"Mhm."
✧˖°.✧˖˚▹ₓ˚. ୭ ˚○◦˚.˚◦○˚ ୧ .˚ₓ༺༄ؘ 𝓒𝓱𝓪𝓹𝓽𝓮𝓻 6 ༄ؘ༻ₓ˚ .୧ ˚○◦˚.˚◦○˚ ୭˚▹ₓ˚.✧˖°.✧
𝘋𝘪𝘯𝘨-𝘥𝘰𝘯𝘨!
...
"Ring again."
𝘋𝘪𝘯𝘨-𝘥𝘰𝘯𝘨!
...
"Man, why ain't Jodele answering this damn door?" Mr. Edmenson muttered. In a louder voice he yelled, "JODELE, YOU BETTER OPEN THIS DOOR!"
Ramona sighed.
𝘋𝘪𝘯𝘨-𝘥𝘰𝘯𝘨!
𝘗𝘖𝘜𝘕𝘋! 𝘗𝘖𝘜𝘕𝘋! 𝘗𝘖𝘜𝘕𝘋!
"JODELE, OPEN THIS DOOR RIGHT NOW!"
All this yelling caught the attention of a stranger, who stopped to stare at the pair and left.
𝘉𝘈𝘔! 𝘉𝘈𝘔! 𝘉𝘈𝘔!
"JODELE, YOU BETTER BELIEVE THAT I'M GONNA BREAK THIS DOOR DOWN IF YOU AIN'T GONNA ANSWER! DON'T KEEP US WAITING!"
𝘉𝘈𝘔! 𝘉𝘈𝘔! 𝘉𝘈𝘔!
Finally, the door was answered by a young woman with dark circles under her eyes. She yawned and zipped up the upper eighth of her onesie. Seeing the appearance of her father, the woman sighed.
"Good evening," she mumbled.
"Hi, Jodele," Ramona replied.
Mr. Edmenson looked her up and down, discountenancing her. "What's good 'bout the evening? It took you ten damn years to open the door!"
"Um, I apologize. 𝘉𝘢𝘥 evening..."
Ramona rolled her eyes at her father's unnecessary rant.
"I hope the ride wasn't too stressful," the woman said. "It's so nice you came all this way to visit."
"What can I say, we're nice people," Mr. Edmenson grinned. "Anyway, changing the subject. Jodele, why'd it take you so long to answer the door, huh?"
"As you can see, I was sleeping," the woman, supposedly Jodele, replied. "I woke up to you banging the door."
"I mean, you probably wouldn't have awoken any other way so this was perfect."
Ramona turned to her elder sister. "Where's Joyce and Yuri?"
"They're inside my room," Jodele replied. She yawned. "Be careful, 'cause Joyce is sleeping." She turned to her father. "Can 𝘐 go to sleep, please?"
Mr. Edmenson nodded as Ramona turned to walk with her big sister to her big sister's room.
"Aww, look at my favorite niece and nephew!" Ramona smiled as soon as she entered the room.
"Don't be so loud, me and Joyce will be sleeping," Jodele told her little sister.
"Hi, Ramona," a little boy grinned as he started jumping around.
"Hey, Yuri!" Ramona said as she sat down on a chair in the room. "Don't yell too much, Joyce is sleeping. Don't you see her?"
Yuri nodded as Ramona hoped he would quiet down. He sat in her lap and rested his head on her chest.
"Ramona," he said.
"Yes?"
Yuri sat up. "I have a joke," he stated. "A woman gave a birth to twins, a boy and girl."
Ramona nodded.
"After she birthed the babies, she passed out."
Ramona gasped dramatically.
"So when she woke up, the doctor said that she couldn't name her babies because her brother already did it for her. 'Oh no,' she said. 'My brother's really dumb!'"
"Mhm."
"So then, she asked the doctor what he named the babies, and he was like, "For the girl, he named her Denise. But for the boy... DaNephew."
Ramona stared at her nephew in confusion.
"Do you get it?"
"Um..." Suddenly, it hit her. "Ohh, yeah, I get it!"
Skeptical of her answer, Yuri decided to explain. "Yea, because Denise sounds the "Da Niece," and since the brother is dumb, he named-"
"Yeah, yeah, I get it."
"It was a good joke right?"
"Yup!"
𝘡𝘻𝘻𝘻...
Yuri and Ramona turned to each other and silently giggled at the sound of Jodele's snoring.
"She's so loud!" Yuri laugh-whispered.
"Right?" Ramona whispered back.
Ramona sighed as her nephew rested his head back on her chest. She suddenly thought of something else to entertain him.
"You wanna see some pictures of me and Dad's trip here?" Ramona asked as she took her phone out of her pocket. She went to her camera app and showed Yuri a picture. "Look, that's Dad and me! At an ice cream shop!"
Yuri stared at the picture then grinned and giggled at his aunt. However, she didn't seem to notice because she was intensely staring at the picture. She noticed something weird.
𝘋𝘢𝘮𝘯, 𝘐 𝘢𝘪𝘯'𝘵 𝘭𝘰𝘰𝘬 𝘯𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘮𝘺 𝘧𝘢𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳. 𝘏𝘦'𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘰𝘯𝘭𝘺 𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘐 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦, 𝘴𝘰 𝘸𝘩𝘺 𝘥𝘰𝘯'𝘵 𝘐 𝘭𝘰𝘰𝘬 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘩𝘪𝘮? 𝘞𝘦 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘯 𝘭𝘰𝘰𝘬 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘸𝘦'𝘳𝘦 𝘥𝘪𝘧𝘧𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘳𝘢𝘤𝘦𝘴! 𝘐 𝘢𝘮 𝘈𝘧𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘯-𝘈𝘮𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘸𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘦 𝘩𝘦 𝘭𝘰𝘰𝘬𝘴 𝘋𝘰𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘯. 𝘔𝘢𝘺𝘣𝘦 𝘐 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘢𝘴𝘬 𝘩𝘪𝘮 𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴. Ramona thought to herself. 𝘠𝘦𝘢𝘩, 𝘐 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘢𝘴𝘬 𝘩𝘪𝘮.
"Yuri, I need to go ask Dad something. Do you want to come with me?"
"Yes," Yuri replied as he got up from his aunt's lap. Ramona stood up and held her nephew's hand.
They both walked out of Jodele's room and entered the living room to see Mr. Edmenson looking worriedly at his phone.
"Oh, Dad!" Ramona said while her eyes fixed on her father's expensive-looking phone.
Mr. Edmenson jumped at the sound of his daughter's voice and quickly hid his phone. He looked up at his daughter with a sigh of annoyance. "What do you want? You scared me."
"I did? That's surprising," Ramona replied. "How did I scare you?"
"'Cause you just crept up on me like... like a goblin shark!"
"Ouch...," Ramona muttered. "I see you got a very expensive phone," she commented as her father exhaled deeply out of his nose. "I thought you ain't have the money for that."
"Um, yeah, it was a gift from my man."
"You have a man? Like a boyfriend?"
Mr. Edmenson stared at his daughter like she was a buzzing fly that just wouldn't go away. "Guess."
"Um, no?" Ramona responded as her nephew giggled.
"Duh! Now get outta my damn face!" Mr. Edmenson turned his attention away from his daughter and stared at a flower pot.
"Wait! I have a question."
With an annoyed sigh, Mr. Edmenson said, "What now?"
"Remember the picture we took in the ice cream place?"
"Yes..., why?"
Ramona whipped her phone from out of her pocket and went to the camera app so she could try to locate the photo. "We don't look anything like each other," she stated, her eyes still fixed on the picture.
"Give me that!" Mr. Edmenson snapped.
He took Ramona's phone from her hand as soon as she gestured her father to take it.
"What do you mean we don't look anything like each other? We look everything alike!"
Ramona sighed. "No, we don't, Dad. Our skin is different. Our noses. Our eyes-"
"Our lips look pretty much the same-- like look at that, then look at that, and you'll see that we actually look like two clones."
"Yea, two clones from different people," Ramona replied. "Listen, Dad, I know you see that we don't look alike. Just admit it."
"Fine," Mr. Edmenson muttered. He cleared his throat and proceeded to speak up. "We don't look alike 'cause... you took your mother's genes."
"Oh," Ramona responded. "Where is she?"
"Well I don't know that, do I?" Mr. Edmenson almost yelled. "Get outta my face!"
"Am I adopted?"
Mr. Edmenson banged his hand on the table near him. "GET OUTTA MY FACE!"
Ramona sighed as the cry of a baby could be heard.
"Oops, that's Joyce," Yuri said as he ran to his mother's room.