MY NEW NEIGHBOR

Chapter 2.

          To the Morrison's credit,they didn't flinch when their door was opened to our little circus of a family, ushering us inside with warm smiles. Mr. Morrison was tall and broad, with close cropped sandy hair and the bearing of a military officer while his wife had the gleaming golden curls and long legs of a model. They were both extremely handsome and together they looked as if they had stepped off the cover of a home magazine. Mrs. Morrison accepted the wine greatfully, cradling it in the crook of her arm while assuring us a cake would have been fine and us assuring her that it wouldn't have.
         
          Their apartment, even though it was right next door to ours, was like stepping into another world with it's high vaulted ceilings and white marbled floor. The air smelled of flowers, the real kind, not the stupid scented plugins, and I wasn't surprised to see bouquets of colorful flowers poking from the top of expensive blown glass vases, so delicate they might break at too loud a noise. Art that didn't make sense to me hung from the walls in elaborate frames, both of these thing speaking to how expensive it probably was.

         We followed them through an archway that let you know you were about to walk into something amazing which turned out to be a spacious kitchen, appliances gleaming a shiney silver, yet to be marred by finger prints and the fires that I'm sad to say were very common place in our household. It was as if every utensil had been perfectly placed by a home designer for a photoshoot, everything neat and organized and I was impressed to see Mr. Morrison head right to the drawer where the corkscrew was located. In our house it would have been a four man rummaging unit where everyone found something they had been looking for months ago with nobody ever actually locating what they were looking for then and ending with one of my moms stabbing dangerously at the cork with a knife, chipping away little pieces like a logging champion chopping down a tree until it was impossible to even open the bottle.

          "How old are you Max?" Mrs.Morrison asked me as she took the bottle of wine from her husband and poured it into glasses that I hoped my moms wouldn't break.

          I tried to keep the frown from my face. To be honest I was a bit... prickly about the question because it was always followed by a surprised "oh really?" I was a bit small for my age... Okay, maybe more than a bit. I hadn't grown much since I had turned ten, puberty having yet to stretch my bones and my cheeks were still soft and round, an extremely irritating factor when involving stereotypical little old ladies.

          "I'm fourteen...." I said, adding almost as an after thought, "or will be in November at least." 

          "Oh!" She said which of course was inevitably followed by, "really?"

          "I know. Hard to believe. I look so much older," I replied, both of my moms and my sister all shooting scowls in my direction.

          "You're almost the same age as Graham," Mr. Morrison chimed in, looking around. "Where is he anyway?"