I don't own Home Alone


The cursor blinked continuously as Becky stared at the blank page of a new Word document. A bunch of notes that she had taken during the soccer game were splayed out in front of her but the disadvantage of that was she didn't know where to begin. Should she start with introducing the team and their opponents, Winnetka High School, or just jump right into how the game was played and what had happened? Not knowing where to start had always been frustrating for Becky for she felt that she spent hours on end trying to find a sentence that would engage the reader to the school's newspaper.

"Okay," she sighed to herself as she ran a hand through her red hair and looked up at the computer once more. "Just write." Cracking her knuckles, she held her fingers above the computer's keyboard, as if she was going to play the piano and began to write.

Winnetka High School is proud to announce their first win during the spring semester on April 15th 1991. The team, trained by Coach Rita Soles and led by Sara Shepard, had been training fervently for months towards its first game. The Cardinals team include...

At that very moment, Becky paused as she reread the words that she had just typed up. Why was this sounding like a boring tale rather than an exciting story? Her goal when writing this was she wanted her readers to relive the excitement just as they were during the game. She clenched her teeth as she felt a rush of frustration flooding over her thoughts. Why wasn't she able to concentrate through all of this? Her deadline was until Friday and yet, she had barely given the newspaper a second thought? Becky let her back collapse against the chair as she looked at the words once more.

"I can't keep staring at this," she said to herself as she moved the mouse towards the exit button and shut down the program without even bothering to save the document. Letting out a sigh, Becky collected her notes and stuffed them inside her bag, not bothering to put them in chronological order. She didn't know whether it was just pure laziness that she was experiencing or the fact that no matter how much effort she put into it, no one was going to care about what happened during the game. Then again, Becky didn't think that anyone read the school newspaper, as opposed to a small group of people who wanted to kept up to date when clubs met or when there was going to be an event, so why even bother to continue with it? The only reason why was that Becky truly liked writing and the school newspaper was something that allowed her to do that. It was better than writing an essay, one of the many things that she detested due to the fact that there wasn't much room for creativity, but the newspaper offered her that escape.

She slung her bag over her shoulder and as she was about to walk out of the computer room, one of her classmates Jessica, stopped by. "Hey, good thing I caught you before you left," she said as she handed her a piece of paper. "This is for the 'Ask Shirley' column. Do you mind putting it in as soon as you can?" she asked.

'Ask Shirley' was an anonymous column where students would ask the newspaper for advice and someone that worked for the newspaper would give them advice. No names were mentioned from either party, but the advice given had to be sincere and professional. Otherwise, the school would not be too happy if they had to deal with any bullying. If Becky were honest, she believed that the 'Ask Shirley' column was necessary to have. High school was a difficult time for all students no matter the popularity that they had. Everyone was always dealing with something and sometimes, it felt good to share it with someone and receive feedback from them. Becky didn't know if any of her siblings had ever asked anything for the 'Ask Shirley' column and she never bothered to prod them on about it. There were some things that were best kept to oneself.

"Becky!" she heard Jeff's voice as he ran down the hallway and met up with his sister. "Did you finish your article yet?" He had gone to the computer room but had not found her there.

"Not yet," Becky said as she turned and looked at her brother, "and before you continue, I know that it's due on Friday. I just couldn't concentrate in there."

"I was hoping that you wouldn't because I just got some new pictures of the field," Jeff said as he held up freshly printed pictures from his Polaroid camera. "The other ones were too blurry when I went through them."

Becky shuffled through the photographs and studied each and every one of them. She had admit, they were a lot better than the other ones that he had taken and perhaps they would help Becky with her article. "Much better," she said as she shuffled through another photograph, "but next time try to get a picture where no one else is around. I was thinking of having one where the field was empty and then moving on to them one where the teams are playing."

Jeff took the photograph in his hand and squinted at it. He had tried his hardest to make sure that the field was empty but somehow he had snapped a picture where a student was present. "Looks like I just caught a picture of Linnie," he snorted as he realized whom the blond was in the picture.

Becky clenched her teeth at the mention of her sister's name. They had not spoken to each other ever since Becky's outburst at the hospital. All three of their brothers were left confused at what was going on between them but Becky was not going to express her dislike that her sister was dating her best friend, and perhaps the one person she had been developing feelings for. A part of her felt angry at herself for not being direct enough with her feelings towards Lucas and angry that she had not shared it with her sisters, but she was also stubborn of the fact that she felt that her sister's knew about it. Especially how much she talked about Lucas when they were together.

"Hey did you know I saw her and Lucas together," Jeff stated, as if this was probably news to Becky. "i didn't know they were a thing."

Becky whipped around and looked at Jeff. "She told you about it?"

Jeff furrowed his brows at his sister's sudden reaction. "No," he shook his head to her, "even an idiot would know that they're dating."

A part of Becky relaxed when Jeff said that he had no idea about Linnie's whereabouts with Lucas. It would have irritated her even more that Linnie would have told her siblings and not her. It was almost as if going behind someone's back and not being truthful about it, something that Becky would never expect coming from Linnie. "You know what?" Becky said as she opened her locker and took out her textbooks that she needed for tonight's homework. "I hope that they're happy!"

SLAM!

Jeff cringed when Becky slapped her locker shut, whipped around, and marched down the hallway as if she had unfinished business to attend to. Jeff felt that Becky was irritated about something, but whatever it was he didn't want any sort of involvement in it. With a roll of his eyes and shake of his head, Jeff opened his locker and collected his own textbooks knowing full well that he had to get home soon.

After all, that homework was not going to be completed by itself.