L*-*i*-*z
"I told her this would happen." The words were muffled but they were like a direct bullet shot to my head. I groaned softly and buried my head further into the pillow. I stretched out and squeezed my eyes shut completely. The little bit of light I could feel on the other side of my eyelids was making my head throb.
I took in a deep breath, trying to clear my head when I smelled the softest trace of cologne on the pillow. That's when I realized this wasn't my pillow. Or my room. My head snapped up and my eyes adjusted slowly to the dimly lit room. Pain shot through me from the muscles in my toes straight up to my head. It suddenly became less difficult to ignore the pain when I realized I had a bigger problem at hand.
Who the hell's bed was I in.
The room looked unfamiliar, but I was positive that I knew the voice I had woken up to. Suddenly, a mortifying thought occurred to me and I tore the covers off my body. You know when you have those mini heart attacks? The ones you get when your chair almost tips backward, or when you think someones veering into your lane and is about to hit you, or when you almost drop your phone into the toilet. Those terrifying moments when you are positive you're about to die for a fraction of a second, and then the glorious recovery moment when you realize you're not dead. Yeah, well I just had one of those moments when I realized I was wearing mens boxers. Not the dark wash skinnies I had put on last night. Mens boxers. Wanna know the worst part? They were covered in yellow ducks.
The ear piercing shriek I let out probably woke up the whole neighborhood. But I didn't care. I'd be elated if it woke up the whole neighborhood. Then they could come charging to my rescue with pitch forks and whatever else they needed to get me out of here alive. Thoughts of what could have happened last night swarmed my head as I crawled off the bed. The wooden floor felt cold against my feet, making goose bumps break out on my arms. My legs were shaking in terror as I slowly walked towards the door, unsure if my capture had heard my scream or not. I tried to remember what my dad had taught me about self defense as I walked closer to the door. I was almost positive that I had read a book on the sport of kick boxing in the sixth grade, but my mind was hardly forming coherent thoughts so there was no way I would remember.
I pressed my ear to the door and strained to hear. There was silence for one second. Two seconds. Three. Then the same voice spoke again,
"Yeah she's sleeping right now. When she wakes up, she'll flip." I knew that voice for sure now. Immediately, my legs stop shaking, my spine straightens and I fling open the door, no longer scared. A long hallway stretches out to the left and right of me. I take a left, following the smell of bacon. The hallway quickly leads me to a kitchen. A boy was at the stove, a spatula in his left and, salt in his right and the phone pressed between his ear and his shoulder. From the back, his black hair looked tangled and unbrushed. His shirt was wrinkled and he wore a pair of khakis. It looked like he had also just woken up too.
"Jonas?" I asked, my voice sounding so quiet in the big, open area. He whipped around quickly to face me. The salt dropped from his hand in his surprise. The glass shattered and salt spread across the floor, covering great distance in a second. I feel like some of the glass shards flew and nailed me in the head because of the sound it created. My hands flew up to my head and I massaged my temples, trying to maintain composure.
"Shit," he cursed silently, "I'll talk to you later bro, stop in sometime." He said these last words into the phone then used his now empty right hand to slam the phone shut and toss it onto the counter. "You're up," he says to me, as if it was completely normal that I was in his house. I watched as he maneuvered by the glass shards around him and walked over to a cupboard where he opened it and pulled out a broom.
"Uhmm..yeah," I muttered. He didn't offer up any explanation as he started to sweep up the mess on the floor. He was horrible at it. He kept missing the big piles and it looked like if he couldn't get a good grip on the broom as if he didn't know where to hold it. I got the impression that he wasn't talking until he finished cleaning up, because all his attention on the mess he had made. Finally, I sighed throwing my hands into the air. "Just let me do it." I snatched the broom away from him, acting like it was a big deal.
"I had it," he said, rolling his eyes but making no attempt to get the broom back.
"Okay sure, whatever, sherlock," He leans against the counter and a smile traces his lips.
"You know you should really be nicer to me," he says as if this is a known fact. This makes me stop sweeping for a second a look up at him.
"Why is that?" I ask. "And why in the hell am I in your house?" His eyes widen slightly at my language, because the truth is I never swear. Ever.
"Wow, you must be really pissed."
"No, I'm really confused and a little bit scared and I really want to know what I'm doing here," I rant, finishing off sweeping up the glass. He points to a dust pan lying on the counter and I pick it up and sweep all the salt and glass into it before dumping it in the trash.
"You don't remember?" he asks, searching my expression. His eyes linger on my face and suddenly, I realized that my hair is frizzy and unmaintained, I probably had huge eye bags my eyes and my shirt was cutting a little too low after a night of sleeping in it.
"Of course I don't remember! Or else I wouldn't be asking you," I say, frustrated as I attempt to pull my shirt up a little higher. He smiles as he realizes that he has something over me. He has something I want and I know I'm not going to get it easily.
C*-*A*-*M
"God, he was so arrogant. You should have seen the smirk plastered onto his face. The whole time I just wanted to punch him in that pretty little face," I vented to Macey over the phone. "And I'm not usually a mean person, right? But this guy, just wait till you meet him Mace. Actually, I hope for your sanity that you don't have to meet him. If he starts attending Gallagher I swear I am going to kill myself."
"So he's cute?" Macey asks. I sigh. Out of all of what I had just told her, that's what she gets out of it.
"Macey," I groan, "that's not the point."
"So he is cute!" she prods, knowing she's getting on my nerves.
"No!" I say, walking into my garage. The car I had gotten for my sixteenth birthday sat in it's parking spot by the silver minivan my mom drove around. We called it The Hulk. No joke. It had been around since I could remember. It survived many storms, and it's fair share of almost-death experiences while on the road. To this day, even though only my mom used it now, the van still smelled like wet clothes and old practice bags and cleats. If you went to clean it out, you'd probably find hundreds of old, moldy McDonald's french fries collecting under the seats. Or DairyQueen straw wrappers.
"So he's ugly?" I get into my car and slam the door shut behind me. Grant' car isn't in the garage so I know that he must be out.
"No," I yell. "He's hot, okay? Now will you please compensate me and tell me how horrible he sounds?"
"He sounds like a horrible person," she repeats, her tone flat.
There's a seconds pause.
"That didn't make me feel better," I finally say as I turn on the engine and pull out of the driveway. Macey laughs one of her genuine laughs that usually only Bex, Liz or I can get out of her. It made me smile along with her.
"Well I have to go. Daddy's going to take me to the Burberry store here. I need knew heels," she says and I hear he deep baritone of Mr. McHenry's voice in the background saying something to Mrs. McHenry about dinner that night.
"Macey, you have spent more money on heels in the last three months then I have spent on my car in the last two years." I hear her sigh over the phone.
"That's because you don't care enough about shoes enough. You're comfortable going to school in your soccer cleats." She says this as if it's a bad thing.
"I only did that once!" I defend myself. "Okay maybe twice." She laughs again and I can tell she rolls her eyes. I can just picture it; Macey sitting in a five-star hotel in Paris in a Chanel dress with Coach pumps, waiting for her dad to get off the phone to take her shopping. Her IPhone will be on the table in front of her on speaker as she files her nails and listens to me droning on. Then I can imagine her walking the streets of Paris with a kind of confidence I will never have. Her head will be held high, her walk will be more of a strut and as the boys heads turn to look at her, she won't even glance back their way.
"Whatever, Cam. I think I'll be back in time for school on Monday."
"Okay, see you Monday. Have fun shopping in Paris," I say before we both hang up.
And hour later, my heart is pounding and my adrenaline is pumping as I sprint down the soccer field behind our high school. The clouds above are grey and unfriendly looking. The wind has picked up quite a bit so a chill bites through the air. It's still April; the bipolar month where one day it's snowing and the next it's as hot as Mexico. My old, reliable cleats pound into the ground, digging into the grass as they skillfully dribble a soccer ball down the field. I pretend to fake out a girl on my left and go right, dribbling towards the goal. My eyes linger down to my feet; a bad habit I've always had. Looking down instead of up. The goal's so close and the feeling I get right before I score during games enters my stomach. My foot makes contact with the ball and it goes soaring through the air until it hits the back of the net in the right, top corner. Perfect. As if I really was in the game, I hear cheering coming from off the field. My head snaps over to see a group of boys with my brother in the lead, chanting my name.
"And Morgan scores again," Grant says, imitating the voice of the announcer. I laugh and role my eyes. I walk over to them, meeting them halfway onto the field.
"What do you guys want?" I ask, noticing that none of them had their cleats with them. I could feel the gaze of hormonal boys looking over my body. I didn't even try to cover up; I was only in a sports bra and shorts. I know that none of them would try to pull anything. All of them were more like brothers so my attitude towards it was that boys would be boys.
"What?" Grant asks innocently, "We can't just come watch my little sister play soccer?"
"Big sister," I correct him. Grant and I both really want to know who came out first when we were born, we want to know who is the oldest and who gets all the privileges. But my mother had known it'd cause conflict so she never told us. And she probably never will. Still, we're both pretty insistent on the subject.
"I'm taller."
"I'm smarter."
"Oh come on, we don't want to hear this bickering," Kyle says, throwing a long, skinny arm over my shoulder. "We came here to see if you wanted a ride to the party." I look up at Kyle, one of my closest friends, and can't help but smile. Kyle is a tall, lanky ginger. He's one of the nicest and funniest people I know. I swear that I'd date him if I didn't love him so much.
"Not going," I tell him. He laughs as if this is a joke.
"Of course you're going. You didn't go yesterday. And the new kid is going, so we get to officially welcome him to San Diego." I watch the faces of all my friends and there's a sly smile hidden on every single one of them.
"New kid?" I ask.
"Yeah, Mary said she invited him to the party. Apparently she met him yesterday in the school office after school. He said he'll be there, so were going to go check him out," Jason pipes in from behind Grant.
"What's his name?" I ask, leading the group towards my bag on the sidelines. The sun was pounding down on us and I could feel the California heat drying out the back of my throat. I rustled through my soccer bag till I found my Gatorade. I quickly downed half of it in one sip.
"We don't know," Kyle says, reaching over and grabbing the bottle out of my hand. He takes a quick sip before it's snatched by Jason who finishes it off.
"You're throwing that away," I tell them, frowning and grabbing my shirt off the ground. I pull it over my head and sling my bag over my shoulder.
"Kyle, you throw it away," Jason says, passing it over his shoulder to Kyle. This obviously is not okay with Kyle because he chucks it back at Jason, pegging him in the head. I start to walk away, knowing this will get bad fast. As I walk to my car, I don't turn around but I can hear the shouts and screams of my brothers behind me as they whip the empty bottle at each other. The weekend lay ahead, my boys were behind me and I was unconditionally happy. In a way, they were like my family. And even though I didn't know it, soon there would be a new addition to our happy family, wether I liked it or not.
G*-*R*-*A*-*N*-*T
"Cammie, you get ten minutes. I'm not joking," I warn her as we pull into our garage. Girls take forever to get changed. No joke. How long could it take? Really, all you need is to roll on deodorant and throw on a clean shirt and pants. My rule is "if they smell good, they'll be good." But girls are so difficult. Theres the makeup and then for some reason they feel that their hair needs to be perfect. Don't even get me started on the clothes, though. Who really cares about if you're shirt matches your shorts. And shoes too, who cares? I own three pairs of tennis shoes tops. But Cammie's closet floor is covered in them. There's heels, ballet flats, sneakers, Sperrys and three hundred other types of shoes.
"You guys are the ones making me go to this party. So go ahead, leave after ten minutes but I win either way," she points out as she opens the car door and jumps out. Kyle laughs beside me, knowing she's right. Jonas and Jason took a different car so they could pick up Bex and Liz. Of course, Macey was in some other country that I will probably never see.
"Yeah, yeah," I grumble as we walk into the kitchen through the garage door. "Whatever floats your boat." The sound of her laugh lingers, bouncing off the walls as she runs out the door and down the hallway to the staircase. Kyle leans against the island and sighs.
"Dude, have I ever told you that your house is huge?" he asks, his eyes scanning the room around him. It was big, but not not huge. Just a lot better than the apartment Kyle lives in by himself. Both Kyle's parents are unstable, his mom was a druggie and his dad drank, hardly ever sober. The whole situation was so screwed up, and so he moved out. The only reason he stayed with them so long was because he had a little sister; Skylar. She was only six, hardly old enough to understand why Kyle didn't live with her anymore and why her parents were so messed up.
"That's because you live in a run down shack," I say, grabbing an apple from the basket in the middle of the table. I threw it up in the air and caught it, taking a big bite.
A look of mock-hurt crossed his face as he said, "My apartment costs four hundred a month. That is worth way more than a shack. And plus, it has class, which a shack doesn't have." I snort through my nose and take another bite of my apple.
"You call a few cup coasters, some old pillows on an even older couch and old Christmas lights class?"
"Okay, maybe class isn't the right word. More like its," he thinks for a second, "Cozy."
"Yeah, if cozy means absolutely no space," I counter. He rolls his eyes and waves this off as if the points not worth arguing for.
"Where's Cam?" Kyle asks, glancing down at his phone to find the time. "The party starts in ten."
"I guess we'll have to be fashionably late then," we hear Cammie yell from upstairs. "Have you seen my green shirt?" I roll my eyes, this is a typical thing for her to ask. Cammie's clothes littered the floor of her room, the floor of the laundry and even spilled out into the hallway. Sometimes, I even found some of her shirts in my room. But, being the good brother I am I answered,
"Which shirt?"
"The flowy spaghetti strap one with the low back," she said. I immediately remembered seeing it in the clean clothes hamper.
"Check the hamper," I call.
"Which one?"
"Clean." I hear footsteps then some banging of the hamper lid and then silence for a second as she rustles through the bin.
"Got it!" I finally hear her say. "I'll be down in three seconds."
"Good," Kyle sighs, "I'll be waiting in the car." He turns on his heel and starts walking to the garage. I laugh.
"It's your funeral, it's a hundred degrees in that death trap," I tell him. He groans and kicks the door.
"Hey, be nice to that door. It's my favorite," Cammie says from behind us. We both jump at her sudden appearance. She's wearing the green top with jean shorts and her white vans. Her hair is curled and she's wearing only the slightest traces of makeup. She was so pretty, so gorgeous and every guy knew that. That's why I had to beat a lot of people up. No guy deserved Cammie. Not one single one at our school. Not even Kyle, Cammie's best friend. All of the guys only wanted Cammie for her looks and her body; trust me, I knew how a guys brain worked.
Kyle wolf whistled. "Looking hot babe," he teased, elbowing her in the ribs, "You going to get yourself a man tonight." Cammie giggled and looped her arm through his before heading to the garage.
"Nah, you're my only man Kyle," she said. I followed behind them. I didn't have to worry about Kyle; he was just a good friend of Cammie's, they were practically inseparable.
"Kyle, you're gay," I said, smiling in-spite of my condescending tone. Cammie laughed but Kyle just shook his head, smirking as he pulled open the passenger door for Cammie before hopping into the backseat. As soon as Cammie draws her attention to her phone, Kyle leans forward.
"I'm not gay, I've gotten laid more times than you have," he whispers to me.
"Once more," I hiss back and this time it's his turn to laugh. He won't let this fact go and ever since sophomore year, he's been boasting about it.
"Yeah, yeah, get mad about it," Kyle provokes playfully as we pull out of the garage. The last couple rays of the California sunlight for the day are hitting down on me through my windshield, I have my sister on my right, my friend behind me and I'm going to see my girlfriend with a full night ahead of us. I can't help but think that this is what everyday should be like as we turn out of the driveway and drive towards whatever awaits us at the party.