Just Like Other Daughters Read Online Free

get married.”
    I smile. “You can’t marry Thomas. You don’t even know him. Come on.” I wave to her. “Help me load the dishwasher.”
    “I’m gonna marry Thomas,” Chloe repeats. This time with a foot stomp. She has tiny feet. She wears a size five, compared to my boat-sized nine-and-a-halfs.
    “Marry Thomas, and leave me?” I chuckle. “No way, Chloe.” I turn for the kitchen.
    “I love him,” Chloe insists.
    “You don’t love him. You love me,” I call over my shoulder. “And your dad,” I add as an afterthought. Divorced mothers are supposed to say things like that. “Come on. Dishes, then a shower and then a movie. You can pick the DVD.”
    “But, Mom, I love him!” Chloe cries passionately. She still hasn’t budged.
    Maybe I should have been concerned at that point, but I wasn’t. Chloe is passionate about everything: the order of her DVDs, her fear of crickets, her love of Mrs. Paul’s fish sticks . . . and apple juice.
    “ Beauty and the Beast ? Aladdin ? Or maybe The Princess and the Frog ?” I tempt. Chloe loves Disney movies. She can’t remember that her father’s wife’s name is Kelly, but she remembers that the monkey in Aladdin is called Abu.
    “ Moooom , you’re not listening to me.” Chloe shuffles down the hall.
    It’s funny how things are said, things happen, and you have no idea at the moment just how significant they are. What’s the saying? Ignorance is bliss? That evening I was in pure bliss.
     
    After I watch Aladdin , when I brush my teeth, I look at my face in the mirror. I feel different, but I don’t look different. I look the same. Thomas says he loves me and we can get married, but I still look the same.
    Mom doesn’t understand about me and Thomas. She doesn’t understand about apple juice. I love apple juice and I love Thomas. Thomas loves Thomas the Tank Engine. He has a shirt and backpack and Thomas the Tank Engine stuff at his house.
    He says I’m pretty.
    I look different than other girls. Not pretty like my mom. My mom is pretty.
    My eyes are squinty and I don’t always speak good. People look at me when we go to the grocery store. Because I look different. Because I have Down’s.
    Thomas doesn’t have Down’s. He’s not a dummy head. He’s smart. Really smart.
    Thomas says I’m his girl.
    I spit toothpaste into my sink and put water in my cup to swish.
    I was Mom’s girl, but now I’m Thomas’s girl.
    I like to be Thomas’s girl. I want to be his girl on Wednesday.
    That’s why we have to get married.
     
    “She said she loves him?” Jin is smiling. “You think it’s serious?”
    I eye Jin across the breakfast table, closing my fingers around my warm coffee mug. “She met him once. Chloe’s never been interested in boys. Or girls,” I add for Jin’s benefit.
    Jin’s all the things I’m not: gorgeous, confident, athletic. She’s also a lesbian, which on certain days, when I’m finding my relationship with Randall particularly difficult, sounds awfully appealing.
    “She’s twenty-five years old, Ally.” Jin is the only one who calls me Ally, the only one who has ever called me Ally. I’m not an Ally. I’m too uptight, too controlled to be an Ally. But I like that she calls me it anyway.
    “She doesn’t like boys. Not in that way.”
    Jin sips from her coffee mug. She’s Chinese, first-generation American. She has amazing dark hair, perfect skin, and dark eyes that turn both men’s and women’s heads. She’s been my best friend for twelve years, ever since she and her partner, Abby, moved in next door with their eight-year-old son. She and Abby split up almost five years ago. Abby took a position with a law firm in Baltimore, but Jin stayed on at Stone. Jin is an art professor and a very talented sculptor and painter. I don’t understand her modern paintings or the creations she forms out of clay and metal in her studio/garage behind the house. But I see their beauty.
    Chloe, on the other hand, sees things in