AN: So this is my first fanfic. I'm not entirely satisfied with how it turned out, but I hope my writing will improve as the story progresses. Constructive criticism is welcome and appreciated.
The sound of the Penderwick's car leaving the driveway echoed in the second-floor bedroom long after the merry party had departed. Skye sat up in her bed, a crick in the back of her neck, and a throbbing in her head. She opened her mouth to let out a groan, but instead emitted a strangled, hacking cough.
"Are you alright staying here by yourself, Skye?" asked Iantha, concern in her eyes.
"I'm fine," grumbled Skye. "I wish you would all stop making such a fuss."
"I'm your mother. It's my job to worry." Iantha smiled, smoothing down the rumpled covers on Skye's normally neat bed. "Just call us if you need anything. Piano recital or no piano recital, we all care about you."
"Thanks, but I'll still be hacking up gunk whether you care about me or not. Besides, it's not like anyone actually wants to go to Batty's stupid recital anyway."
"That's not true. Everyone in this family but you has been looking forward to this for weeks. Even Ben, and he barely even knows what a piano is. I know you aren't feeling well right now, but could you at least try to be nice about it for Batty's sake and stop wallowing around the house feeling sorry for yourself?" Iantha stood up suddenly, leaving a warm, hollow indention in the blue coverlet and looking cross and disheveled. After a few seconds, she pulled herself together and continued to speak.
"My cell phone number is on the fridge if you need anything. I love you." She leaned down and gave Skye a kiss on her forehead and squeezed her hand before walking out the door.
Skye had lain in her bed for a few minutes after her stepmother had left to get ready for the recital, wishing she had been kinder to Iantha. Even though she had been their stepmother for three years, Iantha was still a bit unused to being a mother to four rambunctious girls in addition to her young son. It can't be easy, looking after them all, especially since she had to deal with Skye's notorious stubbornness on top of everything else. 'Besides,' she thought ruefully, 'my temper doesn't improve much when I'm sick and tired.'
Skye slowly got out of bed, looking around the room as she did so. What met her eyes was the sight of Jane's clutter drifting over to her clean and and tidy side of the bedroom from Jane's messy one. She irritably kicked soccer socks, a few beat up old paperbacks, some loose papers and a long lost stuffed animal of Batty's back to her disorderly sister's half of the room. Skye went to her dresser and opened it, procuring a small bundle wrapped in socks. Throwing aside the mismatching socks, she grasped the plain wooden box in her hands and returned to her bed.
Skye placed the contents of the box onto the blue coverlet and examined them. Her first pocket knife, the bullet shell she had found in the woods two summers ago, the notes she and Genevieve* had passed in eighth grade science, shells collected from Point Mouette this past summer, and the mug Jeffrey had given her on her first visit to his school in Boston. The navy blue mug had WELBORN-HUGHES printed in neat gold letters under an outline of the school building. Skye leaned back against her pillows and cradled the mug in her hands. It was a daily reminder of how she had fallen for her best friend.
She shook her already sore head to clear it of such thoughts. She couldn't seriously be thinking of him in that way. He was Jeffrey, the boy whom she had crashed into in his mother's hedge and who had been a friend to her family ever since. But such feelings were irrational, more in Jane's or Rosalind's line of interest than her own. It wasn't as if he could ever like her like that anyways. 'But that one time, four years ago, I could've sworn that he had shown a scrap of such affection...' Her thoughts trailed off into that fateful trip to Boston, where all of these pesky confusing feelings had started.