The Girl Who Wore Jordans

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Six

      “If I see another tall, Italian, anorexic person walk down that thing, I’m out of here,” I proclaimed, as the loud music continued to blast its way into my ears.

      “Elizabeth, you’re being dramatic! Stop it!” my mom scolded, having to lean over Trevor to not yell.

      “Can I have food?” Trevor asked for the umpteenth time of the day. “I’m hungry.”

      “Nice to meet you, Hungry, I’m Kit,” Kit said, laughing at the lame joke she had made, before sobering up and giving him a real answer, “No.”

      “Mom!” Trevor whined. “Do you seriously want to send your only son into starvation? Is that what you’re goal in life is?”

      “Ashton, can you please deal with the kids?” Kit requested of her dear husband who was mindlessly scrolling through something on his Blackberry.

      “Hmm? Are we leaving?” Ashton slowly took a trip back to reality, not hearing what his wife had told him.

      “Can we leave?” Trevor asked hopefully.

      My eyes randomly decided to wander over to the slender expanse of white, as they collided with yet another lanky, dark-haired girl, resembling a toothpick. “That’s it, I’m out of here!” I proclaimed, not being able to take the pressure. I stood up, hoping— no, praying that my mother and Kit would go along with my declaration. 

      “Elizabeth Abigail Turner!” my mom decided to match my stance, as she uttered my full name. I cringed at the use of the three names, wondering if she had used a time machine to travel back into the colonial days when naming me. Though what my three initials spelt out was, well, epic, the names themselves weren’t as “groovy”. “Don’t you dare say another word or make another movement or I swear I’ll—”

      “Holy shit! Liz, your initials spell out ‘EAT’!” Trevor exclaimed, thankfully interrupting a scornful Monica Turner.

      “Yes, yes they do,” I smiled proudly, as Monica merely buried her face with her hands in mortification.

      As the story went, when my mom was naming me, she wanted something “classic” and “sophisticated”. The two names of “Elizabeth” and “Abigail” stuck out in her mind as fitting the criteria to perfection. Being the somewhat-scatterbrained individual that my mom happened to be, she completely overlooked what initials spelled out until it was too late. Maybe it was an omen for the future, or a warning, because I sure as hell lived up to my name. Eat. Yeah, I could definitely do that.

      “You want food, Trev?” Ashton sighed, rising from the plush seat he had inhabited. He shoved his beloved form of communication into the nadirs of his chest pocket, turning to me. “And, Liz, you want to leave?”

      “That’s like asking someone if they like oxygen,” I mumbled, as my mother cast me a look that read, “Shut. Up.”

      Currently, I was no longer on my planet. Well, physically, yes, I was still on Earth, but, more figuratively. The second I boarded the damned plane, I realized that I was leaving the world I knew and entering a completely different one— one belonging to Monica Turner and Kit Lawson.

      “Come to Italy!” they had said. “Maybe you’ll meet a pro soccer— or football player,” they said. “It’ll be fun!” they promised. And the biggest fib of them all: “Shopping? No, none of that on this trip!” Sufficed to say they lied.

      We had been in the wonderful, Mediterranean country of Italy for grand a total of three days now, and the trip had been anything but fun. So far, we had attended four different fashion shows, all of which my mother and Kit had promised wouldn’t exceed an hour. The first lasted three hours, the second four, third only two, and, then there was the one at which I was presently being held hostage, which had been two and a half hours of pure torture so far. I had been to fashion shows in the past, my mother’s entire occupation revolving around the sole word of “fashion”, and, for some reason, I oddly didn’t recall that they were as gut-wrenchingly awful as they were. In summary, to say that I was having a “good” time wouldn’t exactly be the most truthful of things.