"What do you mean 'I may have to wear glasses'?!" Oh, man! As if things weren't hard enough in Elizabeth's life, she had to end up looking even homelier by having to wear glasses thanks to some fink of a teacher who caught her squinting. Who cared if they were supposed to make her better at school? They were just another thing to be teased about. Dumb old Michael. Why was he always so angry and why did Mom never see that as a problem?
Ah, well. At least she could see how ugly Mike really was with'em. And how old Mom looked. Weird. Other ladies Mom's age looked years younger. And dressed nicer. And didn't stoop. And, if Mrs Enjo was any judge, didn't spend their days telling their children that they can't do anything right or bellow about how nobody notices their pooooooooor mother who has noooooo help and nooooo time to herself. Well, Liz might not have been the brightest kid but at least she wasn't as dumb as Mike. He'd said something about why she'd want their help if they couldn't do anything right! Mom turned purple like a space alien and slapped him in the face!
Too bad that just when she was starting to feel good again, Mom said that she was going to have a new baby. Oh, dear. All they could ever talk about was the new baby. The new baby this, the new baby that and, wham, we don't have room for the old baby now. Since they put all of the new baby's stuff in her room, it was as if Mom and Dad expected her to take care of it for them or something. And Mike was no help. When he wasn't complaining about how he'd look, he muttered something about payback. It was about when April was born that she'd started to notice that he didn't even have the decency to call her by her proper name any more. She was either Sistwirp or Lizardbreath. Dumb ol'Michael.
About the only bright spot she could really remember in the early years of having to deal with Candace trying to butt in to her friendship with Dawn and having to watch over April and listen to Mom yell about how selfish she was for wanting to run around and leave her poor mother in the lurch was talking to Miss Edwards. At last! A teacher who understood her! If she could be a teacher like her, she'd be happy. Well, she'd be happy if talking to Miss Edwards didn't drive Mom nuts. Why was she supposed to come to Mom with her problems when Mom was one of her problems? She knew better than to provoke a lecture about ingratitude.
If only there were three sets of questions that she simply could not answer. The first set of odd question started when she asked herself why did doing housework the way they showed her in Home Ec easier and faster than the way Mom did it? Why did Mom say that she did it wrong because it wasn't the way Grandma Marian did it? Why did showing Grandma Marian the way Mom said she did things make her gran spit out her coffee and say "I'll explain why I did that when you're older."?
The second set of questions that she didn't dare to ask was "Wouldn't it have been simpler to tell April to ask a grown-up if she could leave the yard?" That led to her asking herself "Why did Mom think that a child that small would know what she meant? The child care section says that 'someone' means 'anyone' to a three-year old!" Finally, that led to her asking herself why was April's near-drowning somehow her fault for not looking after her. The radio said that parents were supposed to look out for their children, not other children!! About the only thing that those questions could answer is why she'd had to lie to the police and not have April looked at at the ER. That baffled her because it was just sort of something that happened. It wasn't as if Mom and Dad would get into trouble...right?
The third set was asking herself why Anthony just didn't come out and say that he was interested in her? Her friends made this big production about how she wasn't looking because she didn't want to but she didn't believe that. Why did people assume that she was too passive and oblivious to know what was what? Sure, she'd done some dumb things but didn't everyone? Geez! To hear some people talk, you'd think that she was the passive little doll she was when she was three!!