Mistake 3:

I woke up the next day to the vacuum turning on outside my door. I stood up and stomped out into the hall where Casey had thought it was necessary to clean with a large, loud machine.

I pulled the plug. "Do you mind?" I snapped, and without waiting for an answer, I returned to my room, slamming the door behind me.

When I plopped back in my warm bed I was all ready to go back to sleep, but the sun coming through my window was blinding me. I groggily crawled out of bed and pulled the curtains closed, making my room completely dark again. But when I crawled back into bed, the first thing I remembered was the Casey dreams. My eyes immediately snapped back open. Thankfully I hadn't dreamt again after falling back asleep, but the other two dreams were still fresh in my memory. Why is it that you can't remember the good dreams?

I sat up and rubbed my face. The vacuum started up again outside my door. Rolling my eyes, I got up and opened the door, glaring at Casey as I walked past her and pulled the cord with my foot so it came out from the wall for the second time.

"De-rek," she snapped. I ignored her and made my way to the kitchen.

"Kendra called twice," Nora told me as I passed the table.

I grunted my answer, not really caring. My stomach was rumbling and needed to get food in it. I reached into the cupboard for my cocoa puffs, but the only thing in there was Honey Bunches of Oats and Marti's Dora the Explorer cereal.

I looked around the kitchen. The box was sitting by the sink. I snatched it up, like it would run away if I didn't grab it soon, only to find that it was empty. Not even the plastic bag was inside it.

"Edwin," I snapped when I saw him walk in from the laundry room.

"What?" he asked, looking at me with the tiniest bit of fear in his eyes.

I took a few menacing steps until I was towering over him. "What happened to my cereal?" I felt some satisfaction as his eyes widened slightly.

"Casey was eating it this morning," he told me. I narrowed my eyes at him.

"And you weren't?"

He shook his head vigorously. He was telling the truth. I gave him permission to go. Once he was out of my sight, I marched up the stairs, where Casey had moved from the hallway to her room.

She saw me and turned off the vacuum before I could do it for her. "What?" she snapped.

"You owe me a new box of cereal." I realized as I said it how ridiculous it sounded.

"Hardly," Casey argued. "There wasn't even enough left to fill the bowl. There were mostly crumbs left anyway."

"But they were my crumbs!"

Casey's eyebrows rose. "You cannot be serious. You'll eat anything that's in the house anyway and Mom will pick you up some more cereal the next time she goes shopping, so just chill," she yelled at me, each word getting louder.

"You know what?" I stopped, unable to think of anything else to say to her.

"What, Derek?" She rested one hand on her hip and waited for me to finish. I simply glared at her and chucked the cereal box at her that I realized was still in my hand. The corner of it scraped her arm and it fell to the floor. I turned and walked back to the kitchen before she had a chance to yell at me for it.

I turned my nose up at the cereal choices and decided on pop-tarts. I opened the package and sat down to eat them cold, ignoring the phone when it started to ring, once, then twice, then three times. Finally Dad came into the kitchen.

"Don't move, Derek," he said, "I got it."

"Good to know."

"Hello?" Dad said into the phone, "Oh, hi Kendra. Yeah, he's right here." He handed the phone out to me. I took the phone from him and left the room.

"Hey," I greeted when I knew Dad was out of earshot.

"Hey, Derry, you're finally up," came Kendra's sweet, girly voice from the other end.

"Yeah, I was up late last night. Marti had a nightmare." Not a lie.

"Oh, that's so sweet. You're such a great brother to your siblings."

I smirked as Casey walked past me. "Yeah, well I try."

"So," Kendra said, "I was thinking that we could go to the mall today."

"I have to baby-sit." That was a lie. I hadn't even gotten up half an hour ago and I was already getting asked to do something I didn't want to. No way. Not on my spring break.

"Oh," Kendra sounded truly disappointed. I almost felt bad about lying to her. Almost.

"Sorry," I said.

I was about to offer to take her out to dinner later on that week when Dad walked in reading papers in his left hand and nearly running into me. "I need the phone."

I rolled my eyes, pretending to be more frustrated than I actually was. "I have to go. Talk to you later."

"Alright," she replied, "Call me later."

"I will bye." I hung up and placed the phone in Dad's hand before heading back to the kitchen to finish my pop tarts. Casey was standing at the island, wiping down the counter. I ignored her presence and sat on one of the stools across from her.

"You know you really shouldn't lie to your girlfriend," Casey scolded.

I rolled my eyes. "God, can't you stay out of other people's business for five seconds?"

"I'm just saying—"

"Well don't." I took a bite of pop tart, letting the crumbs land on the newly wiped down countertop.

"Slob," Casey shot at me. She leaned across the counter to wipe up the mess, giving me a perfect view down the front of her shirt—

I looked away quickly when I realized what I was doing. "I'm gonna go upstairs." Casey didn't answer as I practically ran to my room and pressed the palms of my hands to my forehead as I leaned back against the door. Why did these things keep happening to me? Out of all the girls in the world, why Casey?

I'll admit that I thought she was hot when I first met her, but I quickly got over that when I got to know her. She's the exact opposite of me and I knew we wouldn't get along when I tried to have a conversation with her. Tried being the key word there. We had nothing to talk about. I tried to bring up hockey and she said she didn't like sports. She brought up movies, but that topic was almost immediately shot down when I said I like action movies. So we pretty much just stood there, staring at our shoes

Suddenly I felt pressure on my back as someone tried to open my door. My weight against it prevented the door from even opening a few inches.

"It's called knocking," I said, raising my voice slightly to make sure they heard it through the wood.

Knock, pause. Knock, pause. Knock, stop.

Lizzie.

I turned and opened the door. "What's up?" I asked, sounding carefree.

"What were you doing?" she asked, looking past me into the room.

"What do you mean?"

"Your door wouldn't open. Were you blocking it or something?"

"Did you need something?" I asked.

"I was wondering if you could help me with soccer over spring break. We won't have any practices since most people are going to Disney Land or to some other vaca—"

"Yeah," I interrupted, "Sure, whatever, maybe. I'm not promising anything."

Lizzie smiled. "Thanks," she said and walked down the hall, grabbing the soccer ball from the games closet as she passed.

Lizzie was my favorite step-sister. She was quiet and never got in my way. And she distracted Edwin, so he wasn't always bugging me like he use to. The only bad thing was that she was somehow able to almost make me be a halfway decent older brother sometimes. I guess I just have a soft spot for my younger sisters.

"Derek!" Dad's voice came from the stairs, "Sam is on the phone!"

I grabbed the phone off my desk. "I got it!" I yelled and turned the cordless on. "Hey, Sam…"

((((o))))

A/n Sorry it took so long for the update. I was in the school play, which was taking up an insane amount of my time, and then I had finals, so of course teachers decided to give us extra homework and stuff like that. Then I just didn't know how to end this chapter. I hope it's alright, and thanks for being patient.