Before Cade Sullivan got all blotch-faced and mean, he was the best.  He was small for his age, sweet and round-eyed, a polite little chipmunk.

Years later, there were days you could still almost see it if you dug down deep, scraping off the layers of grime and angry slouches.  And there were other days where it felt like nothing was left – like Cade was all barnacles and no boat.  But, back in the day, he was perfect.

            Just ask his Aunt Delilah.  When Cade was eight, she loved him so much that she paid an insurance company to protect his personality, so that if anything ever hurt his warm, cheerful disposition, the company would set it right.  Cade was that precious.

“My perfect ball of sunshine,” she’d coo over him.  “We can’t let anything happen to you.  Promise me you’ll stay like this forever!”  Cade’s father thought Aunt Delilah’s doting was tacky, but Cade didn’t seem to mind one way or the other.

            Aunt Delilah bought personality insurance policies for Cade’s three sisters as well, but those weren’t as fancy as Cade’s.  It’s not that she didn’t love the girls – quite the opposite, actually.  She took care of all the children while their parents worked and kept every craft project they ever made her, even the awful puddles of glue and popsicle sticks that Doria glommed together.  But Cade took pride of place in her heart.

Aunt Delilah had pet names for everyone, but they weren’t as glowing as “perfect ball of sunshine.”  She sometimes called Cade by his full name, “Cadence,” although no one else did.  (Cade complained that “Cadence” sounded like a girl’s name.)  Cade’s younger sister Melisma was “Little Izzie Mississippi.”  Two-year-old Doria was “The Blob,” because of her enormous toddler appetite.  Aunt Delilah meant it as a criticism, but Doria loved the name.  And baby Lyddie was “Skipper,” short for “Mudskipper,” because she hadn’t quite learned to crawl, and instead pulled herself around the floor in a strange half-scoot, half-hop.  Delilah also occasionally called Lyddie, “Number Four, (Heaven Help Us),” and muttered to herself, “how many kids are they going to pump out?”  Lyddie’s full name was “Mixolydia,” but nobody ever called her that.  The children’s mother had once been an opera singer, a coloratura soprano, before she “sold out” (her words) and joined an accounting firm.  So, she gave them all musical names, as a final tribute to the life she’d left behind.  Aunt Delilah thought the girls’ names were tacky and pretentious, but that didn’t stop her from loving the girls themselves.

            “Your children are such sweethearts,” she gushed to Erica and Andrew Sullivan one night as they stumbled through the door after work.  “Don’t you want to just bottle them up and drink them?” The couple hadn’t even removed their shoes, but Cade and Melisma were already tugging on their arms and clamoring for them to watch a dance performance that Cade would choreograph on-the-spot.

            Their father Andrew winced.  He’d seen far too many of Cade’s dance recitals, kung fu exhibitions, homemade movies, and unrehearsed plays to be impressed.

Their mother Erica was also tired, but she hid it better.  “The children are lovely,” she said, elbowing her husband in the ribs.  She smiled at Aunt Delilah and allowed Cade to pull her to the couch.

“Cade, Melisma, it’s very late,” Erica said.  “We have time for just one dance, then it’s straight to bed.”  Andrew grumbled something sour as he took a seat next to his wife.

Cade grinned broadly and stepped onto the carpet.  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he crowed.  “Presenting… the extravaganza!  This is the story of an ugly monster and a princess.”

With that, he and Melisma whooped and launched into their routine, a rolling, spinning, high-kicking free-for-all that ended in a dizzy heap on the floor.  Doria took a position on her favorite pink blanket and sang along at the top of her lungs.  Baby Lyddie scoot-hopped around the floor behind her siblings.

            “Just adorable,” Aunt Delilah crooned again, as the children picked themselves up and took their final bow.

            “Yes, they’re very sweet,” Andrew sighed as he scanned the screen of his phone.  He flicked the device off and barked in a louder voice, “Now everybody, brush your teeth and go to bed!”

            That was the children’s cue.  They ignored their father and sprinted off in all directions.  Cade and Melisma ran to the basement, and a soccer game broke out.  Doria wrapped herself in her blanket and scampered around the couch.  “I’m a BWAAAAAAHB!” she roared.  Lyddie watched her, beaming in a puddle of drool.  She laughed as Doria jumped over her.  Aunt Delilah smiled and began to collect her things.

            Andrew looked at his wife.  “You take the little two, I’ll get the older kids out of the basement?” 

            “No way,” Erica said.  “You took the basement last night.  You’re on Lyddie diaper duty today.”

            “Ba,” Lyddie commented.

            Andrew slumped his shoulders and nodded.  “Come on, Lyddie,” he said.  “Let’s get this over with.”

            “Ba ba,” Lydie agreed.

            “BWOB!” Doria interjected.

            “He SCORES!” Cade shouted from the basement.

            “Not if I shoot you with my arrow!” Melisma shouted back.

            “Perfect darlings.…” Aunt Delilah muttered to herself.

***

Forty-five minutes later, with the kids safely barricaded in their rooms, Andrew and Erica sat together at the kitchen table, chewing cold pork chops in silence.

            Aunt Delilah entered from the front hall.  “I’m on my way,” she said, “but before I go, can I get you to sign these forms?  I’m taking the kids for swim classes tomorrow….”

            Technically, Aunt Delilah wasn’t lying.  The children really did go swimming the next day.  But that’s not what the forms were about.  Nobody knew it then, but those papers were the start of something that would eventually blow like a tornado through the Sullivan children’s lives, wreaking havoc all along the way.

Erica glanced over them without reading, her eyes glazed from a day of spreadsheets and e-mail chains.  Andrew tossed down his signature as well.  He was still brooding about Lyddie’s diaper.  The couple finished their pork chops, threw their plates in the sink, and trudged upstairs to bed.  Aunt Delilah scooped the papers into her clutch and made her way out of the house.

            And with that, the cataclysm was in motion.

***

Cade, Melisma, Doria, and Lyddie found out about it two days later when a troop of insurance agents in polyester suits marched through the door.  The head agent introduced himself as “Elmer.”  His suit was a bit more rumpled than all the other agents’, and he had an untidy frizz of steel-gray hair perched atop his forehead.

Elmer invited Cade and Melisma into the living room for a few questions.  Melisma followed her brother reluctantly, clutching her plastic bow and arrows for self-defense.  

“Don’t worry about anything,” Elmer assured the children as they sat down.  “This is just a standard assessment of your personalities’ asset value.  Now, let’s begin.”  He turned to Melisma.  “If you could be any color of pencil from a box of twenty-four, which one would you be?”

            Melisma knew her answer without thinking, but she sat with her lips pursed and her eyes downcast.  She rubbed a thumb soothingly along the loose string of her bow.

Cade sensed Melisma’s discomfort.  “My sister’s favorite color is ‘rainbow-sparkle-swirl,’” he told Elmer.  “She’d be that one.”  Melisma squeezed his hand gratefully.  Elmer wrote a brief note in his binder, his gray hair frizz flopping up and down as he did so, then turned to address Cade.

            “Would you like to wear a suit of armor?” he asked.

            “Yes,” Cade responded, making his voice sound extra brave to put his sister at ease.

            Elmer checked a box on his sheet and turned back to Melisma.  “How many fingers am I holding up?”

            The girl stared at her knees and waited for Elmer to focus back on Cade.  He didn’t.  “Three,” she finally mumbled.

            “Two,” Cade told Elmer.  “The thumb isn’t a finger.”

            “I see,” Elmer said quietly, checking another box.  “Which of the following words best describes you, loquacious, parsimonious, imperious, or riotous?”

            “Parsley,” Melisma whispered softly.

            “None,” Cade answered at the same time.  “I’m just Cade.”

            “Mm-hmm,” Elmer said.  “Now, please tell me about your mother.”

            The questions went on and on.  Aunt Delilah brought Elmer a glass of water, so he could keep asking without parching his throat.  At the same time, other agents hustled briskly about the house, measuring the size of each window, cataloguing and alphabetizing every toy, and rummaging through the bathrooms to examine each toothbrush.

            “Should people wear shoes?” Elmer asked the children.  “Should shoes wear people?” he asked a few questions later.

            “A king, a baker, a teacher, and a homeless man are all trapped on a sinking ship.  There is room on the lifeboat for just one more person.  What do you do?”

            “I guess I’d save the king,” Cade said.  “I mean, he’s in charge, right?”

            “Would you like to own a pirate ship?  How many cannons would it have?”

            Cade furrowed his brow.  “Do I have to use it for pirate stuff?”

            “What do you see in this ink blot?  What if I turn it upside down?”  Elmer extended a sheet of paper, and Cade examined it closely.

            “It’s a city,” he said, “but when you turn it, all the people fall out into the sky.”

“Last question,” Elmer said.  “If you were trapped in a cave and had to eat one of your siblings, which would it be?”

Cade shifted uncomfortably in his seat.  He thought for several seconds.  “If it came to that,” he replied, “my sisters should probably eat me.”

Melisma bolted upright in her chair with a look of horror on her face.  “We would never eat you, Cade,” she said emphatically.  She glared at Elmer.  “Nobody should eat anybody.”

Elmer entered a final note in his report.  He gathered his inkblots and papers and gave Cade and Melisma a brisk handshake each.  He then moved to the kitchen, where Doria and Lyddie were waiting.

“Hello there, girls,” Elmer said.  “What are your names?  My name is Elmer.”

            “Ba,” said Lyddie, half distracted by a plastic shape-sorting toy in her hand.

            “Bwob.”  Doria stood in the middle of the room with her pink blanket draped over her head.

            “Blob?  That’s an unusual name.”  Elmer flipped to a new sheet in his binder.  “Does your mommy call you that?”

            “GWAAAAA!” Doria shouted.  She began to spin in a circle.

            “Ba.” Lyddie agreed amiably.

            Elmer chuckled as he placed a toy duck, a coin, a pen, and a piece of string on the floor in front of Lyddie.  “Okay, Lyddie, which one of these do you want?”

Lyddie ate the coin.

            Doria peeked her head out from under her blanket and instantly grew jealous.  “My duck!”  She stomped her foot.

            “Actually, it’s part of the interview –” Elmer explained.

            “GWAAAA!  MY DUCK!  BWOB!” Doria swooped down to grab the duck, then sprinted out of the room, trailing her blanket behind her.  Lyddie started to cry, but then she noticed her shape-sorting toy and glommed her mouth onto it.

            Elmer shook his head as he ticked another box on his clipboard.

            Finally, the interviews were over.  Elmer gave Lyddie a brief pat on the head, then gathered his interview props.  Doria kept the duck.  Lyddie bopped Elmer on the cheek with a plastic hexagon.

The other insurance agents quickly finished measuring the lengths of the children’s shoes and the crumpled-ness of their beds.  They joined Elmer and Aunt Delilah in the front hall.

            “Thanks for your time, Ma’am,” Elmer said as he shook Aunt Delilah’s hand.  “You should receive our report within the next three business days.”

            “Oh, wonderful!” Delilah beamed.  “Aren’t these children just the sweetest things?”

            “They’re very nice,” Elmer nodded.  “I can see why you want to have their personalities insured.”

Aunt Delilah looked nervously over the yellow form copies she held in her hand.  “I just want to make sure,” she said.  “The brochure made everything sound so simple.  Can you just explain, one last time, how this works?”

“It’s simple,” Elmer answered.  “These children’s personalities will be under the protection of Suleiman Kruld Financial Services.  The policy works just the same as those for a car or a house.  If they’re damaged in any way, the company will cover the cost of repair.  If they’re lost or destroyed, we can provide a replacement.”

Aunt Delilah smiled.  “That’s sounds wonderful,” she said.  She signed her check with a flourish and handed it to Elmer.

            The insurance agent nodded, his gray hair flopping forward and backward.  “Then it sounds like everything is in order.  Thank you for trusting Suleiman Kruld Financial Services with your business.”

            The agents closed the door softly behind them.  The children went back to their lives.  Melisma chased Cade around the couch with her bow and arrow.  Doria threw her blanket over her head and tried to climb the side of the refrigerator.  Lyddie gnawed on a plastic circle.  They were officially insured assets now, but life felt the same as it had when they’d just been kids.