She looked at the clock. Her breakfast would be cold and she knew it.

The radio played last night's football scores while her mother and sister were up and dressed, making breakfast. Lysandra slid into the wooden chair by the table and welcomed the now chilled plate of food before her.

"Mommy? When is summer over?" her sister crowed. She moved her plate back and forth, as if deciding whether to shove it off the table or take the food as it was. Cassie's black hair was slicked back into two pefect braids pressed against her head and her dress was ironed and spotless.

"In about two months,"Lysandra said over a mouth of fried eggs. "What's got you in a hurry?"

"I wanna see Laura agains. Her mommy said they'd be backs at the end of summer." Her voiced wavered and as she slouched in her chair, a stubborn pout plastered on her face. "And I didn't ask you, Sandy."

Lysandra rolled her eyes and glared back, as she took her plate to her room. If she could ever find a way to get her sister to stop calling her Sandy, she would give up almost anything.

Her bedroom window offered a cold ray of light on her bed, as she squished onto her desk chair and slipped into her comfortable silence. Wilmon Crescent was possibly one of the most bland places in Lesher, Surrey. When they first moved there, she walked into the wrong house several times, and who could blame her? The rows of houses were only different by the plastic numbers drilled on the front, and possibly the keep of the lawns. Her house was no different from the next, except the study was probably not the bedroom in the others. The desk had it's own niche in the wall, which even then, barely left room for her single bed in the corner with a bedside table. Her clothes were kept in a small linen closet outside in the hall, which only led to annoyance when her sister would peel and unfold all of her clothes from it, one by one.

The two real bedrooms in the house were her parents and Cassiopia's. Her parents offered sharing with Cassie, but she took the study instead. Living in the same house as Cassie led Lysandra near insane, let alone the same room. The only other benefit of the study was the door locked, and she liked to keep it that way.

Cassie's birthday had been three months earlier, but that did not help her jealousy. Anytime someone recieved a gift in the house Cassiopia would throw a fit that she was never given anything, or she was living in rags and deserved better. The attempts to rid Cassie of the habit were futile, though, and her parents had deemed her, "our little diva!" Lysandra's birthday's were always kept quiet for this reason, and her eleventh was no different.

Muffled footsteps carried down the carpeted hall and stopped by her door, then swiftly returned round the corner. Lysandra's feet were cold on the wood as she stepped to retrieve her annual secret midnight birthday presents. Her lock clicked open and she saw only two small, poorly wrapped parcels, sitting very alone in the hall. She peeked by her door frame in some crazy hope to see her parents with a large birthday cake made of banana creme and coconut with brightly lit candles and presents littering the floor, but didn't. She slid her eyes back down to the pathetic disappointment on the floor and picked them up anyways, for it was better to take them than let Cassiopia have them.

She turned to place the parcels on her desk and shut the door calmly, so she wouldn't awake the five-year old horror down the hall. She turned around and faced her birthday celebration. Lysandra hummed the Happy Birthday tune to herself as she moved the parcels onto her bed and , without poise, landed herself on her pillow and cracked her head into the wall behind.

She grimaced on impact, but stayed book still until she was sure Cassiopia didn't hear the thud. Returning her thoughts to the presents, she unwrapped the larger of the two and found a handwritten card ontop of a hard cover book. She felt the heaviness towards her parents lift, but felt resentment like a lead weight settle down.

"Jane Eyre," she gritted her teeth with displeasure. The book was normally found on the book shelf in the living area. She lifted her head back to the wall with tears in her eyes. For once, her parents could have put thought into her birthday, or given something that didn't already belong to the family. Why couldn't they put her first? She wanted to cry so bad, she wanted to scream at her parents for not caring about her. Why couldn't she? Because her parents favourite daughter was in the next room and she would be in trouble if she awoke her. Lysandra hiccough's filled the silence, her sobs barely audible.