Babysitting a seventeen year old

Babysitting a seventeen year old (4)

Chapter 4

I slammed my hand down on my alarm as soon as it started to go off at 12:00pm. How I loved the bliss of the summer holidays, I could go to bed as late as I liked and wake up at an atrocious time in the day.

As I stretched and generally woke myself up I noticed how abnormally quiet it was in my house, well, I suppose it was never loud in my house, considering it was only my mum and me, but I thought I might be able to hear her watching the television or something.

I trudged down the stairs slowly whilst wiping the sleep out of my eyes, I felt nice and refreshed and ready for the day ahead of me, which was unusual for me, considering how lazy I was. After filling the kettle with water, I made my way towards the fridge to get some milk when I saw a yellow post-it note on the fridge door.

Eve,

Long business trip at work, rushed off my feet lately, won’t be back for three days. Hope you understand, plenty of microwaveable meals in the freezer.

Be safe, love you loads

Mum xxx

Immediately my happy mood was gone. Why couldn’t mum have told me this a few days ago and given me warning? This was my typical mother, always shirking her responsibilities and never really looking after me properly. When I think back, my mother wasn’t always like this, in fact she was a great mum, but after my dad died of lung cancer two years ago it changed her. It changed me too; I used to be a popular, happy-go-lucky teenager, but when my dad died everything changed; I didn’t have it in me to try or to be happy anymore, instead I just made do with being quiet and reserved, never really enjoying life neither hating it, I was a walking robot. I sat in the library every lunchtime at school, waiting until I could get out of that hell-hole so I could leave and go to the public library. Why did I go to the library all the time? Most people there are quiet and shy and will just leave you alone; it was also due to the fact that I now disliked all my previous friends with a passion, so I wouldn’t have anyone to socialize with anyway.

My life currently consisted of; waking up, going to school, coming home, going to the library or exercising, watching television and then going to bed. I can’t really say that I’m unhappy, because I’m not, but nor am I happy, I’m just content with life and it’s steady pace.

Angrily, I snatched the post-it from the fridge and began ripping into tiny shreds of paper whilst trying to telepathically swear at my mother.

After I’d finished being angry and eating my brunch, I got dressed and walked into town, hoping to find a new DVD to occupy Heather with today, if she wanted to watch a film there was no way I was going to sit through Barbie of Swan Lake again.

I stood browsing through ‘Universal’ films in Blockbuster’s, hoping to find something enjoyable for both me and Heather, when I heard a sudden burst of laughter. I turned around to investigate what was so funny and I was met with Becky, an old friend, one of the girls who I had ditched when my father died. I quickly realised she was laughing at me, it wasn’t unusual, whenever I saw any of my friends nowadays, they made snide comments. I put the film that I had been looking at down, before sighing and strolling over to where she stood.

“What’s so funny Becky?” I asked in a exasperated tone.

“It’s just that I didn’t expect you to leave your house throughout the holidays, and now you have, but only to go and get-” She cut off for a moment to finish snorting. Her laughter was quite obviously fake, there was nothing funny about this situation whatsoever.

When it appeared that she wasn’t going to continue what she was saying for quite some time, I decided she needed a little bit of motivation. “Becky, are you aware that you sound like a pig when you snort like that?” Her ‘laughter’ stopped immediately and she glowered up at me, (I was quite a bit taller than her).