Summer Days

Chapter 54

I grabbed a hair tie and my comb and headed out to the kitchen in my bare feet to get some breakfast and hope that someone wanted to braid my hair.

Gabriel was the obvious choice but Erica was well skilled at braiding as well. Surprisingly, or maybe not surprisingly if I thought about what I'd learned about my boys, Luke was very adept at braiding as well, in spite his tendency to twist my hair into loops if he was bored in class. I chalked it up to being less obvious than actually whipping out a comb and French braiding your girlfriend's, who wasn't supposed to be your girlfriend, hair in the middle of Homeroom or English.

"Good morning, Sang." I heard variations of the phrase as I entered the kitchen and smiled, going around and greeting each one of my boys with a quick hug and kiss before greeting Erica and Jessica with a pleased smile and a quick hug.

"I see you made it for breakfast." I smiled.

"Luke does great pancakes." Erica smiled.

"I heard you trained him well." I responded.

"Ben taught me well so it's all full circle." She admitted.

"And Luke's been teaching me." Jessica piped up as she put a rather large bite of pancakes in her mouth. I smiled and slid into the chair next to hers.

"That's good. I do okay with pancakes." I shrugged as a plate materialized in front of me. Based on the healthy side of bacon and heaping spoonful of fresh fruit on the side of my chocolate chip pancakes, it was clear that this had been dished up for me by North. "Thank you, North Star." I said.

He bent and pressed a kiss to the top of my head. "You're welcome, Sang baby. We can take your fruit with us in the van if you don't finish everything."

I smiled. "Thank you. I appreciate the heads up that you aren't going to freak out if I don't finish."

He barked out a laugh. "After how long it took you to fall asleep last night? I'm just happy you're willing to eat at all."

I rolled my eyes. "Thanks, I think."

"Do you want one of the bottled coffees or juice?"

I shook my head. "A glass of milk, please."

"Sure." He nodded and headed back into the kitchen to get me a glass.

I dug into my plate. I was hungry, to be honest, I don't know how I ever managed to think being hungry was a good thing. I certainly don't think I could handle being hungry anymore for more than a typical gap between meals. On the other hand, there were days that I couldn't seem to eat enough and I would practically eat my way through the day with something every hour.

I think those were days that Katniss Everdeen called 'hungry days' in the Hunger Games books. Days where from the moment you woke up, you knew no matter what you ate would not be enough to stave off hunger that day. I used to have those a lot. But sometimes, when I was 10 or 11, those were punishment days. Oh yes. If you thought the step monster was terrible when she made me drink lemon and vinegar mixtures, tied me up in a shower with the water on or made me sit naked in a closet all day... well. Those punishments had nothing on the ones she was giving me at first.

It wasn't uncommon for me to be held to one meal a day for up to two weeks. In the summer. She knew she couldn't pull it off during the school year because if I tried to skip lunch, someone would feed me and then call her to tell her that I was some sort of forgetful child who clearly forgot her lunch that day.

No one understood that they'd just ensured I wouldn't get dinner.

And I was going to be lucky if I could sneak down to the kitchen in the middle of the night and secure a snack. And something to eat for breakfast out of view of Marie's sneaky little snitch eyes.