So I see Marilyn is returning to her maiden name well before we can use our first names. That's obviously the smallest change our family is undergoing, but it might be telling somehow.
I shouldn't be bitter, I suppose, but I can't help but notice the irony that we'd made the decision to separate just as I was going to need her help more than ever, because, as Marilyn mentioned, the whole family has become teenage girls, and though it's not a competition, I've maybe got the worst of it. What Marilyn sort of skipped over is that she and I have clearly become the popular girls. I had to turn Instagram notifications off because Cora's phone hasn't stopped buzzing since I started charging it a couple weeks ago, and she's asked me to try to keep it up because she envisions riding social media popularity to stardom or something like that once this is her life again. Her account is actually milder than I feared - it's not bikinis and underwear or anything, but a lot of short-shorts and crop tops to emphasize that I've got a heck of a figure for someone turning seventeen just before Christmas. And she clearly knew it; when I tried on one of her uniforms, I thought she must have had a growth spurt over the summer, but Marilyn says it doesn't really work that way for girls and showed me how much it had been hemmed up. Cora, apparently, is that sort of girl.
And, yes, it's not just lots of social media photographs and short skirts - her phone is full of texts, that she's been busily fielding until I let her know that we were around, and it's a lot. She keeps track of dozens of friends, is apparently a central part of the cheerleader group chat (eek!), and there are a lot from boys. Some of them are safely in Malibu or that general area, but a disturbing number are in Burlington or that general area - some in high school, but more than a few at the University, and while real-Cora says I don't have to do anything I don't want and that honestly, me getting touchy with anyone sounded kind of gross to her, I'm not that big.
(Oh, and Marilyn didn't mention it, but Juliana is apparently also that sort of girl, and Marilyn has spent some time trying on her outfits and such, and apparently Cora and Juliana share clothes all the time because her new boobs are just as big and perky as mine, although she's got a bit more of a butt than I do.)
So, that's a lot, and obviously L.J. is going through it too. He's not dealing with quite the exploding phone we are - Leda, apparently, is at this place on scholarship, which is going to be a lot of work for him - he's a year behind the girls and wasn't taking a lot of the top-level courses Leda was, and that's before you get to the cross-country team. I suppose that there are worse sports for him to have to try and fake - imagine how exposed he'd be trying to play field hockey - but we're mostly concerned with trying to work our way through the summer reading list in a just a couple of days right now.
-Lucas/Cora
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