A bit short, sorry. No perspective changes. Please review! Oh, and Dallas's appearance based on the movie. Haha, gotta love vintage Matt Dillon. Sorry about the horrible cliche of the father. But, mind you, I did switch it up a little.
I walked up the swayed, worn wooden steps to the front porch and swung open the screen door.
"I'm home!" I called out as I stepped inside my house. My mother appeared around the corner holding a laundry bin and looking very tired.
"Rae-Ellen," she said, exasperated. "Glad you finally decided to grace us with your presence."
I sat down at the breakfast table and rapped my fingers on the scratched wood. "Jane around?" Jane was my older sister. She was a senior in high school and the exact opposite of me. She was sweet, pure, delicate, and a total over achiever. We were almost three years apart. She was eighteen and I was fifteen, although I had just turned it. There was never any question that my mother favored her. But I didn't care.
"Yes, she's upstairs studying." My mother called from the kitchen. She appeared back in the doorway, giving me a wide-eyed look.
"Rae-Ellen Hayes," she scolded. "Tell me you are not smoking in this house."
I looked down at the burning cigarette in my hand. Then, I dropped it on the floor and crushed it under my heel. "No."
She sighed with exaggeration. "I'm telling you Rell, I just cannot understand you for the life of me."
There was no mystery as to why she always looked so tired. She worked as a nurse most of the time to support me, my sister, and my father who didn't work.
"You and your father. I have to run around, fixing up after the two of you all the time. I never have to bail your sister out of any trouble."
"That's because my sister is a lovely, virtuous, chaste, all around royal pain in the ass." I retorted incisively.
My mother gave me a look.
"Where is the saint anyway?" I called.. "Oh, Saint Jane, come down here will you?"
I heard an angry mutter from upstairs and shrugged and walked up the dark steps. I leaned in the door way of Jane's room, where she lay on her stomach reading. I kicked her side.
"Ow!" she snapped. "Cut it out, will ya?"
I smiled at her. Even when she was hacked off, she was still pretty. She dressed differently than most people on this side of town, mostly because she didn't spend a whole lot of her time on this side of town. That was because she had always been friends with and dated kids from the other side. Wealthier kids. She just never fit in over here, with her yellow poodle skirts and matching cardigans and flippy honey blonde hair.
The frown wrinkles on her forehead smoothed out a little and she looked up at me and said "Well, golly, I feel like I haven't seen you in years. How odd, Rae-Ellen showed up once at home, huh?"
I growled. "Oh, don't give me that. I'm home plenty. I just usually have better things to do."
"Yeah, until about two o'clock every morning." She remarked sarcastically.
I walked out of the room, flipping her an obscene gesture on the way out.
I went back down to the kitchen to get myself a Coke and was surprised when I found my father stumbling in the front door.
"How are you doing, Rell?" He dropped into a chair an rubbed his temples. I looked him over. He was sweaty. My mother came in.
"Well, Victoria. Hi, honey."
My mother just pursed her lips at him. "John."
I didn't mind my father so much. Sure, he was a useless drunk, but in this neighborhood, who's father wasn't?
"Hey, Dad." I couldn't help but snicker. He was sort of pathetic sometimes.
But, like I said, I liked him enough. He was real smart, for a drunk. He went to a university and graduated and all. He was always making references about early literature or some shit. He was never a violent drunk either. He spent most of his time in town at some dive bar for old guys like himself.
He didn't mind, like my mother did, that I was always getting in trouble. He thought if that's the way I chose to live, then he was in no position to stop me. Plus, he gave me money whenever I asked.
"I'm going out." I said, slipping on a leather jacket.
"Where to, young lady?" my mother asked impatiently, her hand placed firmly on her hips.
"Aw, c'mon. Just out." I groaned.
"Back by midnight." She told me, even though we both knew that was highly unlikely.
More Rumble Fish similarities. Cough, cough, drunken yet well educated father. lol, thank you S.E. Hinton.
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