Chapter 7

Kindness Has a Price

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

I slid my hand out from under the covers and hit my alarm clock. Groaning, I rolled over, onto my back.

It was saturday morning, who in their right mind would set my alarm, while I was asleep, on a staurday? And it was summer!

I flung the covers off my body and huffed. I hated saturday's. There was just nothing cheerful about them anymore.

I turned my head to the side and saw 7:02 glowing on my alarm clock. I groaned again. It was too early on a Saturday for my liking.

I pulled myself out of bed, grabbing a comb from my desk and made my way down stairs whilst trying to do something with my hair. It was a mess, what a shock.

I walked into the kitchen and tied my chocolate layers back with a hair tie that was laying around on one of the counters. That was one good thing about my family, there were so many things such as hair ties just layiing around the house, I hardly ever had to look for one.

My father was sitting at the table, reading his news paper and drinking coffee, you don't want to know what he's like without his coffee in the morning's. So that was the usual sight to see every morning.

Jessy, Niki, Kyle and Drake were eating cereal quietly and Charlie was on the phone, no doubt to his girlfriend, who none of us had met. I wasn't quite sure if I believed him when he said he did have a girlfriend, but, then again, I don't blame him for not wanting to bring her home.

"Morning, Courtney." My mother smiled from the stove. Why was she smiling? It was early on a Saturday morning?

She tipped a few streaks of bacon onto a plate, straight from the pan, and handed them to me. I took the plate, but gave her a puzzled look. She never made me bacon, or anything of that sort. Was it really for me, or had she been expecting me to pass it on to someone else?

I was usually left to make myself toast or scrounge for a few flakes of cereal at the bottom of the box. I hardly ever ate breakfast, let alone had someone else make it for me! Nothing seemed to be making sense to me so far that morning.

"Go sit down." My mother told me. I did as I was told, not going to argue, I got free food from it, and took a seat beside my dad.

"Morning, dad." I said. He gave me a grunt of 'good morning' and I started to happily chew on my bacon. My father was not a morning person, so I thought nothing of his bitterness towards me. It wasn't as if it was anything less from what I had been getting for the past week anyway.

The rest of my siblings came in and eyed my bacon up hungrily. They were all like a pack of hunting wolves. I hugged my plate protectivley and they backed off, seeing that I was not going to be sharing anything with them!

I still found it weird that I had bacon for breakfast, I wasn't the one who cooked it and mom hadn't made any more for anyone else. Something was not right, had I woke up in the wrong house? Or was I still asleep? Because it all felt like a weird dream, not that I was complaining. I still got bacon and the chance to rub it in everyone elses faces.

Once everyone had finished their food and was about to leave the table my mother shouted out, this couldn't be good. My mother never shouted, she talked quietly, like a squeaking mouse.

"Wait!" I froze in my position, half-way out of the chair, and turned to face my mother. She gave us all alook that said 'sit back down' and we did as the look told us.

"I want you all to start packing." She looked at Charlie. "I want you to help Drake." Then she looked at Shayne. "I want you to help Kyle."And the she turned to who else than me. "And you can help Robin." My mother shot us all a sweet smile. "Go on then, go pack, we leave tomorrow morning."

The race to get to our rooms was on. Eleven pairs of footsteps echoed through out the large house. Everyone wanted to get to their room first. If you packed first, if you packed the quickest, then you could get to the TV first. If you got to the TV first, then you could have your pick of what to watch. TV was the most important thing to my siblings.

I was squashed between all my brothers and sisters as we ran up the staircase. Lucky for me why room was right down the end of the corridor. I tried to break through the barrier of bodies, but it was no use. They had a strong hold. I had to wait unil they all had dispurst to their own rooms.

I dived on my bed, tired from just the efoort of getting that far, and Robin ran in after me, looking as cute as ever with her hair tied up messily and still in her pretty and pink pajamas.

"I'm going to do my packing first and then 'll come help you." She nodded her head making her hair fall over face as the hair tie fell to the floor. I wiped it away for her and she smiled at me, showing her picture perfect teeth.

Robin ran back out of my room and I pulled my suitcase down from on top of my wardrobe. It was a bit dusty due to the fact that the last time I had used it had been to visit grandma, and she had died before Robin was even born!

So I gave it a brush over with my hands before stting it down on my bed and throwing open my closet doors. I looked at all the different clothes I had. There was so many to choose from, though I had hardly ever wore a lot of them. I decided I had better pack for all occasions and weather conditions because I didn't know what I would be facing when we got to the lake.

I folded a few multi-colored t-shirts and stacked them in the corner of my case. I then pulled out my two bikini's, one blue with white polka dots and the other purple with a few black stripes. They got tucked beside the t-shirts.

I then moved on to pants. I took hold of all my shorts, which was only arouhnd three pairs, and pushed them into the case. I then put in a few pairs of long pants, just incase.

I smiled triuphantly as I fitted it all in. They were all folded up and looking neat and tidy, but it did already look tight for anymore belongings.

I moved onto my dresses next. I had to pack some for evening wear and any parties we were to attend as a family. I remembered us having to attend a few last time we went. That was, of course, the third, fourth and eighth time I was pushed into the lake on that vacation.

After they were added to the case, I stuffed my neccesities into the open spaces around my clothes. I just about managed to squeeze in a few different pairs of shoes and still zip it up, though that was a tough struggle.

I placed my suitcase under my bed, ready for the morning, and skipped down to Robin's room. Her room was at the top of the corrdior, right next to mom and dads for 'safety'. We all knew it was because she was scared of the dark and sometimes woke up in the middle of the night, scared out of her wits, so she would run into their room.

Robin's room was a lot like her; girly. It was covered in pink, dressed up like a castle so she could be the Princess.

She was easy to pack for, at least that was a good thing. I just folded all of her cute, little pink dresses and placed them inside the case. I then added a few skirts and t-shirts, her swimming costume and all of her shoes.

Her case did up easily, only being slightly smaller than mine. I took it back to my room and put with my own.

Next I pulled out my travel bag and started to add things into that. It was a long drive, I need things to occupy myself with during it.

My iPod, PDA, things like that. I then put in Robin's coloring book and a few crayons for her to be occupied on the trip too. I placed it on my desk and went back downstairs to watch some TV.

I was a master at packing, so I had the TV to myself. No one else was there as they were still all deciding on what to take. It was a once in a life time thing to not have to fight for what I wanted to watch. I happily flicked on the music channel and listened to a few songs to clear my head of everything.

My eyes were shut, my mind starting to blank out to the beat. But then it stopped. The music turned off.

I had been rudely interupted by my father who had turned the TV off.

"What did you do that for?" I asked. I tried to make it sound polite, though it didn't sound that way when it came out.

"I need you to drive tomorrow." He replied.

"W-What?" He couldn't be serious. There was no was I could drive for that long. It was at least a five hour trip, not to mention any stops we had to make along the way.

"The van doesn't fit all of us in. You know that, Court." He was using a pleading tone that I rolled my eyes at. He wasn't that good at trying persuade anyone to do as he asked, it was something he needed to work at as a father.

"Why can't Charlie or mom drive?" I asked, trying my best to get out of it. There were plently of other drivers in the family.

"Charlie's taking his car up too and your mother needs to come in the van with me to help control the kids." That one was a fair enough answer. "Come on Court, for the family." I couldn't believe my eyes, he was giving me the puppy dog look. My father shouldn't even know how to do that, let alone use it on me!

"Fine!" I yelled, not having any will power against him now.

"Good, so you can take Dani, Robin and Sam." His mile was tooc heerful for my liking.

"Wait, why can't Dani drive?" Dani was old enough, she had a decent car, why did I have to take my crappy little thing? It was a miracle that it still ran as well as it did!

"She doesn't want to." I stared open mouthed at my father as he left the room. She didn't want to? I didn't want to! It was official, my parents hated me.

This was what the good morning has been about. The waking up early, the happily cooked bacon, giving me the choice of what Robin was going to be wearing all summer, they had been sucking up to me all day!

I pulled a cushion up over my face and screamed. Why was I always the one on the bad end of the stick? I couldn't see how anyone else couldn't drive, it was more of a case of wouldn't.

I had to put up with three of my sisters for five hours straight. I couldn't stay around my family for that long! It was going to be agony.

A/N: Bleh...This chapter sucks...

I am apologizing for any mistakes, my spellcheck isn't working because of...Okay, I know why, but it's hard to expain...I''l try;

The original Baker's Dozen was written on my computer last year, before I had my laptop and a programme with spellcheck. So now that I have all of the documents on this computer and spellcheck, I should just be able to open them up on microsoft word and run spellcheck, right? WRONG! Something's gone wrong somewhere because spellcheck doesn't pick up any of the mistakes in my work...And because I start a fresh document and then copy and paste over paragraphs, edit them, add more writing, then add the next paragraph, it is technically just like it being the old document, so not even my new work isn't being picked up on spellcheck now...It sucks...

Hmm...Not that hard to explain after all...Unless you didn't understand...Let's just say spellcheck HATES ME! Actually, I'm not gonna blame spellcheck, I'M BLAMING MY COMPUTER! That thing always hated me too! It would just restart itself randomly and I would lose any document that I hadn't saved...It sucked...

And I am sooo tired...

Sorry for no update yesterday, guys...Busy day..I picked up my results, had to go enroll in college and then I had enough time to write one Last Ending chapter before having to get ready and go out to dinner!

When I got back form dinner, I just uploaded all of the pics to my facebook and watched my brother and cousin on their highness...Yeah...They got high of oranges last night...Sooooo funny! LOL!

I also write a songfic, oneshot for ya'll...Because I wanted to write something before I wen to bed, but I couldn't be asked to update a story...Know what I mean?

...You know you're lazy wehn you're DSi is on the floor beside you and you can't even be bothered to pick it up...

Thank you to;

KlaineLuneville: Oh well...I did try, honestly! And it did come with one or two mistakes yesterday...hehe! ahaha! Thank you :) LOL! whoop! whoop! LOL! Thank you :)

StormFloo35: Awwwwwww! Thank you ever so much :) That does mean a lot to me...=D hehe! Thanks :)

Destanaa: ahaha! YAY! LOL! Glad you remember it ;) LOL! ahaha! Yeah...Cute fluffiness! LOL! I did pretty wel :) Thank you :) LOL! hehe! Yeah...Well, I hope it was good all the same :) Aww...Well, I'm sure it'll pass by quickly :) hehe! And then by Monday it will all be just a memory...LOL! Thank you :)

LovingThelazyDays: Guess what? YOU'VE READ THE ORIGINAL, YOU KNOW WHEN TRENT COMES IN! Around chapter nine...Do you know how far away that is? Thanks :)

megzz17996: Awwwwwwwww! That means soo much to me :D I'm glad love them all :) Yeah...This one has always been one of my favorites too :) hehe! Wow...Back when I was in year nine...Okay, I don't actually remember that far back...But I got a C in my maths for GCSE's...I say that's pretty good...Especially since that was the highest mark I could get (I took foundation, not higher)...LOL! haha! Thank you :)

YAY! TWO NEE REVIEWERS :D

I feel blessed...

I say that a lot these days...hehe!

OH! I go back...Go back? DANG IT! I am sooo used to saying 'Go back to school' but I'm not...Let's start again...

OH! I start college on September 5th! hehe! I can't wait :D LOL! I'm gonna be assigned my tutor and be given schedule :) I'll try and share it with you so you know why I don't update and such :D LOL!

OH! September is also the date I'm gonna be getting the competition results...I entered a writing competetion last monthm, fot those of you who don't know :) Ths hortlist is coming out on the fifth and I sooo hope I'm on it! Though I doubt I will be...I read last years winner's story...OMG! It was soo hard to believe the writer was only twelve! =O!

hehe...

ALSO! As I type this, I have no internet connection...Great, right? Soooo...Because it said that the box was unplugged, I'm gonna have to to go downstairs and check it out...Fun...If you're reading this, I DIDN'T FAIL FOR ONCE!

Okay...I failed with the box...BUT! Apparently if you troubleshoot the problem, it tells you that a cable is broken somewhere...But turns the internet back on anyway...Hmmm...

Thanks for reading, please review :)

Love, ChloeRhiannonX