Excerpt: Just for Now
Book 3: Escape to New Zealand
“Jenna, you know what?” Harry said from behind her. “You have a bottom like a wombat!”
Jenna nearly hit her head on the oven ceiling as she pulled it out and sat back on her heels. “What?” she asked, staring at Harry.
“Harry!” Finn barked at his son. “That was dead rude. Apologize to Jenna.”
“Sorry, Jenna,” Harry said, his lip trembling at his father’s tone. “I didn’t know I shouldn’t say.”
“I forgive you,” Jenna told him. “But it isn’t polite to talk to ladies about their bottoms. It isn’t polite to say things about how people look anyway, unless you’re saying something very nice, like, “Your dress is pretty.”
“But I am saying something very nice,” Harry argued, anxious to explain himself. “Wombats have special bottoms. Their bottoms are their superpowers!”
“Remember, Sophie?” he appealed to his sister. “When Dad took us to Aussie, and we saw them?”
“Hmm? Yeh,” Sophie agreed, looking up from her book. “They looked funny, I thought.”
“You see, Jenna,” Harry went on earnestly, “wombats dig tunnels. They have very powerful legs for digging. And if a dingo comes to try to get into the tunnel, the wombat can back up. It blocks the tunnel with its bottom. The dingo tries to get its face around the wombat. Then the wombat squeezes with its bottom, and it squishes the dingo!”
“Ah,” Jenna said, trying not to laugh. “Superpower bottoms. I see.”
“Even though wombat bottoms may be nice,” Finn put in, a smile attempting to escape his own stern expression, “we still don’t talk about ladies’ bottoms. Not ever.”
“Sorry, Jenna,” Harry said again, looking worried. “Are you angry?”
Jenna reached out to give him a hug, then remembered the rubber gloves. “No. Of course not. Your dad told you, and now you know.” She turned back to the oven again, then stopped. It had been kind of funny, but she wasn’t about to offer Finn another view of her Wombat Bottom.
“Ah . . .” she looked around. “Why don’t you let me finish up in here? The fumes,” she realized with relief. “I’ll come tell you, Finn, when I’ve got most of the oven cleaner wiped out and you can get in there with the elbow grease.”
“Course. Let’s go,” he told the kids. “Leave Jenna to get on with it.”
He didn’t know much about wombats, Finn thought as he shepherded Harry and Sophie out of the kitchen. He knew a thing or two about ladies’ bottoms, though. Jenna’s may or may not have been able to squish a dingo’s face. But it definitely had some superpowers.
