This story starts with a very bad thing for a story to start with. That thing is a toilet. Yes, you heard right. A toilet.
Unfortunately, this was the toilet belonging to two of my brothers, Mark and Luke. Also unfortunately, I was the one cleaning this soiled toilet.
But don’t worry, it wasn’t like they’d forced me to do this or something like that. In fact, they’d said they’d give me forty dollars just to make the toilet seat gleam. I wasn’t about to pass up the opportunity for earning money like that without doing much at all, so of course I got out the cleaning supplies from under the kitchen sink and set to work.
There I was, standing over this revolting object, rubber gloves and scrub brush in hand. I heard my brothers in their rooms, rocking out to blaring heavy metal music or watching the TV with eyes that could barely be peeled off from it. Being the lazy teenage slobs that they were, they would of course much rather cough up a couple of the earnings from their jobs so I’d do it instead of them cleaning their own bathroom. So you can pretty much imagine how good I was at cleaning toilets, and even better because I’d discovered a trick recently. Instead of working for my minimum wage of five dollars, I’d found out that they were so sluggish that if I threatened to walk out on the job, they’d offer me a fortune-- the most they’d ever paid was sixty dollars.
Every time they begin a sentence with “Quinn, it was pay day yesterday,” is a great moment in my life. So far, just from toilet-earnings, I’ve got six hundred bucks cash, and then there’s always dish-earnings, dusting-earnings, and don’t forget all the other chores I’ve ever done for all of them. All in all, I’ve got about three thousand dollars, while all they’ve got is meager earnings from their jobs, most of which they spend on my pay or buying whatever sixteen and seventeen year old guys buy (what, you expect me to pay attention?) so I’ve been living pretty good. There’s a lot you can gain from living with seven brothers, especially if you’re the only girl.
What? Yeah, I’ve got seven brothers. There’s Mark and Luke, (twins, and SO annoying), but there’s also Jeffrey, Logan, Bradley, Chase and 2-year-old Seth. It’s not like I’m the one taking care of them, though. My dad’s a lawyer with a real good pay so my mom doesn’t have to work. She’s the one taking care of the littler ones. Unless you count Jeffrey, of course. He’s really good with kids, and Mom always wants his help with them. He also does all his assignments in school, turns ‘em in on time, and I don’t remember him ever playing with action figures or Nerf guns. We don’t talk a lot, but when we do, his answers are usually one or two word ones. I don’t really know much about him, but we’ve all figured out that he’s not like the others. For one, he’s got the palest blue eyes you’ve ever seen, while we’ve all got green, and he’s also got long wavy golden blond hair. I’ve heard from Mark and Luke that a lot of girls like Jeffrey at school. I just think that they’re jealous, though, because Mark and Luke are a different category completely. Not only have they got the trademark O’Connor freckles, button nose, fiery red hair and green eyes, but they’ve also got a gleam in their eye like they’re about to light your pants on fire (it’s happened before, not a nice memory for me) and have earned me a terrible reputation at school. Not even Jeffrey could change that.
The rest of the O’Connor kids are just like Mark and Luke, but I prefer to think of myself as much, MUCH less annoying then them. Our mom’s and dad’s sides are both Irish, but they’ve forgone the customs a long time ago, since they’re both the third generation living in America.
Sometimes I’ve dreamed that I’ll learn Celtic, the original language of Ireland, but I know that’s never going to happen. For one, it’s not like they teach almost-forgotten languages at my school, and I’m sure I’m terrible at learning languages anyway. I’m not even that good at English: I’ve got a B- in Language Arts, and I’m not about to get any better at it. It’s a well known fact in my family that absolutely none of us can write. Especially poetry. Despise the stuff.
