Angela's Farm, Chapter 7

Olivia slowly opened one eye.
"What the hell happened?" she groaned, but her voice sounded more like an angry bear speaking Dutch than her usual chirpy self. As she tried to sit up, a wave of nausea hit her like a freight train. This was the worst hangover she's ever had. Her mouth felt as dry as a butter stick wrapper.

"I'm not an expert, but I think we all got shit-faced," Sarah said from somewhere to Olivia's left.

Olivia tried to open her other eye, slowly, as any sudden movements would cause the room to spin wildly. She coughed and gasped for air. The light was blinding. "Well, at least you seem to be all cheerful," she said, trying to keep her eyes fixed on a dot on the ceiling.

"Never better," Sarah said. She did sound a bit muffled.

"Sarah, are you sleeping on the floor?"

"Yep. I have a pillow and blanket down here and everything."

The dark dot on the ceiling suddenly moved and crawled towards the window, where Olivia couldn't see it. "Can I ask you why?"

"Sure."

"Why?

"That, I don't know," Sarah admitted.

Olivia paused for a moment, trying to think about the last night. Her face twisted in suspicion. "I can't remember anything after we left the creamery. Please tell me I wasn't doing anything too embarrassing."

"Don't worry, you were quite hilarious. At the diner, you devoured all of your food and most of mine, which I appreciate, but then you launched into this long-winded rant about a conspiracy you'd supposedly uncovered."

"Oh god," Olivia moaned.

"You insisted that everyone in the world was constantly trying to starve you," Sarah continued. "And then you said to my aunt, and let me quote: 'I want to be like you, Angela-poo. As big as a house or two.'"

Olivia's eyes widened in horror. "Please tell me you made that up."

Okay, okay, I may have exaggerated a bit," Sarah admitted.

"You almost gave me a heart attack."

"You didn't actually say it, you were rapping it while wearing a tea towel on your head and scratching Jenna's belly like a DJ. You called yourself '75 cents,' apparently because of inflation. But don't be alarmed, I have it all on my phone. I already watched it twice. You can look forward to daily blackmail from someone called Sarah-mander."

"Why didn't you stop me?" Olivia was really mortified.

"First, because you were so adorably drunk, second because I think I was also adorably drunk, and third because Jenna couldn't stop laughing because she is super ticklish. Oh, and my aunt loved the performance, by the way, even though she is more into Sinatra. She's considering adopting you as her new experimental daughter. She said you have enormous potential while she was feeding you a pie."

"Yeah, sure. Oh shit, what's the time?"

"Around noon. But don't worry, nobody is working. A bottle of booze in eggnog still counts as a bottle of booze consumed by three idiots with some help of my aunt."

"I wasn't thinking about working," Olivia said quietly. "I was thinking about breakfast."

Sarah's messy hair peeked up from below the bed frame. "You were so stuffed last night that Jenna had to drag your ass here because you refused to walk, and the first thing you ask for in the morning is breakfast. You can't wait to show off your enormous potential, can you? It's a marathon, not a race."

"Look, maybe I have a really fast metabolism, okay? All I know is my stomach is going to turn inside out if I don't eat something. And you're in the flight path, so can you please check if we have anything left to eat? Or duck and very quickly."

"Alas, the astute and valiant damsel comes to the rescue with her culinary masterpiece!" Sarah stood up from the ground, bowed slightly, and slowly made her way to the table. She picked up a plate of strange dark objects that may or may not have survived The Great Fire of Rome in 64 AD and placed it on the corner of Olivia's bed. She then grabbed her phone and headed to the washroom. "Till our next rendezvous, my plump courtesan. Enjoy Sarah's succulent chocolate mousse bis-coctus." She waved back from the door. "May thy repast bring thee sustenance."

"What?"

"See you in an hour, fat-ass."

Olivia hesitantly took a bite from the corner of one of the burnt blobs, feeling an impending storm brewing in her stomach. The "cookie" seemed edible, but just barely. She swallowed it, and her queazy belly gave a growl like a pack of hungry werewolves.

The nauseating feeling subsided slightly as she kept swallowing, so she continued to eat Sarah's culinary masterpieces one by one until they were all gone. As soon as she stopped chewing, that peculiar feeling of discontent and hollowness crept back into her stomach. It was clear that she required more food, but it would be preferable if it wasn't made of ingredients such as chalk, burned sawdust, and who knows what else dead or alive Sarah found around the farm.

"I'm going to the kitchen," she called out towards the loudly singing bathroom where Sarah was currently butchering the part of The Barber of Seville: 'Lalala, lalala, lalala, la-la, bravo Figaro, bravo, bravissimo, bravo'.

One more minute of that head-splitting ruckus and there was a serious chance her bizarre friend might accidentally plunge into the toilet, which would be regrettable but also absolutely unavoidable.

As soon as Olivia entered the main house, aunt Angela greeted her warmly. "How's my favorite little girl?" she asked, motioning her to take a seat. "Let me make you something very special to brighten those cute cheeks."

Jenna was already sitting at the table wearing sunglasses. She nodded to Olivia and smiled without saying a word, then went back to her coffee and phone. Even Jenna looked seriously beaten up.

"I've got the perfect thing for a young, growing girl who had a little too much fun," Angela said, presenting Olivia with an enormous bowl of oatmeal.

Olivia wanted to object that it was too much. It was an automatic reaction, something people in Seattle like to say when they notice a horse-sized bowl of oatmeal appear in front of them. But her stomach felt like it was trying to eat itself. Damn, she thought, this might not even be enough.

"Let me know if it's sweet enough, love," Angela said, as she scooped a spoonful of thick, sticky substance and brought it to Olivia's lips.

"It's great, thank you," Olivia managed to say with her mouth full. It was incredibly creamy and sweet, but it surprisingly agreed with her turbulent stomach. She took the spoon and continued to eat. Aunt Angela knew a thing or two about comfort food.

"That will give you enough strength for now. Then I'll fix you some lunch. Does my growing girl want some milk?"

Jenna looked up. "I think your growing girl has a thing or two for something heavier."

"Oh, is that right? I have half & half in the fridge. I remember Emily used to drink that for breakfast, and she was such a healthy young lady. I see a little of our Emily in you, Olivia."

"That’s precisely what I said, Mom. She’s like Emily's little sister, isn't she?"

"Don't worry, love, you'll catch up with her in no time. Oh, she had such a good appetite," Aunt Angela sighed. "I wonder what she's doing now."

Jenna chuckled, turning to Olivia and raising her sunglasses. Her eyes were red. "Emily had to leave after two years working in the creamery because she didn't want to get 'stuck' on the job, hahaha."

Olivia finished her oatmeal, splashed it with a cup of Half & Half, and felt perfectly fine, surprisingly. She even began to wonder what Angela was cooking for lunch. She touched her painfully stretched belly, spilling over her unzipped jeans, trying to figure out if her stomach was telling her that it was full or that it wasn't full enough. It felt the same, kind of like that cup which is both half full and half empty. She always thought of herself as a half-full-cup person. Only one way to find out.

"Can I have a bit more?" she asked politely.

"Of course. We can't have you starving," Angela said with a wink and went on to make more oatmeal.

Jenna watched Olivia with slight fascination, shaking her head slightly. "I should bring you some of my old clothes. You'll need them really soon. Oh, Mom, I forgot," she turned back to her mother, "Alyssa is coming tonight, so you may have to make more food for dinner."

Angela mumbled something unpleasant from the stove.

"I don't care," Jenna replied. "Just because you have a quibble with her mom, it doesn't mean you have to be nasty to Alyssa too."

Suddenly, Sarah entered the kitchen, with a big smile on her face of someone who had just spent the last forty minutes on the toilet. "Alyssa? Is your balloon bestie coming over?"

"Yeah, she's also bringing her little cousin from Boston. The girl's apparently a bit bored, so you could try to entertain her," said Jenna.

Sarah's eyes sparkled. "Olivia can use some of her yesterday's material to entertain our little guest. 'A charming prince tells a princess in a hat, he wants to make her fucking fat.' We can dress up Jenna's dildo collection in tiny clothes and add strings for a puppet show. Olivia, you can do that stupid voice..."

Luckily, Angela interrupted Sarah's unhinged creativity by bringing three massive plates of spaghetti and meatballs, and of course, an extra bowl of oatmeal.

“I still feel like everything tastes of raw eggs," Olivia said as she started stuffing her face with the pasta, alternating it with spoons of oatmeal. "I never want to see that awful egg nog again."

“Me neither,” Jenna agreed. That was so amateurish." She looked back to see if her mom was watching and transferred about half of Sarah's meal to Olivia's plate, making her spaghetti pile look like a medium-sized bee hive. "What were we thinking? Egg nog in summer! So for tonight, I googled a homemade Irish cream recipe. No eggs this time.”

Olivia paused and looked up from her plate to see if Jenna was joking. It was hard to read her face through the sunglasses, but she concluded that it was just like with food on this farm. If you complained that you had too much of something, they would just give you too much of something else. Different tastes were respected and celebrated, but the quantity was never questioned. Like right now, there was no way in the world she was going to eat that much spaghetti and another bowl of oatmeal. No way.

After both of her plates were licked clean, Olivia was quite impressed with herself that she managed to stay more or less conscious. Although she couldn't move too much, she didn't feel as sleepy as she did yesterday. So whatever she was doing was working.

***

After Jenna with Sarah's dubious assistance cleaned the churner from all that yesterday's sticky mess, it was already late afternoon. Olivia sagged on the bench, her back supported by a cushion, watching the cousins, and feeling useless. But Jenna reassured her that a female employee eating herself to lethargy was a perfectly acceptable excuse on the farm and it apparently happened all the time.

When Jenna asked if Olivia would be able to help with at least one batch of butter, she instantly agreed. Even if it was just flipping a few valves and pushing a button, it was still a job she could do. Plus of course, sampling the cream and testing the butter was a nice bonus. So, while Jenna and Sarah went to gather ingredients for their Irish cream, Olivia started the churner and took a quick nap to gather her strength.

The timing was just perfect. As soon as her friends returned with a mixer and a box of things and set up their new command center in the receiving room, the churner beeped, signaling that the butter was ready for texturing.

This time, Olivia was determined to take her task far more seriously. No idling, no distractions. She dragged a chair to the table and methodically tasted a spoon or two every few minutes while marking her observations on the sheet. After thirty or so minutes she concluded that the texture had to be perfect 10 points because she could not possibly swallow another spoonful. It was time to wash down the greasy butter taste with a cold cup of cream and see what Jenna and Sarah were up to in the next room.

"It needs more rum," Sarah flapped her arms like a scarecrow in the wind.

"No it's too watery; it needs more cream," Jenna argued. "And I'm not gonna carry you two back to your room again so stop with the rum."

"I don't want it to become another pudding."

"I recall you didn't mind too much yesterday. You were the drunkest of us all. Running topless because your shirt apparently went to Alaska to chill out."

"Oh, that's why it was in the freezer! I was wondering who would do such a thing."

"Hey," Jenna noticed Olivia standing in the doorway. "You're the master tester. Here, try this."

Olivia was pleased to have something sweet to wash down the taste of the heavy cream. The drink was rich, creamy, and chocolatey, with only a hint of rum, and tasted very professional.

"It's good 8 or 8 and half, but..."

They added more coffee and chocolate syrup, an extra can of condensed milk, two more cups of heavy cream, and another generous splash of rum until everyone agreed on the taste.

Jenna's phone buzzed. "Alyssa is here," she announced, looking at the screen. "I better go down before my mom says something nasty to her. I don't even know what her problem is with Sanders. Out of all the farms in Montana, she has to hate the one where my best friend is from."

"Parents, right?" Sarah said. "My mom thinks your mom is an obese pig while we know it's you who's going to be the real deal."

Olivia frowned, "That's rude."

"Well, she doesn't know you, Olivia, so that's why she couldn't mention you as the most obvious candidate. Logic, no?"

"Candidate for what?"

"Exactly." Jenna agreed. She grabbed her phone and headed out leaving the two to bottle their new masterpiece.

"I wonder what's for dinner," Olivia said absently. She could definitely use something savory to balance out all that sugar.