When her alarm ripped her out of an unsteady sleep, she felt like she had been hit by a bus. She felt the previous day still in her bones and in her rumbling stomach. After the texts she had felt so helpless and confused that she had had to get it out of her system once more and it had tasted like gall.
Afterwards she had shut her phone off and packed it into her backpack, shoving it down to the bottom, where she could hopefully forget about the damn thing. But it didn't work.
It didn't work while she had been in the kitchen, making Cal his promised favourite.
It didn't work while she was eating three times more chicken nuggets than usual, while Cal was blabbering about his day and a bug he had found in the garden, Danny always called it Piper's stress eating.
It didn't work when she was getting rid of all the calories afterwards.
It didn't work when Cal showed her the bug he had named Piper, his new pet.
All the time those texts were in her head.
They were in her head when she had tucked her brother in.
They were in her head every single time she had woken up that night.
They were there in the morning, making her feel miserable and weak.
Cal was lying next to her, all cuddled up with his stuffed blue dragon, that Piper had named Alfred when Cal was still a baby, the poor thing was already so raddled because Cal always dragged it around wherever he went, crawled or jumped. Alfred had been Cal's first toy, a welcome to earth present from his older siblings. Danny had already been 17 years old when Cal was born and babysitted his little sister while the parents were at the hospital. Piper had wanted to give her new little brother a welcome present so badly that Danny had finally given in and driven her to the mall where she had picked Alfred as the perfect toy and the way Cal loved this little dragon had proven her right.
She looked at the little boy in her bed for a few minutes, his presence calmed her down a little, giving her the feeling of having a home. It had become bad habbit lately for Cal crawling into her wide bed in the middle of the night when another nightmare had tortured him. Piper stroke the blonde hair, it was soft and fluffy like a little yellow babyduck's feathers and it still smelled like baby. This particular scent of newborns when you smelled their heads.
Before she could wake the little boy, she rised from her king size bed and put on her runner's shorts and a black top she took from her drawer. Piper had started running a year ago and she now was kind of addicted, whenever she ran, it felt like her toughts and worries were too slow to keep up with her, she was literally running from her problems and it was working as long as she didn't stopp. Her mind was empty and light until the second she slowed down at the sight of home and all her dark thoughts rolled over her like a truck and so sometimes, like today, when her mind was really overloaded, she just kept running until her body broke down.
Putting on her running shoes, she opened the door to the street, cold air hit her face and filled her lungs while she still kneeled on the black marmor floor tying her shoelaces. She took in a deep breath and stepped into the barely awake street, closing the door behind her. The sun hadn't rised yet and the birds were still asleep, Piper liked the street more in the early morning when it seemed darker, colder, truer.
Her feet on the asphalt and her own breath were the only noises that stirred the cold air. Soon she had found her rhythm and the steady beat of her shoes hitting the road made her deaf against the voices in her head. It was freeing, but it wasn't enough this time. Soon the words started to cloud her mind again.
'Can we start tomorrow? -A'
It sounded way too familiar for a conversation between to people who's most contact had been one watching the other getting bullied by her friends so far. Who did this girl think she was? Asuming that only an A would be enough to make sure Piper knew who she was. As if she didn't know that much people who would text her. Which she knew she didn't, but it was a totally different thing for somebody else to asume it.
Piper speeded up, trying to get back into her running numbness by making the muscles in her legs burn from exhaustion.
Did this Alex-girl really hack the principal's PC? Piper surely thought the leatherjacket-Nichols-gang-member was capable of such a level of criminal energy, along with robbery, drugdealing and other dreadful felony. Plus nearly nobody in school knew her phone number. Yes, it was a fucking mystery, because she wanted it to be, it was enough to be tortured all day in school, she wanted at least her cellphone to be a save place, a plan that surely was about to fail now.
Piper cursed internally, her lungs were burning like they were on fire, her legs felt sore and her heart was beating 100 miles per hour, but this Alex girl still fogged her mind and screwed up her magic bullet against sorrows.
For the last metres Piper quickened to the absolute maximum, causing her lungs to nearly explode when she reached the frontsteps of her home. Letting herself fall down on the frontporch, panting heavily, she watched the street wake up.
The birds started cheeping, when the first sunbeams gleamed over the edge of the world, coloring the horizon in light shades of pink. Piper took off her runningshoes and the sweaty socks, putting them neatly on the porch beside where she was sitting.
She stretched her legs towards the ground, feeling the grass with her burning feet, it was still damp from the night but it was cooling her down a bit and the blades of grass were tickleing her feet.
As much as Piper craved for speed sometimes, as much she wanted to press on pause in other moments, she wanted the world to slow down to a complete standstill. She tried to take in every detail of this moment, the cool grass beneath her feet, the peaceful absence of mankind, the silence that was just broken by a few baby birds crying for breakfast and telling each other their dreams of the night.
It all seemed so peaceful, hiding the fact how gruelsome of a place this world could be and the lie of it all broke Piper's heart, changing her mood from one second to the other. She took her shoes in her hand and pulled herself up from where she was sitting, whiping her damp feet on the doormat before she fumbled her key into the door. Entering the cold interior of the house, Piper sighed, all of her problems were still there, hiding behind the corners, behind the closed kitchen door, inside of her backpack, in her parent's bedroom.
The house was deadly silent, creating a lonesome athmosphere. Her dad was probably gone already, being the successfull lawyer he was, he barely was at home to see his wife and kids and in those past years he had even been staying overnight in his office sometimes, at least that was what he claimed. Well, Piper knew it better and she was sure her mother did too.
The cold marmor floor did the rest to cool down her heatened feet and she left wet footprints on the dark surface while making her way to the kitchen. It was still more than an hour before school started so she didn't have to hurry. She poured what little whine was left in the open bottle on the counter into the drain. That bottle hadn't even been open yesterday afternoon and now it was nearly empty, so Piper assumed her dad hadn't come home yesterday. Her mother's whineglass was standing in the drain and Piper decided to eliminate the evidence of her mother's loneliness, washing up the glass and putting it back into the massive glass cabinet.
Then she got a bowl out of the cupord, placing it on the table with a spoon and milk and cornflakes, before pouring water into a glass.
It was 15 Minutes later now and she was starting to freeze in her sweaty running clothes, she threw one last look at the kitchen, that was part of the biggest room in the house. The whole groundfloor consisted of only a hallway, a little bathroom and that one huge sterile looking room that contained a barely used but high tech and modern kitchen, a big table that could save plenty of guests and the living room part that took half of the floor space of the house, with white leather couches, a huge flat screen and the fireplace. One and a half of those 4 walls consisted of a floor to ceiling glass front, giving view to the neat garden.
Piper closed the door behind her, taking the steps that led from the hallway to the first floor where her bedroom was. Cal was still asleep in her bed, Alfred in his little arms. Without waking him up, she slipped into her own bathroom, stripping off her clothes and turned on the hot shower.
It was tuesday and the week had already been more confusing than every other one in her life. She never had been invited to a party by anyone else than Polly or Pete. And now she had an invitation of a cute boy to a party that was only three days from now and it scared the shit out of her. She knew she wouldn't go, the Nichols would be there like on every other party in town and she wasn't stupid enough to let Larry watch them torture her when she could avoid it.
Plus, she didn't want to admit but she was still scared it was just a joke. A gruelsome trick to mock her, that if she said yes he would answer 'Well, I'm not going with you fatass, so deal!'.
Piper turned off the shower, the steam fogged the bathroom so she barely could see from the shower to the door. She hurried to put her clothes on, nearly choking on the damp, hot air.
She had no idea how to say no to this Larry guy surely she would stummer around and her face would turn red in embarrassement, but that was still the second scariest thing for today.
Forbidding her brain to think any further, Piper left the bathroom, tiptoeing towards Cal's room that lay across the hallway. The child's room was a big contrast to the neat, sterile rest of the huge, cold house. Instead of the white empty walls that dominanted the other rooms, Cal's walls were plastered with drawings of dogs, bugs, ducks, santa clauses and Cals and Pipers and Alfreds. The carpet was covered with toy cars, crayons and lego bricks. It was a labyrinth of childhood that made it hard to even walk through the room. How Cal was able to cross the room in the dark to sneak into Piper's bed without breaking both legs would always remain a mystery to his big sister.
After collecting some neat clothes for her little brother she went back to her room where the little boy was still asleep, he lay there sprawled out in the huge bed and his little naked feet were looking out from under the blanket. Piper walked towards him, stroking his little head to wake him up.
"Hey baby. Rise and shine!" she whispered when he grunted in disapproval. "Cal" she kissed him on the forehead "time to wake up".
The little boy blinked a few times and slung his arms around his sister's neck letting her lift him out of the bed - but before he could fall asleep on her arm again, Piper put him down on the ground, helping the sleepy boy to dress himself.
While Cal sat at the table, munching his cornflakes, Piper got a headache pill from the drawer, putting it on a tray with the glass of water, carrying in to the second floor. She knocked on her parent's bedroom door before entering. Crossing the room, she placed the tray on the nightstand.
"Mum?" her mother grunted just like her son had done before "Mum, I gotta go to school!".
The room was darkened by weighty curtains and a smell of alcohol hung in the air.
Ripping the curtains open angrily, Piper forced her hungover mother to wake up. The compassion she had had with her mother years ago had turned into anger and frustration as she had to watch her little brother grow up with a selfish mother who burried herself in work and selfpity. And so she ignored the grunting of her mother, raising her voice "Mum! I gotta go and somebody has to watch Cal."
Carol rubbed her eyes, groaning from her headache, she grabbed for the heachache pill on her nightstand, being used to the habits of her caring daughter.
"Mum! Get up!" Piper yelled, it was unbelievable how this person could be so non functioning while being so successfull in her job.
When her mother slowly moved herself out of her bed Piper left the room again, collecting her backpack on her way down. "Cal, I gotta go, I see you in the afternoon, be a good boy!" she pecked a kiss on his forehead and rushed to her car.
Hey guys, thanks a lot for your reviews.
I know I'm starting this off a bit slowly, but I think it's always good to introduce the character to the reader and to illuminate their whole life to make it a more realistic person :) please tell me what you think about that.
Of course you all want to see some more Piper-Alex-interaction and I promise you'll get it. Just be patient ;)
Please keep the reviews coming, tell me what you like, tell me where I have to improve myself and tell me what you think is shitty :)