She's Just A Skater Girl

'Let it out, darling.'

Safe to say, I was absolutely dreading the next day at school. It was bad enough as it was, but being Adam's personal 'maid' was enough to push it over the top. Plus, if I pretended to be sick, he would probably make me do it for another whole week. It was completely ridiculous, which was why it was something that Adam would do.

Sighing, I stepped into a pair of ripped jeans (stonewashed) and pulled a thick jumper over my head, since it was starting to get cold outside. Smoothing down my hair, I stared into the mirror. Yep, I look perfect for a maid. Not.

"Riley!" Mom yelled for the fourth time this morning. In fact, I was pretty sure she was enjoying it, seeing as her voice increased an extra ten decibels each time. 

"Coming!" I yelled, popping my head round the door. Of course, in teenager speak, this means 'stop bugging me for God's sake, I'll come when I'm ready!' This version, however, was a lot shorter, and a lot less likely to get you grounded. 

After I finished putting on clothes and socks, I scraped my hair into a high, messy ponytail (because there's obviously no other type of ponytail or bun than 'messy') - since by the loudness of Mom's voice, there was enough time to put it in a 'proper' style (aka, not looking like I hadn't touched my hair for about a month). 

Purposefully slow, I strolled down the stairs, tapping the bannister on each go. Maybe the later I got to school, the less waiting on Adam I would have to do. 

"Mom's livid, you know." Trent commented from the bottom of the stairs. He was holding a pancake in one hand, and munching on a piece of it while he spoke. I rolled my eyes.

"Close your mouth when you're eating, moron." Trent mimicked my sentence in a girly, high-pitched voice, before stuffing the whole pancake in his mouth, and chewing it all with his mouth very wide open. Yep, we were pretty much back to the usual brother-sister banter. 

I brushed rudely past him and glided into the kitchen, where Mom was frying more pancakes on the cooker (the more that Trent could stuff in his mouth the merrier, right?) and Dad was sat at the breakfast bar, reading some intellectual newspaper, and neglecting the stack of pancakes in front of him.

"Good morning." I said pleasantly, as I grabbed a dry plate for the draining rack. Startled, my parents both turned to look at me. I wasn't surprised. Normally, the most I'd do in the morning is supply them with an unladylike grunt to signify my presence. Well, it was just as functional.

Mom glared at me suspiciously, while Dad shot me a small smile. "Good morning, Riley." they replied simutaneously. Dad's greeting was more lighthearted, while Mom was still frowning. God, wasn't she happy that I'd (supposedly) gained some manners?

"You're phone was buzzing all last night Riley, didn't you check any of the messages?" Mom asked, shaking her honey blonde hair out of her face. My face paled. I could have a pretty good guess at who those messages were from, and I knew I wasn't going to like any one of them at all. After I read Adam's last text, I thought I had switched off my phone, but I obviously hadn't. It was then that I realised that I hadn't answered, and Mom was still staring at me expectantly.

"Um, yeah, I'll do that. It was probably Jenna or....the phone company." I blurted out. I could still remember middle school, where whenever Mason got a text, it was always from his phone service providers, while for Lee, it was always some girl texting him. As I remembered these old times, I felt a pang of sadness. Sure, England was great (most of the time), but it wasn't home without Mason and Lee.

After I piled a few pancakes onto my plate, I pulled out my phone from the pocket of my jeans. I had about 7 texts (who were probably from the person I was least hoping they were from) and one WhatsApp message, which surprised me, because I usually didn't get many of those.