Beyond Flames

Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid man. Daniel cursed himself. How could he allow himself to be fazed by Sarah and her actions? After she had disappeared, he had stood outside of the apartment for another five minutes before pushing the door open again. There, he had found Seden and Emeka waking up and shying away from each other, but he only rolled his eyes at them and made his way to the kitchen. Time to do something productive, he thought by himself. Anything to keep his mind off of Sarah and the questions littered around in his mind.

“Anyone fancy an English breakfast?” He asked the two tired friends. They both nodded, and Emeka stood up. He walked to the room, probably to change his now dirty clothes.

A faint yes came from the painted pink door where Sarah had disappeared behind. I opened the fridge, thankful for the grocerie shopping we had done a few days ago, and started picking out the ingredients I would need. Now I may not be the best cook, but my English breakfasts were famous amongst our families. Once in a month we would all come together, every mom and every dad, to enjoy the breakfast cooked by my mom, Noah and I. That was a relaxation moment for us all, a moment where we could catch up with everyones lifes and could talk freely about anything. Before we met Sarah, it had always been something my mom would organise, but once we got to know her and invited her and her huge family along, too, the organisation was fully in the hands of me and my brother. The original plan was to organise it with the band, but turns out Sarah, Emeka and Seden are not the best party planners around. So, all tasks came on the shoulders of our family except for my father, and we honestly didn’t mind.

When we had first invited Sarah, it had been quite awkward as Sarah was the silent, scary type who would totally be out of place in our pretty, civilized families. We didn’t have a clue what Sarahs family looked like either, since she never told us about them, but after a bit of persuading from Sedens side, we finally managed to convince her to come with her family. And that she did.

What we didn’t account for was that Sarahs family was the biggest one of all. We thought Emekas’ was big, with his three sisters and two brothers, but Sarah did not only have two snotty older sisters, she also had two twin baby brothers who only cried and  a little brother. But since her parents were divorced and her mom got remarried, she also had a stepsister from the age of fifteen. A family of nine was too big to add to the relatively large table from Daniels family, so they made it an habit to add an extra table to their entourage, so everyone could take a seat. Sarah’s sisters immediately bonded with Emeka’s, forming the gossip pentagon they were now, and her brothers always chatted with Noah and the bandmembers.

Sarahs entire family was not like they’d expected them to be. They were super smart, extremely handsome if you left out the stepsister who was always sporting puffed cheeks and ate more than the entire table together, and really talkative. Sarah was the silent one, apparantly. For the longest time, Daniel had had a crush on the eldest sister, but then she revealed her true arrogant self and had crushed all Daniels hopes of ever being with her. She was the prettiest one, though. Her blue eyes were one shade bluer than the rest, her blonde hair just a bit shinier, her nose just a little bit smaller, her cheekbones just a little bit higher, sharper than those of the other girls. She was the meanest one of them, though, but love makes blind and Daniels eyes were already dazzled by her beauty, so he was an easy prey. To tell a long story in short: She noticed, she played, she broke. He hadn’t been her first victim, she had been his first heartbreak. He got over it, though, mostly because of Sarah and her actions. When she had found her friend in a bad state, she had coaxed the information out of him with a few words and when she heard the way her cruel sister had turned him down, she had been furious. She had slipped into her sisters’ bright blue room, stole her precious diary and had taken pictures of it. Then, she had created a fake email account, sending the pictures to the biggest gossip queen of our school, Rebecca Kingsley, and that had done the deed. Her sister had been publicly humiliated, just like Daniel, and got what she deserved. Sarah didn’t like her sister, anyway.