In My Mother's Footsteps: Chapter Twenty Five
Disclaimer.
I do not own Disney, and therefore do not own any of these characters.
Serissa.
"Do you have my strawberry lipgloss?" Morgan asked, but before I could respond she was grabbing lipglosses by the fistful out of the makeup box on my dresser.
"No!" I told her, marching over, "put them back!" she dropped the glosses and marched into the bathroom that I had just vacated. I looked at the makeup case and sighed. I always kept my glosses in the large left-hand container in the case's bottom, but when she had dropped them they had fallen everywhere. I put it back – I didn't have time to reorganize now – and pulled out the concealer. As I covered the huge zit on my forehead I looked at the room behind me, reflected in the mirror. The room was almost the size of the entire house, as it was a renovated attic. Because of this the walls only came up about four feet before slanting up to the 8-foot ceiling. Against one wall were three beds, two on opposite walls and one in the center. My bed was on the very right, against the wall leading to the large bathroom. My bed was a decorative trundle with a pink-and-green plaid comforter and a soft cream-colored fleece blanket. Above my bed were pictures that I had taken with my best friends Caroline and Natalie over the years. The next bed was Morgan's full bed, covered in fuzzy purple and blue blankets and pillows. Unlike mine, hers was an unmade mess with crinkled magazines lying on the end. The final bed, against the wall leading to the stairs, was Kayla's dance-themed twin bed. Her cover was a silky pink, with a rose-pattern in a slightly darker pink.
I twisted the cap back on and put it away just as Miley called up, "Breakfast!" Almost instantaneously Morgan darted out of the bathroom, jumped into her pink flats, and bounded down the stairs. Kayla turned slowly, admiring her outfit in the mirror before turning to me. "Let's go!" she said, offering me her tiny hand. I grabbed my backpack and took her hand, shutting off the lights as we left the room.
Down two flights of stairs and around a corner we entered the kitchen, full of the morning light. Morgan was already halfway through her stack of pancakes, racing the twins to see who could finish first. Both boys had barely started and would never catch up in time, although they were trying hard, their identical blonde heads bent in concentration. Kayla and I took seats opposite each other and ate more slowly.
"Do you have your permission slips?" Miley asked the twins, sitting down with her own pancakes. They nodded in unison without a break in their pancake inhaling.
"Good," she said before turning her attention to me, "and how far did you get in your science project last night?"
"I made all of the graphs," I told her, "so I just need to print everything up and put it on the board when I get home from school."
"When is it due?"
"One week." I answered through a mouthful of pancake and syrup.
"Done!" Morgan called out, throwing her hands in the air as sticky syrup dribbled from her lips.
"So now we can act like civilized humans?" Miley asked her. Morgan nodded, wiping her chin with a napkin. "Than I think civilized humans can put away their plates and grab their own lunches."
"One day I'm gonna break my arm," Morgan grumbled jokingly, carrying her plate to the sink, "and then you'll have to clean it up for me."
"And until that day you will not only clear your own place but wipe it down." Miley told her, pointing to the spots of syrup she had left on the shiny oak table. Morgan sighed and wet a paper towel to clean up her spot.
"Remember that I have that extra dance class today, mom." Kayla announced.
"Oh right!" she exclaimed, "Okay well I have to be at the studio until…" she scrolled through her blackberry schedule, "six. And your class is three to seven?" Kayla nodded, "Okay well Charlie will have to drop you off, but I can pick you up afterwards. Is that alright?" Kayla nodded again, her smile faltering a little. A few weeks ago she had confided to me that she always felt ignored. I was oldest, and the granddaughter, so Miley made a special commitment to be there for me so that I didn't feel like I was missing anything by not having a mother. Morgan was, well, Morgan. Loud enough that even if you wanted to ignore her, you couldn't. And the twins were youngest, so they were babied, and were always making some kind of trouble. Kayla spent so much time out of the house, practicing for her dance competitions, that she saw Miley and Noah the least, and normally by the time she was home they were too tired from work, helping Morgan and me with homework, or punishing the twins that they didn't have energy to spend on her. Because of all this, she told me, she cherished her time in the car with them, when there was nothing to do but talk.
"You girls better finish up," Miley warned Kayla and I as the twins cleared their plates, "the bus should be here in ten minutes. I nodded, cutting up my last pancake.
"Daddy!" the twins screamed in unison. Noah had entered from the garage, looking tired in his raggedy sweats, dark circles forming under his eyes. "Hey buds." He said, swinging Andrey in the air. Andrey giggled before hugging his father as Apollo danced around his waist screaming "Me! Me!" Noah kissed Andrey's cheek and placed him on the ground before picking up Apollo and repeating the ritual.
"I swear," he began, resting Apollo on his hip, "I will never sign up for a movie with a night-time shoot ever again."
"You always say that daddy." Kayla told him as she cleared her place, and I followed suite.
"But this time I mean it." He told her.
"Since when is it okay to great your kids but not your wife?" Miley asked jokingly, kissing him on the cheek.
"You know I love you more than life itself." He whispered, kissing her back.
"Eww!" everyone but me chorused.
"Oh sha," Miley told them, breaking the embrace. "You should be glad your father and I still love eachother."
"Yeah that's great," Morgan told her, "but we don't have to see it." Miley smirked and walked over to the refrigerator. She hugged each of us, handed us our lunch bags, and sent us off to school. I was last in line.
"I love you honey," she whispered, squeezing me a little tighter than she had the others.
"I love you too, Grandma." I told her.
"What did I say about calling me that?" she asked, laughing as she handed me my lunch.
"But you're my grandmother!" I argued.
"I am too young to be anyone's Grandma." She told me, "Now go before you miss the bus."
"Love you!" I called, running for the door.
Author's Note.
The End.