Disclaimer: Jamie and Caitie are not mine--they belong to Disney...though I am thinking of asking my boss for a pay advancement, and then going and trying to buy the show...if I can't do that, I might just buy Jamie...Anyway, Jamie's family is, of course, mine. This is just a zany little story that I came up with today after doing way to many chores...Anyway, without further ado...
Sunday Morning
Jamie Waite ran his fingers through his hair, and shuffled down the steps of his two story house with only two things on his mind: coffee and food. Or maybe it was food and coffee. He wasn't really sure. All he knew was that he wanted food and that he wanted coffee. At the moment, what order he got them in really didn't matter.
Yawning, the young man shuffled his feet in the general direction of the kitchen. He muffled a curse when he stepped on one of Sami's endless Legos, the sharp points digging into the tender part of his foot. Jerking his foot up off the offending piece of plastic, he glared down at the innocent looking red square.
Heaving a great sigh, Jamie continued his half shuffling, half limping decent into his family's kitchen, blinking and covering his eyes with a muffled groan as soon as he stepped into the white tiled room. Didn't the architect that built this house know that overexposure to sunlight early in the morning was some how bad for you?
As soon as he decided that he was brave enough to face the blinding sunshine again, Jamie dropped his hand and blinked his eyes blearily several times, searching the room to see which of his four sisters was up.
Not surprisingly, Jasmine, better known as Jazz, was standing in front of the stove, merrily cooking bacon in a black iron skillet. Her jet black hair was, as always, drawn up away from her face, today in a high pony tail. She was already dressed for the day, in a conservative pair of blue jean shorts and red tank top with wide straps and white flip flops.
At the table, Molly sat with her doll baby in her lap, her red ringlets hanging down into her sleepy face. Molly was still clad in her pj's, a long white nightgown with one of the assorted "Rugrats" characters on the front--the little red haired boy that was afraid of everyone...Chunky or Chuckie or something like that.
Leaning against the counter, her long red hair falling down in her face, and clutching a cup of coffee in her hand, was Jamie's mother Genevieve. She, too, was still in her nightclothes, though they were covered by her multicolored robe. The newspaper was clutched in her other hand, and she examined it for a minute, before dropping it on the counter, obviously deciding that there was nothing that she would like to read in it.
Genevieve was the first one to notice the young man standing at the doorway. She smiled at her oldest and only son, before opening her mouth to speak. However, the only thing that came out of her mouth was a yawn, and she quickly covered her mouth.
Her yawn made him yawn, and he passed it on to Molly, who had looked up just in time to see his gaped mouth expression. The little girl let out of her small, coo like yawns, before rubbing her dark brown eyes with her tiny fists.
"You're up early." Genevieve noted, after the yawn infection had gone the way of all mortal flesh.
"Trust me--it was not intentional. SOMEBODY'S constant singing about ex's woke me up." Jamie growled, glaring at Jazz's back and running his fingers through his bed head spikes. His spiky bed hair was different from his normal spiky hair--it stuck up and out of his head in every direction known to man and some that weren't.
Obviously, she felt the weight of his eyes on her back, and she cringed slightly, slumping her shoulders and trying to make herself as small as possible.
"Sorry about that." The raven haired girl apologized, sounding embarrassed.
"It's alright...I had to get up anyway." Jamie relented, waving his hand in a dismissive gesture.
"How come?" Molly asked, her expression slightly more awake now.
"Caitie's dragging me to the mall with her this morning for something called 'Slasher fest'." Jamie shuddered at the memory of Caitie explaining to him what it was. He had thought that it was a marathon of slasher movies--but he had been wrong. Evidently, what it was, was a bunch of the stores in the mall were slashing their prices by fifty percent--for one morning, nine till noon. The young man shuddered again, already dreading the coming shopping excursion.
"Ooo...Jamie's got a DA-ATE..." Molly sang, now completely awake, her little face shimmering with joy at the thought of teasing her older brother.
"It's not a date--you go on date's with your GIRLFRIEND." Jamie argued, sitting down across the table from the little girl.
"So, does that mean that Caitie's your GIRL-FRIEND now?" Jazz decided to get in on the ribbing over her brother now.
"What? Girlfriend? Who has a girlfriend?" A groggy voice asked from the doorway. Jamie looked over his shoulder to see his twelve year old sister Crimson come shuffling in the door, her long red hair hanging in her face, making her look like Cousin It's Irish cousin. She shoved it back off her face and looked at her siblings with the same dark brown eyes they all shared and had inherited from their mother.
"Jamie!" Molly sung out, her eyes laughing as her brother's face began to turn red.
"She is NOT my girlfriend." Jamie stressed.
"Whose not his girlfriend?" Crimson was obviously still confused and half asleep.
"Caitie." Their mother spoke up, grinning when her son turned accusatory eyes on her.
"Caitie? What's a Caitie?" Crimson crashed into the vacant seat beside her brother, and rubbed her eyes tiredly.
"Jamie's girlfriend!" Molly explained again, laughing out loud.
"She's NOT!" Jamie finally broke in, his cheeks still red. "She's just my friend!"
"He's going shopping with her." Jazz informed Crimson, as if that was all she needed to say to prove her point. "He's going shopping with her--to SLASHER FEST."
Crimson snorted, and turned amused eyes on her brother. "Oh, she is for SURE your girlfriend."
"She's not!" Jamie insisted.
"Huh?" The youngest of the Waite children, Sami, wondered into the room at that moment. The four-year-old's bright red hair was till pulled into the pony tale her mother had put it yesterday before the child had gone to bed, and she was dressed in one of Jamie's old black tee shirts, the edge nearly dragging the ground and the sleeves hanging down almost to her wrists.
"Guess what!" Crimson told her. "Jamie's got a girlfriend!"
"Jamie's got a girlfriend?!" Sami squealed, going from sleepy to excited in half a second. Then a slightly confused look clouded her little face, and she looked up at her mother. "Maman, what's a girlfriend?"
Her older brother and sisters snickered at the question, though Jamie's face was still bright red. Genevieve smiled at her youngest as she explained. "Well, sweetheart...a girlfriend is a girl that a boy really, really likes and he wants to see her all the time, and he talks about her all the time, and talks to her on the phone."
Sami seemed satisfied with that explanation, nodding her head and climbing up into the chair next to her brother. Genevieve heaved a quiet sigh of relief, and then sat down beside Molly, just as Jazz turned triumphant to the table, a plate of bacon in one hand and a plate heaped with a giant pile of pancakes in the other.
Setting the plates down, she sat down in between Molly and Crimson, and grinned at her family. "You may thank me later."
"Thank you Jazz." Her siblings called in ragged chorus.
"Yeah really--you saved us from Mere's cooking!" Crimson couldn't help but add. She squawked, and ducked the wadded up napkin her mother pitched at her, even though the older woman's eyes were twinkling.
For a few minutes, everyone was silent, digging into the breakfast food Jazz had made for them. Jamie was chewing a bite of pancake and bacon when Sami broke the silence.
"Can I meet your girlfriend today?" She asked brightly, smiling her wide smile at him.
Jamie choked on the food he was swallowing, coughing violently. Crimson, always quick to think on her feet, beat on his back for him, before he got his coughing under control.
"What?" He croaked out, before taking a sip of his orange juice.
"Can I meet your girlfriend today?" Sami repeated obediently.
"I don't have a girlfriend." Jamie told her, turning to glare at the older girls, all of which were sniggering quietly.
"But Maman said that a girlfriend was someone you really liked, that you talked about, and did stuff with and talked on the phone with. Don't you do that with Caitie?" Sami asked.
"How do YOU know about Caitie?" Jamie asked, searching his memory for anything he might have said about his friend to his littlest sister.
"I heard you talking about her to Maman." Sami informed her.
"And you DO talk to her on the phone." Molly piped up, grinning a Cheshire smile at her brother.
Crimson snorted, and shook back her hair again. "That's for sure--she called you twice and you called her three times, last night ALONE!"
"And you ARE going somewhere with her today." Jazz added.
"You're going SHOPPING with her, Jamie. To a CLEARANCE sale." Genevieve added, propping her chin on her hand.
"SO!? She's my FRIEND!" Jamie argued, his red cheeks undercutting his statement.
"No man willing agrees to go shopping with a woman unless he hopelessly in love with her." Crimson stated firmly.
Jamie glared at his sister, before heaving a piece of syrup coated bacon at her. It hit it's mark, catching a hold of her wild red hair.
"Oh, YUCK!" Crimson groaned, before turning furious eyes on her brother. Before he knew it, his little sister's entire glass of juice was running down the sides of his face.
"Oh, you are so dead!" Jamie picking up one of his half eaten pancakes and tossing it at her. Crimson saw it coming this time, and ducked.
Unfortunately, Jazz didn't, and she caught the pancake with her face. Letting out a squeak, she yanked the offending baked good off her face, and flung it back at her brother. However, her aim wasn't as good as either of her two siblings, and it wound up hitting her mother.
The trio froze, staring at the woman in horror, waiting for the expected explosion. But Genevieve just let a mischievous smile pull at her lips, before flinging her own orange juice over the three in a shower of orange rain.
Within seconds, the entire kitchen exploded to into a war zone. Pancakes and bacon and orange juice flew freely, of course, but so did the flour, eggs, sugar and whatever else happened to be within reaching distance. Sami got the worst of it, with the entire bag of flour being upended over her, coating her from head to tow with a fine white powder. Jamie, whom she happened to have been hiding behind at the time, also got a dusting of the white powder. Small pieces of egg also clung to his hair, from where Molly and Jazz had doubled up on him, smashing two eggs into his hair gleefully. Crimson wound up with the entire bottle of syrup squeezed into her hair, and egg smashed into her Pj's. Molly escaped with only one glass of juice being dumped on her, but Jazz had all the bacon dumped over her head and butter smeared down her face. Genevieve got most of the pancakes pitched at her, two actually sticking to her hair, and one running down the front of her robe, leaving a sticky, syrup and butter trail down the front of it.
When they finally ran out of ammo, the entire family settled back down into their food covered chairs, observing the food drenched kitchen with a strange sort of satisfaction. Sami summed it up best.
"Wow--we made a BIG mess."
The rest of her family dissolved into fits of laughter. Sami, slightly confused by her family's reaction, just shrugged her shoulders and clambered into her brother's lap, giving him a floury hug and a sticky kiss. This just made the rest of them laugh harder, and Jamie just shook his head.
"I've got to go take a shower--Caitie said she's be here sometime before nine." Jamie looked over at the clock and winced when he noticed that it read eight twenty five.
"Will you give Sami a bath too?" Genevieve requested, still choking on her own laughter.
"Yeah, sure." Jamie agreed, lifting the baby of the family and heading toward the upstairs bathroom. However, before he got there, the doorbell ringing caught his attention.
Changing directions, Jamie carried Sami toward the door, and opened it--and jumped. Caitie Roth stood before him, her mouth open in shock.
"What HAPPENED to you?" She asked, her eyes wide.
Jamie looked at her, and schooled his features into the most serious expression he could manage. "I was eating breakfast with my family."