The clumsy girls guide to summer

The clumsy girls guide to summer: Chapter 1

The bright lights are shining down on me as the room around of faceless faces stare back, waiting and watching for me to start. The guitar riff plays in the back ground as my hands tremble by my sides. The drum beat starts to pound in steady rhythm behind me and the lights suddenly become even more dazzling. A haze appears in front of my eyes as the hammering of my heart tightens and increases. I open my mouth. Nothing. I push my voice to appear but it seems trapped in my throat, lost somewhere deep inside me. A loud laugh sounds from the crowd and it's the most prominent thing I can hear. The voice throws further insults at me as I realise what's happening. But it's too late; the blackness engulfs me as I hit the floor.  

The faintest shuffling awakens me, as the sound of the fire alarm suddenly goes off. I cover my head with my quilt and snuggle in more under it, trying to suppress the sound of the alarm and my mum clambering up the stairs to quickly turn it off. By the smell of it, for breakfast I will be having burnt pancakes or something sweet of that sort; I'm definitely betting on the burnt bit either way. Now I can hear both my mum and dad moving plates and stuff around the kitchen; why couldn't I have just stayed asleep for a bit longer? Something had woken me up, a shuffling noise or something. Then I could feel someone's presence in my room; lifting my head out from under the covers I come face to face with my little sister.  What is she...?

"LOUISA!" I yell, as I jump out of the warm bed and regret it with the sudden coldness of the morning air in comparison. I grab for the nearest hoody and pull on the boot slippers next to my bed, hopping after my sister as I do so. For having little legs you would have thought she couldn't run as fast as she can. I swerve out of my bedroom, literally running into the door in the process and continue to chase my five year old sister down the stairs and around the house before finally arriving in the kitchen.  My parents look happy cooking breakfast, both chatting and working together to create the mound of pancakes: I don't think that is going to last long to be honest.

Louisa skids on the tiles knocking the pancakes in my mum's hand flying, leaving them hanging from the ceiling. I on the other hand, skid on one of the pancakes which had landed on the floor and fall back on the bottle of chocolate sauce, on the counter. Unfortunately, the lid explodes off and the kitchen suddenly is covered in sticky chocolate sauce across the whole of the light beige walls. This manages to match the remaining of some pancakes stuck to the ceiling. Louisa and I look around and both back towards the door; my parents on the other hand look around in disbelief then manage to glare at both of us. It probably doesn't help that a pancake suddenly drops from the ceiling landing on my dad's head. The sight of the pancake on his bald head makes both Louisa and I giggle then try covering this up with a coughing fit, as our parent's expressions become more serious and less dazed at the situation.

"So... I think I may skip breakfast today- a shower sounds good to me!" I say meekly yet with slight cheerful enthusiasm trying to lighten the mood: it never works. I turn around hastily walking back out of the kitchen to the corridor and Louisa starts to follow.

"Cathy! Louisa! Both of you freeze and get back here...Now!"

 My mum doesn't like raising her voice or shouting at us or anything which seems violent or angered; always for peace and justice. However, she has perfected the serious tone, as well as the art of the passive aggressive voice. Both being used in the same sentence- that's worrying. We both shuffle back and look down at the floor, Louisa looks up at me with worried eyes so I make a small smile back at her and bend down to her height. I never realised how much mum and dad looked like giants from this angle- its quiet scary in some ways actually- was I ever this small? Mind Louisa is tall for her age- but still. I realise I'm rambling in my head and snap back to my mum's lecture whilst I notice my dad scrapping the pancake remains off of the ceiling with a brush or something similar.