Alone in my room, I open the bag with the bra inside and try it on. It doesn't quite hurt but it's very uncomfortable. It's too tight. I look in the mirror and my boobs are much bigger than before. The feeling from the mall starts up again. I decide to investigate. I pull down my underwear and sit on the bed. There's white crusty stuff in my underwear and I wonder if this has to do with the peeing disorder. I remember what the lady in the stall's crotch looked like — all red and bloody — and it hits me. Not pee but blood. I wonder if it hurts. I compare my own crotch to the lady's and decide mine is much nicer. Hers had too much hair on it.  Right now mine is wet and squishy and the mall feeling is rising in my breasts again. My whole body is stiffening up and I wonder what I can do to prolong this experience. I lie down on my stomach, under the covers, naked. Perfectly still. I play a game with myself. How long can I lie here without wiggling? I start to time myself, but then I forget that I'm timing myself, and instead I'm thinking about the girl in the mall. Then I start to think about Carmen Penelope and what kind of bra her mom might have bought her and then I realize how weird I'm acting and I have to pee. There is so much pressure pushing out from inside my crotch that I think about touching it to push the energy back in. I don't though. I put on my robe and pee.
Fido and Rover wake me up with their squawking at six thirty the next morning. Time to get up for school soon anyway, I think, and make my way towards the bathroom. Sidney is already awake and standing in her nightgown in the living room. She is staring into the cage. Mom's still in bed.
"Do you want them? I don't think I want them anymore." She sees by my face that I won't say yes and starts talking again before I can answer. "If you don't, I'm taking them back. They're not what I wanted. I wanted a boy and a girl so they could get married and they're not."
"They're probably brothers," I say. "Brothers always fight." I don't know why I'm defending them. They're evil. It's obvious. But it doesn't seem right just to bring them back to the store. If they're moving around then they have a soul and that' s just like a person in Heaven. Sidney is looking at me impatient. I say okay.
"They're your problem now," she says. My sister doesn't normally snap at me. We go into the kitchen nook next to the living room and pour ourselves some Cheerios. Sidney opens the refrigerator but we're out of milk. No bother, we eat them dry, one by one.  Fido and Rover are trying to bump each other off the swing by pecking one another on the foot. Or wing. Or whatever they can peck.
"I wonder what would happen if they accidentally ate people food instead of birdie food," Sidney says. "Do you think they might get sick or something?"
"Probably," I say.
"That would be a real shame," she says. She shovels a handful of Cheerios into her mouth. She crunches for a long time.
We don't feed them that morning. Or the morning after that. On the third morning they look tired. I open a can of tuna fish and make sandwiches for lunch. The birds are staring at me, following my movements with their necks-slash-heads. I know they must be hungry by now. I take the leftover tuna slime and dump it in the cage through the bars. As I'm doing it my stomach stabs me. Maybe I feel guilty. There's just something not right about these parakeets. They're making me think messed up things. I want to hurt these birds. I want things to be normal again.
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