Man of the Year (Drake Story)

Chapter To

The next morning, I felt mentally nailed to the bed. I couldn’t get up—the terrible nightmare that I’d experienced last night about my mansion burning down and Amanda firing my maids contained me to the bed.

It was even more difficult for me to get up once I realized that it wasn’t a nightmare.

“Good morning, Master Aubrey. How did you sleep?” One of the maids, Haley, asked as she took some comforters out of the closet.

“I slept fine, for the most part. You?”

She chuckled lightly and said, “I assume you slept more than fine, for you’ve awaken three hours after we all do. But as for me, I slept well—as well as you can in the maid’s quarters. There are so many of us that it’s hard to sleep with all the noise and lack of space.”

I wondered how come the amount of maids in the house mattered; the mansion was so big that each maid could have her own room, or at least share rooms by two’s. Why was there a lack of space? Did they sleep in one room?

I made a mental message to visit the maid’s quarters, or at least ask Belphoebe about it. She seemed to know about all the questionable things in this house, and there were apparently many more than I was noticing.

Haley was right about my waking up three hours late: it was now twelve o’ clock in the afternoon. I had probably missed breakfast. Maybe Belphoebe was even looking for me.

“Don’t fret about your breakfast. Evidently, you and the other new guests woke up around the same time, so Master Drake is making provisions to have you fed right about now. You can go down there now and find out what time breakfast will be served, just to see if you have enough time to shower. If so, I’ll be waiting outside of the upstairs northwest bathroom to run a bath or shower for you.” Haley told me. She stood at the side of the bed, probably waiting for me to get up so she could make the bed.

“Sorry; you can go ahead,” I said, finally peeling myself from the comfortable mattress and slipping on a pair of my uncle’s borrowed slippers.

I left the bedroom, walked down the corridor and followed the sound of laughing and clashing forks. Obviously, they’d begun eating without me. Hopefully this was not everybody and just the new guests. That way, if I joined them now, I’d be able to meet a few of them without the overseeing of my uncle. He had a tendency to be really pushy, urging people to talk to each other and arranging parties and such. At my birthday party, he would introduce me to girls and say, “Oh, you two should talk about the new movie coming out this weekend. Maybe you guys should see it together?” or “You and this young man both watch baseball. You’d make great friends, you know? Baseball lovers unite!”

With a sigh, I walked into the dining room and smiled at everybody, content to see that Uncle Drake was not here. One of the butlers pulled out a chair for me at the very top of the table, a chair that I’d only seen my uncle sit in. I thanked him, sat in the chair, and then thanked the female worker who placed a plate of an array of breakfast foods before me.

“Good morning,” I greeted the new guests. Belphoebe was here, along with another tanned girl with long two-toned hair and a sexy, R&B aura about her. The others were three nerdy white boys with glasses or cardigans tied over their shoulders or braces, and a petite white girl with black hair draping over her face.

They all mumbled almost inaudible good morning’s to me except for Belphoebe and the long-haired girl. The one with the hair said good morning loud and clear, but Phoebe didn’t say anything at all.

“I’m Aubrey; Drake is my uncle.” I told them.

“We know that,” The white girl snapped.