating, then engagement, then marriage, then kids. And I really liked everything just the way it was with me being the only child and getting everything that I wanted. Call me selfish, I’m not. That’s really not it at all. It’s more like I took comfort in knowing that I was the only person there for my dad after my mom died.

“Oh, I am so sorry, Audrey,” she had said after I corrected her. “It’s great seeing you again, though. I want to thank you and your friends for cleaning out the attic for Brett.”

“Brett?” I had asked and furrowed my brows

She had nodded and giggled, “My son of course! Didn’t your dad tell you that he would be staying in the attic instead of the guest room?”

“Guest room?”

Tarryn had elbowed me very discretely to wake me out of my stupor.

“Wait, what? Son? Staying in the attic? What are you talking about?”

“Oh dear, your father didn’t tell you did he?”

At my blank look she had continued.

“Well, Audrey, darling, your father had thought it best for us to move in and get settled before the wedding.”

“The wedding?”