My eyebrow keeps twitching.
Mommy says I’m not old enough to drink coffee.
She says that’s the reason her eyebrow twitches sometimes.
So why is mine twitching?
Rougey is leading me down to the basement, her hand gripping mine like her life depends on it.
She’s going to show me a new game. One that grown-ups play, I guess.
I don’t know much about grown-up games. Mommy and Daddy sometimes play a game called Taboo when they have friends over.
Maybe that’s what Rougey is going to show me. Taboo.
Rougey closes the basement door and drags me down the staircase.
Our basement is unfinished. That’s what Daddy says. We live in a big house, so we don’t need the basement for anything besides storage. The walls are made of the same material as sidewalks, and the floors are wood. Daddy says he’s going to pay a man to make it look like the rest of our house eventually, but that he’s too focused right now on his clubs downtown to get that done. Mommy could supervise, but he told me in secret he doesn’t trust her to get it done without him helping her make decisions.
So we rarely go down here. Daddy has a set of weights and a treadmill in the corner, and there’s an old set of couches that used to be in our fancy living room upstairs before we upgraded, but it’s mostly empty space with a few spiderwebs in the corners.
I don’t like going down here. I like it even less right now.
“Rougey? Why do we have to play this game in the basement? It’s all dark and spooky down here.”
Rougey smirks. “Because the kind of game we’re going to play is a secret one. It’s so much fun that we don’t want to have to share it with anyone else.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“What’s the name of the game?” I look around. “I don’t see any board game boxes down here. Mommy and Daddy keep them upstairs in the playroom.”
“Silly Bianca,” Rougey replies. “It’s not that kind of game. It’s a game like tag, one that doesn’t need a board.”
“Are we going to play tag?”
“I said it’s like tag, not that it is tag, dumb-dumb.” Rouge walks around to the other side of Daddy’s treadmill. “It’s called Doctor.”
“Doctor?”
“Yes. We’re going to pretend that I’m the doctor, and I’m giving you a checkup.”
My eyebrow twitches again, this time twice as hard as before. What the heck is going on with it?
“What do you mean you’re going to give me a checkup?”
“Like, I’ll pretend to be the doctor, and you’ll pretend to be the patient. We’ll do the thing where I bonk your knee with a mallet, I’ll check your eyes. And, you know, other doctor stuff.”
I cross my arms. “That doesn’t sound very fun to me. I don’t like going to the doctor very much.”
“Well, this version is a little more fun,” Rougey says. “Why don’t you lie down on the treadmill?”
My eyebrow is going crazy now, but I ignore it. I sit down on the treadmill, let my little legs dangle off the end.
“Good. First we can test your reflexes.” Rouge takes a small hammer out. She must have gotten it out of Daddy’s toolbox in the garage. She taps it against my knee.
Nothing happens.
