Teddie did the first thing that came to mind.
He panicked.
Looking around the room,
he couldn’t see any escape.
The footsteps were descending the stairs in a sleepy,
yet heavy rhythm.
That meant it was his mom,
still groggy and potentially grouchy as a hungry bear that just woke up from a long hibernation.
He had only seconds.
She would be in sight at any moment.
What could he do?
He kept asking himself.
What?
A desperate notion hit Teddie and without fully examining all aspects of the idea, he acted.
Lifting one of the cushions of the couch with his left hand
he quickly tossed the remains of Tammy Lou’s precious Sally doll as far back toward the recesses of the couch as possible.
He just had time to settle the cushion back into its proper place
Then drop flat to the floor on his belly as his mom came lurching around the corner,
her hair standing up in all directions.
She was busy rubbing the remaining traces of sleep from her bloodshot eyes,
and therefore, she failed to notice Teddie’s prostrate form on the living room floor.
Teddie held his breath for a moment as he watched his mom’s retreating back enter the kitchen,
desperately struggling to keep from reaching back to adjust the hem of his short nightshirt
He realized he was beginning to sweat as he watched his mother disappear around the kitchen corner
He then he scrambled to his feet and scampered for the stairs.
Teddie momentarily forgot about the telltale creaking of the stairs
until the first chorus of moaning protests drifted into the air
as he vaulted the steps three at a time,
his arms pumping and his nightshirt flying,
his regular feeling of embarrassment pushed aside by more important issues.
Issues like avoiding capture,
torture,
sentence and execution for porcelain people murder.
He grimaced at the sound his footsteps made and he froze halfway up the stairs.
“Teddie?” His mom’s voice called questioningly out from the kitchen.
“Is that you, honey?
Land sakes, dear, you sound like a herd of elephants.
Slow down for pity’s sake.”
Teddie knew that he had been discovered and total escape was impossible.
However, it wasn’t too late to cover his tracks.
So instead of continuing to dash up the stairs and try to deny the fact that he had ever been up that morning,
he decided to reverse his course.
In a brilliant counteroffensive,
Teddie turned around and started making his way back downstairs,
his hands absently tugging to straighten the hem of the nightshirt to make it longer.
Blast that damn thing and blast his grandmother for not making something bigger
and double blast damn his mother for not letting him buy any new, cooler pajamas.
“Sorry, mom!” Teddie controlled his emotions and voice as he descended the stairs.
He purposefully adopted a slower, more unsteady,
sleepy pace.
It wouldn’t do for him to make his mom any more suspicious.
Mrs Garvan came out of the kitchen with an empty coffee cup in one hand and the morning paper in the other.
She looked surprised to see her son downstairs without being dressed for the day.
Although she didn’t know exactly why Teddie insisted on dressing immediately in the day
Tammy Lou would stay in her pajamas all day if she could,
it was a well enough established routine that it was easy to notice.
“Are you ok, sweetie?” She said as she watched him step off the last step.
“You’re not sick, are you?”
“No, mom, I’m fine.” Teddie reassured her.
He met her quizzical gaze with his own innocent grin.
“Just a little tired still I guess.” To add realism to his make up as you go script,
he rubbed his eyes with his fist and then stopped and gave a big yawn and wide, full stretch.
In the middle of his stretch,
he became aware that his nightshirt was riding up toward his belly and he was exposing himself in front of his mom.
His face flushed with humiliation and he immediately cut his stretch off short.
He also realized that he had inadvertently given himself the perfect way to escape back into the relative safety of his room.
Teddie looked at his mom’s amused expression and forced a half fake,
half real visage of shock, horror and surprise.
He purposefully tried to make it look like he had just forgotten to get dressed that morning and he didn’t realize it until right then.
To play his role to the max,
Teddie quickly averted his eyes to look down at his nightshirt.
Sure enough, little bits of his underwear were still peeking out from under the hem.
His hands grasped the accursed short garment and tugged it lower for the tenth time that morning.
At the same time, he spun around and vaulted back up the stairs.
He tossed an embarrassed look back over his shoulder before he was out of sight and saw his mother smiling and shaking her head.
Only then did his heart begin to slow down and beat at a normal rate.
His ruse had been a success!
His mom had bought his performance with nary a question.
He was home free!
